Nei Gong week this week, and I reached the last lesson of Year 2, yay. I’d been hoping that it wouldn’t be a long seated lesson, because that would interfere with my MCO prep, so I was a little nervous when I opened the lesson and saw a decent length seated exercise! But it turned out to be an outside practice, to do during sunny days; so it was something that I would want to fit into my afternoons when I’m out in a park doing Tai Chi there instead of something that I would want to fit into my morning Nei Gong at home.

I tried the exercise a couple of times; no particular effects yet. It is interesting when doing it how noticeable the different aspects of the exercise are, though: yes, there’s one point on my forehead that stands out, yes, I can leave my gaze far away but move my attention along a line, yes it goes inside my head when I do that, and yes there’s one point in my head that feels distinctive in a way that plausibly seems like having my vision become a little lighter. So I’ll keep on poking at that a couple of times a week.

On the MCO prep note: I had a bad practice on Wednesday; I didn’t feel quite right going in but I decided to practice anyways and that was a mistake. Not a horrible mistake or anything, but now I know to listen to my body when it’s doing that. Did MCO prep again on Friday and then tried kicking it off on Sunday; better than the previous week, but the Qi was only making up to just above the middle of my spine. Still, things are feeling more active in my body: e.g. when doing the Kidney Hui Chun yesterday, stuff was moving around quite noticeably even in the preparatory hand movements of that set, and today I did just a bit of Wu Ji as a preparation for a different exercise and my body started tingling almost immediately. So I’m pretty optimistic that I’ve hit upon a practice routine that has me actively building up Qi.

I also went through the third Zhan Zhuang lesson in the Taiji course. Still no putting the hands up; I guess that only shows up in the third year, but I’m not going to try to skip ahead to that. A very interesting lesson, at any rate, adding releasing from the feet to the mix; and it did indeed add another aspect to the interior stretch. On Saturday I did Zhan Zhuang with my arms up; hard time sinking my mind through my body in that position, but I still felt a good amount of inflation as I relaxed my arms, tried to sink my mind, and tried to relax my feet.

And on Sunday I did Zhan Zhuang as in the new lesson, I got a lot of inflation then. And actually on Sunday afternoon, the insides of my elbows were aching a bit; I’m not sure that was caused by the inflation from Zhan Zhuang or if that was caused by something else, but nice to feel that my body was working. If it was caused by something else, it’s probably that my Tai Chi teacher was having us do an exercise where you used your Dantian to flash your arms up and down, and I did a hundred iterations or so of that on both Saturday and Sunday, so that would also have put stress on my arms. Interesting exercise, one which I’d done before but not as effectively in the past: one I did it enough, I started to get a time delay where the movement was moving from my arms on down. Which is a good sign because it’s showing force moving from one part of my body to the other (setting up a causal relationship instead of muddling all the different parts together); but then when I asked my teacher about it, he said that it should go from my legs to my Dantian to my arms, so I had the causality reversed! Something to keep working on.

Also on Saturday I worked through an exercise about grounding your opponent’s force from Ken Gullette’s Internal Body Mechanics book; interesting to feel it both within my body when receiving force and within my partner’s body when I was giving force, I could tell when he was adjusting. And there was a Sunday Tai Chi class this week; we finished the staff form, yay. Next month should be a staff review, but then we’ll start the double dao after that; I think that’s the last weapons form that my Chen teacher teaches? Still a few empty hand forms to learn, though, and at some point it would be nice to see the Taiji ball.

Just Taiji review on Tuesday; I think only two sections to review and then I’ll be back to progressing on those lessons? I would say that I should try to review more sections midweek, but I’ve been spending that time on watching the Zhan Zhuang lessons; hopefully I’ll do the third of those this week. I’m definitely glad that I went through the Zhan Zhuang prep lessons: yesterday in particular I had a quite strong internal stretch while practicing that, and while I didn’t feel as strong an inflation today, I felt like maybe my mind was stabilizing a little more inside my body? Also I’ve been feeling random tingling (in a good way) in my back pretty often, and I’m continuing to feel bits of my back want to relax and expand at random points during the day.

I had an acupuncture appointment on Friday, and my energy levels have been a little better since then; not sure if it’s the treatment or getting restocked on my herbs or random chance or what.

I’m trying to get back into MCO work. I did a one-hour MCO prep set on Wednesday, then tried out the MCO on Friday. Didn’t make it very far, though; I clearly didn’t have much juice, which didn’t surprise me. But I did the prep exercise on Sunday, and then when I was doing the Kidney Hui Chun on Monday, it went really well, in a way that made me think that stuff is starting to build up. I’ll try to keep up that routine, doing the prep twice a week and trying to kick it off on a third day during the week, plus some other exercises that hopefully will help out some. We’ll see if anything happens that interferes with that; and hopefully I won’t come across any long seated Qigong exercises in the course for the next few weeks that I have to spend time on.

It was a Nei Gong lesson week; this time it was on Give It All Away. I’ll have to think about that one, figuring out what my approach should be; I don’t think I’m currently approaching Nei Gong in too instrumental a way, but I’m also not approaching it in the sort of attitude of devotion that that lesson recommends. And, honestly, I’m not good at that sort of attitude! Maybe I should listen to it again to see what options he recommends and see if I can find one that fits.

I also watched the Zhan Zhuang 2 video on Friday. Still doing preparation, this time about sinking your mind through your body; I was surprised how much my body was reconfiguring while doing that. Definitely seems good to work on, for Nei Gong purposes as well as Tai Chi. I did regular Zhan Zhuang on Saturday; I don’t know that I felt like my mind was doing a particularly good job of soaking through my body (maybe because of the arm position, maybe because it was raining pretty hard), but even so my body felt like it was supporting itself surprisingly well.

Also on Friday I had an interesting Wu Song Shen Fa 1 session: when the Jin reached my shoulders, my arms lifted on their own more strongly than I’m used to them doing.

In general, I feel like there’s interesting and productive stuff going on inside my body. I wish my energy levels were better, though, still room for improvement on that front.

On Sunday, I taught my first class in this iteration of my Silk Reeling Principles course. Only two students, which was less than I’d hoped; I knew some people had a conflict (so I’ve already scheduled a makeup session of it for this Saturday), but I’d thought a couple more people might show up? But the two people who showed up were super involved, so that was great, we ended up talking enough that the class went about half an hour over. Part of that was that I probably stuffed in a little too much material this time; also, I feel like I need more calibration about how hard people find it to pay attention to their body, and to what sort of attention I’m looking like: I think people are looking for big insights but I want people to start small, and initially with stuff that isn’t even surprising. So still a work in progress.

This week’s lesson was a Taiji review lesson; nothing much to report there.

I’d mentioned last week that I’d been feeling tired recently; and this past Wednesday my sleep had been interrupted, so I expected to feel like I’d need a nap at some point during the day. But actually it went fine: I was a little tired, but not actually that much given how my sleep had gone. I was trying to keep my spine open that day, and I think that helped. I had a good session of the Zhan Zhuang precursor exercise (about sinking flesh from bone), I’m definitely going to be keeping that up. Thursday started off very well, I had a good Spleen Hui Chun session and felt active and stretchy inside, so that was good too; a bit more yawning later in the day than I would have liked. And on Friday I went to the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco; on the drive up I was doing a good job of sinking inside my torso, and I kept that state during the museum visit. Saturday I again had bad sleep and was pretty tired but I still managed to do all my usual practice and I felt like it turned out pretty well, e.g. a good Zhan Zhuang session (the regular version, not the precursor exercise), and I was feeling my and my partner’s bodies pretty well during push hands. Good sleep Saturday night, and then on Sunday I did an hour-long MCO prep exercise and that went well, I’m glad I did that. So in general I’m seeing a good number of positive signs; it would still be nice if my energy levels were better (I’ll try to ask Damo about that in June), but there are enough other signs of progress that I’m not particularly discouraged.

My wife was out of town for a week, so I figured it was a good time to finally try out Shui Gong 3, so I watched that again on Tuesday instead of doing a new lesson. I ended up doing Shui Gong 3 a couple of times while she was out, and the experience of staring out through my Yin Tang was pretty interesting. I don’t think I actually got to the meat of the exercise, though, I’ll have to do it more times to get that, I suspect. I only did it two times because I wasn’t sleeping great; not awful but noticeably worse than normal. I’m honestly not sure how much of that was because of Shui Gong 3 and how much was because my wife wasn’t there, but I figured that I should remove one variable so I stopped the exercise after that.

Though I actually ended up doing a new exercise last week as well. A while back I’d taken the time to unlock the lessons in the Nei Gong course up through Zhan Zhuang; despite doing that, though, I never actually spent the time to watch the Zhan Zhuang video. But I’ve been doing Zhan Zhuang once a week for the last month or so and been getting enough out of that that I figured it was time to watch the videos, so I watched Zhan Zhuang 1. Which isn’t actually presenting Zhan Zhuang, it’s doing a preparatory exercise about sinking flesh from bone, but it’s good to know that that’s important in this context too. So I’ll spend some time going over that, and then I’ll move on to the second and third videos.

Not much going on in general. My energy levels are lower than I’d like; not sure how much is a consequence of travel (both mine and my wife’s), not sure how much is me not refilling my TCM herbs during my last treatment, not sure whether something else is going on. I’m trying to keep my back open and my posture good, and my body actually does feel abnormally open inside, so I’m still optimistic that I can make progress again on my back and that that will help with my energy levels; we’ll see.

One thing I forgot to mention last week when talking about my trip: I was taking a bus from Cincinnati to northern Ohio, and there were a bunch of Amish (?) people on the bus. I didn’t see anybody in the seat in front of me at first, but then, an hour or so into the trip, I saw a little girl standing up in the seat and looking at me. And the reason why I’m mentioning that here is she had maybe the best neck / head positioning I’ve ever seen; I guess that’s what happens when you’re a kid who doesn’t spend your time hunched over looking at things and are also around adults who don’t spend their time hunched over looking at things? Something to strive for, at any rate: my neck (and upper spine) is in a lot better shape than it once was, but clearly I’ve got a lot of room for improvement.

Anyways, pretty quiet week: end of the trip, and now my wife is on a trip, so still a decent amount of disruption. No new lessons, I’m still reviewing the first chunk of the Yang 37 form. And my body is definitely letting me know that I didn’t move quite enough on my trip; nothing horrible, but I do need to get back into shape, and also be a little better about my sleep. I felt good this morning, though, so that’s a good sign.

Not much to report in general. I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned that I’m giving a second iteration of my Silk Reeling Principles course, but I announced that to my local Tai Chi folks a week or so ago; this time I’m doing it once a month for five months, that will start in May. So I’ve been thinking about that, and I’m starting to get excited; hopefully it’ll be better this year? (I mean, it was okay last year, but there’s definitely room for improvement.) And I reread Ken Gullette’s Internal Body Mechanics book; there are some partner drills there that I think I would benefit from working on, and my push hands partner sounded open to that idea, so hopefully I’ll be able to spend time on that?

Bought my plane tickets for Damo’s June workshop in Houston; I’m looking forward to that. Though doing that made me realize how much it will cost for me to attend the Foundations courses; I still think that’s the right idea, but I’ll probably hold off on buying plane tickets until I’ve talked to Rick, just to make sure that he thinks the course would be a good idea for me.

Not much to report this week: I’ve been on vacation, so while I did my daily Nei Gong practice and a little bit of Tai Chi, but no more than the minimum, and no new lessons.

Nice seeing family, though, and the eclipse was pretty cool!

This week’s lesson was on Nervous System Refinement. I haven’t gone through it too many times; the surface of my arms feel a little more present, but I’m not yet sure what to make of that, I’m not feeling direct connections between that and environmental (or internal) aspects? We’ll see, I’ll keep at it.

On Wednesday I reviewed the Lotus Dao Yin lesson, and I’ve thrown that into the mix a few times. No big effect from that one either but it still feels like the right thing to do. I guess the other option would be to work on Song breathing, the one big effect I had with that was actually related to opening up my chest? But I’ll stick with the Lotus Dao Yin for a while.

I also tried kicking off the Microcosmic Orbit on Wednesday; stuff made it near the top of my spine but not actually up into my head. And the same thing happened on Sunday, too. Not sure if I just don’t have enough juice; if I need to get back to some of the pre-MCO practices; if I need to open up my neck some more (if I’m remembering correctly, the one day when I did do it successfully, I’d been doing Coiling Snake right before then, which does help with my neck); if I need to spend more time thickening in my Dantian before sending stuff up my spine; if I should switch to sitting on my knees before sending stuff up my spine to make it easier for Qi to get in there; or something else. Not worrying too much either way; I’ll keep on trying it out once or twice a week, and hopefully I’ll be able to rotate back to exercises that help me build a little bit more.

On Friday I did 20 minutes of Zhan Zhuang; it was interesting again, this time there was a pretty strong and continually expanding stretch along my arms. So I tried it on Saturday, this time for 30 minutes; less of a dramatic stretch, but still definitely felt worth doing, and actually I felt an expansion in my chest too, which is something that I’m trying for right now! I was surprised after that how much my legs ached; wasn’t awful or anything, but more than I would expect if I’d been doing Wu Ji for 30 minutes, not sure what the difference was there. (Maybe I was sitting lower for some reason, or maybe it had to do with how forces were being transmitted.) I think I’m going to try showing up to Tai Chi class 30 minutes early on Saturdays and doing it at the start of class.

Tai Chi week for the IAA; I’m still reviewing the first road. One thing I noticed (and it’s come up in a couple of videos): in Gong Bu, the bottom half of your front leg should be going straight down to the foot, but I’m often going farther forward than that. Probably would help my knee if I stop doing that (and I assume I do that in Chen Tai Chi too); I’m still feeling out what I’m supposed to do instead, am I supposed to be standing higher, am I supposed to be stepping further forward, am I supposed to be sinking more into my Kua to get down to the right depth?

For most of the week, I felt a little off, maybe even on the edge of getting sick, but for some reason it didn’t feel too discouraging? I hear people talk about how they feel sick for a few days after clearing out stuff with Dao Yins; that might be what I’m going through? And I’m also still dialing in how food affects me, that might be part of what’s going on too. And also I had to get up a few times in some of the nights, because of my dog asking for something, which didn’t help; though even there I’m optimistic because I feel like I’m getting good control over Liver Heat stuff, so if I don’t have my dog keeping me up, my sleep is going pretty well. But at any rate I was doing kind of minimal practices most of the week, smaller practices than normal on Wednesday and Friday mornings in particular.

But on Sunday morning I’d slept well and felt nice and energetic. So I figured I’d try kicking off the MCO; I didn’t really expect it to work super well, because I hadn’t been particularly actively working on building up Qi that week, but my Dantian did at least have a little bit of signs of activity? And it actually worked, though just barely: Qi was going up my spine very slowly, it took about five minutes to make it up there, but it did finally reach my Baihui. Interesting feeling: my Baihui felt like a big hole, and the inside of my body felt relaxed and nourished after doing that. I think it’s actually the most successful I’ve been at doing the MCO at home; still a lot to work on, I think I must have been at the bare minimum of fullness for my Dantian for it to work at all, but still, I’ll take getting one successful cycle. And also this must be evidence that my work on my back has been paying off: it wasn’t moving quickly up my back but it also didn’t feel like it was hitting blockages.

So I’ll definitely want to keep on trying that, and also to work on getting more Qi in my Dantian. Also, I think I’ll dial down the frequency of doing Coiling Snake, because I’m no longer getting strong effects from doing that, so I feel like it’s done its work. In general I’m just feeling a spontaneous desire to Song in my back a lot of the time when I’m standing around, which is also a good sign for the back; though with that I am also starting to notice tightness in my chest now. So I think I should switch my Dao Yin focus and spend some time with the Lotus Dao Yin, that should help with that.

This week’s lesson in the Nei Gong course was on Pillar Opening. Good timing for it: I’ve been working on stretching open my back, and while that’s been successful, I’d been feeling a little bit like I also need to build it up in a healthier way after I’ve stretched apart some of the stuck bits? So it was good to see an exercise that plausible feels like it could do that, and also good to see an exercise that’s short enough that I should be able to find time to mix it into days when I’m mostly doing something else.

On Wednesday, I had a good Wu Song Shen Fa session: 20 minutes of WSSF 2 and 20 minutes of WSSF 3, and I got some interesting vibrating going on towards the end of the second one. Not sure yet what’s going on there, but presumably it’s something useful?

I felt like I was on the edge of coming down with a cold or something on Thursday night, so I took it easy on Friday and over the weekend. Seems to have worked well, I didn’t actually get a cold and I was feeling good enough to go to Tai Chi on Saturday. I spent some of that class working on moving from my Kua (e.g. using my Kua to lift my legs); seems like a good idea, I’ll try that more.