Not much to say about the normal stuff this week: normal Nei Gong practice during the week, noticeably less Tai Chi practice than normal because of having busy afternoons and being more tired than I would like, and I had to miss Saturday and Sunday Tai Chi classes.

But the reason why I had to skip those classes was a good one: we had our first local Nei Gong workshop since covid happened, so I spend Friday through Sunday at a workshop. It was labeled as a foundations workshop, which was kind of vague, and I expected it to be going over the basics (which wouldn’t have been bad, I’ve probably been neglecting those a bit), but it was actually rather more advanced than that.

The main theme of the workshop was tissue work. Every morning, we spent a significant amount of time stretching out our arms: different variants of holding your arms in some position, stretching them out, twisting them, and stretching them more. Except that it frequently wasn’t active stretching: sometimes it was relaxing your arms and moving your attention to different locations, and my arm would stretch on its own. And also sometimes Rick would come over and help us stretch our arms: it felt to me like he was actually tugging on them, but he said that he was mostly touching my arms in ways that let me relax? At any rate, it was really interesting when he did that: after a couple of seconds, my arm would extend noticeably, in a way that didn’t feel painful at all but that did feel like my arms were taffy that was getting pulled.

Not the most pleasant experience (holding your arm up for a while isn’t comfortable), but manageable; it would be nice to think that it’s because I’m getting better at this stuff, but also Rick has mellowed a bit in his teaching. (Though I have gotten better since earlier local workshops; it was nice to feel like I was one of the people in the middle of the range of skill / experience there instead of being right at the bottom. And it was nice to never feel like I’d reached my limit and have to stop for a while while other people kept on going.) And I feel like it really is having an effect in terms of creating more space in my arm and letting the fascia start to do its own thing instead of being stuck too closely to my muscles (and I assume the taffy feeling is related to that): it was definitely the case today that, if I paused and relaxed my body, I would feel various parts of my body expand. I hope I can keep up that looseness in my body: I don’t know for sure how frequently I’ll stick with that exercise, but I should probably at least do it some. (I will miss having somebody there to tug on my arms, though, but I can get some of the effect doing it myself.)

And we also did some other exercises that were working on expanding the body in different ways, and also setting up connectivity across your body. The most important one of those for me was a different way of setting up Wu Ji; not radically different or anything, but slightly different fine points to focus on while arranging your body at the beginning, mostly around generating more space in your body. And doing Wu Ji felt significantly better than normal after I set things up that way: in particular, it took quite a bit less effort to stay up when I do this. (And I think doing that combined with the relaxing and letting my fascia have room to expand will work help me build Spleen Qi instead of messing up my Spleen Qi.) So I am definitely going to work that approach into my Wu Ji from now on, that will be a big help.

And there were a few other things. There was a standing Dantian Gong-ish exercise that I’ll probably try to do once every week or two? And we did some sitting exercises that are related to the firing process; not sure if I’ll do those regularly or not, I’m honestly not sure how well I remember them and also I feel like, once I get back to thinking about that sort of thing, what I should really do is work on the Microcosmic Orbit preparation stuff from the middle of year two and from the Maryland workshop.

Anyways, yay for in-person workshops, I am definitely looking forward to being able to do those a few times a year.

I switched back to Nei Gong standing stuff instead of that one Tai Chi exercise this week. Which frequently just meant doing Wu Ji, but I did do Dantian Gong for the first time in a while. Fortunately, it seemed to be going well, I certainly didn’t get a feeling that my Yin field in my Dantian had degraded or anything. My standing stamina might have, but I think actually I might have been standing a little low, because of the practice I’d been doing the previous weeks? The next time I did Wu Ji I experimented with height control, I think I’m doing a better job of feeling tingling in the right place when I’m at the correct height? And I think it is plausible that I had been standing a little low that time.

In terms of sitting, I mostly was doing the Hui Chun, including sitting along with an hour-long video of the Water Hui Chun. Though I also did something else sitting for the first time in a while, I felt like doing Anchoring the Breath one day. Which was a little surprising: when my attention was in places that were close to my spine, that part of my spine would start stretching on its own. One of the clearest signs that I’ve seen of attention giving rise to Qi.

The main interesting thing from Tai Chi was watching my teacher do bits of the Jian form: it’s a lot more flowing than I’m used to. So I’m starting to get a sense for what he means that you should imitate a dragon in that form; definitely something for me to work on.

I’ll be at an in-person Nei Gong workshop this Friday through Sunday, I’m definitely looking forward to that! Too bad I’ll have to miss Tai Chi on both Saturday and Sunday, but there’s not much I can do about that.

My sleep was better this week; I did quite a lot more shutting down after exercising (especially the standing exercise that I’ve been doing), and my hypothesis was that it helped? My doctor didn’t think that that standing exercise was relevant to my problems, though, so I’m probably wrong about that.

At any rate, I’m going to switch back to some of the basic standing exercises for a while now, Dantian Gong and Wu Ji and Ji Ben Gong or something like that. The Chen Qingzhou version of Zhan Zhuang actually was starting to get slightly interesting, probably helping my legs more than some other exercises that I do, but I think right now I’d rather avoid doing an exercise that sends energy straight to my head like that. And hopefully if I get better at relaxing my legs during Wu Ji then I’ll be able to get more benefits on my legs that way as well.

Not a ton to report on Tai Chi, though I’m glad to be going through the Jian again, I definitely have fine ponts to work on there. When practicing push hands, I asked my partner to try out the exercise where one of us pushes harder and harder on the other person’s torso and that person tries to ground it; kind of interesting, though I think I’ll need to try it a lot to get significant benefit out of it? I don’t think he’s interested enough to want to work on it regularly, though, but maybe I’ll be surprised, I’ll see if he brings it up.

I haven’t been doing a ton of Tai Chi practice on my own, I should get back to that; this week was a little busy and while my energy levels weren’t horrible, they weren’t enough to get me actively excited. I did at least work on the Guan Dao a couple of times, though, so I’m pretty close to having the stuff that we’ve covered in class so far memorized. Which is good, because I’m going to have to miss the next Sunday class, so it’s important for me to keep up with things on my own…

Not a lot to say for Nei Gong this week: I’m just doing the Kidney (and sometimes Spleen) exercises, and for standing I’m doing a standing exercise from my Tai Chi teacher instead of any of the Nei Gong ones. I’ll probably stick with that one another week, but then I’ll stop; I don’t feel like I’m getting anything specific from it, and my Liver Heat problems are coming back, and I’m worried that that exercise might be sending too much energy to my head. And also I feel like I should get back to my Wu Ji, and it would be good for me to do some standing Dantian Gong too, I think.

Tai Chi was interesting, though. My teacher went over my form this week, even though he’d just commented on it the previous week at the teacher certification. Here are my notes:

• When going forward with my left elbow before the uppercut in Jing Gang, I should strike forward, not at an angle to the side. And the elbow should be a little isolated from the step forward.
• In Dantian Change, don’t focus on a smallish ball in front of me: instead, turn noticeably to the left at the start, and after that farther than I had been to the right, and let this help me to expand my chest more when drawing the silk.
• In Reverse with Spiraling Forearms, turn as I push, so that shoulder goes forward as well and more of the body gets involved.
• I have “sharp corners”: in punches and similar moves, I stop suddenly and the suddenly move into the next move, I should connect them more.

In general (this is my interpretation, not his), this is another sign that I’m too drawn in on myself why doing Tai Chi. I want to continue to lean into feeling Qi in my body, especially my arms and spine, during both Tai Chi and Nei Gong, hopefully this will help with that.

And my teacher did go over that standing posture I’d been working on; he confirmed that my feet should be parallel and my weight on my Bubbling Spring. (And he reminded me that I should repeat four sounds in my mind while doing that, which I forget most of the time!) And I asked him if I should stretch up my right middle finger, and he seemed to think that it was okay to do that! (Though now I’m wondering if my Liver Heat means I shouldn’t.)

Also, when doing the part of the Jian form where you turn forward (bringing the blade over, up, and down), I feel like I need to work on my choreography there: I want to spend some time thinking about what parts of my body are going up when and what parts are going down when. And I should point my left foot down when it’s raised.

In terms of Nei Gong this week, not a ton to report. I had not great sleep most days; part of that was the heat but I’m not sure what’s been going on the last few days? Nothing awful or anything, but enough to affect my practice. So no particularly long practice sessions, but I’ve been keeping up with stuff. And actually the Water Hui Chun is starting to feel subtly different, in a good way, e.g. stuff seems to be moving down the front of my body a little more clearly during the bit when you go down from the Bai Hui to the Dantian?

Also, in general, just while sitting around, I’m finding myself randomly paying attention to my body, and relaxing while letting bits of it expand. Which seems like a helpful thing to be doing? Pleasant, too.

And I just got the e-mail that the local Nei Gong course is starting back up. Looks like just Rick this time, I don’t know if that’s a permanent change or if Joyce was busy for this one. Three days in October; conveniently, a Friday through Sunday, so I won’t have to juggle my work schedule. This one is just labeled as a Foundations of Nei Gong course, I wonder if they’re starting the sequence from the beginning. (No complaints if that’s true!)

In terms of Tai Chi, I led Silk Reeling this week, so I’ll get my form reviewed next week. And there was a Sunday Tai Chi class, including the level 1 instructor’s test. I think I’m close to getting caught up on the Guan Dao, though there’s one bit I haven’t gotten right and some other bits I’m iffy on. Should be within reach to catch up on my own, at any rate; which is good, because the Nei Gong course conflicts with the October Sunday class.

The instructor’s test went fine; people had a lot of corrections to give me, but that’s expected, and I didn’t get nervous and mess up or anything. They had me go over the Diagonal Circles and Lie Splitting silk reeling exercise; when doing the Lie Splitting, I should be moving the lower hand slightly up so the two hands put pressure on a hypothetical opponent’s arm between them. In the first form, I should expand more, and let energy go to the tips of my fingers. (E.g. in punches, when flipping my hands, when stretching up in Golden Rooster. This actually probably dovetails well with my feeling that I should relax and let energy fill my arms more, though this recommendation is more active than that feeling.) In Reverse with Spiraling Forearm, my arms should circle back more instead of just going up. I should relax more betwene postures. In Backwards Trick, I should strike with my elbow.

My Jian form wasn’t very good, it sounds like I have a lot of work to do there conceptually. I should extend out into the sword, I should move more like a dragon (whereas, in the Dao, you move more like a tiger; dragons flow more than tigers), and I should take more time (I started off at a good speed but then I rushed it). We’ll see whether I make progress on that sort of fine point while we go through the form this time in class; if not, I should ask Tony to review my Jian form every so often. And probably my Dao and Spear forms too…

My TCM doctor says that my Kidneys are improving noticeably. Which seems plausible just based on how my Dantian is feeling. Would be nice if I could get my sleep working well and have more energy during the day, though.

Pretty mellow week. I got my second shingles vaccine shot on Wednesday; as predicted, that had me basically knocked out on Thursday and didn’t have me feeling at full strength on Friday. I did do some Nei Gong on Wednesday morning, but nothing super special or anything.

My teacher was out for Tai Chi on Saturday, but one of the more senior students watched my form and gave me some advice. And I went through the form a couple of times in an analytical way on Sunday. Here’s my combined notes from that:

• In the push to the left just after the start, I should sink into my left Kua more.
• In Jing Gang, I should end with my hands in front of my Dantian; they’re too high most of the time now.
• In the push in Six Sealing Four Closing, I should experiment with sinking into a tuck in my tailbone.
• Before I step to the left in Dantian Change, I should make sure I’m sunk into my right Kua. (In general, if I’m stepping out and feel slightly unsteady, that’s a sign that I should sink into the Kua that I’m stepping from.)
• I am very good at forgetting the details of the transition from the first punch into Jing Gang, though I think I’ve got it okay right now.
• In Reverse with Spiraling Forearms, I should make sure my heel has gone down before pushing forward with the opposite hand.

I also experimented with some tweaks to show respect (saluting at the start, and doing an extra 180 degree turn at the end); not sure if I’ll put those in when doing the teacher certification exam on Sunday. If it weren’t so incredibly hot and I could get in multiple solid practices this week, that would be one thing, but I don’t know that I’ll be able to practice much tomorrow, and I’m not sure about Friday either.

We had the last class of the summer Tuesday session tonight. My teacher mostly talked and answered questions: he went over the answer to one question on the written certification exam that I’d asked him about, and he answered some questions about Silk Reeling. The main one that caught my attention there was in Spine Stretch: he was leading with his chin, whereas I like to lead with my Baihui, and we talked about that. He said both were possible approaches, as long as you know why you’re doing it; leading with your chin is good if you want your back moving in both directions, leading with your Baihui is good if you want to focus on extending your back.

And he also answered a question I had about two hands fixed step Push Hands. In what he calls part 3 of that, if I’m receiving the push at that point, I should indeed be blocking with my hand, but I should also be rotating my body to the right; and then, in part 4, when my partner traps my hand and continues pushing, I should use my Dantian and body to sink in and rotate to the left. (So the rotation to the right feels more like a swivel, whereas the rotation to the left gets more of my body involved while sinking.)

And, watching him there and working it out with my partner, I think I figured out the difference between the 1-2-3-4 that he teaches to learn it versus the ongoing continuous version that people normally do. The continuous version is more like the 3-4 repeated on both sides; so the 1 basically goes away (it’s an extra push), and honestly the 2 part feels a little short to me, when I learned the 2 part I didn’t really appreciate the rotation to the left there.

It’s been a little hard to tell with the vaccine side effects and the hot nights making it hard to sleep, but I continue to think that the TCM treatment is helping noticeably with tiredness; I’m looking forward to that continuing to get better.

Wednesday was my best practice day I’ve had in a while. Which is kind of depressing, because I think it was probably like a normal Wednesday a year ago? Shows how bad my energy level has gotten; hopefully it’s a sign that my TCM treatment is helping and the upward trajectory will continue, but who knows.

Anyways, I did the Water Hui Chun with 10 minute intervals. Which is an improvement over doing it with 3 minute intervals, if I’ve got the time, but it wasn’t as much of an improvement as I was hoping. So I’m thinking that, if I’ve got 80 minutes to spend on that, it might be better instead to do both Water and Earth with 5 minute intervals.

And then in the afternoon I had a good Tai Chi practice. I went through the Lao Jia first form three times, paying attention well and stopping and retrying bits as I noticed bits that were off. Some of the things I’ve noticed are things I’m pretty sure I’ve noticed in the past, I just need to have those changes stick. In particular, in Six Sealing Four Closing, when moving right at the end (just before the push), I should make sure my weight is fully shifted to the right before moving my left foot in. And, in Dantian Change, when turning to the right near the end of the move, just after putting my left foot out, I should turn into my right Kua. Also, earlier on in that move, when drawing the silk, I should have my right hand basically pulling from my left elbow.

On a similar note of weight shifts, I’m sometimes moving forward or backward in a way that has me a little off balance: e.g. when stepping back in Reverse with Spiraling Forearms, I should step back with my weight remaining on my front foot and then shift my weight after my rear foot has landed.

Also, I realized that I’m putting pressure on my left knee in Oblique Posture, and in fact my left knee is going forward over my foot; I shouldn’t go forward as much when bending down, so my left knee remains over or slightly behind my left foot.

And I also reviewed the Jian a few times (I’m doing it as my weapon in the instructor’s test in a few weeks), and finished going through the spear. And I went through the Guan Dao as well; I don’t think I made any progress in actively catching up, but at least I didn’t fall farther behind?

On Friday, my practice didn’t go so well; I was hoping to do the Water and Earth with 5 minute intervals, as I mentioned above, but I ended up being sleepy enough that I just did the Water. I did at least go through the first three Ji Ben Gong exercises in their Qi Mobilization variants with 9 minutes + 3 minutes Wu Ji on each; it was good to get back to that, I like how stuff moves around when I do that, I think if anything doing that with longer intervals (15 minutes, say) would be better than doing all 8 Ji Ben at once with only 5 minutes on each one. (And maybe I should do the same thing with exercises 6/7/8; I’m less sure about 4/5, though for 4 maybe that’s just another sign that my back isn’t up to snuff.) And I did some Tai Chi in the afternoon, but not a lot.

Also on Friday, I started going through the review material for the Tai Chi instructor’s test that I’m taking in a few weeks. (I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned that; it’s a test for the lowest level of instructor certification that my teacher offers.) One interesting thing that came out of that was when I got to the discussion of Zhan Zhuang from a document my teacher shared from his teacher (Chen Qingzhou); it turns out that that version of Zhan Zhuang is different from what I think of as Zhan Zhuang. Instead of the arms making a curved shape in front, the right arm is in front but with the fingers pointing up and the palm facing left, and the left arm is behind your back in a hook. In retrospect, I had seen this before, I just hadn’t realized that Chen Qingzhou particularly recommended this one or what he called it. I might spend the next week or two doing it daily: I don’t have any standing exercise that I’m actively working on, so it could be interesting to see what it feels like?

Or at least doing it mostly daily: I’ve got my second shingles vaccine shot tomorrow, so it’s not clear to me how much I’ll be able to practice the next three days, the first shot had pretty noticeable side effects. (A little worse than the COVID vaccine for me, and that one was noticeable as well.) At least I’ll be done with the shingles vaccine after that; though there will be another COVID booster I’ll want to take at some point this fall, and at some point I should get a colonoscopy; so I’m not yet quite past the list of upcoming medical maintenance tasks…

The week started off pretty well. As I mentioned last time, I’m pausing new lessons in the Nei Gong course, so no lesson on Tuesday. On Wednesday, I did go through the Qi mobilization versions of the entire Ji Ben Qi Gong (with 5 minute intervals, so 85 minutes in total); I’m glad I did that, though I wouldn’t describe it as a revelation or anything. (Actually, the way I was feeling when practicing today, I’m thinking I might want to spend some time doing the first 3 in sequence, with 9 minutes on the non-Wu Ji parts of each.)

Unfortunately, my week basically turned awful after that: my dog was clearly not doing well overnight, and when we took him to the vet in the morning, they took one look at him and rushed into action. They stabilized him and diagnosed him as having Gastric Dilation Volvulus. (So, if you’ve got a large chested dog and they’re doing dry heaves, it’s potentially a sign of something very serious.) I took him to an emergency vet after that for surgery, and it actually seemed like that went well, we’d avoided several potential outcomes that they initially warned us about. But he also didn’t recover as well as they liked, and then they realized he’d gotten pneumonia during the process; that got really severe really quickly, and he died on Friday.

I’m doing better now, it’s feeling less raw, but Thursday was bad, Friday was horrible, and Saturday and Sunday things were still pretty raw. So no Nei Gong most of those days, no Tai Chi on Saturday. I did go to the Tai Chi Sunday class since I’d missed it the previous two months, but I skipped our annual picnic that day.

And I’m glad I went on Sunday. I mostly went because I wanted to get back into Guan Dao; I’d reviewed some on Wednesday, and also I’d been trying to learn ahead before my trip to Ohio, so I knew I was at least partly caught up; it turns out that I wasn’t completely caught up, though. But I should be able to make up the difference before next month’s class, I hope?

Also, I ended up leading the group going through the Lao Jia first form, and my teacher gave me several pointers after that. During Hand Maneuvers, I shouldn’t turn my head so much, my gaze should mostly change because I’m turning my torso. During Dantian Change, I should relax more and make it fuller, and I should sink more; also, when bringing my left hand over at the end of it, it shouldn’t go too high. And in Ground Hacking Dragon, I should keep my torso upright instead of leaning over and sticking out my butt; it’s okay if that means that I don’t go so low.

And today I had my my TCM treatment; my doctor says my Liver is doing pretty well and my Kidneys are doing better. I sure hope the Kidney treatment starts to make a difference, because I definitely still have issues caused by that; he switched herbal formulas, so now instead of just being on a Liver formula, I’m on a combined Liver / Kidney formula. So we’ll see if that helps; at least it’s less bitter…

And in the Tuesday evening class today, I did some slow walking around an area with big trees while people were doing Silk Reeling; I’m glad I did that, though honestly it also pointed out that I’ve kind of forgotten how that slow walking exercise works. I might be starting to feel the presence of trees a bit? And then I did push hands; nothing new, mostly just trying to consolidate single hand, two hands, and moving two hands. My partner and I both couldn’t quite remember how the moving two hands worked at first, but then our teacher came over and reminded us, I think we’re in a better position to remember it going forward.

Also, in general, I’m feeling like I definitely need to work on my foundations. I talked about that in a Nei Gong context last week, but I’ve been feeling it in Tai Chi as well: I haven’t been practicing Tai Chi as much recently (see the above Kidney issues!), and I think I’m actually regressing. Hopefully I’ll be able to get back to doing that more: I’d been making catching up with the Spear form my first priority, and either reminding myself of the Jian form or catching up with the Guan Dao form my second priority, and all of that is still important, but I really do need to spend more time on the Jian, and also get back to doing the Lao Jia first form multiple times on multiple of my non-class practice days. And, ideally, I’d make significant progress on that in the next three weeks, because that’s when the next Sunday class is, and teacher certification is happening then. (Honestly, I think I’m good enough to pass the teacher certification, but I’ll feel a little embarrassed doing it at my current level.)

And I’m also feeling like my legs are weaker than ideal. Though I’m not sure how much of the issue there is that my legs should get stronger and how much is that I should lose some weight? I’m not super fat or anything, but still, I’m definitely carrying enough weight that it wouldn’t hurt for me to get rid of some.

So the good news is that now I’m feeling excited about stuff to work on, and I think I’m enough past the awful parts of this past week that it won’t be affecting me quite so directly. We’ll see how much my energy levels are up to practicing tomorrow and Friday, though.

Oh, also I reread Damo’s White Moon book. Good stuff there, though, to be honest, I think that one of my takeaways there is that I’m probably not going to be making enough lifestyle changes to make it super far into Nei Dan. Which is okay if that’s the way it turns out? I’ll get benefits of going through the Nei Gong parts of things, and if I make progress on that and then stabilize, that’s okay. (Though, speaking of foundations, reading that book made me think that I should spend more time sitting, e.g. starting to work in an hour-long session of Calm-Abiding. Probably not something to do until I’ve gotten the MCO in a better state, though.) And if I still want to go deep in internal arts but Nei Dan isn’t for me, there are lots of other arts out there for me to continue improving on. (Tai Chi, for example!)

This week’s lesson in Damo’s course was on Self-Healing. Which, basically, is using attention (but not intention!) to help your body heal itself. I don’t have any current physical ailments that I particularly need to recover from right now, so I didn’t spend time trying it out, but something to keep in mind the next time I strain something.

Though I do have an energetic ailment: I’d been feeling better about my Liver Heat improving and was looking forward to focusing on my Kidney deficiency, but then the Liver problems were actually kind of annoying the first half of this week. I decided to spend time doing the Wood Wu Xing and I asked Damo about it and he recommended the Water Hui Chun, so I’ve been doing those, and it really did get significantly better over the weekend (and my doctor agreed when I saw him yesterday); yay. When I did the Wood Wu Xing the first time this week, I had a noticeable tingling in my Bai Hui, and that went away after about five minutes of the exercise; I’m not used to that clear a concrete effect.

That got me thinking, though, that right now my main issue is this energy problem. And, until I get that sorted out, I’m just not going to be able to do stuff at full capacity. And, if I’m focusing on sorting that out, it seems like that can make a difference; so that’s what I should be doing as my top priority.

And, in terms of other priorities, my next priority is getting the Microcosmic Orbit going reliably: that’s definitely more important to me than Damo’s class. But, also, I was sitting this weekend and thinking “my chest really does feel tenser than would be ideal, I should work on that”.

So, right now, I feel like my priority should be 1) getting healthy; 2) the Microcosmic Orbit; 3) going back to foundations; 4) continuing with Damo’s course. And there’s no way I will ever find time for the fourth of those, given that priority stack; honestly, even three priorities feels wrong. The only reason why I’m not saying that I’ll just do the first two is that that would basically have me only doing seated work, and that feels wrong: my natural tendency is already to seek out seated work and avoid standing work, and I don’t think that’s healthy. So I should keep up the Wu Ji, I should probably work in some Dao Yins (given that I’m noticing tightness in my chest, maybe spend some time on the Lotus Dao Yin?), I should keep on throwing the Wood Wu Xing into the mix, and it’s probably not a bad idea for me to go through the Ji Ben exercises some.

But, given those three priorities, even once I do have the health issues sorted out, I’ll probably still want to stay paused on new lessons for a bit while I get the Microcosmic Orbit under control? Also, I should probably find time on the days when I’m working to fit in a second seated session, so I can do a Hui Chun plus poke away at MCO stuff; fortunately, if I’m pausing Damo’s course, that opens up some time on Tuesday and Thursday evenings that I can use for that. (Or at least it does on Thursdays; I have a Tai Chi course on Tuesdays for the next three weeks that’s keeping me unusually busy.)

One other thing I did this week was trying out Damo’s advice for driving a car: relaxing my arms and getting a stretch in them. Pretty interesting; my hands seem to be asymmetric, so if I want them to feel like they’re stretching the same amount, I need to move the right hand up the wheel. (I don’t think that’s me, I think probably the seat isn’t quite centered in front of the wheel.) And he talked about paying attention to the cars around you; I noticed that actually do feel a bit of pressure in the appropriate direction, but only when they’re quite close. I’ll play with that a bit too, though not at the expense of actually looking around me!

Tai Chi is going okay; I haven’t had the energy to do as much practice as I should, but I did manage to successfully get caught up with the spear, and to remind myself of one bit of the Jian that I was starting to stumble on. I need to work on the Guan Dao this week, though, there’s class this Sunday. (It’s the annual picnic, so maybe we won’t have time to do Guan Dao, but I should be prepared in case we do.)

And I’m chipping away at Push Hands. Still a huge amount of work to do there, but it’s something. I learned the moving two hands version tonight; and in terms of stuff to work on, I need to work more on turning my waist and on sticking to my opponent.

One of the senior students asked if I was doing instructor certification; nice that she thinks that I’m doing well enough to ask that question! I’d been thinking about it but hadn’t heard that it was scheduled, but it’s coming up in September. So I should look through what’s necessary for that; when I’ve seen people do it in the past, they’ve demonstrated the Lao Jia first form and one weapon, and I feel comfortable enough with that (I’ll probably do the Jian), but I should make sure to put in a bit more time when practicing just to make sure.

Good week; not 100% back to normal in my practice, but a lot closer than I had been. I did one of Damo’s lessons for the first time in over a month; it was the Qi Mobilization version of the eighth Ji Ben Qi Gong exercise. Which was pretty interesting: like the seventh, it’s about mobilizing the Yin field, and as long as I did the actions slowly enough, I think I was correctly feeling the field’s existence and then how it moves and stretches as I do the exercise? Makes me wonder if there’s something about the Zhan Zhuang hand position that makes it easier to feel that field, since both the seventh and eighth exercises in that series have you start with your arms in that position, and they both can be used for feeling the Yin field. And actually Tai Chi felt different today when I was going through the form, in a way that might be relevant; it would be good if my sensitivity in that area was starting to increase.

And I started going through the various seated exercises that I’d learned on the lead up to the Microcosmic Orbit, trying to get back into shape there. And that felt pretty good: I don’t feel overflowing or anything, so there’s work to be done, but I feel something? I had been thinking that I might try out the MCO this week, but now I’m thinking I’ll do another week of prepwork: partly because I’m busy tomorrow morning, which is normally one of my practice times, and partly because I’ve been surprisingly sleepy over the last week, so if that continues, I won’t want to push my Nei Gong practice. Also, some of the things Damo said in this week’s lecture made me think that it could be interesting to go through all the Qi Mobilization exercises in a single session, which would take a good chunk of time.

In terms of Tai Chi, I’m pretty much caught up with the spear form; some details that I don’t quite have, but at least the basic movements are all there. And I did more push hands on both Saturday and this evening; hopefully I’m getting better at relaxing and rotating instead of trying to force things, one of the senior students really helped me with that this evening. I mostly did minimal amounts of practice outside of class, though I did go through the Dao and Jian forms; I was a little disturbed to find that there was one spot in the Jian that I didn’t quite know what to do, so it’s good that I’m getting back to doing that! And I need to get back to the Guan Dao, given that I missed two Sunday classes; fortunately, the Sunday class this month won’t do any Guan Dao, so I’ve got a full month to catch back up. (And I do think that I learned everything from the June class, so I just have to make sure I still remember that and then do the bits we added in the July class.)

If I weren’t having sleep problems this week, I’d be optimistic that the acupuncture is helping; Dr. Yang says that my Liver heat problems are doing better, though not so well this week (hence the sleep problems), and he’ll soon switch to focusing on my Kidneys. (Which he says are also doing better, but are still low enough to noticeably affect me.) It would be good if that actually turns out to have a real effect on me; right now I’m pretty convinced that some of the physical readjustments he did have made a noticeable difference, but my energy level changes are still within the realm of potentially just being random fluctuation.

Oh, one thing I forgot to mention last week: Damo put out a really interesting video on relaxing during Wu Ji. Basically, he was saying that, when doing Wu Ji (or other standing meditation), he really does feel like his muscles are completely relaxed, but as long as he keeps his attention appropriately in his body, the Qi provides enough buoyancy to keep him up without effort beyond the attention. (But then if he’s in that state and removes his attention, he’ll collapse.) More encouragement for me to listen to situations where my body feels a little puffy: I definitely notice that sometimes (especially in my arms after the first three Qi Mobilization exercises), hopefully I can get that feeling across more of my body. One positive recent sign that might be related is that I am still periodically noticing that, when I’m relaxing, my spine does occasionally want to spontaneously stretch out a bit; hopefully that means that it’s creating space for that sort of puffy feeling to build into.

I also reread Chen Xiaowang’s book on The Five Levels of Taijiquan; I’d forgotten how much of that book talks about Qi development, in ways that are consistent with the previous paragraph. So hopefully that can be a way in which Tai Chi and Nei Gong can work well together.