This week’s lesson in the Nei Gong course involved an exercise called “Connecting the Hands” where you rotated your hands in a way that’s supposed to help build up the Dantian. Damo said this week was particularly important, so I’ve shifted some of my seated meditation time over to this. Maybe it’s helping a little bit, I might be getting a little more of a tingle down there than I was a week before? Hard to say.

And then in the parallel track of stuff from the library, I’ve finished the videos going into Wu Ji in detail and gone through the Ji Ben Qi Gong. Lots of stuff there that I’ve been doing wrong: e.g. in Flying Hands, my hands were flying too much, and my hands going up are supposed to be close to my body with my Lao Gongs facing the body. Or in Upholding the Moon, you’re supposed to really bend your spine and neck going forward, and have your hands cross over each other so the Lao Gongs are on top of another, and then going up you’re supposed to bend your spine in the other direction so the front of your spine opens up. There’s more stuff I was getting wrong, e.g. in the ones in the second half I feel like I was behaving too much like I’d expect from Silk Reeling. So I’m trying to do them differently now, but I’ll probably want to return to those videos in a month or so.

There’s also the question of how to find time for all of this, since even only six weeks into the course I could fill up an hour of practice time even without Ji Ben Qi Gong. I asked about that, and was advised to think about my practice routine on a weekly basis: don’t try to practice everything every day, but do try to loop back over the week. So I’ve squeezed things a bit to find some time to do a couple of the Ji Ben each day, that seems workable for now. (But I also feel like maybe I should be spending more time on the Connecting the Hands exercise…)

I’m also trying to pay more attention to the height of my center of gravity: the Wu Ji talks mentioned that, and that’s pretty key to the first three Ji Ben exercises, too. And I think I am starting to get a better feel for that; and I also feel like my Wu Ji stance had been a little bit high, with my center of gravity more at the height of my navel than my Dantian. So I’m trying to stay lower (though I keep on popping up!); it feels like it’s helping my breathing be in a better location? Though, honestly, Wu Ji is still kind of strenuous to me, so my breathing is basically never super relaxed… I’m also trying to pay a little bit more attention to the connection between my shoulders/elbows/hands and my feet, and I thought I was doing okay at that, but then today I realized I could relax my shoulders noticeably more and then the connection felt quite a bit stronger. So I guess I hadn’t been doing okay at that!

We had the Sunday Tai Chi class this week. My notes from the Pao Chui section of that: in the Large Forearm Fist / Small Forearm Fist moves, you should tense while your hand is going out and relax while it’s going to the middle. (So this is different from Hand Maneuvers in the first form, where it’s tense on the bottom and relaxed on the top.) In Large Forearm Fist it’s more the upper part of the arm that gets the energy (going as high up as the shoulder), in Small it’s more the part of the arm near the hand. Also, when shaking after Ride the Dragon Backward, I realized my right foot was moving a little forward, I think I should work on having my right foot land next to my left foot so I can stay vertical.

Haven’t been doing Tai Chi on weekdays or Saturdays over the last couple of weeks; that is a gap. The lockdown might ease up here soon, hopefully we’ll be able to safely restart the Saturday class, though even if the Tuesday class restarts I’m not sure I’ll join it. (At least if it’s inside, though in the late summer it’ll probably be outside.)

This week’s topic in the Nei Gong course was about locating your Dantian. I won’t exactly say that it was farther back than I expected, since I’m used to it being towards the middle of your torso (and maybe feeling farther back than that), but it’s farther back than I’d been paying attention to during breathing exercises. And I also won’t say that I 100% have it located: at first I was happy because I’d found one of the three possible signs Damo mentioned (feeling nauseous) when I put my attention in the right place, but then I realized that I felt slightly nauseous whenever I move my body far enough back in my abdomen, so that didn’t seem associated with a single point. I still think the farthest forward where I feel nauseous is probably basically the right place, and sometimes I think there’s a little vibration there, or sometimes other sorts of oddness, but I’m not 100% sure I’ve got it right.

Anyways, these days when I sit at the start of the day, I’m starting off by working on quieting / sinking my breathing, and then locating my Dantian. No particular progress on the breathing front, it’s not getting any longer or anything. It has sometimes been interesting walking after that, because sometimes my mind does get a little stuck down there; on the Dantian, in particular, which I guess is another possible sign that I’m finding the right place?

And I’ve made it through the videos in the library breaking down parts of Wu Ji; that’s been quite interesting. The discussion of your shoulders talks about sliding your shoulder blades so they line up flush with the back of your rib cage instead of jutting out; I’m realizing I can do that, and it helps the top of my torso feel good. In general, the shoulder blade rotations are paying off; it had been the case in the past when doing Wu Ji that I felt like something was going on in my shoulder blades, but also it was causing them to ache, whereas now I feel much less ache and much more movement. (When I’m doing the shoulder blade rotations now, my shoulder blades come pretty close to touching!)

But also I’m continuing to pay attention to sinking my pelvis (and it’s going pretty far down, though it takes a while), having my neck go up and out, and also I was reminded about sinking my Tian Tu. And I’m managing to do that last one much more effectively now; I get a pretty serious stretch on the back of my neck (both up and down, I try to maintain an active up component but sinking my pelvis pulls it down pretty hard), and a good sink on the front of my rib cage as well. I think the shoulder blade positioning helps the sink in back be in the right place, too? It really does feel like parts of my spine are opening up, especially my neck; and on Saturday in particular all afternoon I was noticing my body feel different.

In the section about your hands, he mentioned feeling the stretch start to go up your arms, so I’m trying to use that as a guide for how much to stretch. And, in feeling out the center of gravity stuff, I’m thinking that I should probably be a little bit lower than I had been? Also, when tilting my torso forward (for spine purposes, not for purposes of where weight hits my feet) I should tilt from my Kua instead of my feet.

And then there’s this stuff about feeling connections from your shoulders / elbows / hands to your Kua / feet. I feel like that’s the next thing to explore; it might even be the topic of this week’s lecture in the main course? I’ll find out…

I’m also getting tired of having tight hamstrings, so I’ve gotten in the habit of trying to touch my toes when my watch tells me to stand up. I think it’s having an effect, though I also don’t feel like I’m super close actually being able to touch my toes.

I did do some Tai Chi one evening last week while Liesl was walking Widget; and I practiced on Sunday, too. And I watched a Jian video; I really am very close to the end of that form, I should just go learn the last couple of moves.

Pictures from April:

I’d been working on a cave with natural stairs last time; I’d cleaned up the stairs, so the question is what to do next.

First, I looked around some:

Here are the stairs.

There’s a neat garden up the stairs with a sunken tree.

Looking back from above the stairs, so you can see the other buildings in the area.

There’s a little nook on the right side of the entrance.

I don’t have the before pictures, but I had to push out the wall on the left side in this picture by a few blocks so it matched the right side.

There’s quite a bit more cave on the other side.

So that’s me taking the lay of the land. (And bumping out one of the walls a bit.) But I wanted to do something with the stairs: maybe add in colors or something? I experimented with a few different blocks:

How about blue steps?

Or maybe red steps and blue on the sides?

Darker sides look better.

Or I could add in some gold to make it flashier.

While I’m in the area, let’s put in some furniture in that nook.

I didn’t like the gold, so I went back to the darker sides.

Honestly, I’m not super in love with that; I might get rid of the red and go back to something plainer. Or maybe it would look fine if I put more exciting stuff on the ground inside?

Roger was with us for Minecraft for the first time in a while, chipping away again on his cathedral.

Here’s what the cathedral looks like.

Adding some wood on the top.

Here’s the view at the other end.

A picture from further out.

Starting to make the top level wider.

Some random picture I took in the area; I think it’s maybe near that weird cliff with lava in it? At any rate, a view of sunset through a hole going through a mountain.

Meanwhile, Dan was continuing his more abstract shapes.

A cube and a line. Which raises the question: shouldn’t there be a square? Like, we’re skipping straight from one dimension to three dimensions? (Hmm, maybe also a single block somewhere to be the zero-dimension case.)

A closeup of the cube.

A view up the pillar.

The cube has sprouted; I guess it wasn’t supposed to be a geometrical abstraction after all…

And Ariel was continuing to work on their palace.

Approaching the palace; I now know where it is well enough to be able to fly there instead of just teleport.

A view from a higher angle.

More structure on the lower floor.

Starting to work on some spiral stairs.

Now the stairs go all the way up.

Not much to say this week. This week’s lesson in the Nei Gong course was on Wu Ji; so not a new concept, and in fact something that I’d already been going over because of the supplementary material, but an important one. One thing I was wondering about there was whether I should have my knees quite so wide: I’d been thinking they should be a little wide, but it sounded like maybe my legs should be going straighter from my hips?

Still working on my breathing, and I’m still feeling it’s not as locked in as it sometimes felt the first half-week I was working on that lesson. My breathing is going fairly far down, but it seems like it wants to be at or just above my navel instead of a little below that? Eventually it usually gets there, but it takes a while. Though something interesting happened today: it got to a reasonable location, then I was just kind of sitting there, then all of a sudden it felt like my consciousness was expanding and my breathing slowed way down. Observing more, my consciousness wasn’t necessarily expanding: it was rising, but not out of me, more rising from my Dantian to my head. So it actually ended up where it normally lives; it did feel broader than normal, though. And the slowed breathing was definitely unusual.

I actually didn’t do any Tai Chi all week: normally I’m managing to do some on Sunday, but for various reasons it didn’t quite work out this past weekend. I’m okay doing it a little less, but I’m not okay not doing it at all; and I’m actually vaguely wondering if the reason why I’m not feeling as much interesting stuff during Wu Ji might be linked to me not doing as much Tai Chi? So I’m thinking that, on evenings when Liesl walks Widget instead of me, I should do some Tai Chi then; also, I’m close to being done with one of the things I’ve been spending time on during the weekends, so towards the end of the month I should have a little more time.

As far as Wu Ji goes, I’m still mostly doing 25 minutes, though I did 30 minutes on Saturday without a problem and would have been fine doing 30 minutes on Sunday as well if I hadn’t been busy. Some days I’m too sleepy to be up for 30 minutes or even 25 minutes, and also 25 minutes works a little better with my sleep schedule, so for now I’m mostly sticking with 25. One thing I have noticed is that I seem to be getting better at stretching my spine in what I think is the right way during Wu Ji, and that’s actually carrying over to other aspects of my life: sometimes when I’m just out for a walk I’ll notice that my spine feels solid, and even energized. So that’s nice, that my spine is going from being actively problematic to potentially actively healthy.

This week’s lesson in the Nei Gong course was on a seated Dao Yin exercise; fine, but I’m not feeling anything super interesting while doing it.

I chipped away some more at the stuff in the library on Wu Ji, making it up to my pelvis. And that was interesting; I tried relaxing my pelvis and it actually does sink more than it had been in the past. And sometimes I feel a little tingling around there while doing that. Still feels like there’s more work to be done in terms of sinking, and hopefully eventually things will start feeling differently supported in my abdomen?

Or maybe it’s tilting enough; eventually once it’s tilted enough you’re supposed to be able to sink your tailbone in a way that kind of locks your stance into place. And today, when relaxing and sinking my pelvis, I could feel a tug down my spine all the way down to the back of my neck. So it feels like it really is helping open up my spine, which is at least something.

(Though, on the note of feelings in Wu Ji, it’s actually been a while since I’ve felt the same sort of pleasant fluid tingling sensations that I had been feeling in the winter. I kind of miss that, but I’m not worrying about it for now, I’ve got enough other stuff to focus on now.)

When doing breathing practice, I found that I was able to observe more and controlling less, so I rewatched the abdominal breathing video. The five stages are: 1) quiet, 2) deep, 3) at ease, 4) slow, and 5) soft. So I’m doing better at quiet, and actually deep is going pretty well, too. In fact, I was making it pretty quickly / reliably to feeling like my breath is locked into my Dantian, so yay, I guess I’d been making progress on sinking my Qi to there and this is related to that? Still a little bit of consolidation work to do there, though, and then I’m waiting until slow starts showing up, I’ve only gotten one slightly twinge of that, mostly it doesn’t appear at all.

Did a bit of Tai Chi this weekend. One thing that I noticed while doing the form was that I felt noticeably more solid and rooted than I had been; maybe I’ve made an improvement in my posture that’s having an effect there?

My Tai Chi teacher has started doing online courses. I ended up not doing the Saturday course this weekend: it’s spending a fair amount of time on Silk Reeling and Qi Gong, and I’m doing Silk Reeling pretty regularly during work meetings and the Qi Gong overlaps a lot with the Nei Gong work that I’m doing. And it’s spending some time on a form I don’t know and don’t want to start learning now, and I don’t have a great location to go through the first form while on video. But we also had the Sunday class; the second form fits a little better into my study, and the Xinjia section is important to me, I definitely want to get better at both of those forms. But I skipped out on the weapon part, doing some stretches and meditation during that.

For the second form: I noticed my knee was a little further inside than I’d like on some moves, in particular during the waist-intercepting strike. In the second-to-last move, where you strike back with your left hand, when you’re moving right before then, your back (left) leg should cross behind your right leg. And in the large forearm strike, you should turn in the middle (or maybe even starting at the beginning) of the second full pair, so you’re ready for the other direction when that’s done.

In Xinjia: in the move after the Jing Gang after the oblique postures and punch, where you move your right arm back, you should also turn your torso: that way your right arm doesn’t end up breaking your energy.

I also practiced the first form a couple of times and the Jian a couple of times. And I got some tips for Jian videos, but I haven’t watched them yet.

As for Nei Gong, the second week of the course was on abdominal breathing. Which had a five-step development process, none of which involved trying to breathe abdominally, it’s supposed to happen as a result! Basically, you start by watching your breath but not focusing hard on it or trying to guide it; then it should naturally get deeper, then longer, then it should feel “softer”, which is some sort of change in feeling in how things move inside. Except that’s only four steps, so I should clearly rewatch the video at some point; not worrying so much right now, though, because just observing is really hard: I constantly feel like I’m waiting longer than is natural to breathe!

Though, when I do sit and breathe for a while, I feel like my breathing actually does go farther down in my abdomen than I was expecting. So hopefully I’m actually making progress on the deeper part? And it’s even possible I’m making progress on the softer part, for a while I’ve felt a sensation in the bottom of my torso when breathing that isn’t clearly part of my lungs moving in and out; who knows…

Since there was only one video, that gave me some time to poke at other parts of the library, so I did that, following a recommendation on other videos to watch in parallel with different weeks of the course. For the first couple of months, the recommended pairing is a series of “foundations” videos; I think these are the videos Damo had on Vimeo earlier? They’re about Wu Ji and Ji Ben Qi Gong; I’m actually kind of surprised to see them there, I would have expected them in the main course. (Especially Wu Ji, given how much time the in-person courses spend on that.) Maybe they’ll show up in the main course, just a little more briefly? So far I’ve gone through the a little bit of the Wu Ji section; it was informative.

My Wu Ji wasn’t actually going great for the first half of this week: I’d been hoping to get it to 25 minutes, but I wasn’t always even making 20 minutes, I was feeling a little sleepy. Then I thought that maybe I should try finding a timer that has interval alerts: I might find it easier to keep on plugging on if I had an idea of when 5-minute intervals are happening. (At the very least, I could try to stay to the next interval.)

So I got a meditation timer app, and it actually helped a lot: I made it to 25 minutes today, and I don’t think I would have made it past around 15 without that. Some issues around the haptics, which I think are probably Apple Watch limitations, but still, I like it. And if I’m remembering correctly I did 25 minutes on both Sunday and Monday (and on Sunday that was before I was experimenting with these apps, I was just feeling more awake, I was actually surprised when it ended), so hopefully I’ll be able to solidify that and move on to 30 minutes.

My torso’s also been sometimes feeling floaty when I’m doing Wu Ji, presumably that’s a sign that I’m doing better at my posture in my torso and/or relaxing more? Still having problems in my legs, though. Sunday in general felt like there was a lot of stuff going on in my body, nice to feel like I’m making active progress.

I’m switching the title of these posts to “Nei Gong Notes”: for a while I’ve been doing Tai Chi and Nei Gong, and while my time had been more heavily weighted towards the former, with COVID it’s now more heavily weighted towards the latter. And I think that, with the launch of the Internal Arts Academy, I’ll be spending more time than I had been on Nei Gong stuff than I had been; maybe not more than on Tai Chi, but at the least it’ll be more balanced. Also, in some sense Tai Chi is a subset of Nei Gong: Nei Gong basically means “internal work”, and hence includes internal martial arts.

Anyways, as to the Tai Chi portion of this: I actually did go through the form three times this Sunday and I went through most of the Jian form as well. And I did okay on the latter, though I couldn’t remember the last few moves we’d learned; glad I got back to the practice. And today I went through the first form three times, the second form once, and the Jian form a few times, and I remembered one or two more moves in the latter. Still need to get back to the Xinjia first form.

Also, I’m thinking I’m not getting as much new from doing Dantian Rotations, so I’m dialing that down to once a day (with 25 repetitions) instead of twice.

I’ve finished the first week of the Internal Arts Academy syllabus. The first video had us doing seated meditation; the one he led off with is one he calls “starving the mind”, where you basically try not to think. Which is different from the Song Breathing that I’ve normally been doing during my meditation time. So I’ve been trying that; seems fine, I don’t yet feel that I’m getting anything extra from that. I have been using that as an excuse to try thinking less during Wu Ji, though.

And the second video was on stretches. The main thing about all of these stretches is to put your consciousness on the body part where you’re stretching; that makes the stretch more effective, and helps open up space around there. For my future reference, the list of stretches:

• Shoulder rotations; only rotate backward, not forward, we all slump too much as it is.
• Scapula rotations; from the outside, it looks a lot like shoulder rotations, but try to move your shoulder blades instead.
• Yao rotations: this is the area of your torso between the bottom of your rib cage and your hips. Try to feel an active stretch on the outside as you rotate around.
• Yao rotations from the Dantian. A similar-looking movement, but this time you’re supposed to be moving from your Dantian, and that’s where you focus your attention instead of the outside stretch.
• Bend at your hips, feeling a stretch on your lower back and butt. When you’re come up, make space inside your torso to help your rise. Keep your legs locked on this one.
• Neck rotations: turn your head right and left.
• Sit cross-legged, and turn your torso right and left, feeling the stretch (I think) in your Yao again.
• Sit cross-legged, and turn your torso right and left but move from your Dantian.
• Sit in a half-lotus position, lean forward, and rock your torso from one knee to the other. Switch which foot is on top and repeat. (I should probably rewatch the video on this one to understand where I’m supposed to be feeling the stretch, and whether I’m supposed to come up between legs; I think your butt and no, but I’m not sure.
• Sit with the soles of your feet together and bend down at the hips, and rise up by opening inside your torso.
• Sit with crossed legs and breathe in, stretching your lungs and your whole body.

Outside of the course, I did 20 minutes of Wu Ji a few times, and 25 minutes today, hopefully I’ll be up to 30 minutes in a week on so? And I’ll probably stay there for a while. Today was interesting, at one point I felt kind of like there was a sheathe surrounding my going from my hips to my lower back. Never felt that before, and given that so far the interesting stuff that I’ve felt has usually stopped at my tailbone, it’s nice to feel something going up further.

Pictures from the March Minecraft session:

There was one cave that I’d noticed last time that I was thinking I’d build in, so I traveled back to the mountain, in hopes that I could find it again.

Some random island (?) that I took a picture of; not sure whether the lighting inside is natural or from something that some player added…

That wall of trees really is kind of dominant when you’re traveling past it…

There’s the cave!

It was closer to the mountain than I realized; certainly made it easy to find…

The neat thing about the cave is these stairs in the back: that’s all procedurally generated, they’re amazingly regular given that.

Now the stairs are actually reaching down to the floor.

Here’s the view all the way to the top, I had to regularize things at the top too.

I puttered around a little in the middle, but not much; I have to spend more time on the inside, on the entrance, and put a path or something connecting this to the mountain.

Next, Dan: it combines his new focus on trees with his old focus on straight lines.

Heading at night to the area where Dan was working.

A lot more trees in that water area, and a tall pillar on the right.

You can see the orange pyramid he built a few months back peeking out from underneath the trees.

Here’s the view from the side, so you can see the spaces better.

The view towards the pillar; not sure which ones were generated and which ones were added.

Here’s a full view of the pillar.

A view of the trees on top.

And Ariel had been adding to their castle, building a greenhouse on top of one side.

Ariel standing on the castle roof.

The view inside the greenhouse.

The lower level of the castle.

I’m getting back into practice. Not so much Tai Chi: I was going to go through a few forms this weekend, then I noticed it was going to rain soon so I headed outside, then halfway through my first time through the form it started to rain pretty hard. But hey, once is better than none. And actually I’ve been managing to go through the smaller Silk Reeling set most workdays: if there’s a meeting that I don’t need to spend much time talking in, then I do that while listening.

And I’m getting back into Wu Ji: still need to build up my stamina (more mental stamina than physical stamina), but I’m usually managing 15 minutes without too much trouble now, hopefully I’ll manage 20 minutes tomorrow. And hopefully I’ll push beyond that; I’m hoping that I can use this enforced time at home as a reason to get closer to 30 minutes a day. Still haven’t done any Ji Ben Qi Gong or Animal Frolics since my recent break, though.

I had an interesting time doing seated meditation on Sunday; my start-of-the day sitting got cut off at 10 minutes or so, so I did another 15 minutes later, and that 15 minutes was surprisingly intense (in a sinky way, if I remember correctly), much more so than 15 minutes of meditation normally is. Heck, it was probably more intense than 25 minutes of meditation normally is. Not sure if it was just random or if two short sessions is somehow more effective than one longer one?

Damo launched his Internal Arts Academy. I’ve signed up for that, and I’m going to put in regular time; probably not as good as having regular in-person lessons (or at least regular in-person lessons with a good teacher), but I’m sure I’ll get a lot out of it. Means I’ll be spending more time in my evenings on Nei Gong stuff (and probably blogging less), but I think that’s the right choice for me now.

Interesting lecture on perception from a Vipassana point of view. It talks about how, at some point, you start directly perceiving all sorts of things as vibrating; I wonder if that’s related to the Chinese point of view that Jing, Qi, and Shen are all vibrations (at different frequencies)?

Damo posted another video about The Internal Arts Academy; should be launching tomorrow, I’m curious what that’ll be like.

One pleasant thing that I’ve been noticing is that, when walking around, sometimes my spine is feeling particularly well stacked and stable these days. So yay, that’s good, hopefully it is getting in better shape. Or at least was before I’ve been working from home; I can feel things start to fall apart a bit, too.

But fortunately I’m not really feeling like I have a cold any more. So I started doing a tiny bit of Wu Ji yesterday, I’ll try to get that back into shape, and I’m shifting my sitting meditation from something more external to something more internal. And today during a meeting I went through a bunch of Silk Reeling movements. Hopefully if I can keep that up then my body will start being happy again. And it’s not awful now, it just could be better, and I want to make sure I maintain and build upon the spine improvements I feel like I was making before the stay at home order.