Not a ton to report this time. Nei Gong wise, I spent the week working on the Awakening Dragon; the main thing that I noticed beyond what I’d noticed in the workshop was how much horizontal circular twisting there is in the form. It really is a neat set of movements; and my torso (especially my lower spine) does start to warm up noticeably while doing that.

Also, I wasn’t feeling great for a day or two, and on those days, I did a really minimal amount of Nei Gong, literally only a minute or so of Wu Ji. But I was surprised to find that, even with that amount of practice, I feel Qi being present and active in my body. Not sure how much that’s a sign of my body getting better internally, how much is me being more sensitive, and how much is aftereffects from the workshop; we’ll see if it sticks around or not.

I didn’t practice Tai Chi much this last week; I should get back to that this week. I led silk reeling on Saturday; it went fine, we’ll see what my teacher says when reviewing my form this weekend. And we started doing the Tai Chi straight ruler (we’d done the angled ruler in previous weeks); not super interesting yet, but maybe it will get more interesting or maybe there’s something more subtle going on internally that he’ll talk about this week, we’ll see.

The big event this week was a three-day workshop that Rick gave. Up in Arcata, so I got to drive a little over five hours each way; that was fine, I’ll probably drive again instead of flying if he keeps on doing that, but next time I’ll arrange my schedule so I can drive up during the day, I think.

The main topic of the workshop was the first of the Dragons. My first time learning one of those in person; it seemed like I’d actually done a decent job getting the basics down from the videos, but there were definitely some details that I was getting wrong. And also I should stretch a little more forcefully, and I should (sometimes) think a bit about what the stretching is leading me to do, that’ll help me appreciate how it fits together.

Other than that, my diaphragm is probably a little higher than I’d been treating it as being. And I should spend more time paying attention to my liquid center of mass and, once I’ve got it in the right place, leaving my attention there (at least for exercises where that’s a natural thing to do); as the workshop progressed, I had some pretty good effects doing that.

It’s been ages since I’ve done a long standing session; I don’t think I’ve done Wu Ji for more than 30 minutes at a time since we got Velvet, certainly not since I broke my hand. And since I’ve got a workshop with Rick coming up, I’d been thinking I should figure out how worried I should be about that. Also, it had been ages since I’d done the regular Dantian Gong; I’d done the advanced version every so often, but not the regular version. So I decided to try to do a full standing Dantian Gong set; that takes a little over an hour, and while I don’t find it quite as strenuous on my legs as Wu Ji (maybe because I’m doing it wrong, but also in Wu Ji your hands are helping you sink), still, it is an hour of standing with your legs in a potentially uncomfortable position.

I did that on Wednesday; somewhat to my surprise, it was totally fine! I mean, I wasn’t super comfortable by the end, but also I wasn’t totally gritting my teeth and hanging on for dear life either. So hopefully I’m in good enough shape for the workshop? I also did a ten minute Pushing the Tides session today, to work on that form of pain; though Rick actually likes slightly different arm / shoulder stretches, probably I should have done some of his instead? Anyways, that went fine too.

In general I will say that I’m feeling a lot more space in my shoulders than I was a year ago. Also I was noticing at some point this week that I was feeling the effects of standing with pressure in my Yong Quan more broadly than I had been: e.g. I was feeling it some on the sides of my rib cage, even though that’s pretty far from my spine, which had been how it was making it up my torso.

Sadly, something came up at work, so this weekend was pretty busy; in particular, I didn’t do as much Tai Chi practice this week as I would have liked. Though at Saturday Tai Chi class, I tried out one of the push hands exercises from Damo’s class, where you pressdown on your parter’s arms, trying to feel their feet, and then bounce them to the side. Didn’t work at all at the start, but eventually we figured out how to get it to start working a bit. So that was interesting; don’t know if we’ll make a habit of it or not.

The lesson this week in Damo’s Tai Chi class was on Single Whip; a little more different from the Chen version than I expected. I’m not super confident that I’m remembering it correctly, so I’ll review it again tonight instead of moving on to a new lesson.

Looking forward to the workshop; it’s this Friday through Sunday. In Arcata, I can’t say that I’m thrilled about the drive but I don’t blame Rick for not wanting to make the drive in the other direction! And even when it’s local it’s not super local, so the good news is that I won’t have to wake up early on Saturday and Sunday to make it there.

Still more tired than I would like, my sleep’s a little interrupted, but practice is going okay despite that? I’ve started getting back to stretching before Nei Gong on my days off; I saw a note in the IAA Discord that made me think I should do planks, too, so I’ve done that once or twice but I should do that more. And I went through the Ji Bens for the first time in ages; nothing huge to report there but I was glad I did that.

I mentioned last week that my right leg was feeling super tight; still not sure what caused that, but I’ve been decently diligent about touching my toes regularly to stretch my leg and back, and it’s definitely helped, it’s almost back to normal now. And I feel like I’ve also made progress in my range of motion while doing that, so hopefully I can maintain that as my new normal and improve further.

And, tiredness aside, I’ve actually been feeling energetic in other ways? Like, yesterday I didn’t get enough sleep but I took a nap in the morning, and I felt actively good in the afternoon, with my body feeling active inside but also with me just feeling more energized. So hopefully I can get the sleep problems tamed a bit and, if I do that, maybe I’ll find myself having made progress in other ways?

In terms of Tai Chi, in a couple of videos Damo’s mentioned sinking still more into your Kua before taking a step; it really does work to generate a feeling of release in the other foot coupled with stability on the leg that you’re sinking into. I’ve always had trouble with the step forward in Jing Gang, but doing this sink seems to help with that; I want to experiment more with that this week but I’m optimistic.

I wrote up some notes about the Silk Reeling course I taught earlier this year on my main blog.

Not the most productive week for Nei Gong. I had to work on Wednesday, so I didn’t do a long Nei Gong practice then, though I did do longer than normal Nei Gong practice last Monday to partly make up for that. And I was tired an unusual amount, so in general my practice wasn’t going great; e.g. I’m not sure I even did a 40 minute Hui Chun this week? Fortunately I think the tiredness is starting to get under control: I think it was primarily caused by sleep and the sleep problems were caused by me eating too much, so I’ve been eating less the last few evenings and sleeping better. We’ll see how this week goes.

In Damo’s Tai Chi class I did the lesson on Ward off Left; not a ton to report there. Though it was making me think that I should get back to Wu Song Shen Fa 3; I did that once or twice this week for the first time in several weeks, I should try to mix that in.

In terms of Chen Tai Chi, I’m continuing to notice that I’m doing a better job of having my pelvis rotate after I sink into my Kua, which is making me quite a bit more stable; and I think it’s also helping me adjust my back so my Live Gate is more full? And even though I was tired I did still manage to review all of the forms there that I know except for the Lao Jia Erlu; I should start working that in this week, my hand has recovered enough that it’s fine. And I think I’m liking the angled ruler a little more, though it’s still not my favorite thing; I’m just not that into Qinna…

I listened to an interview with Nabil Ranne on the Drunken Boxing podcast that was saying similar things about Chenjiagou Chen Tai Chi that Damo says (e.g. Fa Li / Fa Jin confusion); makes me wonder if Beijing-style Chen Tai Chi has an approach to Jin that would match my interests more? I’ll try to ask my teacher about Fa Li versus Fa Jin at some point.

I finished reading Chen Taijiquan Illustrated; I quite like the visual presentation, and the concepts seem good (and I appreciate how it focuses on principles instead of teaching a form). Though the flip side is that I also didn’t see specific ideas in there that made me think that I should spend the next few weeks with those ideas in mind.

My right leg was feeling funny the last couple of days, in a way that made me wonder if my back was being problematic again. I hope not, and that instead I strained a leg muscle; today I’ve been using that as an excuse to stretch my hamstrings quite a bit more often than I normally do, and fortunately that seems to help. And that stretch is a good thing for me to do even if it’s not related to this, so I’ll try to keep that up this week; I might want to take some anti-inflammatories too, though. I can’t think offhand of anything in particular that I’ve been doing that should actively be causing problems with my back, but maybe I’ve been missing something? Or maybe it’s just me being tired and slouching too much.

Pretty reasonable week, I think? I took Wednesday easy because of the COVID vaccine, but honestly I was basically fine that day. This was the week that I started only doing acupuncture every other week, so no acupuncture on Friday; did decent Nei Gong and Tai Chi sessions, nothing special but fine. Also on the Tai Chi note I did the Guan Dao on Sunday for the first time since I broke my hand; didn’t feel completely wonderful, I’m glad I held off until now, but I think it’s safe to restart? Good timing, too, I mostly remembered what to do but there were some bits where I wasn’t sure.

In Damo’s Tai Chi course I got up to the lesson where he introduces Push Hands in the regular (non-push-hands) videos; the two hands sequence is different from what I’m used to, and I don’t think I’m going to try to teach that to my partner, but the one hand is what I’m used to. Nothing too surprising there, but it basically confirmed my feeling about what I was thinking was the right way to approach that: do a Peng and then turn, and maybe try to sink the force to your feet while doing the Peng. (I think I’ve watched this video before, which is probably why I was thinking that!)

And in the push hands part of the videos, he had a “flesh separation” standing practice where you sink your bones while leaving the flesh up (instead of the reverse), either standing statically or moving up and down. Interesting exercise, it’s kind of intense; I don’t know that I’ll do it a ton but I should probably keep on doing it sometimes.

Good Wu Ji today, I felt like my structure was working well and my sinking was working decently too.

I went through the opening lesson from the 37 form in Damo’s Tai Chi course. Pretty interesting, a surprising amount of stuff moving through my body; I guess the preparatory exercises have had some effect in terms of preparing me!

On Wednesday, I went through the Spinal Dao Yin again; and, partway through, the feeling there changed. The stretching and relaxation in that exercise felt like it was affecting a much wider area of my back than normal, instead of being strictly localized in my spine. And also the stretch went farther up and down my back than normal.

At the end of acupuncture on Friday, my doctor was very surprised at how strong my Qi levels were. He said that this meant that my channels were opened well; I think that must be related to what I was noticing on Wednesday. Also, starting after last Friday I’ll only go every other week for a while, so I’ll skip acupuncture this week.

On Saturday Tai Chi we did some Angled Bang exercises; basically it turns out to be a way to practice performing / dealing with Qin Na on yourself. Not the most interesting thing to me, I don’t know that I’ll stick with that? Hopefully I’ll like some of the Straight Ruler / Bang exercises better.

Sunday Tai Chi this week; pretty good, I’m keeping up with the staff and noticed a few things in the Xin Jia Yi Lu. I’ve decided to start keeping a directory with notes about particular subtle points of specific moves in the different forms; I’ve been writing those down here, but this isn’t a great location for me to come back and remind myself once more than a few weeks have passed.

I got my COVID vaccine yesterday and am pretty achy today; so probably I won’t do a ton of Nei Gong tomorrow. Hopefully I’ll be back to normal on Friday.

I said last week that I was optimistic that I’d be able to normally practice longer amounts; I was wrong! Or at least wrong for this last week. Mostly because my sleep was bad; maybe somewhat due to Velvet, maybe somewhat due to me eating too much, I’m not sure. Not horrible or anything, but not great practice, in fact I only managed three good Hui Chun sessions instead of four.

I went through the Wu Song Shen Fa 3 video again on Tuesday, and just watching the video (and practicing along with it) was surprisingly intense. I did mixed standing practice this week: sometimes doing that, sometimes doing spinal waves, once doing Spinal Dao Yins, once doing the Dragon Dao Yins, and once doing the four energies drill; I’ll move along to Damo’s next Tai Chi video this week.

Tai Chi class was pretty interesting on Saturday: I was feeling particularly connected in my body, and also particularly stable. (Sinking into my Kua and letting my pelvis slide under me is definitely helping.) And I did push hands with somebody that I don’t normally do push hands with, and that was a very interesting experience: I got to feel what it felt like pushing hands with somebody who is good at grounding, and it was pretty odd just pushing away with my right hand and having it seem like it wasn’t having an effect. Definitely something to work on.

I got some new Tai Chi shoes. They seem fine; not necessarily better or worse than my previous ones, I like the purple that I was using and they’re a tad long, but their width is good, they’re nice and flexible, I like the leather they’re made from, and, their soles grip a little better. So at the very least I at least now have a not-out-of-business source of Tai Chi shoes that I like.

Speaking of soles gripping, I found it easier to do Ma Bu with the new shoes without my feet slipping too much. But it was harder than I would like for other reasons; I need to get back to that and do it longer; maybe a little to build up my strength but mostly to improving my ability to relax properly.

Another quite good week, at least by the standards of the last three months; hopefully this will be the new normal? I got permission to stop wearing the brace most of the time; so now I can do Nei Gong Wu Ji and other exercises that I couldn’t do at all, and I don’t have various bits of Silk Reeling or the Lao Jia first form that I wasn’t doing quite right because of the brace. The part of my hand around the bone that was broken (and is now growing back together but is still a bit weak) sometimes feels sore, but that’s manageable; and joints / tendons on that finger are a bit off, and my wrist flexibility is noticeably off. But that’s all expected; the only thing that was bad was something I’d already noticed, that my wrist not only has a noticeably limited range of motion when rotating my hand outwards but it also sometimes hurts in a weird way when I did that. But the doctor didn’t seem to see that as an active sign of problems; so hopefully if I move my hand around enough and work at stretching its limits, that will all get better.

And Tai Chi class on Saturday felt noticeably better, it felt like doing Tai Chi was helping my hand heal rather than hurting it. I still took it a little easy, e.g. not doing Flash the Back with anything approaching full force on my left hand, but I’ll ramp it up over the coming weeks. I even tried doing two-handed Push Hands; that felt a little odd, so I stopped after a pretty short amount of time (five minutes, maybe?), but I didn’t feel any adverse effects, so I’ll do that longer this week. Honestly, after the whole thing my hand felt noticeably better than it did after I’d gone to class the first time after the accident, even though I had the brace on then.

So yay for healing. In terms of getting back to normal: I’m still mostly doing Hui Chuns and spinal waves, but I’ve managed to work in some of the MCO prep stuff. I had an interesting time on Thursday where I did the Ming Line in the morning and then, an hour later, I was sitting and eating breakfast and all of a sudden I felt my upper back start to spread; not sure what was going on there, maybe some Yang Qi had migrated up my spine over that hour and decided to make itself known? And I did the Spinal Dao Yin sequence on Wednesday; I’ll probably do that once a week for the next few weeks. I won’t say I’ve done a ton of Wu Ji, but I had an interesting time on Sunday where, part of the way through Wu Ji, I felt some really strong inflation for a while, especially in my chest and arms; and then maybe five minutes later I deflated but not in a bad way, I just shifted back some and did a better job of sinking. And I feel like I’m doing a reasonable job of figuring out how to stand so my body hangs together while sinking, with my Yong Quan helping keep me upright.

As for Tai Chi: I went through all of the Chen Tai Chi forms I know once last week except for Pao Chui and the Guan Dao; those two feel like they’re probably strenuous in ways that mean that I should ease into them a little more. And I was feeling good enough that I was getting frustrated at doing the forms badly; not because of my hands but because, honestly, my standards are just not high enough for most of those forms. So I really need to spend more time in to get all the weapon forms that I’ve learned to a state where I can spend my time going deep into what it means to do them well, instead of floundering around at a superficial level. And, for the forms where I actually have started to address them at a deeper level, I also see more stuff to work on.

This, of course, all requires time. But I think I’ve got enough energy that I can do that; and I’ve found ways to carve out more time where Velvet lets me practice (whether Tai Chi or Nei Gong), instead of having her be a source of interruptions. And we’ve gotten her to mostly sleep through the night; sometimes I still wake up anyways (because she whimpers in her sleep and/or rattles her pen while moving in her sleep), but it’s a manageable level of interruptions, especially since the TCM treatment has gotten my Kidney Qi levels to a healthier state.

The other thing that requires time is Damo’s Tai Chi course. But I am starting to pick that up again; I reviewed the stretching exercises from week 8 this week (I think they’ll actually help my hands’ range of motion as well as my shoulders), and I’ll review the Wu Song Shen Fa 3 lesson from that same week tonight and start doing that some days instead of Spinal Waves. And then, next week or the week after, I’ll move on from that lesson.

It’s not internal arts, but the other thing that I’ve been getting back to is playing piano. The range of motion and the weird pain while rotating is definitely an issue there, but not enough to make it feel actively harmful; so I’m hoping that doing that will help my hands too? So I’m trying to do that a bit every day; I’m not working on actually making the pieces that I’ve learned recently sound better, I’m just going through them once each as a hand therapy mechanism. Hopefully soon enough I can get back to actually improving them on an artistic level. (Which is also motivation for what I want to be doing with Tai Chi: my playing of those pieces really had been improving in non-superficial ways until I broke my hand, so I know what it feels like to do that, I just need the same feeling when doing Tai Chi.)

Probably my best Nei Gong week since we got Velvet? On Wednesday, I did a good length Advanced Dantian Gong session in addition to my now-regular Hui Chun; and I did a more-than-minimal amount of Tai Chi that afternoon, too. On Saturday I did a decent amount of Spinal Waves, of Tai Chi Wu Ji, and of Taiyi Standing; and on Sunday I did some Bellows Breathing in addition to my Hui Chun. (And Hui Chun on Friday and Saturday, too.) So I’m finally starting to get back to MCO prep stuff; no huge effect or anything, but I was reacting to the Advanced Dantian Gong, and also I was feeling energy at the ends of the Ming Line during some of the sessions.

I’d tried getting back to Ma Bu a week or two ago; I was trying that some this past week, but it kept on going not so well, I kept on slipping. Which had always been an issue; it was manageable if I practiced in bare feet on a yoga mat, but that’s harder with Velvet around. So maybe it’s just that my shoes are too slippery (I’ve ordered another set of Tai Chi shoes, we’ll see if they help); but also I’m not relaxing enough, and it’s possible that, if I relax more, then the extra sinking will help more of the force to go downwards. Something to poke at.

I’m seeing the doctor tomorrow, hopefully they’ll give me permission to not wear my brace most of the time. It’ll be good to get back to Nei Gong Wu Ji, if so, and in general to various Nei Gong standing exercises; though I also do want to keep up my Spinal Waves while I’m working on keeping my TCM doctor happy with me. (One solution to that is to do the Spinal Dao Yin sequence, though that’s probably only a once-a-week thing.)

Though I probably won’t have as good practice this upcoming week as last week: I’ve got multiple appointments in the middle of the day tomorrow, so I won’t have as much practice time, and in general my sleep’s been a little bit off because of a puppy transition. But hopefully I can improve my practice in general over the next month.

I got confirmation that I’m registered for Damo’s workshop in Texas next summer, so hopefully I’ll be there.