An overall note around aches in my body: my right Achilles tendon has been aching ever so slightly for a few weeks. Doesn’t seem to be getting worse; I’ve started taking some ibuprofen, icing it, and stretching it a little more, it might be helping though I’m not yet convinced that it’s really on the road to recovery yet. (Though it’s itching right now, which can sometimes be associated with healing, so maybe something is changing??) Also, my knees have been aching for a while in a different way than normal, I’m feeling stress on them sometimes on the top of the knee (on the lower thigh above the kneecap). Not doing anything about that one yet other than not sinking so low in a few situations.

Anyways, last week’s lesson was a Nei Gong one, another one of the Hunyuan lessons, on Large Loops. Pleasant enough.

Wednesday: I did 50 minutes of Wu Ji and an hour of Dantian Gong / Qi thickening. And I went on a walk without the dogs at the end of the afternoon; I felt like it was useful, and also as I was paying attention to my body during the walk, I feel like most of my body was decently loose and I could get my mind in there but I was having a hard time paying attention actually inside the spine? It kind of felt like there was this whole tube there that my mind doesn’t want to get into; I feel like that’s a sign that there’s probably a lot of loosening to be done there. But hey, hopefully being aware of that is a start.

Thursday: I was extra sleepy, so I did a little less Tai Chi than my recent norm: 20 minutes of Taiji Standing 4, I went through Yang 37 twice with the video and three times without it, and I did the Hunyuan 48 and the Lao Jia first/second forms twice. (Though, admittedly, that’s still more than I’d been doing before the last month or so!) And I took inspiration from the previous day and had a pleasant walk after that. In the afternoon I did an hour of Calm Abiding (but being sleepy meant it was quite a bit less effective than on Tuesday), and I went through the recording of Rick’s July 2 class, my notes are that it was quite good but I can’t remember why I noted that. And I reviewed the Hunyuan 48 in the evening.

Friday: I did an hour of Wu Ji; it went well, the lower part of my body was actually about as connected as it had ever been, my Yong Quan and inside of my thighs definitely had interesting stuff going on. And my back was tingling right at the start, not in a “tons of Qi” way but in a way that I think came from having done a couple of good walks on Wednesday and Thursday, that got things loosened up and moving through there better. And then I did a little more than an hour of Dantian Gong / Qi thickening / trying to kick off the Microcosmic Orbit. (My first attempt at the later since the summer workshop.) I didn’t succeed in kicking it off, Qi only went about halfway or two thirds of the way up my back; it felt more like I didn’t have enough juice rather than a clipping pass problem.

Saturday: when I was walking one of my dogs in the morning, I felt like I was doing a pretty good job of keeping my Ming Men open, so that was nice. Other than that, I did the Long Loops exercise and went through the Dragons, and of course I had my regular Chen Tai Chi class.

Sunday: I did a little over 30 minutes of Hunyuan stuff (Large Loops, Side Channel Rolling); I went through my Tai Chi sword weapons forms; and I did 50 minutes of Bellows Breathing / attempting Scholar Breathing / Calm Abiding. I made progress on Scholar Breathing: I could definitely feel the Ming Line and I also got a sense of how the front of it might want to pull in. So I didn’t actually kick off Scholar Breathing but I also felt like my body was moving in that direction. I was a little tired so I didn’t do as much Calm Abiding as I would have liked.

Monday: I did 75 minutes of Wu Ji; I was planning to do an hour but about 45 minutes in, my abdomen inflated in interesting ways, and then my armpits inflated a bit after that, so I kept going even after the one hour bell. And I did 50 minutes of Dantian Gong and Qi thickening.

Tuesday: I did Taiji Standing 4 and Wu Song Shen Fa 1; the part of the latter where stuff is going down was more interesting in my arms and torso than normal, it actually felt like I was getting Yi Jin Jing-style effects of Qi affecting my body’s tissues as it moved through them. And I went through the 37 form three times and the Lao Jia 1st/2nd forms once. In the afternoon, I watched Rick’s July 12 Zoom class; and then I did 35 minutes of Calm Abiding, but I was too sleepy to keep going. Which, if you’re keeping count, happened to me every time this week; I’d been happy that, for a while, it felt like my energy levels were good in the afternoon (and I was also stabilizing my mind well inside my body during Calm Abiding) but now, unfortunately, I’m back to being sleepy enough that it’s a problem with that exercise. Not sure if it’s random fluctuation or if there’s something I was accidentally doing right for a little while that I’ve stopped doing…

I was visiting my parents for most of the week, so no new lesson and not a ton of practice most days. And, unfortunately, I think I probably sat around too much and/or sat around in a less-than-ideal position, because my back is feeling not super great? Nothing horrible, just a little achy / weak.

Anyways, as to the days:

Wednesday: 30 minutes of Wu Ji, 25 minutes of breathing practice. Also, I was noticing that my shoulders not infrequently want to expand, I think the opening work really has had an effect. And I read some random article online that day which got me thinking that maybe I’ve been logy after my afternoon naps recently because I slept too long and went into a deeper sleep phase, so I was thinking I should set an alarm for 45 minutes; I’ve been putting that into practice since I got back, I think it’s helped.

Thursday: 50 minutes of Spine Shoulder Dao Yin, 20 minutes observing the breath.

Friday: 20 minutes Wu Ji, 40 minutes Kidney Hui Chun.

Saturday: 30 minutes Ji Ben 4, 25 minutes of Spleen Hui Chun, and I also went through the Chen Xinjia first form. (That was the only Tai Chi I did while on vacation.)

Sunday: 15 minutes Wu Ji, 40 minutes of just sitting, 20 minutes of Yin Yang breathing. (The latter two of which I did on the way home, good to be home.)

Monday: 45 minutes of Wu Ji; like I said, my back wasn’t feeling great, so I didn’t go a full hour. Though I didn’t feel like the Wu Ji was compressing it, I actually felt like the Wu Ji was stretching it out, so hopefully that will start helping? And I did an hour of Dantian Gong plus thickening.

Tuesday: in the morning, I reviewed Single Whip, I went through the Yang 37 twice with a video and twice on my own, I did 20 minutes each of Taji Standing 4 (Push) and the Four Energies exercise, and I went through the Chen pole-like weapons. (Guan Dao, staff, spear.) In the afternoon, I did 60 minutes of Calm Abiding; I wasn’t hanging out as easily in my body as I had the previous week, my body felt kind of tight? But I attention was pretty stable, so I kept at in, and as I relaxed my body I made it in there further. And I got some pretty good mental Song, too. So, all in all, it felt like a rather good session; and I’d actually been feeling more monkey-mind-ish than normal recently, so I was glad to be in a good mental state that time. And then I watched a video of a class that Rick gave at the end of June – I’ve decided that I want to start attending his classes going forward (at least the ones on Wednesdays, Saturdays are a less good time so I’ll probably do those via the recording), so I decided to go through the four ones from June / July. Interesting class, I’m glad I watched it; good Golden Orb practice, in a way that I got different things from than from Damo’s class a few months back.

Last Tuesday’s lesson was Taiji Standing 4 – Push. Which is actually good timing – I’d been vaguely wondering if I should spend more time on the Taji Standing exercises, and some of the general discussion in that lesson combined with some discussion in the IAA forum makes me think that it’s worth experimenting with: it seems like those exercises might be a useful complement to exercises that actually move Jin? So I think I’d like to find time on those; the next question is when / how, though, because there aren’t any exercises that I want to dial back on…

On Wednesday, I did 90m of Wu Ji; the last 15 minutes was hard but I made it. And 30m of the Full Moon practice.

Thursday was another good Tai Chi morning, and actually a good practice day in general. I reviewed the Ba Men 2 – Release video, I went through the Chen Jian form 5 times, I did 20 minutes each of Taiji Standing 4 and Wu Song Shen Fa 3, I went through the Yang 37 form 3 times alone and 2 times with the video, and I had one good-feeling round of the Xin Jia first form. And in the afternoon I did an hour of the Yellow Court stretch, since I’d heard that Rick was mentioning that and it had been a while since I’d done it; an hour of Calm Abiding (probably the time doing that where I’ve felt most like I was hanging out in my body; not as strong a Song as I’ve gotten before but the hanging out part is definitely progress); and 20m of Full Moon. And I felt good after practice, not sure what all contributed to that but yay. And I reviewed the Hunyuan 48 in the evening.

On Friday, I decided I should experiment with doing some of the Nei Gong in the morning, to avoid after-nap weirdness. (My naps have gotten sounder recently, so I’m a little logy when I wake up.) And I think I should probably stretch more too – I was doing that more regularly at the start of my maybe-retirement schedule, and it felt good, but I’ve been slacking on that as well. Dogs kept me up for a while in the previous night (though I slept soundly after that) so I wasn’t 100%, but I did 20m stretching and 1h of Wu Ji in the morning, and 1h of Dantian Gong plus thickening in the afternoon. I had good Shen Up during that hour, my attention felt really clear, my body was inflating more than normal at the start of the DTG.

On Saturday, I did 30 minutes of Zhan Zhuang; I felt like I was doing an okay job of turning sinking into expansion, maybe because of the four energies practice? And my Chen teacher reviewed my Jian, I got some useful advice out of that. Unfortunately, that (plus the regular Chen Saturday class stuff) was all I did – one of my dogs was really worked up overnight so my sleep was crap.

Sunday was the once-a-month extra Chen class. I did 20 minutes of Zhan Zhuang before the start; a little sleepy so I chickened out, but actually it was pretty good, and I noticed during class that my lower spine was feeling better than normal, like it wanted to push up some, so maybe my body is starting to learn to keep the Ming Men full? That would be really useful if it is the case. And I did a little bit of breathing practice; some just sitting and watching (and mostly notice that I was surprisingly tense), and some box breathing.

On Monday, I went through the Spine Spa video. I wasn’t really looking forward to that: was spending two hours on that the right thing to do? But past me had thought that I should do that once a month or so, so I gave it another shot. And I’ll chalk that up as a win for past me, glad I did that, I’ve now set up a recurring reminder for that. The rotating the cage bit felt surprisingly strong; maybe that’s because of the Dantian pulsing that we did before that, I’m not sure, I’ll have to try out the Dantian pulsing in other similar contexts. And the bit about pulling with your pinkies was pretty interesting, there’s one bit in the middle of my spine that I kept on coming back to while doing that, hopefully I got that a bit unstuck but who knows.

I’m visiting my parents the rest of the week, so today was a travel day. I did sit on the plane for about 50 minutes and did a decent job of getting my mind in my body again, but I did almost no Song. But I’ll still treat that as a victory, doing anything like that on an economy-class seat in a plane is hard.

I feel good about the week – that’s now a few good Tai Chi days in a row, and there were some good signs over on the Nei Gong side, too. We’l see how much practice I do this week, but visiting my parents is important, so if the answer is “not much”, that’s fine. Not sure what was up with my younger dog’s sleep patterns at the end of the week, hopefully that was a transient thing, I’ve got enough sleep/fatigue issues that I don’t need my dog making it worse. (He was getting better on Sunday and Monday night, though, so I’ll be optimistic.)

A Nei Gong lesson week, on Dan Tian Governance. I didn’t really get that one; feels like something to return to if I start making progress with Scholar / Martial Breathing.

Anyways, the middle of the week was good (as Tuesday had been); I think it’s because sleep was going better? I had a hypothesis there that something I was doing was getting me to breathe more deeply with my diaphragm while sleeping and that was helping things (not fixing things, but maybe if I could work on that, it would); unfortunately, my sleep and energy levels were back to a so-so level after that, so maybe it’s just random variation. I do want to push on that, though, I’m no longer as convinced as I was that obstructive sleep apnea is all that’s going on.

Anyways, on Wednesday I did 1h Wu Ji, 1h Dantian Gong plus Thickening the Qi. Both went well – 1h was totally fine for the Wu Ji, my mind felt back in shape for the first time since I got a little sick after the workshop, and my body is aching in ways that, if I’m optimistic, might mean that things are expanding inside? And my body was doing some interesting “bump bump bump” movements during the DTG instead of letting my hands move smoothly.

On Thursday, I had another good Tai Chi day: I reviewed the Grasping the Sparrow’s Tail lesson(though I should probably go back to review the Ba Men lesson); did Jian form 6 times; 20m each Taiyi Standing and WSSF2; went through 37 form 4 times (once with video, three on my own); and the Lao Jia first form three times. For Nei Gong, I did 1h of Spine / Shoulder Dao Yin and 45m Calm Abiding. In the evening, I reviewed the 48 form, watched the Qi Connects Body lecture in the Foundations set, and skimmed a couple more sections of the Audio Guide.

On Friday we had friends over, so not much time for Nei Gong: 20m Wu Ji, 15m breathing exercises, but that’s all.

On Saturday I lead Silk Reeling in my Chen Tai Chi class, and did the other normal stuff in that class; for Nei Gong I did 10m Pushing the Tides, 20m Dragons, and 30m ADTG.

On Sunday, I rewatched Lotus Dao Yin video and I did 1h Bellows Breathing / Scholar attempt / Calm Abiding. That latter did not go well; what with the workshop there had been a several week gap since the last time I tried it, and that turned out to be enough that I didn’t feel confident that I was doing the exercises correctly. So I might have to review those videos again. (Or, of course, decide to stop pushing on that.) And I did half my Tai Chi forms.

On Monday, I did 1h Wu Ji, 35m breathing exercises. A little disappointing: I was hoping to do 90m of Wu Ji but, for whatever reason, I didn’t. This is actually a theme: the attentive reader will notice that my Nei Gong times have almost never added up to two hours since the workshop, even though that’s my goal. Some of that is fatigue, but also something’s off with the timing of my afternoon maps, which is having the effect of me not leaving enough time for Nei Gong and/or not wanting to do Nei Gong? (I still do do Nei Gong, I just goof off more before starting and give up more easily.) That latter could also be related to fatigue, but I think that I also need to spend less time getting distracted by pointless stuff; it might be a good idea for me to delete all the puzzle apps off of my iPad, for example.

And in my Tai Chi session this morning, I did 20m each of the four energies and WSSF1; my feet ached more than normal towards the end of that, which I’ll take as a good sign. And I finished going through the different Tai Chi forms, and I went through the Jian 3 times. In the afternoon, I did 45m Spinal Dao Yin, 30m Calm Abiding (bad planning there, I was doing it in a central part of the house because I expected my wife to be out longer than she actually was, whoops), 10m Wood Wu Xing.

I was feeling a little sick in the middle of the week, so no lesson last Tuesday evening and no practice on Wednesday and Thursday. Apparently many people got sick after the workshop, don’t know if something was going around or if it was something more esoteric.

On Thursday I was starting to feel better, so I finished my Tai Chi forms for the week, and I did 15m of Side Channel Rolling and 40m of Kidney Hui Chun. Also one thing that I noted that day was that my Yellow Court was feeling more active than normal; it had been doing that since the workshop, clearly the workshop had an effect. (Mostly calmed down as of this writing, though.) And I watched the Shen Up, Qi Down video that was posted to the Foundations course; glad I did, it stuck in a way that previous presentations of that material haven’t, it managed to get me in a mental state that really does feel different inside.

On Friday I hadn’t slept well (I’m trying out an apnea treatment that, honestly, isn’t going great), so all I did was 20m Wu Ji and 25m Spleen Hui Chun.

On Saturday, I started doing Advanced Dantian Gong but it quickly became clear that a nap would be more useful then too, so I stopped after 15 minutes. I went to my regular Chen Tai Chi class, and went through the Dragon Dao Yins.

On Sunday I did half of my Tai Chi forms, 20m Wu Ji, 10m Coiling Snake, and an hour of Calm Abiding.

On Monday, I did a 25m stretching session (I should do that more often, but certainly right now I’m feeling that my body has regressed in a bunch of ways since the workshop, so stretching seemed called for), 1h of Wu Ji, and 25m on Kidney Hui Chun.

And today was a rather good day. I reviewed the Ward off Left video in the 37 form, I went through the rest of my Tai Chi forms (and I actually decided to go through the Jian form six times, because I’ve decided that it’ll be the form that I show to my teacher later this month), and I also did 20m each of the four energies exercise, Wu Song Shen Fa 1, and Wu Song Shen Fa 3. So lots of Tai Chi in the morning; and, in the afternoon, a solid Nei Gong session, with an hour of a mix of Wu Ji, Spine Waves, and Ji Ben 4, followed by an hour of Calm Abiding. I did need a decent nap in the middle of it, so it’s not like my energy problems had disappeared, but also my sleep was better than average last night, I think. (Possibly due to Shui Gong 2, I did that last night and I think it made a difference.)

Most of the last week was the workshop. Lots of good stuff; and my body was feeling like it had had a pretty good workout by the end of it!

Which meant that I still felt what I thought was pleasantly exhausted (in a kind of unusual, more internal way) on Sunday; unfortunately, on Monday, I crashed hard at my normal nap time, and I’m feeling worse today. Not sure if I came down with something in the airport or if the lack of sleep Saturday night (caused by a flight getting me home at 1am and my dogs waking me up at a normal time) was too much sleep debt, or what; at any rate, I’m taking it easy now, certainly not doing a lesson tonight. (I did at least get a decent amount of Tai Chi in on Sunday, plus a bit of Calm Abiding.)

And I have some thinking to do about how to change my practice mix in light of the workshop. Probably work in a bit more seated gathering / thickening, and some occasional Microcosmic Orbit attempts? And I should spend more time doing active standing work with my mind inside my body, using it in different ways.

This week’s lesson was 37 Form – Full Sequence. A good one for a short week, since it’s just front and back videos of the sequence, so there’s nothing new I need to learn. And I also watched a new interview with Damo on Tuesday night.

On Wednesday, I had a short practice, only 30m Wu Ji and 25m Full Moon: partly that was me getting distracted and partly it was needing time to pack for the workshop. Though actually the Wu Ji started out amazing; but then my brother called and I needed to talk to him, and when I got back to it, the magic was going. I can’t even remember any more exactly how it was amazing, but something really interesting was going on in my body, hopefully that will come back…

Thursday was a travel day; I did 20m of Wu Ji and a bit of Yin Yang breathing on the plane.

And I’ve been at the workshop since then. I’m not going to write about the details of that, though maybe next week I’ll write about what changes to my practice routine I might make in response to the workshop? We’ll see.

A Nei Gong lesson this week, Side Channel Rolling; another Hunyuan practice. Pleasant enough, gets my body moving.

Wednesday: 1h50m Wu Ji. I would have done a full 2 hours (it was getting plenty annoying, but I would have lasted), but people came early to look at work that was going to be done on my deck.

Thursday: Tai Chi in the morning. I reviewed the 37 Form Opening Sequence; went through the Jian form a few times; did 20m Taiyi Standing, 20m WSSF1; went through the 37 Form a few times. I’m starting to feel a little good about it: tons of details wrong, but there are also parts that feel good inside my body, and also I’m at the state in the form where it doesn’t feel so long. In, I did a slightly abbreviated Spinal Dao Yin and 45m Calm Abiding. In the evening I reviewed the Hunyuan 48 and listened to IAA pod number 6. I also watched Chen Qingzhou’s Jian video; I’ve got it largely correct, though I think a few details are wrong. I think we’ll start that soon in the Saturday class, so I don’t necessarily have to worry too much about getting the details from the video?

Friday: 1h Dantian Gong, 20m Thickening the Qi, 20m Golden Orb. Golden Orb was probably more effective than when I did it without the thickening, but still, I don’t think it was as effective as when following along in the Zoom video? So I should follow that along again next time. And 30m breathing practice (Dry Sighing, Yin Yang Breathing). Again, good Dantian Gong, it feels like it’s starting to have an effect around my tailbone, that’ll probably be useful for when I get back to working on the Microcosmic Orbit.

Saturday: I needed extra sleep, so I didn’t do my regular Advanced Dantian Gong or long Silk Reeling. I did 20m Zhan Zhuang, and I went through the Dragons, though; and of course there was the regular Tai Chi class. And I went through half my weapons so I don’t have to do that on Sunday.

Sunday: 25m of Hunyuan stuff (side channels, belt). Sunday Tai Chi class. I did a bit of Bellows Breathing in the afternoon, but I was too sleepy for it to go well; I was planning to go into Scholar Breathing but I cut it short.

Monday: 1h Wu Ji, 15 minutes Side Channel Rolling, 40m Kidney Hui Chun

Tuesday: 20m each WSSF 2/3; and finished almost all my Tai Chi forms. Still not feeling WSSF 2 very strongly… And I went through the Du Stretch video (I should probably do that more regularly), did some full moon practice, and I did the Bellows Breathing / Scholar Breathing / Calm Abiding that I didn’t manage on Sunday.

The big thing this week is that the 9 day Nei Gong retreat starts on Friday. So I might cut my practice short on Wednesday to make sure I can pack, and Thursday will be a travel day, and I won’t be giving detailed reports on the workshop. Fortunately, the lesson for today is just a review of the Yang 37, so it’s not really adding anything particularly new, so I can go through that lesson like normal.

This week was a Tai Chi lesson; finished the 37 form, yay! Though honestly I am not confident of a whole bunch of stuff in the entire second half of the form, and I’m sure there are details in the first half that I’m getting wrong, too. I don’t want to pause my progress in the course while I go through the whole thing again (though, honestly, that might actually not be the worst idea?); I think I’ll probably try to do what I’m doing with the Hunyuan 48, which is to go back to the beginning and review a section a week, and, if I feel iffy about previous sections that I’ve reviewed, go over those again as well; the question then is when I’ll find time for that. Maybe I can add it into my Thursday evening study? Or maybe I can add it into Tuesday / Thursday mornings? On weeks when I’ve made it through all my forms on Sunday / Tuesday, adding it into Thursday morning makes sense, I think; would be nice if that happened in a higher percentage of weeks, though…

Anyways:

Wednesday: I did 1h Wu Ji; it felt like I had weird line running around my waist, at first I was worried something was inappropriately compressing vertically but when I tried stretching my torso out more, I don’t think that was the case? And I did 15 min Coiling Snake + Wu Ji; I felt a much stronger connection to my Lao Gong when doing that than normal, not sure what’s going on there. And 35m of breathing exercises; I’ve been slacking on those but I still think they’re an area where I need to build my foundations up more, not sure what to do about that…

Thursday: 20m Taiyi standing; it didn’t feel like much at the start but by the end I was getting a noticeable Peng going down that led into a release that was at least somewhat useful, I think? And 20m of WSSF1; it felt significantly stronger than normal from the start, there wasn’t necessarily a strong release from my foot but at least more stuff moving through the body / interacting with the body than I’m used to. (So maybe that combination of exercises is good?) And I finished going through my forms for the week. As to Nei Gong, I did 20m Wu Ji, I rewatched the Coiling Snake video (one thing I forgot was to push from the spine into the arms, don’t pull from the arms) and the Golden Orb video, and I had 1h10m of good Calm Abiding. In the evening, I reviewed a section of the Hunyuan 48, and I listened to the first four sections of the new Audio Guide to Nei Gong; nothing super surprising there, I’d probably get more out of rereading the Complete Guide. (But I don’t know that that’s a high priority, either.)

Friday: 1h Dantian Gong, 20m Golden Orb, 30m Anchoring the Breath. The Dantian Gong was super powerful, lots of stuff building up; the Golden Orb didn’t feel like it was having a significant effect on my body, though. (Much less than when I watched the Foundations workshop on that.) I think what I was missing was a step to thicken the Qi, so I’ll look for an exercise to work in there. Also, I’ve been noticing recently that I’m getting more stretchy connectivity in my lower back, that was certainly clear today.

Saturday: 40m Advanced Dantian Gong; it was good, I felt some swallowing of Qi by my abdomen towards the end. I did 20m of the Qingzhou standing exercise; I did feel my Baihui being a little more active, but still, not enough of an effect for me to want to keep on doing that, so I’ll switch to something else for my Saturday pre-Tai-Chi-class standing exercise. (Probably traditional Zhan Zhuang.) For my long silk reeling exercise, I did a long version of Chest and Abdomen Folding; there wasn’t anything interesting going on there, which wasn’t a big surprise. In the class, we finished the Lao Jia spear, yay; there were a bunch of details that I’d been getting wrong over the last quarter, good to have that firmed up. And I went through the Dragon Dao Yins after class.

Sunday: 20m Wu Ji, 1h of Bellows Breathing / Scholar Breathing / Calm Abiding. Nothing much to report there, no hints of Martial Breathing arising. And I went through a decent number of my Tai Chi forms.

Monday: 1h Wu Ji, and I reviewed the Thickening the Qi lesson and the Bellows Breathing lesson. The Thickening the Qi lesson was a good fit for what I’d been seeing in that Foundations lecture, so hopefully doing Dantian Gong + Thickening the Qi + Golden Orb will make the Golden Orb much more useful.

Tuesday: 20m of the Four Energies drill, and 20m of WSSF3; it’s interesting in the latter how the energy splits and goes both to the leg and to the arm, it’s like the way, when you do the Peng in the Four Energies drill, the sinking leads to expansion. (Not 100% sure if it’s all that mechanism or not.) And I finished going through my forms for the week, yay, nice to have that done on Tuesday. In the afternoon I did 20m Wu Ji, and I watched the Drawing Down Heaven Dao Yin video; not necessarily planning to spend more time on that Dao Yin, if I’m going to work on that then there’s a Year 2 set of lessons that seem like an evolution of it, I think it’s the Taiyi Hundun ones, so if I want to work on opening that channel then I should probably do it that way. And I had a good 1h10m Calm Abiding session; I should really start setting my timer for a longer time instead of saying “I’ll set it for an hour and if it goes well I’ll keep on going”, because I don’t end up going all that much longer than an hour.

No more offspring visiting, so I’ve been back to a normal schedule this week. And it’s been going well; actually, I feel like my body has been getting better even before this week? My spine is feeling both a little more flexible and a little more solid in ways that make me think that Qi is moving through it; also, how it feels when I sink into my Kua is changing (especially during Tai Chi), I feel like there’s an extra step at the end which has my pelvis sink further in ways that adds an extra stretch and extra stability. Which in turn creates a new goal, which is to get to that extra stretch more quickly, I think that will make a difference in my stability.

Anyways, on to the stuff from this week: last Tuesday’s lesson was a Nei Gong one, Scholar Breathing Revisited. Which started off with an assumption that you’ve been doing Scholar Breathing a lot; I hadn’t, and I’d actually forgotten exactly what it was, so I spent a decent amount of time rewatching some earlier videos. It turns out that it’s something that I was considering working on after last summer’s workshop but had decided I wanted to spend my time in other areas; having it come up again makes me wonder if I should reconsider that. I’d already been thinking I should spend more time on building Qi in my Dantian specifically, and this feels like it will dovetail well with that; so maybe instead of doing a 1h Calm Abiding three days a week, I should switch one of them to Scholar Breathing? Or, actually, to a combination of the two – I need to go through my notes from last summer, but my memory is that, on several days, we did a sequence where we started with Calm Abiding to build up Qi and then transitioned into Scholar Breathing (which in turn may or may not have transitioned into Martial Breathing, of course). So I’ll look through those notes and give that a try.

As to the other days:

On Wednesday I did 1h30m Wu Ji and I reviewed the year 2 Alchemical Breathing lesson. (Which turned out to be a different thing from Scholar Breathing, I couldn’t quite remember which year 2 videos were relevant. And I won’t say that that one is irrelevant, using Alchemical Breathing as prep for Scholar Breathing is maybe not a bad idea?)

On Thursday I did 10m Stringing the Arms, and I did all my Tai Chi weapons forms and almost all the empty hand forms. I went through the Sinew Work Principles Zoom class again, glad I did, I should do it every so often. (I think it was probably even more intense this time than when I first went through it?) I did my regular Thursday evening review of parts of the Hunyuan 48 for, and I rewatched a foundations video on the Dantian. Which, among other things, convinced me that I need to work on my Dantian more: building up Qi in general across my body is good, but I just don’t have nearly enough Qi in my Dantian specifically to get some of the behaviors that I’m working towards.

On Friday I did 1h Wu Ji (with my mind mostly in my Dantian), 20m Ji Ben 1, and I reviewed the year 2 scholar/martial breathing video; that last one was useful.

On Saturday I did 40m Scholar breathing (well, 20 minutes of prep stuff plus 20 minutes of Scholar breathing). Before my Chen Tai Chi class I did 20m of Qingzhou’s Zhan Zhuang (still not really getting anything out of it, I’ll declare an end to that experiment at the end of the month), and during Silk Reeling I did both long Horizontal Circles (during which the stretch / connection moved down to my legs in an interesting way about halfway through the time I spent on that) and long Body Stretch (in the going up direction, things gathered in an interesting way, though going down was less interesting). And I did some Dragon Dao Yins after that.

On Sunday I did 45m Calm Abiding with my mind in Dantian (went pretty well); and 30m Wu Ji combined with Ji Ben 4. I like how my body feels as it’s making a ball shape while doing that. And I did 10m of Stringing the Arms and went through half of my Tai Chi forms.

On Monday I did 90m Wu Ji, 40m Water Hui Chun.

And today I went through the Spine Spa video a second time; maybe I’ll try to do that once every month or so? And I reviewed the old and new Scholar Breathing lessons. And I finished going through the Tai Chi weapon forms for the week, though I still have empty-hand ones to do.