This week’s lesson: Nei Gong, Three Circles. Another Hunyuan one, seems fine.

I also started seeing a new TCM practitioner, a recommendation from a fellow student in my Tai Chi class. I liked what he had to say in the intro: seemed plausible from a medicine point of view but also there was stuff (e.g. about physical alignments and relaxing parts of the body) that is consistent with Tai Chi / Nei Gong recommendations. Hopefully it will go well; I decided to sign up for a pretty big package plan, so I’ll feel silly if it doesn’t go well! And I’m going to do this one more regularly (especially at the start, three times a week) than I’d been doing with my prior TCM doctor; for all I know, maybe the main issue there was that I dialed it down too early… Hopefully I’ll still be able to get about as much done (I can nap during moxa treatments, after all), but ifI do less in the future on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and/or Sundays, that’s why. (It actually does seem pretty likely that I’ll do less Tai Chi on Thursdays, but we’ll see.)

Wednesday: 75m Wu Ji, 40m Dantian Gong.

Thursday: 20m Taiji Standing 5, 37 form x2. Not much in the afternoon, I can’t remember and didn’t take good notes – maybe just 20m Three Circles?? And Shui Gong 2 at night, for the first time in ages. And my first appointment with the new TCM doctor, just moxa treatment.

Friday: I slept quite well; not sure if it was the moxa or the extra chewing when eating that he had me do or the Shui Gong or what. (Though that didn’t repeat later in the week, so I suspect it’s the Shui Gong, that has happened to me with Shui Gong 2 in the past.) And I did 30m of Wu Ji, and a 1h Microcosmic Orbit attempt. In some sense it was my most successful MCO attempt – it felt more like descriptions that I’ve heard, stuff went up my back without any particular blockages and at a quite leisurely but not completely glacial pace. Not as much made it all the way to the top as would be ideal, but certainly some did. So if I can build on that, then that would be great. (No obvious aftereffects in my body in subsequent days, though.) Shui Gong 1 at night.

Saturday: 40m Advanced Dantian Gong; all four dragons. Regular Chen class; I did a long Ankle Rotation during the Silk Reeling, I’m almost done with the long Silk Reeling exercises.

Sunday: Two hours of push hands, again very useful: I’m getting more out of touching my partner, I’m feeling more in my body and in particular am using the Kua better, I think. And 30m of bellows breathing / ming line in the afternoon.

Monday: Feeling a little off (purging, maybe?), so I took it easy; 20m Wu Ji, 40m Dantian Gong.

Tuesday: Bad sleep, so I didn’t practice much (though honestly some of that was just me letting myself get distracted.) I went through the Chen pole weapons forms and did the 37 form and the Xinjia first form once each; my only Nei Gong was 55m of Spinal Dao Yin.

I finally (with the help of Claude) got mail notifications about blog comments working again, so if you leave a comment, it shouldn’t take me a week to notice it now.

This week’s lesson was Taiji Standing 5 – Single Whip (plus Pushing Hands – Press). Pretty intense, I like that one.

Wednesday: My monthly going through the Sinew Changing Principles Zoom class; good, as always. Also, a random note: I’ve been feeling over the last month or so that the left side of my torso is weaker than the right, I think my TCM doctor was correct about my Kidney being weaker on that side. Probably related to why I normally lean to the left when I’m standing.

Thursday: I rewatched the Golden Rooster video; interesting one, lots of details for me to fix. I did 15m of TS5 (that was interesting inside), 20m WSSF3, and I went through the 37 form twice, the Hunyuan 48 form, and the Xinjia first form (I did a surprisingly bad job, honestly). In the afternoon, I did 30m of Dragon 2, 25m Pulling Down Heaven, and 25m attention to breath.

Friday: I did 45m Wu Ji; my back felt stretchier than it ever has, I think the Dragon 2 is making a difference. And a 65m successful MCO attempt; this is the second time that I’ve gotten it to work after a Foundations workshop, so that’s good. Like the previous one, I initially didn’t think it was going to work, but it just kept on going up, and after about 15 minutes it made it to the top of my head. And there wasn’t any particular blockage anywhere along my spine. Though, unlike the previous time, it didn’t leave my torso tingling for days after…

Saturday: 30m attention to breath, 10m Tai Chi Wu Ji. And the regular Chen class; I was doing a good job of Fang Song, it felt quite different inside, I’ll definitely want to keep on working on that.

Sunday: 20m Pulling Down Heaven, 20m attention to breath, plus the monthly Sunday Tai Chi class. And 30m of indifferent attempt at doing Scholar Breathing that turned into a decent job of feeling the Ming Line, at least.

Monday: Du Stretch video; 20m Wu Ji; 1h DTG / thickening. Also, I’ve recently been noticing a bit of pulsing in my left leg while doing Wu Ji; I’m not sure if it’s blood vessels or fascia. (Somewhat irregular, which argues against blood vessels.)

Tuesday: I reviewed Needles to Sea Bottom and Fan Through Back, and I went through all the Chen weapon forms. I did 20m each TS5 and WSSF1; I felt a weird full body tingling halfway through the latter, I’m honestly not sure if I was just overexerting myself and feeling slightly dizzy or if something was clearing in a useful way or what. I went through 37 form and the Lao Jia 1/2 once each. And in the afternoon I did 20 minutes of Wu Ji, 25 minutes of Dragon 2, 35 minutes of Kidney Hui Chun (been a while since I’ve done that, I should probably get back to it?), and 30 minutes of attention to the breath.

I feel like my back is doing better; not sure if it’s the weekly Du Stretch videos or Dragon 2 or what, probably a combination. Would be nice if that helps make the MCO attempts more successful, instead of only working right after a workshop, we’ll see.

The lesson last Tuesday was a Nei Gong one, Pulling Down Yang. Seems like a pleasant enough one, another in the Hunyuan series And I also watched Qi Building and Filling from the Sweden 2025 video set; very interesting, I should watch it again.

Wednesday: I did 45m of Wu Ji and a 1h MCO attempt. I didn’t have enough juice in that; one random thought is that the CPAP has been making my sleep annoyingly fragmented recently, I wonder if that’s related?

Thursday: I did 20m of Taiyi Standing, 20m of Wu Song Shen Fa 2, and 10m of Foot Pump; the Foot Pump still isn’t doing anything for me. And I went through the 37 form twice and the Xin Jia first form once. In the afternoon I went through Rick’s October 25 Zoom class and did 30m of attention to breath. And in the evening I watched the Qi Building & Filling lecture a second time, and packed for the workshop; no Hunyuan review, I should get back to that this week.

Friday: This was a travel day; I did 20m of standing work, Wood Wu Xing plus Wu Ji, and 30m of attention to breath.

Saturday and Sunday: A Foundations workshop. I think Rick wouldn’t approve of those Nei Gong goals that I posted a week or so ago on the other blog; clearly I should work on consolidation more. And on connection some, but I feel like I’m not doing horribly with that? At any rate, good weekend, and the second Dragon seems more interesting to me now.

Monday: I got tired of getting annoyed at the CPAP machine, and I enjoyed sleeping better over the weekend without it, even though I was in a hotel! So I’m declaring an end to that experiment, and I sent back the CPAP machine. I did my weekly going through the Du Stretch video; I wonder if I should do it more often, it definitely seems useful but it’s a little less clear if I’m getting sustained benefits from it or if I’m just taking two steps forward and then two steps back every week. (It’s not like it’s the only back thing I’m doing, but still.) And I did 45m of Wu Ji and 40m of Dantian Gong.

Tuesday: I went through my Chen pole weapon forms. I did 20m of Wu Song Shen Fa 1 and 10m of Foot Pump; more going on in my torso than normal in the WSSF, presumably because of the workshop. I went through the 37 form three times and the Lao Jia first and second forms once each. And a bunch of smaller things in the afternoon: 25m Wu Ji, 10m Ji Ben 1, 30m Full Moon, 30m (sleepy) attention to the breath, 25m Pulling Down Yang.

I didn’t do a lesson last Tuesday, as I mentioned last week

Wednesday: I was still feeling the vaccines a bit, so I just did 40m attention to the breath. And my breathing is getting deeper and slower outside of that now; honestly, it feels a bit much, I wonder how much I’m subconsciously forcing it? Still, progress; and it actually carried into my sleep. Which then interacted weirdly with the CPAP machine, another piece of evidence that I should stop using that.

Thursday: 20m WSSF1 and 20m Foot Pump; the former didn’t feel as strong as it had before I’d switched to focusing more on Taiji Standing on sessions where I didn’t have time for both (which is most of them). And, presumably related, the latter didn’t feel like much either. And I went through the 37 form twice and the Xin Jia form once. In the afternoon I did 25m attention to breath, I watched the video for Rick’s October 22 Zoom class, and in the evening I went through Hunyuan 48 once.

Friday: I did 55m Spinal Dao Yin and 40m Dantian Gong.

Saturday: My regular Chen class, plus 20m of Yin Field and all four Dragons.

Sunday: I did 2h push hands; the second hour was with the same guy that I’d pushed with a few weeks back, again very helpful. And I did 40m of misc seated Nei Gong stuff in the afternoon. In the evening I published a post on my other blog talking about my Nei Gong and Tai Chi goals (among other things).

Monday: 75m Wu Ji, 40m DTG. It’s been three weeks since I’ve done that much Wu Ji, which is pretty embarrassing; though the good news is that I wasn’t sure I was going to make it that far this time but my brain kept on saying “sure, go another 5 minutes”; I’m used to the opposite problem recently.

Tuesday: I did 20m of WSSF3 (maybe felt a little better than the WSSF1 on Thursday?), 10m of Foot Pump, and I went through the 37 form and the Lao Jia first/second forms once each, as well as all the Chen weapons forms. In the afternoon I went through the Du Stretch video, spent 30m doing Dragon 1, 30m attention on the breath, and 15m Song Breathing.

This week’s Lesson was a Tai Chi one, on The Foot Pump. Which I’d heard about before so I was looking forward to it, but unfortunately my first take during the lesson was that I’m having a really hard time putting it into practice. I think I’ve actually regressed in terms of releasing Jin from my feet; I was never great at it, but recently I’ve been spending time on Taiji Standing and that’s been taking away from my time on the Wu Song Shen Fa exercises, and I think that’s probably hurt. So it would be good to find more WSSF time, but it’s not entirely clear to me where to find it…

On Wednesday through Friday, I was at a seminar that Chen Bing was giving. And it was amazing, honestly potentially transformative. He was really focusing on Song during the whole workshop: constantly doing Song exercises between sections of the form, and even stopping bits of the form to Song in the middle.

It was a different version of Song than I’m used to: I think of Song as a vehicle for expansion, and of course the IAA talks about Bones Up Flesh Down in both the Nei Gong and Tai Chi coures. Whereas Chen Bing was perfectly happy to have us relax by, say, letting our head and torso sink forward; pretty different from Bones Up Flesh Down, but also we weren’t exactly collapsing either: we were opening up our joints, just in a way that had us bending more. And there was also advice about how to pay attention to our body to increase the Song.

So my body felt really different even by the second day. And also I don’t think that I’ve ever had such strong punches in the form, I really was clearing out tension that was getting in the way of that. We’ll see if I can keep that feeling up; I hope so.

No Nei Gong those days (and I skipped my Thursday Hunyuan 48 review too), I figured five hours a day on Tai Chi was enough, and maybe not the best idea to mix and match either.

On Saturday, I had to drop my wife off at the airport in the morning, so I skipped my Chen Tai Chi class. I did do some Nei Gong: 40m of a combination of Wu Ji and Ji Ben 1/4, and 40 minutes of Dantian Gong. My Ming Men was heating up more than normal during Wu Ji, and there was stuff going on in my torso while I was walking downtown for dinner.

On Sunday I did Chen pole weapons and the Double Dao; I think my Double Dao is solid enough that I can dial back to doing it once a week. And I did a quite slow version of the Lao Jia first form taking about 20 minutes to do it and trying to focus on relaxing, along with a more normal second form; my back was tingling in a good way. For Nei Gong I did 20m of the first Dragon, and 55m of seated work. When trying out Scholar Breathing, nothing happened at all, that kind of surprised me, my body felt relaxed and open? I had a pretty good Calm Abiding at the end of that, at least.

On Monday I went through the Du Stretch video, did 45m of Wu Ji, and 40m DTG. And then I got both the COVID and flu vaccinations; I am definitely feeling that today, so no Nei Gong or Tai Chi today. Actually not a bad idea to not do a new lesson: because of the workshop I didn’t work on the most recent Nei Gong or Tai Chi lessons at all this week, so having an extra week to spend on those will help.

Also on Monday I decided to try doing a Yi Jing reading for the first time. The question I asked was related to my breathing, and I got fire over water, the final hexagram in the sequence, with no changing lines; kind of an intense reading? It does feel consistent with my idea that I should spend time just paying attention to my breath, trying to get out of my body’s way, so I’ll keep on doing that. (And it’s also consistent with the idea that a CPAP isn’t the right approach, which I also believe.) Not that I actually believe in the Yi Jing, but still, if it reinforces my hypotheses, I can work with that.

This week’s lesson was a Nei Gong one, on Yin Field Opening. Another Hunyuan one; seems pleasant enough, though I doubt I’ll particularly focus on it after the initial period.

Wednesday: I went through Sinew Work Principles video again; it’s still good, I’m glad I added a reminder to do it once a month or so. One random throwaway comment from the video that I liked was something along the lines of that the Qi in your Dantian should be like a hammock that your mind is resting in.

Thursday: My torso is still feeling a little bit of the effects of the Sinew Work Principles session yesterday, so all the more reason to keep on doing it! I went through the Chen pole weapons and Double Dao; I did 20 minutes each of Taiji Standing 4 and Joint Opening; I went through the 37 form 3 times and the Xin Jia form 2 times. In the afternoon I went through the Du Stretch video, I did 25 minutes of Awakening Dragon, 30 minutes of Yin Field Opening, and 30 minutes paying attention to the breath. And I reviewed the Hunyuan 48 in the evening.

Friday: I did 1h Wu Ji, followed by a quite unsuccessful MCO attempt. Which, on the one hand, wasn’t surprising: I hadn’t done as much Dantian Gong as normal this week, so I was thinking that I should put it off to Monday until I realized I had an allergy shot on Monday. When I started, though, by body was feeling good though, or at least interesting; I think that was more of the aftereffects of the Sinew Work Principles video, though it’s also not completely clear to me that that helps with MCO attempts, because that video is more about affecting my body via Qi than strictly about building Qi. At any rate, the attempt really didn’t work, though it’s not clear that the volume of Qi was the cause: the Qi went into the base of my spine too far forward, so it was wanting to do a circle around my abdomen instead of going up, and I was kind of denial about that for long enough that I didn’t get a good second try.

Saturday: I did 30m Advanced Dantian Gong, 20m Zhan Zhuang, had my regular Chen Tai Chi class, and went through the four Dragons.

Sunday: I did 25m Zhan Zhuang, and had my monthly Sunday Chen class; we’re starting the Guan Dao as our weapon for the next year or so in that class, it’ll be good to have a review of that since I’ve only done it once. And in the afternoon I spent 45m on a Scholar Breathing attempt; I got a little bit of light pulsing, and one bit of persistent light pull, but nothing super clear, certainly nothing that I would actually call Scholar Breathing.

Monday: It was an allergy shots day, so I just did the Du Stretch video, 20m Wu Ji, and 30m attention to the breath.

Tuesday: I’m going to a Chen Lao Jia workshop run by Chen Bing the rest of the week, so I went through Fang Song video of his today; pretty interesting, a quite different thing from, say, the Wu Song Shen Fa stuff from the IAA. (A little more like some of the Silk Reeling that my teacher teaches, but with a more explicit focus on relaxation.) I don’t think I’ll make a habit of doing those exercises, but honestly it wouldn’t be the worst idea? And then I watched a Lao Jia demonstration video of his, and attended a live Q+A that he gave. And I also did my Chen sword forms, but no Yang Tai Chi today. In the afternoon, I went through the 10min Stretch by Waterfall video; pretty good, I might do it again if I want that length of stretch? And I went through Rick’s October 4 Zoom course recording, and did 30m of Yin Field Opening.

It’ll be a pretty unusual week: because of the Chen Bing workshop, I’m honestly not sure I’ll be able to do any Nei Gong this Wednesday through Friday, and I certainly won’t do any IAA Tai Chi. (Hmmm, though I am supposed to watch an IAA Tai Chi lesson tonight; I don’t know what’s in that one, if it’s an isolated exercise then maybe I’ll be able to find time to practice it.) And I need to drop my wife off at the airport on Saturday morning, so we’ll see if I make it to my usual Tai Chi course then, too.

This week’s lesson was a Taiji one, on Joint Opening. I’ve only tried it once, but it seemed pretty useful, probably worth occasionally doing 5-10 minutes sessions of it once I’m past the initial trying it out.

Wednesday: I cleared out space in my bedroom so I can use a mirror there. And it turns out I stand in a zig-zag pattern: I’m not sure if my hips are off (historically they’ve been too far to the right but they might be better now?), but my torso definitely leans right and my head/neck definitely leans left to compensate. Now that I’m aware of that, I can feel that my torso is relaxing too much (sagging, really) in a way that causes it to lean left; if I move right, first things feel a little compressed but then I get an internal lift in my spine. And I can feel something similar (but a little harder to detect) in my neck. So that gives me something to try to feel for when I’m not looking at a mirror; but it’s so far very difficult for me to keep a proper posture for any length of time, it reverts back quite quickly. I won’t talk about it on the rest of the days, but I continue working on this; today I was noticing that I often turn my head too far to the right when trying to adjust, and also my head is too far forward. (I mean, I knew it was somewhat too far forward, but today it was quite bad!) So lots of stuff to work on; still, being aware of this is progress, and I can improve my posture to some extent. In terms of practice on Wednesday, I did 75m of Wu Ji (frequently distracted by looking at my posture) and 40m of seated Dantian Gong.

Thursday: I watched Cloud Hands video again, because I felt like I still had some basic stuff to work on even after watching it a week or two ago; honestly, I could probably stand to spend a month or so on that one. (I don’t think I will, but maybe I’ll come right back to it once I’ve finished reviewing all the form videos?) I did 15m Taiji Standing 2, I went through the 37 form twice, all the Chen pole forms and Double Dao, and the Xinjia first form. 40m sitting, paying attention to breathing plus some Song breathing. (A couple of other things going on today, so not as much internal work as I’d like.) And I reviewed the Hunyuan 48 in the evening.

Friday: 45m Wu Ji; I did a decent job of keeping my torso aligned correctly, though my head tilted a lot. A 1h MCO attempt; felt unusual, sensations moving up were in a larger part of my back, at first I thought it was really going high but then the main part got stuck in the usual place.

Saturday: 30m Advanced Dantian Gong; a long version of the Knee Rotations Silk Reeling exercise, which (unsurprisingly) wasn’t particularly useful; and the regular Chen class. I tried the Roll Back isolated Push Hands exercise, it didn’t work at all. And I went through the Dragons.

Sunday: I’d been feeling more and more that push hands is the place where I most need work in my Tai Chi, so I’m planning to start going to a local push hands group on most Sundays; today was the first time. Most people were away at an event, and it’s a small group, so it was just me and one other guy, but it was extraordinarily useful: we spent about 2h alternating between doing push hands, having him suggest some principles to me, and having him look at me. I have basically three big ideas to work on, we’ll see how much progress I make. And in the afternoon, I did 40m of Full Moon practice.

Monday: 30m Wu Ji, 10m Ji Ben 1, 40m Kidney Hui Chun; that latter one felt a little stronger than normal, not sure why.

Tuesday: I reviewed White Snake Creeps Down; I went through the Chen Sword forms; I did 20 minutes each of Joint Opening and Taiji Standing 2; I went through the 37 form 3 times and the Xin Jia form twice. 37×3, Xin Jia x2, they were both noticeably improved by the push hands on Sunday. I made a surprising number of mistakes during Xin Jia, though, I should get that in order if I’m going to show it to my teacher. And in the afternoon I did 65 minutes of Wu Ji; and then I started a Dantian Gong session but there was something going on in my stomach (I felt a little off after lunch and took an antacid after that, and I think in retrospect that was the wrong move) so I stopped it after a little more than 15 minutes.

Interesting week. I’ve got some big things to work on, from watching myself in the mirror and from the Push Hands practice, so that’s great. But also there were more days than I was happy with where I didn’t do quite as much practice as I’d like, and where I was more distracted than I like. I think it’s because of an iPhone game I’m playing; I’d rather not give it up, I actually think it’s designed pretty well, but I should work harder at compartmentalizing it.

This week’s lesson was a Nei Gong one, on Four Gates Breathing. Good timing for me: over the last month, when I do the basic stretch that has us pushing our hands up and curving so we get pressure from your foot on one side to that side of your body to your hands, I’d been noticing a really strong connection to my Lao Gong. So I think internal connections to my Lao Gong (and to my Yong Quan, though not as strong there) have been building pretty well recently; and linking that up to breathing is helpful.

Wednesday: 75m Wu Ji. I kind of wonder why I’m sweating so much during Wu Ji these days (that happened on Monday too), given that it doesn’t feel like I’m exerting all that much muscular effort? And 40m surprisingly sleepy seated work, mostly DTG but including 10m of Four Gates. Or rather, it was surprising at the time (and I was a little disappointed at the time that I did 75m of Wu Ji instead of 90m), but I came down with a (quite mild) cold the next day, so me stopping Wu Ji earlier was in retrospect a good thing, me paying attention to what my body was saying. Also I decided to go back to one round of neck rotations per day: I think three might be stressing my neck a bit too much, and it certainly wasn’t hurting anything.

Thursday: I reviewed Cloud Hands; I’m going to spend a bit of time on isolated practice for that. I went through the Chen pole weapons forms and the Double Dao form, and I did 20m each of Taiji Standing 2 and Cloud Hands. I started to feel weirdly tired at the end of that, though, that’s when I decided that I might be coming down with a cold. So I just went through the 37 form and the Xin Jia first form once each. And in the afternoon, I just went through the Du Stretch video and did 30m of breathing, and I skipped the Hunyuan 48 review in the evening.

Friday: Just 20m of breathing.

Saturday: 20m of Four Gates Breathing; and I skipped Chen Tai Chi class. (A good week for that, fortunately, since my teacher is out of town.)

Sunday: I just did some Shui Gong 1; I was actually feeling noticeably better, it’s just that spent all day up in San Francisco playing board games with a friend I hadn’t seen for months.

Monday: Starting to ramp up again: the Du Stretch video, 20m Wu Ji, 50m of sitting (mostly Dantian Gong), and a stroll.

Tuesday: 20m each of Reverse Stretch and Cloud Hands; and I went through the 37 form 3 times and the, Lao Jia first and second forms. And in the afternoon I watched Rick’s September 6 Zoom class and did 20m of Four Gates Breathing.

This week’s lesson was a Taiji one, on Reverse Stretch. Seems interesting enough?

Wednesday: I did 75m of Wu Ji; it was a good session, my main focus was on getting an an appropriate stretch in my left Kua, hopefully I made progress there. And I did 40m of good Dantian Gong.

Thursday: I watched the Taiji Standing 2 video, since I feel like it’s time to switch over to that one. I practice my Chen pole forms and Double Dao; I did ten minutes each of Taiji Standing 2 and Reverse Stretch; I went through the 37 form three times and the, Xin Jia form once. In the afternoon, I realized I was getting too distracted by a game I’m playing, I’m going to have to start building in longer break times from it, I think it’s interfering slightly both with my practice and my sleep. (And I’ve been decently successful at putting that into practice the rest of the week, fortunately.) For Nei Gong I did 25m of Du Stretch, 15m of Awakening Dragon, 40m of Sun and Moon Turning, and 25m paying attention to the breath. And I did my regular Hunyuan 48 review in the evening.

Friday: 45m Wu Ji; 1h Microcosmic Orbit attempt. Which I think worked, but not as well as two weeks ago? The Qi going up kind of bypassed the usual sticking point in my back, and then it seemed to split, with half (probably a little more than half) going to the Yellow Court or some place like that and hanging out, and the rest going up. But it did seem to go up and make the full circuit. Not sure what was going on there; also for what it’s worth it was moving a lot faster than a couple of weeks ago. We’ll see how I feel tomorrow, if I have aftereffects in my body like I did two weeks ago and, if so, how strong they are. (Update: no strong noticeable aftereffects the next day.)

Saturday: I did 40m of Sun and Moon Turning and went through the four Dragon. I had my regular Chen Tai Chi class, and I led Silk Reeling during that. Which means I have to think about what I want to show my teacher; probably the Xin Jia form? I’ve got some extra time to decide, because I think he’s in China for the next two Saturdays.

Sunday: 25m of a combination of Wu Ji / Ji Ben 1 / Ji Ben 4, and 20m of Awakening Dragon. And I did 50m Bellows Breathing / Martial Breathing attempt / Calm Abiding; nothing particular to report, I had an okay Ming Line during the Martial Breathing attempt and I felt like my abdomen was maybe thinking a little about doing it but ultimately it didn’t.

Monday: 45m Spinal Dao Yin, 40m Dantian Gong.

Tuesday: I reviewed Repulse Monkey into Diagonal Flying. I did 20 minutes each of Taiji Standing 2 and Reverse Stretch, I went through the 37 form four times, and the Hunyuan 48 form and the Lao Jia 1/2 forms once each, and I went through the Chen sword forms. I had an acupuncture appointment that went long, so the only Nei Gong I did was 30m of paying attention to my breathing. And I think I’m going to pause acupuncture, at least with my current doctor; I am going to ask one of my fellow Tai Chi students about the doctor she goes to and potentially I’ll give that one a try.

Last week’s lesson was a Nei Gong one, on Sun and Moon Turning. It didn’t really fit into my schedule last week so I only did it once, I should find more time for it this week.

Wednesday: I did 40m of Dantian Gong, and took Rick’s Zoom class, covering some bits of Awakening Dragon. (I still need to watch the full video of the previous Saturday’s class, hopefully I can do that this week.)

Thursday: I did 20 minutes each of Taiji Standing 1, Torso Movement, and WSSF1, and I went through the 37 form 3 times and the Xin Jia form once. And in the afternoon I went through the Spine Spa video; I continue to like it quite a bit but I think I don’t want to have it take up all of my Nei Gong practice time one day every four weeks, given that I’m getting what seems to be an effective amount of spine stretching in other ways. So I’m going to swap it in the rotation with the Sinew Work Principles class; I think I’ll try to do the Du Stretch once a week, though, I could use that level of work on my spine and hamstrings. And I did my regular Hunyuan 48 review in the evening.

Friday: I got way too distracted goofing off in the middle of the afternoon, so all I did was about 30m of Awakening Dragon-related stuff. It felt really strong, though, at least…

Saturday: For Nei Gong, I did 30m of Advanced Dantian Gong and I went through all four Dragons; glad I did the latter, I’m on the edge of forgetting some bits of those. And I did my regular Chen Tai Chi class; I got back to doing long versions of the Silk Reeling exercises, this time was Kua Circling In With a Kick. (Which, unsurprisingly, didn’t benefit from being done for longer.)

Sunday: I did 20m of Hunyuan Qigong exercises, and went to the regular Sunday Tai Chi class. I got info there about a local Push Hands group, maybe I’ll start doing that most Sundays. And I spent 10m paying attention to breathing; and then I planned to do Scholar breathing in the afternoon, and since I slept well I was optimistic that I didn’t need a nap, but that turned out to be false, so I gave up on that sit after 30m and me repeatedly dozing off briefly during it.

Monday: 1h of very good Wu Ji; wish I could have gone longer but I wanted to leave time for an MCO attempt. Just as a note for myself during my next session: I started by relaxing near my pelvic bone like Rick’s been telling us, and made sure that that led to a stretch behind my butt into my lower Kua as I sank down. And then once I got my feet weight in the proper position, I tuned in there, and the stretch coming up the Yong Quan linked in well, so I felt pretty strongly supported in my lower body in a way that made it easier to create a stretch by sinking. And that stayed surprisingly strong the whole time. Though I noticed it was weaker on my left side, which isn’t too surprising since I’ve always been asymmetric there, but I found that it was easier to try to reduce the asymmetry by sinking more into the stretch on the left than to try to figure out the asymmetry by sensing my body positionally; hopefully that can build up my left side more if I stick with that? (Though of course I also should spend more time doing Wu Ji in front of a mirror…) So that was good; and I was optimistic about the MCO attempt, since the last one had gone well and my spine had been feeling good all day. And the prep seemed fine, but the attempt itself was kind of a dud; basically, I got stuck at the same spot as I had frequently gotten stuck at in the past, and while maybe a little bit of Qi made it past there and even up to my head, it was only a tiny amount and even that tiny amount didn’t really complete a cycle. So that’s too bad, I guess I still have more work to do. (Random thought – I feel like, in the previous successful attempt, I didn’t spend as much time thickening first as I’ve been in the habit of doing? So maybe I should dial that down some: Damo always does some thickening when teaching MCO, in my experience, but also last summer he did say that your Qi kind of craps out after doing a certain amount of it.)

Tuesday: I had both an acupuncture appointment and a dentist appointment in the afternoon, so the only Nei Gong I did was 25m of Sun and Moon Turning. And my Tai Chi practice was a bit shorter than normal; I went through the Chen sword forms (and I think I have the basic shapes of the Double Dao more or less in place now?), Taiji Standing 1, Torso Rotation, and two repetitions of the 37 form and one of the Lao Jia 1st/2nd forms. Taiji Standing 1 is making less of a dramatic difference than it was a few weeks back when I started doing it, so probably I should move on to Taiji Standing 2 on Thursday, I should have time to go through that several times before I hit Taiji Standing 5 in the regular sequence of lessons.