Nei Gong Notes, August 25, 2026
This week’s lesson was a Taiji one, on Peng Separation. An interesting one; I liked the Zhang Zhuang series so it’s good to see a moving lesson building on that.
Wednesday: 20m Dragon 3; 35m Song Breath 1; 35m Water Hui Chun.
Thursday: Read some more Practical Tai Chi; went through the Chen sword forms; did 15m Peng Separation, 20m WSSF3; went through the 37 form, the Xinjia first form, and the Hunyuan 48. I did the Du Stretch; I feel like doing that once a week isn’t really helping much, I should either do it more often or less often. Honestly, if I want the hamstring benefit, maybe I should do it daily, but I think for now I’ll try doing it every two or three days, and try to do something spine-related (a Dragon or Coiling Snake or something like that) on days when I’m not doing it, so at least I get regular somewhat intense spine work. (I do throw in some spine waves multiple times a day, but that alone doesn’t seem to be making a difference for me.) 45m Wu Ji, 20m Jing Gong 1; I did the Wu Ji in a room with a mirror on the side, I’m leaning forward a lot, when I fixed that I got a surprising amount of stretch on the lower third (maybe a bit more even) of my back. 40m Earth Hui Chun. And I reviewed the Hunyuan 48 in the evening.
Friday: A longer stretching session than normal; 30m Dragon 2; 30m Wu Ji; 30m standing Dantian Gong. 5m of closing down at the end, to see if that helps with sleep, because my sleep had been off the last few days.
Saturday: 35m Song Breath 1. Went to my regular Chen course; more stuff moving around than normal, maybe Peng Separation knocked something loose? Went through the four Dragons.
Sunday: I woke up with a stiff back (but I slept extremely well; you win some, you lose some, I guess), probably because I was cold overnight. Did the Du Stretch, though not as well as normal because my lower back muscles were fighting. 20m Wu Ji / Lotus Dao Yin, but then I decided I’d rather sit on a sofa with a heating pad instead of doing a Hui Chun.
Monday: 25m Dragon 1. 30m Wu Ji, 30m standing Dantian Gong, 20m Wu Ji / Ji Ben 1 combo. 40m Earth Hui Chun.
Tuesday: A dishwasher delivery and achy back (better than it was on Sunday but still definitely not healed) meant I didn’t do as much Tai Chi as normal, but I did (quickly) go through the 37 form and the Xin Jia first form. 35m Song Breath 1, 60m Spinal Dao Yin, 40m Wood Hui Chun; good practice session, I felt unusally focused. (And from watching myself in the mirror: when I threw out my back, my hips started wanted to go really far to the right, instead of their traditional slight bias to the right.) Finished reading Practical Tai Chi Training; I can’t say I’d recommend it, I think the authors are probably quite good at Tai Chi and at teaching in person (I’ve learned a lot about push hands from one of them!) but there’s too much in the book and it’s material that’s hard to convey in book form.