My best practice week in ages; a combination of my sleep behaving acceptably and me feeling motivated had good results. Yay.

This week in Damo’s course was continuing the five elements seated sequences, this time with Wood. The first bit in the Water sequence (making big circles while twisting your torso) was here too, so I guess that’s common to all of them? Which is good, I like that one, my spine could use the action. Anyways, the surprise with the Wood one is how active it is, with a couple of moves that could be Dao Yins (and maybe actually are, I’ll ask people in the know if they are purging exercises or not). Coincidentally, one of the older lessons that I was rewatching also had a Wood exercise, which talked about how Wood is associated with the tendons, I guess this is part of that.

I still don’t have a feel for exactly when to do the exercises in this new sequence; I’ll wait until I’ve learned all five, but if an explanation of that doesn’t show up, I’ll ask about it.

Anyways, in terms of practice: on Wednesday, I actually practiced a little over two hours in the morning; admittedly, mostly seated, but still. And on Friday, I practiced close to two hours. So it was good to get back into the scene? And, inspired by rewatching old videos, I did go through Thickening the Qi; a little depressing that my Qi didn’t feel as thick as it had sometimes when I did that exercise.

But then I watched the Water Wu Xing video from year one, and decided to do that; normally I just do those five exercises in sequence, but I got the impression that the Water one could stand on its own pretty well, and I feel like I could use the help. So I went through that on Thursday, I think, doing it for 10 minutes? And, after 5 minutes or so, I was feeling an effect in my spine, especially near my neck, so I guess my Qi is a little thick after all. And then I actually started to feel nauseous while doing that, enough so that it felt like a wise idea to stop after 10 minutes instead of going further.

So it was good to get back into older stuff; and I also did manage to go through the whole standing Dan Tian Gong sequence this week, it’s been a while since I’ve done that. And, in general, my standing is now not in the pathetic state that it had been in a few weeks back; I’m not standing forever, but doing Wu Ji for 20 minutes is no problem (I’m sure I could go longer), and doing Dan Tian Gong for 39 minutes seems fine. And I even managed to fit in an extra bit of sitting practice one work afternoon when I hit a break a little early.

In terms of Tai Chi, I led Silk Reeling this week. Tony has been pushing us to do that more slowly, so I did (honestly, I went slightly too slow!), and that was a very interesting experience, getting me to feel more stuff inside my body than I have been. So I’m going to want to continue that. Also it made me realize that my balance just isn’t as good as I’d like on the Circling In To / Out Of Your Kua With A Kick exercises, I need to work on that, and on some bits of the form.

I’m continuing to be optimistic that I’ll learn the Xin Jia first form pretty well this time; I’m up through Jade Girl, and got some help in the transition from Dan Bian into Jade Girl, and now I think I’m solid there. (Bend left, then start facing to the right, with your left hand over your right hand. Circle clockwise down from the right, ending up with chest closed and facing right.) One other pointer from this week: after the flick down with your hands in Xin Jia Oblique Posture, you should let your hands bounce back up pretty high.

I also bought a Guan Dao and a heavier regular Dao this week. Unfortunately, when I started using the new regular Dao, I realized that the weighting is pretty far off; I’ll go back to the store tomorrow and see if they have other ones that are weighted better.

My back has been doing quite a bit better this week, the tightness there is almost completely gone. And I’ve been doing more Wu Ji than I had been, and it’s gone back to feeling effective, so that’s a good sign.

I’ve done a decent amount of practice, though for various reasons I didn’t do much extra practice on Wednesdays and Fridays. I did rewatch two old lessons this week and take notes, though; I’m going to try to get into a habit of doing that most weeks, there are definitely a bunch of exercises that I don’t completely remember and that I would like to occasionally get in the habit of doing. One of the ones this week was Thickening the Qi; that one I did remember, and I used to be in the habit of doing it once every week or two, but I’ve fallen out of that habit; a little depressing that my Qi honestly doesn’t feel so thick these days. Another sign that I would benefit from bumping up my overall practice level.

This week’s lesson was on a seated exercise sequence for building up your Water energy. It looked familiar, I think I might have seen a random video of Damo’s where he showed it? I haven’t actually practiced it before, though, but I rather like it; it’s soothing, it feels like it might be doing something useful around my lower back, and it feels a lot shorter than the 27 minutes it actually takes. So I’ll probably want to work that into my practice routine occasionally in the future.

This also raises an issue with my practice routine: I have a regular 25-minute slot in the morning where I do seated work, rotating through a sequence of exercises over the week. But now (and for the next four weeks, since we’re going through all five elements) that’s taken up by new lessons. So I think I should probably find more time to do a second round of seated work at some point; I certainly don’t want to repurpose my existing standing work slot for doing seated work, but just 25 minutes of seated work shouldn’t always be my answer. To be sure, right now I really do want to build up my stamina for standing work; but if I’m feeling physically tired but not sleepy, and if I’ve got some room in the day, it would be better to keep going with seated work than to stop practice just because I’m tired. Though unfortunately right now I am sleepy more than I’d like, and of course I also do have to actually do my job on work days, so there are real constraints, but still.

Tai Chi is going fine; not a lot to say there, just keeping on with stuff. I’m still optimistic that I’ll be able to learn the whole Xin Jia first form this time.

Not a lot to say this week; sleep has been iffy (hopefully that will get better as we make progress on house stuff), and my back is still feeling tight. I was doing some Wu Ji on Sunday, and I was feeling surprisingly little there, especially at the start; ten minutes in and I was starting to feel a little more going on, but the back stuff is affecting me more than I thought, especially first thing in the morning. So I should work on my back a little more (heating pad? ibuprofen? lots of back stretches?), and I should probably spend more time just doing Wu Ji instead of mixing brief Wu Ji bits in between other exercises so that I can build that back up.

I did review old lessons on both Wednesday and Friday last week, though; hopefully I can set up a routine of doing that twice a week. It’s definitely happening to me that I’m thinking “oh, I should do that one exercise” and I can’t quite remember how it went.

One note I forgot from Sunday Tai Chi a couple of weeks ago: in Big Forearm Fist / Small Forearm Fist in the second form, your hand/foot synchronization switches in the two halves: in the first one, your right arm moves in as your right foot moves, whereas in the second one, your left arm moves in as your right foot moves. (So it ends with your right arm, which matches with how your right arm/hand comes down to be ready for the next move.

Bad week for sleep, so I didn’t manage any long Nei Gong sessions. Though I did at least manage a decent variety of practice: going through all of Dantian Gong and all of Ji Ben Qi Gong over the course of the week.

This week’s lesson in Damo’s course was actually a theoretical one, around how the mind perceives objects. Interesting; I’ll probably want to listen to it another time or two before I get it? And, honestly, I appreciate not having a new routine to go through this last week, I already have quite a few of those.

In general my body’s feeling good. Muscles and sinews are feeling particularly integrated when I do silk reeling; and I’m having occasional urges to do snippets of Tai Chi moves when I’m walking around, and I feel connection in my Dantian when I do. So connections are being built; I still don’t really feel Tai Chi power coming out of my Dantian, but at least the connections are there.

My back was actually a little off this week; not sure if that was related to the sleep issues or if I’d overstressed it or something? Not awful, though, just surprising; it felt like I hadn’t done enough Silk Reeling, except that I had.

Also, I’ve had a couple of times recently when food that I normally like is feeling a little bit much, a little too flashy? Not sure what’s going on there: maybe I’ve just been eating the same things too often and gotten tired of them, maybe my stomach is starting to have different opinions about what I should eat. Which Damo talks about some in the course; honestly, I hope it’s not that, I like what I’ve been eating? But as long as it doesn’t go too far in the “eat plain food” direction, I’ll be okay.

This week’s lesson in Damo’s course was the same as the previous week, just with the second and third Ji Ben exercises. Which was also pretty interesting; at first it seemed maybe a little disappointing, I didn’t feel like I was compressing as much, but then I realized that something interesting was happening in my armpits. At first, the only thing I noticed was, that in the Wu Ji after doing the second exercise, my arms were floating noticeably higher than normal for two or three minutes; but then the third exercise started feeling odd as I lifted my arms, and then, a day or two later, I started feeling like there was kind of a ball of air in my armpits. Which I’ve heard is an expected sort of thing if I do enough Qi Gong, I guess this is what pushed me over the edge? And in general the joints in my arms are feeling a little more spacious.

Also, over the weekend, I noticed that I was sweating a surprising amount while doing this exercise; Damo had said in the previous lesson that that would happen, but I hadn’t noticed it happening then, but it’s happening now. And the other surprising thing about this exercise is how fast it feels: at the intervals I’m doing, the second and third exercise together take 27 minutes, but the time goes by amazingly quickly once I get started.

As predicted last week, I didn’t get my normal extra practice done last Wednesday, but I was back to normal after that day, and I got in a good two-hour session on Friday. This Wednesday will be a little busy, but Monday was a holiday, so I was hoping to get in a large practice that day as well; unfortunately, it didn’t turn out that way, so while I got more done than on a work day, I didn’t do as much practice as I had on Friday.

I finally restarted the regular Nei Gong program last week. Pretty interesting session: it was on mobilizing the Qi using Compressing the Pearl. So you do the exercise some normally, then some compressing down with your Lao Gong stretched and then actively pulling Qi up on the way up, and then some with the active compression but just opening on the way up and letting the rebound of the compressed Qi help you up. And, after doing it for a couple of days, that got pretty surprising: on the third part, it literally felt that my arms were moving without any effort on my side when going up. I don’t know that I’m actively feeling Qi moving (though I do feel an active compression on the way down), but whatever the effect, it was pretty distinctive.

And I had quite good practices on Wednesday and Friday morning; as I mentioned last week, I decided to experiment with eating first, and then I was a little tired / unmotivated, so I goofed off for a while. At first, I was feeling annoyed with myself, but when I finally got going at 11am, I realized that I actually was feeling a lot less tired than I had been, and I got in two solid hours of practice after that on Wednesday. Friday wasn’t quite as good, more like an hour and a half, but still, a pretty solid practice. I didn’t get as strong an effect in my Dantian as I had sometimes a few months back, but still, good to be back in practice.

On Saturday morning, I had a quite good Ting exercise practice; and it felt like the effects of that carried on into Tai Chi class that afternoon, I was feeling stuff inside me more strongly than normal.

Also, this week, I felt like I was paying attention to things inside the body more at random times during the day, which seems like a good evolution. And I think I was maybe getting better at sinking my tailbone when I was practicing?

So, a good week. Though I think this week is going to be a lot worse: I’m feeling stressed because of some home maintenance problems. I’m getting things in motion to hopefully begin resolving it, but I think it’ll be a while…

Pretty good week? I practiced well over lunch on the three work days; I didn’t do a ton of practice on my days off, but some, and in general things feel pretty good. (And the days off were productive in non-Nei Gong ways, that’s important too!) And my skin is feeling pretty strongly connected, I’m getting a kind of visceral understanding of the “wetsuit” concept that Damo talks about.

I missed two weeks of Tai Chi, but I mentioned that to my teacher, and he just did review this past Saturday in the Xinjia portion. He actually went over stuff from right before I went away, so hopefully he’ll review the next bit this weekend, because it seemed like the class had done Part the Wild Horse’s Mane, which I mostly know but not completely.

As mentioned last time, I ended up not restarting the regular Nei Gong course last week, but one of the things I took care of was getting my internet fixed (my cable modem went bad, it turned out), so I can do that after I finish writing this.

Speaking of weekday practice, I’d been trying to practice Nei Gong after taking a shower on my days off, before eating breakfast, because I’m often a little sleepier after eating. But, honestly, that hasn’t been great, for a few reasons. One is that sometimes I’m hungry enough to feel a little weak / distracted, which is a downside. Another is that I’m not doing a great job of practicing immediately instead of goofing off and reading or something for a bit; I can work on that, but still, not the best idea? And the third is that I miss going to Maison Alyzée and getting a baguette for breakfast: I used to do that back when I was working from home, but now that I’m going into the office, I can’t do that. So I think I’m going to experiment with going for a walk, grabbing a baguette, and having a light breakfast before doing my morning Nei Gong; hopefully that will work out well enough, at least not reducing my amount of Nei Gong practice?

No post last week: I was out of town (mostly on vacation) for the last two weeks, and I didn’t feel like writing up a post in the middle of vacation. Especially since I wasn’t doing quite as much Nei Gong / Tai Chi as normal, so I figured I didn’t have so much to talk about.

I did practice most days; not as much as normal, no Tai Chi weapons forms, and no long practice sessions, but hopefully enough to not backslide too much? The one unusual thing I did was walk past a church, notice that it had a labyrinth outside, and then spend maybe 35 minutes slowly walking in and back out of that.

Maybe because of that, one thing I’m wondering about now is whether I’m sinking appropriately when walking. There’s this tension between keeping my head up and hence my spine extended, while still having my pelvis sink; I feel like these days maybe I’m having the upward stretch affect my legs too much? Something to work on.

Because of plane problems, I missed two Tai Chi Saturday classes instead of just one; hopefully that won’t mess up my plans to learn the Xin Jia first form too much. And because of internet problems, I didn’t write this post yesterday and I didn’t start back up on the regular Nei Gong class (which I was planning to do now that I’ve finished the Dragons) videos yesterday, either; and I’m tired enough today that I’m not going to do the Nei Gong video today either, I’ll just wait until next week to start. Though I did get good lunchtime practice on Monday and Tuesday, going through the full Dantian Gong over the course of those two days; because of Delta, the office is almost empty, so I don’t have any hopes of finding people to play board games with over lunch, which is good for my Nei Gong at least.

Done with the Dragons, yay. Definitely glad that I did that; even setting aside potential energetic benefits, it’s definitely been opening up my back, I feel stuff moving around in there. And I do think there’s something going on energetically in my spine, too; I’m finding myself just spending more time in the standing parts of the exercise, because I feel these little unexpected sensations continuing to pop up. This is something that the Lotus Nei Gong folks talk about: it’s okay to do Wu Ji for longer than normal after another exercise if you feel stuff moving around in response to that exercise! But I think I’ve literally never felt that before: not that I don’t feel stuff in Wu Ji, it’s just not in response to an exercise. But Wu Ji (or actually the main standing exercise here is a different one, with your feet close together, I think it’s called Taiyi standing?) definitely has a different feel after you’ve been twisting and opening up your spine.

I still need to get back into longer practice sessions; kind of doing the minimum too many days. Though this week and next week won’t be the times for that, since we’re visiting relatives this week and I’ll be in Ohio next week. And once I get back from that, I’ll get started on arranging for having the carpets removed in our bedroom, hopefully that will give me noticeably more energy.

The one other new thing I’ve done a couple of times now is this version of a walking exercise where you’re paying attention to your environment; I’ve been doing it after my allergy appointments, since they’re on the Stanford campus in a place right next to some forested bits, so I can just wander over there. Nothing particular to report on that yet; and maybe it’s not the best idea to do Nei Gong right after an allergy shot…

In Tai Chi, I’m focusing on learning the second half of the Xin Jia first form; I think I now basically know what’s going on from the first Gao Tan Ma through the Forward / Backward Trick? So that’s progress; hopefully I’ll be able to continue that progress through the end of the form. I’ll be out this week, which is too bad but I think I’m pretty close on Part the Wild Horse’s Mane: I basically know what to do there, there’s just some details I need to memorize. So if they do that this week, I should still be able to catch up okay.

My parents were in town for several days last week, so I didn’t do as much Nei Gong as normal, and I didn’t watch the review video for the fourth dragon last week, just the third dragon. I’m most of the way through the book, too; a few differences from the videos, but the videos are later, so I’ll stick with that. And it talks about the pause at the end of the third closing down as something to vent energy, which is interesting and does gel with what the videos were saying about putting your attention beneath your hands, so I’ve been trying that. So I’ll review the fourth dragon video tonight and finish the book this week; I’ll be out the next two weeks, I’ll restart the Nei Gong class after that.

One day, when practicing the Swimming Dragon, when I got to the part where you’re letting your torso hang to stretch your back, I felt something kind of give in my back. At first, I was worried that that meant that I’d strained something, but my back felt fie after that, so now I’m optimistic that it was a good sign, that my lower back might be getting a little unfused? I continue to be impressed how that exercise (at least in the context of the whole sequence) is surprisingly effective at giving a pull on my lower back, clearly I should keep on spending time in that part of the sequence.

Practice in general went pretty well, though, I did a decent amount of Dantian Gong in particular.

In terms of Tai Chi, we’re getting to the part of the Xinjia first form that I don’t know so well. So I’m goin to work at learning those; a pity that I’ll have to skip one week of class soon, but there’s not much that I can do about that.