Good / interesting week. I slept pretty well most nights, so that was a very pleasant change of pace; and, related to that, I got a decent amount of practice done. My current ideal situation is 25 minutes of seated meditation in the morning, close to an hour over noon (Dantian Gong plus something else), and maybe 20 minutes at the end of the work day; I don’t normally reach the trifecta, mostly because I goof off too much at noon before starting practice but also because I’m not necessarily in the mood to do quite that much practice at the end of the day, but I’m getting closer?

I’d been feeling that my chest was a little tight, so I asked folks about that; Damo’s advice was the Lotus Dao Yin plus the first and third Dragon Dao Yins. Which is a reminder that I should learn the Dragon Dao Yins; I think I’ve also heard that they’re good for your spine, which would also be good for me? There was a recommended time in the first year of the program to learn them, but I was too busy then, so I didn’t learn them then; I’m thinking, though, that given that I’m feeling like my Dantian isn’t quite in the shape that I expect I’ll need it to be in to move onto the second year of the program, then that would be a good time to take a bit of a break from the weekly lessons to consolidate my practice, and that sounds like a good time to fit in learning the Dragons.

At any rate, I’ve gone back to doing the Lotus Dao Yins. But then something interesting happened: I was doing Song Breathing yesterday, and was thinking “I’ve been trying this pretty reliably for like a month and a half, and I’m just not feeling anything that matches the description of the exercise; maybe it’s time to dial down the frequency of this exercise, and focus more on other stuff”. And then, a few minutes later, I felt this expansion / relaxation in my chest, linked with my breathing in a way that very much did feel it wasn’t a coincidence. So yay, I guess that’s what Song Breathing is about, or at least one of the things it’s about! And it was persistent, too, my chest was still tingling in interesting ways when I was going for a walk half an hour later. Hopefully I’ll be able to get back to that state in future times when I’m practicing Song Breathing, and maybe Song Breathing is actually what I needed to relax things, because my chest definitely was feeling more relaxed for a while. (But who knows, maybe the Lotus Dao Yin practice helped set up the conditions for that.)

Anyways, this week in Damo’s course was another Jing Gong lesson. I didn’t even try to practice this one: those lessons are cumulative, so I need to work on where I get the right effect from the first part before seriously moving on. Though there was one thing he said that caught my ear: before, he’d mentioned that doing Dantian Gong was useful if the Jing Gong wasn’t working, but this time he said that going straight from Dantian Gong into Jing Gong could be useful. So that seems worth trying.

The downside is that, after doing thirty or thirty-five minutes of Dantian Gong, my legs are shaking enough that I feel like my body isn’t in a super receptive state, which makes me think that probably Jing Gong is less likely to work? So that got me thinking that I should try to work in some seated Dantian Gong; I hadn’t done that before partly because I’d assumed that standing was better than seated and partly because, when I’m tired, it could be very hard to maintain concentration on that in the middle of the day, but I’ve been corrected on the former and fixed the latter. So I went back and watched one of those lessons, to get the sequence; for my future notes, it’s Neutral, Hands facing down, Hands pushing down, Hands facing down, Small circles, Big circles, Small circles, Big circles with pushing, Hands parallel facing, Neutral. (Though I’m not sure about the first Hands facing down and the last Hands parallel facing.) So what I’ll try to do is make it through the standing version twice a week (over two days each time, so four days total) and the seated version once or twice a week, and try out Jing Gong after the seated version.

The other thing that I’d been thinking is: I usually use a five-minute interval timer, but sometimes there’s an exercise where I want smaller segments. (Like the Dantian Gong above, 50 minutes is more time than I think I want to spend on that?) So, for situations like that, I’d been leaving the timer in place but trying to make each segment of my practice be two and a half minutes, counting breaths to try to split the difference. But I was thinking that counting breaths is potentially a distraction, getting my mind in the wrong place.

So one thing I was thinking was: the timer app I’m using doesn’t let me set intervals on a finer granularity than a minute, but probably 3 minutes is okay? E.g. 30 minutes for seated Dantian Gong sounds fine. So I’ve started giving that a try, and indeed it is fine, and a little relaxing. But the other thing that I’m thinking is that the problem is that my mind is in the wrong place but maybe that’s an issue of being distracted instead of an issue of counting (because counting is pretty reflexive for me anyways); so I’ve sometimes been trying to count with my mind resting on my Dantian, using the count to actually help localize the focus. And that also seems to work? I think ultimately the first approach is probably better than the counting approach; and the bigger lesson is that I should get back to fundamentals and try to relax with my mind in the right place.

Anyways, lots of stuff going on this week. And the other thing of note is that, for the first time in 2021, I went to Tai Chi in person: the local COVID case rate seems to have lowered enough that that doesn’t seem unwise. Nice to do that, nice to see people; unfortunately, I’ve basically almost entirely missed the Lao Jia Dao, which is too bad because I was hoping to get that back in my memory, but the good news is that the only parts of the Xinjia First Form that I missed are parts I know pretty well and was already practicing, so that was good. I did see the Dao form a few times on Saturday, and I think they’ll do another review week next Saturday, so maybe I’ll be able to pick that up? Seems optimistic, though.

It does mean that it’ll be a little harder for me to figure out when exactly to work in my Nei Gong practice on Saturdays, but I should be able to figure something out; certainly the benefits of doing Tai Chi in person will make the tradeoff worth it.

This week started off rough: bad sleep, and then there was an issue at our HOA that I had to deal with because I’m a board member this year that kept me worrying for a couple of days, which didn’t help at all. But on Friday night, my sleep was as good as it had been for a while, and it’s continued to be good enough every night since then, so that’s nice: I’ve been able to do some Dantian Gong each day for the last four days, which is good because I want to up my practice there.

Speaking of sleep, this week’s lesson from Damo was Shui Gong, which is about an exercise to do before going to sleep. So I’ve been trying that out; on the one hand, my sleep has been going well, but on the other hand, I don’t get much of a feeling from the exercise itself? So I’m thinking that, for now, any effects are just coincidental, though I do think that I’ll keep it up even after this week. (And a week from now I think the lesson will be a second part of that; apparently there are 5 parts, though we don’t get to the other parts until year 2 of the program.)

One other thing I’ve noticed is that my chest feels tighter than other parts of my body. So I’m thinking I should try to regularly work in the heart exercises. As a reminder to myself for that, the sequence is: 1) static hands; 2) hands moving out; 3) hands moving like bicycle; 4) lotus mudra.

Not much else particularly to report. I’m moving to a different project at work which means that I have fewer long meetings every week, so it will be harder to find two meetings during the week where it’s reasonable for me to do silk reeling during them. But the local COVID rate has fallen significantly recently, so I think I’m going to start going to Saturday Tai Chi, which should make up for that.

Super sleepy this week, which is disappointing; maybe pollen allergies? I ended up having to take naps sometimes during the day; if I didn’t, my Nei Gong didn’t go well.

Though, on days when I did take a nap, my Nei Gong at least did okay after that? Not making any particular breakthroughs or anything, but I feel like I’m doing a good job of having a feeling go down the bones of my legs which I think is a good thing, probably what they’re talking about in terms of feeling weight sink through my body. I’m not 100% sure yet it’s really sinking down to my feet, but it’s sinking further? Though, actually, maybe the feeling that it’s going through bones should make me nervous, I’m not sure I’m getting getting enough of the feeling of flesh sinking off of my bones.

When I was doing Tai Chi over the weekend, I was also feeling a little more connection across my arms; I’m going to try to lean into that a bit and see if it takes me anywhere interesting.

The lesson this week in Damo’s course was a further refinement of the one from last week; so I didn’t spend much time on it, because I’m still not ready for the one from last week. I did at least manage to go through Dantian Gong twice this week instead of once, hopefully I can keep that up.

Back to being more tired than I’d like; not horrible, but still, it’s getting old, I would have liked it if the allergy tweak had worked. Still, I got a decent amount done while practicing this week.

This week’s lesson in Damo’s class was about a technique for consolidating qi that’s in your Dantian. I practiced it every day like I always do with new techniques, and only felt something nontrivial on one day, and even that day I didn’t feel all that much. So I think I’m not ready for that one; which is actually something that Damo says is entirely likely at that stage. And, if you’re in that situation, that means that you should focus on Dantian Gong.

Which I’ve been going through once a week (over two days), and feeling something while doing that, so I feel like I’m making progress when I do that? But clearly I should do it more. Which, fortunately, dovetails with the thought that I’d had that I should try to work in an extra bit of practice over lunch; I’d been thinking that that would mean that I’d do my standard half-hour whatever I was working on plus some Dao Yin or something, but now I’m thinking that that means that I should do Dantian Gong basically every day, and move my Ji Ben practice to the second half. (Which still leaves me with other days when I can do Dao Yins, fortunately.) So I’ve started to give that a try; hopefully I’ll be able to make it through the Dantian Gong twice a week, and maybe I’ll even manage three times a week, we’ll see.

Good week; tweaking my allergy treatment regimen seems to have helped, so I definitely slept better than other weeks. Lots of days with solid practice; the weekend was a little off, my Wu Ji didn’t feel right on Saturday so I bailed after 30 minutes, and partly because of that, I only did a light practice on Sunday, but in general practice went well, and I’m managing to do a little more practice on weekdays. I want to bump things up there still more — I’m doing seated meditation in the morning, something that takes maybe 30 minutes over lunch, and maybe 15-20 minutes of standing work at the end of the afternoon, and I want to try to regularly add in another 15-20 minute segment to the lunch part, so I can work more stuff (random Dao Yins and what not) into the once-a-week routine, but still, it’s enough for me to do the core exercises I’m doing (Dantian Gong, Ji Ben Qi Gong, some longer Wu Ji sessions) plus whatever the new thing is plus the occasional other exercise, which is good.

For the seated meditation part, I’m alternating between Calm Abiding, Anchoring the Breath, and Song Breathing; still not really feeling like I’m getting the predicted effects of Song Breathing, but I think Anchoring the Breath is helping me breathe more deeply, at least? And I’m actually feeling like I’m sometimes starting to slip into reverse breathing while doing these exercises, which is probably progress.

Also, while my Wu Ji didn’t feel right on Saturday, on Sunday I tried standing a little higher, and I felt a much stronger connection with my legs while doing that, with lines going down them. And I’ve been able to repeat that the last couple of days, too: start a little higher, feel what seems like a productive sense of connection, and then end up sitting back and down a little more while maintaining a good feeling. So hopefully that’s a sign of moving in the right direction.

This week’s lesson in Damo’s course was on the Lotus Dao Yin, continuing the theme of freeing up the heart center. I didn’t feel nearly as strong a connection while doing this one as I did during the previous week’s seated exercise, so I don’t think I’ll go out of my way to keep it in my practice routine for the time being.

This week’s lesson from Damo was some exercises to get more room around your heart center. Interesting enough because it really was just moving your hands around in front of your chest and/or holding your hands stable in certain configurations in front of your chest; I wouldn’t have thought before doing Tai Chi that that would lead to me feeling much of anything, but it really does. Not a super intense feeling or anything, but still: absolutely noticeable.

Part of me feels like I’ve been feeling things a little less intently inside recently. But, actually, I’m not sure that’s at all true: e.g. when going through the Ji Ben Qi Gong, Flying Dragon feels pretty intense, which I’m pretty sure is relatively new. So hopefully I’m making progress?

Anyways, pretty good week. My back started to ache a bit in midweek, which was honestly kind of weird: I hadn’t been doing as much Coiling the Snake the last few days, but I’d kept up with my Tai Chi, and even after I did both of those, it still wasn’t feeling great the next day? Never horrible, though, and it faded over the next few days. Hopefully I’m not getting sensitive to weather changes; I’ll deal with it if I am, though.

I did 45 minutes of Wu Ji on Saturday, and honestly I thought I was at more like the 30 minute or maybe 35 minute mark when the timer went off for 45. So that was nice. Probably still means that I’m still sitting a little high, though I do notice that I’m settling to a lower position as I get into more of a sitting position instead of squatting. And I also was feeling fairly soon after the beginning like there were lines of connection going down the top of my legs; I suspect that’s a good sign.

On Sunday I gave up after 25 minutes; I chalk that up to not having gotten quite enough sleep the previous night, and while I thought it was okay when I started practice, it became clear pretty quickly that I was sleepier than I’d thought and would have done better getting back to sleep and trying to practice later. Ah well, live and learn; in general, though, the week has been fine for sleep, hopefully a change in my allergy routine has helped.

Good to get back to Calm Abiding as a meditation practice; I’d missed that, and I’m feeling out of shape with it. For now I’m trying to do a three day rotation, Calm Abiding / Anchoring the Breath / Song Breathing, but I might actually switch to four days, with Calm Abiding every other day?

Good week for practice. This week’s lesson was on Song breathing, and it was a follow-up from the previous week on anchoring the breath; basically, start from the feeling you get from the previous week, and then try to release on outbreaths, using your hands to help. This depends on building up the mudra from anchoring the breath, which I can’t say I think I have super well established, so I did both parts most days.

Damo also talked about some of the physical signs you’ll see when doing Song breathing, once you get good at it: vibrations in the hands, then feelings in other parts in your body as you release tension and clear blockages. He says it doesn’t take too long to start getting to that stage, maybe a few weeks; I’m certainly not there yet, but I feel like it’s probably worth trying to get there? So I’ll try to work both anchoring the breath and Song breathing into my practice routine, instead of always doing Calm-Abiding. (But I really do want to get back to Calm-Abiding, I hope that this week’s lesson isn’t yet another seated meditation…)

Practice-wise, I’m adding in the Tai Chi form (three times through the first form, once in the middle of the week); actually, it felt good enough this time that I went through the form a fourth time. And this weekend I did Wu Ji for 40 minutes on both Saturday and Sunday. Saturday felt good, probably because I’d gotten a quite solid sleep the previous night; I might have been taking it a little easy on my height in the Wu Ji, but in general my body felt like it was doing interesting things? Sunday didn’t feel quite as good, which I suspect is because I was a little sleepier. I have actually been thinking that I’d get something interesting out of Wu Ji if I push myself until I’m more tired than I’m comfortable, but, if so, I don’t think being sleepy helps, I think it’s just physical tiredness that might help me relax muscles in useful ways.

I’m also thinking I should spend more time doing seated work: I’m kind of ignoring most of those lessons, but e.g. for the Song breathing, maybe the exercise from a month or so back about moving energy through your fingers and arms would be useful? And I’m only doing standing Dantian Gong, but some people in the Facebook group were saying that both seated and standing are useful, for different reasons. I used to do more seated work when the course started, but I’ve stopped other than my morning meditation; the main reason for that is because seated work is harder to focus on when I’m tired, and that’s true and still something I have to worry about, but on days when I’m not so tired, I think I should try to work in some of the seated practice.

Last week, my Nei Gong really wasn’t going well; I wasn’t sure whether it was because I was tired or because my back was hurting or because I was standing two low, or maybe those factors were related. So I tried to work on all three; only so much I can do about being tired, though I did at least talk to my allergist and get one idea. Back-wise, I skipped doing Dantien Gong last week (hard to do when I’m feeling achy and tired anyways) and did Tai Chi over lunch two or three times; that felt good. And also I did some Coiling Snake most days; I really do feel like that helps my back, I had several times when I was out for a walk and my back felt actively happy. And, finally, I actively tried to stand higher.

And it helped! I was quite iffy at the start of the week, but by the time the weekend hit, my back was basically feeling fine, and my brain had stopped recoiling at the idea of doing Wu Ji for more than 10 minutes. So on Saturday I planned to do it for 25 minutes and actually did it for 30, and on Sunday I did it for 35; and on one of those days I followed it up immediately with 10 minutes of Coiling Snake and 5 more minutes of Wu Ji. And it felt good: nice tingly feelings, basically comfortable the whole time, and I got back into a feel where the dominant feeling was more my bones fitting together into a nice framework and being kind of floaty.

So hopefully I can stick with that feeling; and I’m also kind of feeling that, at a low-key level, I really am tensing my legs basically all the time without realizing it? If I can hone in on that feeling enough to relax my legs more, that will be useful. Anyways, back to my normal routine now, though I’m thinking I’ll try to do Tai Chi over lunch once a week midweek as well.

As for Damo’s class, this week’s class was on “Attention Vs. Intention”, which was a sitting breathing exercise that I think is the same as the Anchoring the Breath that he and his students frequently recommend? So I was glad to have learned that, and I’ll probably try to keep on working it into my practice a couple of times a week. To jog my future memory, the sequence is nostrils, sinus cavities, throat, collarbones, chest, diaphragm, abdomen, then link it all together, and then add in a mudra.

Sunday Tai Chi; I should sink more when doing Wrap and Change to Cannon. (Not just sink inside my body, but actually squat down more when doing the change.)

This week started off okay; Damo’s lesson was on an exercise for stretching your diaphragm, which I’d seen him talk about in a Zoom class, vaguely thought “I should probably do that, my diaphragm is a little tight”, and then forgotten about it. So it’s good to see it again, and it’s good to have a small thing to work on.

And then the first half of the week, I did my usual exercises and stuff, and that was fine. But then I had a day when I decided to try a longer Wu Ji over lunch, and that really wasn’t happening: I was sweating and had my heart racing before I hit 10 minutes, and aside from being unpleasant, that’s a sign that something is seriously off in my body positioning or behavior or something.

Exactly what was off wasn’t so clear, though. I was tired; maybe that has that effect? And my back had been hurting; maybe that was making my muscles tense up in ways that prevented me from relaxing correctly or had me unconsciously standing in a bad position. Or maybe I was just standing too low.

I’m still not sure what was going on, but the weekend wasn’t any better; and even my upper torso felt off, I wasn’t managing to get a good effect from trying to relax the top of my shoulders. The back pain is clearly bad, though: I don’t know if it’s causing problems with my Wu Ji (and actually in the past sometimes Wu Ji has helped with it, now that I think about it), but it might be, and it’s not pleasant either way. Not that it’s horrible or anything, but still, worth fixing. And actually it wasn’t really just back pain: part of it was in my right kua, which feels like it might have been triggered by me trying to relax that more and change my positioning? That part feels worth waiting out, though who knows.

So I’m thinking I should maybe do a bit more Tai Chi: I actually did that over lunch today instead of doing a real Nei Gong session. But also I’m thinking I’m probably standing too low again: that’s certainly reliably led to that sort of sweating in the past, and maybe it’s also causing muscle pain? So I’ll experiment with standing higher; and actually the little bit of Wu Ji I did today was better, my upper torso in particular felt better.

One other thing I was thinking of was that the time when I was feeling like things were going well a few weeks back happened to coincide with when I was doing Coiling Snake, and in particular my back felt actively good then. Maybe that’s not a coincidence? So I’ve been trying to work that into my end-of-the-afternoon practice more often than not; short sessions, since I’ve been feeling bad, but hopefully it will help.

One thing I noticed doing Tai Chi today: the last time my teacher reviewed my form, one of the things that he pointed out was that my arms weren’t properly going over my head during Thrust with the Right Foot and/or Thrust with the Left Foot. I’ve been working on it, and noticed that it went better in Left Foot than Right foot; and today I noticed that I wasn’t turning my torso as much on the Left Foot as on the Right foot; when I turned it more, my arm seemed to arc over the top more naturally.

Damo’s lesson this week was on eating. Interesting enough, but I don’t think it’ll particularly change my behavior at all; food is a group thing, and nothing I saw made me want to lobby for changes in what we eat.

Two extra days off again, which was kind of interesting; I really don’t manage to do as much Nei Gong as I’d like on Saturdays or Sundays, because of the habits around how we spend our weekend mornings, whereas Thursday and Friday were good days, even though I had to do a little extra napping / sleeping in so I didn’t feel tired. I did 40 minutes of Wu Ji on one of them, and in retrospect I wish I’d gone for 45 minutes, I wasn’t so exhausted or anything.

That was actually a kind of surprising Wu Ji session, because my legs weren’t happy from fairly early on. Normally, when that happens, I don’t last much longer, but this time, I kept on going for another 25 minutes or so. So maybe my stance and levels of habitual tension and what not have changed in such a way that, even though I’m standing lower and my legs notice that, the parts of my legs that are getting stressed are ones that have more of a reserve?

The down side is that my energy level was low enough over the weekend that I didn’t manage a second long session. And the other downside is that my legs are still feeling like they’ve been stressed a bit; though that’s probably as much upside as downside, because that’s how muscles adapt. I also still don’t feel like my stance is quite right in the shorter sessions: things get into place on the longer sessions in a way that I haven’t really learned to capture.

The other good thing this week is that I’m starting to get a better feel for an imbalance in my body: I’ve known for a while that my Wu Ji is tilted in a way that I can fix by relaxing my right kua, but now I’m realizing that that imbalance is present even when I’m basically standing straight up, and that’s helping me feel it better. So, still something I have to actively work on, but at least now I’m starting to be able to feel it better instead of depending on the mirror, which should help?