Not a ton to say this week. I’ve been getting back to doing the Ji Ben Qi Gong after going through those videos; and I’m immediately realizing that I’d been doing it a lot of it wrong, especially in the second half. (Basically, it’s less like the Silk Reeling Exercises than I’d thought.) So I should rewatch those videos at some point, but I should probably get my new normal in place first, so I’ll be able to more easily be surprised at my next set of mistakes when I watch it.

I’m continuing to go a little lower than I had been during Wu Ji, because I think that gets my center of gravity at my Dantian height instead of at the height of my navel. Which is more strenuous; for other reasons, I’m normally doing 20 minutes a day instead of 25, and that’s enough work! (But on weekends I’m trying to do 25 minutes.) I am trying to spend more time relaxing into my breathing during Wu Ji; I won’t say I’m doing a great job of relaxing, but it’s something. And I’m still needing to tweak my shoulder positioning, and finding it useful to do so; weirdly, I’m no longer finding that I can sink my pelvis very much, I’m not sure if that means that my pelvis is naturally sinking more or if I’m tightening up (maybe because of the lower position) in ways that make that harder.

Most days I’m doing two Ji Ben Qi Gong exercises, and I’m also trying to work in some Dantian-specific seated exercises, since Damo says that’s important right now. When doing the latter, I decided I didn’t feel super comfortable with my breathing, so now when I’m sitting at the start of the day, I’m trying to mostly just observe my breathing, thinking about what it means to be quiet. Right now I’m playing around with the transition between breathing out and breathing in, not having that feel like a jerk but also not having it be under conscious control; it’s hard! Still haven’t made much progress in having the breathing be naturally slow; presumably that will come eventually…

The Dantian exercises have been a little hit or miss: sometimes I feel like it’s actually harder to locate my Dantian at the start than it had been before! But today’s practice was quite good, I felt pretty noticeably buzzy inside. (Not a super strong feeling, but definitely present.) And sometimes when sitting around I’m feeling that if I quiet my breathing, too. So hopefully I’m making progress; a ways to go, though.

This week’s lesson in the Nei Gong course involved an exercise called “Connecting the Hands” where you rotated your hands in a way that’s supposed to help build up the Dantian. Damo said this week was particularly important, so I’ve shifted some of my seated meditation time over to this. Maybe it’s helping a little bit, I might be getting a little more of a tingle down there than I was a week before? Hard to say.

And then in the parallel track of stuff from the library, I’ve finished the videos going into Wu Ji in detail and gone through the Ji Ben Qi Gong. Lots of stuff there that I’ve been doing wrong: e.g. in Flying Hands, my hands were flying too much, and my hands going up are supposed to be close to my body with my Lao Gongs facing the body. Or in Upholding the Moon, you’re supposed to really bend your spine and neck going forward, and have your hands cross over each other so the Lao Gongs are on top of another, and then going up you’re supposed to bend your spine in the other direction so the front of your spine opens up. There’s more stuff I was getting wrong, e.g. in the ones in the second half I feel like I was behaving too much like I’d expect from Silk Reeling. So I’m trying to do them differently now, but I’ll probably want to return to those videos in a month or so.

There’s also the question of how to find time for all of this, since even only six weeks into the course I could fill up an hour of practice time even without Ji Ben Qi Gong. I asked about that, and was advised to think about my practice routine on a weekly basis: don’t try to practice everything every day, but do try to loop back over the week. So I’ve squeezed things a bit to find some time to do a couple of the Ji Ben each day, that seems workable for now. (But I also feel like maybe I should be spending more time on the Connecting the Hands exercise…)

I’m also trying to pay more attention to the height of my center of gravity: the Wu Ji talks mentioned that, and that’s pretty key to the first three Ji Ben exercises, too. And I think I am starting to get a better feel for that; and I also feel like my Wu Ji stance had been a little bit high, with my center of gravity more at the height of my navel than my Dantian. So I’m trying to stay lower (though I keep on popping up!); it feels like it’s helping my breathing be in a better location? Though, honestly, Wu Ji is still kind of strenuous to me, so my breathing is basically never super relaxed… I’m also trying to pay a little bit more attention to the connection between my shoulders/elbows/hands and my feet, and I thought I was doing okay at that, but then today I realized I could relax my shoulders noticeably more and then the connection felt quite a bit stronger. So I guess I hadn’t been doing okay at that!

We had the Sunday Tai Chi class this week. My notes from the Pao Chui section of that: in the Large Forearm Fist / Small Forearm Fist moves, you should tense while your hand is going out and relax while it’s going to the middle. (So this is different from Hand Maneuvers in the first form, where it’s tense on the bottom and relaxed on the top.) In Large Forearm Fist it’s more the upper part of the arm that gets the energy (going as high up as the shoulder), in Small it’s more the part of the arm near the hand. Also, when shaking after Ride the Dragon Backward, I realized my right foot was moving a little forward, I think I should work on having my right foot land next to my left foot so I can stay vertical.

Haven’t been doing Tai Chi on weekdays or Saturdays over the last couple of weeks; that is a gap. The lockdown might ease up here soon, hopefully we’ll be able to safely restart the Saturday class, though even if the Tuesday class restarts I’m not sure I’ll join it. (At least if it’s inside, though in the late summer it’ll probably be outside.)

This week’s topic in the Nei Gong course was about locating your Dantian. I won’t exactly say that it was farther back than I expected, since I’m used to it being towards the middle of your torso (and maybe feeling farther back than that), but it’s farther back than I’d been paying attention to during breathing exercises. And I also won’t say that I 100% have it located: at first I was happy because I’d found one of the three possible signs Damo mentioned (feeling nauseous) when I put my attention in the right place, but then I realized that I felt slightly nauseous whenever I move my body far enough back in my abdomen, so that didn’t seem associated with a single point. I still think the farthest forward where I feel nauseous is probably basically the right place, and sometimes I think there’s a little vibration there, or sometimes other sorts of oddness, but I’m not 100% sure I’ve got it right.

Anyways, these days when I sit at the start of the day, I’m starting off by working on quieting / sinking my breathing, and then locating my Dantian. No particular progress on the breathing front, it’s not getting any longer or anything. It has sometimes been interesting walking after that, because sometimes my mind does get a little stuck down there; on the Dantian, in particular, which I guess is another possible sign that I’m finding the right place?

And I’ve made it through the videos in the library breaking down parts of Wu Ji; that’s been quite interesting. The discussion of your shoulders talks about sliding your shoulder blades so they line up flush with the back of your rib cage instead of jutting out; I’m realizing I can do that, and it helps the top of my torso feel good. In general, the shoulder blade rotations are paying off; it had been the case in the past when doing Wu Ji that I felt like something was going on in my shoulder blades, but also it was causing them to ache, whereas now I feel much less ache and much more movement. (When I’m doing the shoulder blade rotations now, my shoulder blades come pretty close to touching!)

But also I’m continuing to pay attention to sinking my pelvis (and it’s going pretty far down, though it takes a while), having my neck go up and out, and also I was reminded about sinking my Tian Tu. And I’m managing to do that last one much more effectively now; I get a pretty serious stretch on the back of my neck (both up and down, I try to maintain an active up component but sinking my pelvis pulls it down pretty hard), and a good sink on the front of my rib cage as well. I think the shoulder blade positioning helps the sink in back be in the right place, too? It really does feel like parts of my spine are opening up, especially my neck; and on Saturday in particular all afternoon I was noticing my body feel different.

In the section about your hands, he mentioned feeling the stretch start to go up your arms, so I’m trying to use that as a guide for how much to stretch. And, in feeling out the center of gravity stuff, I’m thinking that I should probably be a little bit lower than I had been? Also, when tilting my torso forward (for spine purposes, not for purposes of where weight hits my feet) I should tilt from my Kua instead of my feet.

And then there’s this stuff about feeling connections from your shoulders / elbows / hands to your Kua / feet. I feel like that’s the next thing to explore; it might even be the topic of this week’s lecture in the main course? I’ll find out…

I’m also getting tired of having tight hamstrings, so I’ve gotten in the habit of trying to touch my toes when my watch tells me to stand up. I think it’s having an effect, though I also don’t feel like I’m super close actually being able to touch my toes.

I did do some Tai Chi one evening last week while Liesl was walking Widget; and I practiced on Sunday, too. And I watched a Jian video; I really am very close to the end of that form, I should just go learn the last couple of moves.

Not much to say this week. This week’s lesson in the Nei Gong course was on Wu Ji; so not a new concept, and in fact something that I’d already been going over because of the supplementary material, but an important one. One thing I was wondering about there was whether I should have my knees quite so wide: I’d been thinking they should be a little wide, but it sounded like maybe my legs should be going straighter from my hips?

Still working on my breathing, and I’m still feeling it’s not as locked in as it sometimes felt the first half-week I was working on that lesson. My breathing is going fairly far down, but it seems like it wants to be at or just above my navel instead of a little below that? Eventually it usually gets there, but it takes a while. Though something interesting happened today: it got to a reasonable location, then I was just kind of sitting there, then all of a sudden it felt like my consciousness was expanding and my breathing slowed way down. Observing more, my consciousness wasn’t necessarily expanding: it was rising, but not out of me, more rising from my Dantian to my head. So it actually ended up where it normally lives; it did feel broader than normal, though. And the slowed breathing was definitely unusual.

I actually didn’t do any Tai Chi all week: normally I’m managing to do some on Sunday, but for various reasons it didn’t quite work out this past weekend. I’m okay doing it a little less, but I’m not okay not doing it at all; and I’m actually vaguely wondering if the reason why I’m not feeling as much interesting stuff during Wu Ji might be linked to me not doing as much Tai Chi? So I’m thinking that, on evenings when Liesl walks Widget instead of me, I should do some Tai Chi then; also, I’m close to being done with one of the things I’ve been spending time on during the weekends, so towards the end of the month I should have a little more time.

As far as Wu Ji goes, I’m still mostly doing 25 minutes, though I did 30 minutes on Saturday without a problem and would have been fine doing 30 minutes on Sunday as well if I hadn’t been busy. Some days I’m too sleepy to be up for 30 minutes or even 25 minutes, and also 25 minutes works a little better with my sleep schedule, so for now I’m mostly sticking with 25. One thing I have noticed is that I seem to be getting better at stretching my spine in what I think is the right way during Wu Ji, and that’s actually carrying over to other aspects of my life: sometimes when I’m just out for a walk I’ll notice that my spine feels solid, and even energized. So that’s nice, that my spine is going from being actively problematic to potentially actively healthy.

This week’s lesson in the Nei Gong course was on a seated Dao Yin exercise; fine, but I’m not feeling anything super interesting while doing it.

I chipped away some more at the stuff in the library on Wu Ji, making it up to my pelvis. And that was interesting; I tried relaxing my pelvis and it actually does sink more than it had been in the past. And sometimes I feel a little tingling around there while doing that. Still feels like there’s more work to be done in terms of sinking, and hopefully eventually things will start feeling differently supported in my abdomen?

Or maybe it’s tilting enough; eventually once it’s tilted enough you’re supposed to be able to sink your tailbone in a way that kind of locks your stance into place. And today, when relaxing and sinking my pelvis, I could feel a tug down my spine all the way down to the back of my neck. So it feels like it really is helping open up my spine, which is at least something.

(Though, on the note of feelings in Wu Ji, it’s actually been a while since I’ve felt the same sort of pleasant fluid tingling sensations that I had been feeling in the winter. I kind of miss that, but I’m not worrying about it for now, I’ve got enough other stuff to focus on now.)

When doing breathing practice, I found that I was able to observe more and controlling less, so I rewatched the abdominal breathing video. The five stages are: 1) quiet, 2) deep, 3) at ease, 4) slow, and 5) soft. So I’m doing better at quiet, and actually deep is going pretty well, too. In fact, I was making it pretty quickly / reliably to feeling like my breath is locked into my Dantian, so yay, I guess I’d been making progress on sinking my Qi to there and this is related to that? Still a little bit of consolidation work to do there, though, and then I’m waiting until slow starts showing up, I’ve only gotten one slightly twinge of that, mostly it doesn’t appear at all.

Did a bit of Tai Chi this weekend. One thing that I noticed while doing the form was that I felt noticeably more solid and rooted than I had been; maybe I’ve made an improvement in my posture that’s having an effect there?

My Tai Chi teacher has started doing online courses. I ended up not doing the Saturday course this weekend: it’s spending a fair amount of time on Silk Reeling and Qi Gong, and I’m doing Silk Reeling pretty regularly during work meetings and the Qi Gong overlaps a lot with the Nei Gong work that I’m doing. And it’s spending some time on a form I don’t know and don’t want to start learning now, and I don’t have a great location to go through the first form while on video. But we also had the Sunday class; the second form fits a little better into my study, and the Xinjia section is important to me, I definitely want to get better at both of those forms. But I skipped out on the weapon part, doing some stretches and meditation during that.

For the second form: I noticed my knee was a little further inside than I’d like on some moves, in particular during the waist-intercepting strike. In the second-to-last move, where you strike back with your left hand, when you’re moving right before then, your back (left) leg should cross behind your right leg. And in the large forearm strike, you should turn in the middle (or maybe even starting at the beginning) of the second full pair, so you’re ready for the other direction when that’s done.

In Xinjia: in the move after the Jing Gang after the oblique postures and punch, where you move your right arm back, you should also turn your torso: that way your right arm doesn’t end up breaking your energy.

I also practiced the first form a couple of times and the Jian a couple of times. And I got some tips for Jian videos, but I haven’t watched them yet.

As for Nei Gong, the second week of the course was on abdominal breathing. Which had a five-step development process, none of which involved trying to breathe abdominally, it’s supposed to happen as a result! Basically, you start by watching your breath but not focusing hard on it or trying to guide it; then it should naturally get deeper, then longer, then it should feel “softer”, which is some sort of change in feeling in how things move inside. Except that’s only four steps, so I should clearly rewatch the video at some point; not worrying so much right now, though, because just observing is really hard: I constantly feel like I’m waiting longer than is natural to breathe!

Though, when I do sit and breathe for a while, I feel like my breathing actually does go farther down in my abdomen than I was expecting. So hopefully I’m actually making progress on the deeper part? And it’s even possible I’m making progress on the softer part, for a while I’ve felt a sensation in the bottom of my torso when breathing that isn’t clearly part of my lungs moving in and out; who knows…

Since there was only one video, that gave me some time to poke at other parts of the library, so I did that, following a recommendation on other videos to watch in parallel with different weeks of the course. For the first couple of months, the recommended pairing is a series of “foundations” videos; I think these are the videos Damo had on Vimeo earlier? They’re about Wu Ji and Ji Ben Qi Gong; I’m actually kind of surprised to see them there, I would have expected them in the main course. (Especially Wu Ji, given how much time the in-person courses spend on that.) Maybe they’ll show up in the main course, just a little more briefly? So far I’ve gone through the a little bit of the Wu Ji section; it was informative.

My Wu Ji wasn’t actually going great for the first half of this week: I’d been hoping to get it to 25 minutes, but I wasn’t always even making 20 minutes, I was feeling a little sleepy. Then I thought that maybe I should try finding a timer that has interval alerts: I might find it easier to keep on plugging on if I had an idea of when 5-minute intervals are happening. (At the very least, I could try to stay to the next interval.)

So I got a meditation timer app, and it actually helped a lot: I made it to 25 minutes today, and I don’t think I would have made it past around 15 without that. Some issues around the haptics, which I think are probably Apple Watch limitations, but still, I like it. And if I’m remembering correctly I did 25 minutes on both Sunday and Monday (and on Sunday that was before I was experimenting with these apps, I was just feeling more awake, I was actually surprised when it ended), so hopefully I’ll be able to solidify that and move on to 30 minutes.

My torso’s also been sometimes feeling floaty when I’m doing Wu Ji, presumably that’s a sign that I’m doing better at my posture in my torso and/or relaxing more? Still having problems in my legs, though. Sunday in general felt like there was a lot of stuff going on in my body, nice to feel like I’m making active progress.

I’m switching the title of these posts to “Nei Gong Notes”: for a while I’ve been doing Tai Chi and Nei Gong, and while my time had been more heavily weighted towards the former, with COVID it’s now more heavily weighted towards the latter. And I think that, with the launch of the Internal Arts Academy, I’ll be spending more time than I had been on Nei Gong stuff than I had been; maybe not more than on Tai Chi, but at the least it’ll be more balanced. Also, in some sense Tai Chi is a subset of Nei Gong: Nei Gong basically means “internal work”, and hence includes internal martial arts.

Anyways, as to the Tai Chi portion of this: I actually did go through the form three times this Sunday and I went through most of the Jian form as well. And I did okay on the latter, though I couldn’t remember the last few moves we’d learned; glad I got back to the practice. And today I went through the first form three times, the second form once, and the Jian form a few times, and I remembered one or two more moves in the latter. Still need to get back to the Xinjia first form.

Also, I’m thinking I’m not getting as much new from doing Dantian Rotations, so I’m dialing that down to once a day (with 25 repetitions) instead of twice.

I’ve finished the first week of the Internal Arts Academy syllabus. The first video had us doing seated meditation; the one he led off with is one he calls “starving the mind”, where you basically try not to think. Which is different from the Song Breathing that I’ve normally been doing during my meditation time. So I’ve been trying that; seems fine, I don’t yet feel that I’m getting anything extra from that. I have been using that as an excuse to try thinking less during Wu Ji, though.

And the second video was on stretches. The main thing about all of these stretches is to put your consciousness on the body part where you’re stretching; that makes the stretch more effective, and helps open up space around there. For my future reference, the list of stretches:

• Shoulder rotations; only rotate backward, not forward, we all slump too much as it is.
• Scapula rotations; from the outside, it looks a lot like shoulder rotations, but try to move your shoulder blades instead.
• Yao rotations: this is the area of your torso between the bottom of your rib cage and your hips. Try to feel an active stretch on the outside as you rotate around.
• Yao rotations from the Dantian. A similar-looking movement, but this time you’re supposed to be moving from your Dantian, and that’s where you focus your attention instead of the outside stretch.
• Bend at your hips, feeling a stretch on your lower back and butt. When you’re come up, make space inside your torso to help your rise. Keep your legs locked on this one.
• Neck rotations: turn your head right and left.
• Sit cross-legged, and turn your torso right and left, feeling the stretch (I think) in your Yao again.
• Sit cross-legged, and turn your torso right and left but move from your Dantian.
• Sit in a half-lotus position, lean forward, and rock your torso from one knee to the other. Switch which foot is on top and repeat. (I should probably rewatch the video on this one to understand where I’m supposed to be feeling the stretch, and whether I’m supposed to come up between legs; I think your butt and no, but I’m not sure.
• Sit with the soles of your feet together and bend down at the hips, and rise up by opening inside your torso.
• Sit with crossed legs and breathe in, stretching your lungs and your whole body.

Outside of the course, I did 20 minutes of Wu Ji a few times, and 25 minutes today, hopefully I’ll be up to 30 minutes in a week on so? And I’ll probably stay there for a while. Today was interesting, at one point I felt kind of like there was a sheathe surrounding my going from my hips to my lower back. Never felt that before, and given that so far the interesting stuff that I’ve felt has usually stopped at my tailbone, it’s nice to feel something going up further.

This week was mostly about continuing reverberations from last week’s Nei Gong course.

I did keep up my Nei Gong practice, doing at least a little bit of it every day since the course ended. Not sure how long that’s going to last, but hopefully I’ll end up at a steady state that has me doing more Nei Gong than before the class. And hopefully doing better Nei Gong; I’m certainly doing things in a more varied way, at least. Though it’s also not feeling nearly as effective as it was during the course; not sure how much of that is because even an hour of practice isn’t the same as five or six hours of practice, and how much of that is because practice on my own isn’t as effective as practice with expert guidance.

And I’m back to doing my normal Tai Chi. (Well, except for Sunday, because it was raining pretty hard out.) On Saturday, I was definitely still on a Nei Gong high, because the Silk Reeling Exercises felt a lot more intense than they normally did, and the form felt somewhat more intense. It’ll be really good if I can hold on to some of that feeling, both because it feels good, because I suspect that it’s reflecting energy flowing better through my body than it had before, and because it’s feedback giving me potentially healthy guidance. (E.g. there were a few random moves in the form when I lost that feeling of energy, I should figure out what was going on there.) Though, jumping ahead, the Silk Reeling and the form weren’t nearly as intense in the Tuesday evening class tonight: the feeling was still there somewhat, but definitely not the same thing.

On Sunday, I did breathing meditation lying down for 30 minutes; that was also pretty intense. I guess / hope it’s a feeling of Yang Qi, and I guess I shouldn’t focus on the sensations too much, and I’m honestly not sure how much time I should spend on lying down practice because it doesn’t seem conducive to gathering Qi in my Dantian, but still: it’s interesting / pleasant enough for me to want to keep on doing it sometimes. (But I’m also starting to mix in more seated breathing practice.)

What actually hasn’t been going super well has been my Wu Ji practice: my thighs have been feeling weak, so I’ve been dropping out after about 12 minutes. Part of this is that I’m going noticeably lower than I had been before the class; maybe also I’m doing other changes in how I hold my body / muscles, and if so I’m not sure if my thighs being under stress reflects something good or something bad? But I also feel like my thighs are just over-tired right now, so maybe I should actually back off on the Wu Ji a bit, spending more time doing less strenuous practice until they’ve recovered.

Also this morning I was reading a section in the Comprehensive Guide talking about Qi Gong sequences, and it mentioned that you should drop into Wu Ji after every posture, so I did that today; so even though I didn’t have a single Wu Ji session that was as long as I’d been doing, it at least added up to a more reasonable amount of time.

Other notes from tonight’s Tai Chi class: my teacher was talking about opening up the Live Gate in a move where I don’t normally think of that as a key component, and I used that as an excuse to work on spreading my lower back a little more (sideways as well as vertically) during a few different moves; seems worth continuing to experiment with, it did at least feel differently stretched. And actually the Qi Gong practice in the Tuesday class went as well as I can remember it ever going, my Dantian did feel a little more full than normal?

My notes on four of the five animal frolics, as learned in the Lotus Nei Gong course I just took. (The frolic we didn’t cover was the monkey, which is apparently about moving the blood.)

Tiger:

Extend fingers into claws, like gripping the top of a jar. Grab Dantian, make small circles with your hands, circling forward and unwind by going higher. Wind it in, still circling forward unwind again, and at top, lunge forward onto left foot. Pull back right arm, palm still facing down, stretching inside of rib cage; look back as you pull. Then left, then right. Then use both arms to pull back to the middle, shifting weight back some; circle arms out to the right and forward. Then same thing, but circle back to the left. Then pull back with both arms and step up with right foot.

Repeat: small circles, unwind, wind in, unwind, then lunge forward with right foot. Left, right, left, center to left circle, center to right circle.

Then: step up, unwind again and wind back.

Shift weight to right foot (or maybe step forward?), with left unweighted next to it; circle arms over so right arm is extended with claw up, left arm bent over right arm with claw down, close to shoulder. Focus on spot on left, lunge forward with left leg, swinging your arms over with right arm pointing at spot, left arm 90 degrees.

Step up with right leg, ending with weight still on left; left arm extended claw up, right arm bent over. Focus right and lunge right, coming down with left arm at spot and right arm 90 degrees over. Then left again and right again.

Come to center; unwind/wind back and then drop into Wu Ji.

Bird:

Raise arms, opening live gate; expand shoulders, imagine rubber sheet over arm, stretch the top especially at the wrist. Then go down: shoulder down, then elbow, wrist and hands go down left, stretching an elastic sheet under the wrist. Repeat twice more (3 total).

Step forward with left; flap with arms at 90 degrees, one forward and one to the side, flapping left then right then left. Then flap up with both arms forward; coming down, go up onto left food, with right foot off the ground pointing back, and with both arms going back along your back (palms up), imagine Tian Tu teaching towards Huiyin.

Repeat on other side; step forward with right, 90 degrees right left right, then both forward and back, stepping up onto right leg.

Step forward with left, twist to the left; if you’re feeling flexible, lower down until your right knee touches the floor and your butt is on your left heel. (But staying higher is fine, don’t lower your knee unless you’re flexible enough to also lower your butt.) Cross your arms in front of you (crossing on forearms near the wrists), with the right hand on top; uncross them, with the right arm kept bent and your left arm opening, pulling your right elbow away from your left hand, with your right hand pointing at your left hand. Close and do it two more times. Then step forward with your right foot, twist and close your arms with your left arm on top, and do the same thing on the right side.

Then flap three times standing on left foot; arms out to side, right foot off the ground but heavy and pulling you down on the downward flaps. Then same thing standing on right foot.

Then both arms rigid pointing out, like pole between index fingers; twisting dive bombing motion from the Dantian, starting small and getting bigger. No fixed number of turns. Then go down into Wu Ji.

Deer:

Make horns with your index and ring finger; should go up, with middle two fingers curled down but not curling at the expense of bending the fingers. Thumb also sticks out. Put up next to your head, thumbs pointing at temples, elbows further back than normal.

Send a pulse of energy up inside from pressure on your Yongquan. As it reaches the top, stretch up through your body, raising your arms, standing on your toes. Rotate your Dantian forward, turning it into a spine wave; do that twice more. Then sink down. Repeat this whole thing twice more.

Step forward with your left foot, landing on the heel. Then press up from your Yongquan on your right foot twisting pretty far to your left, led from the Qi. End up with your weight forward on the left foot (which is now flat); twist your spine (including your neck) left, looking back over your left shoulder. (Still with hands making horns by your head.)

Repeat on the right.

Do the same thing on the left, but don’t twist as hard; then do three spine waves kicked off by forward Dantian rotations. Repeat on the right.

Paw your right foot back with a sort of scraping motion, then stomp down with your right foot and lunge forward with your left foot, turning your torso to the left and sticking up your arms, with your right arm arcing over the top and giving a ribcage stretch while your left arm is more going straight in line with your body. Repeat on other side: paw and stomp left foot, lunge right and stretch arms.

End by pawing and stomping right, then stomping left next to it, then dropping down into Wu Ji.

Bear:

Raise arms to diaphragm level and let hands hang limply. Make everything heavy; as always, sink flesh around bones.

Step forward with your left foot: a relatively short and heavy step. Sink all your weight again, over your left foot; your right heel should come up naturally. Lean forward/left and fold into your Kua. Push back up from the sole of your left foot.

Repeat on right side: short heavy step, heavy weight on right, fold into right Kua, push back up.

Then similar on both sides but when you fold, lean forward so that your back foot comes up and you’re balancing over your front foot.

Then step forward with your left foot; lower your fingers so they feel like they’re sinking into your feet. Raise your arms up so your hands are beside your head; you should feel like you’re stretching out an elastic (or some mucus or something) from your fingers to your toes; you also want to feel a stretch in your chest. Your weight should remain over your front foot. Then let your hands go down. Push back up from your left foot, step to the right, repeat.

Step to the left and grab your Dantian with both fists, with palms up and knuckles touching in front of your abdomen. Drag them (and your Qi) up, still touching; when they reach your chest, arc them away and up until they’re making a circle above your head, still touching. Reverse and go down your body. Then step right and do the same thing.

Step up with your left foot, do one last bear sink, and go into Wu Ji.

I spent the last five days at a Lotus Nei Gong course taught by Damo Mitchell (with the help of a senior student of his). I’ve been impressed by Mitchell’s books, and I liked him quite a bit as a teacher: good at explaining, funny, and I really liked the mixture of stuff he taught, going over core practices, teaching us (most of) one important sequence, occasionally lecturing on basic concepts, and mixing up the difficulty level nicely. (I’m definitely more prepared than I was for the Nei Gong course I took a couple of months back, but this one was also less physically stressful, except for one morning.)

My Wu Ji positioning was pretty good; I was told to go a little lower, and sometimes my tilt wasn’t quite right but I got corrected to tilt both more and less at different times, so I’m okay on average? The tip that I picked up on the tilt was to ease up on my lower back, and I think I can feel what that’s talking about: if I stand what feels straight up to me, I do feel a slight tension in my lower back, and I can lessen that by tilting a bit. Also, my hands weren’t nearly low enough, and also should be wider, a little wider than my body, and I should make sure to keep my neck up.

Sessions regularly got kicked off with a set of stretches, I should probably try to do those. The main theoretical concepts that were discussed were about Yin Qi and Yang Qi: letting your mind sink to your Dantian to build up Yin Qi, having it go from there into the rest of your body, opening up space in your joints to let the Yin Qi flow in there (at least I think it was the Yin Qi?), how opening up your Lao Gong helps you manipulate Yin Qi, how Yang Qi leads to various sensations which you should basically ignore (which is too bad, I can feel those and they’re kind of fun!), how Yang Qi will open up the meridian on your back and that’s super important, once it’s there then other meridians will start to open. And, once you’ve done that, opening up the meridian in front is the next major goal, and doing both of those will make a significant difference in how you feel; Mitchell presented that as in reach, even in reach within a couple of years, but also something which almost nobody in the class had yet reached.

So then there were techniques in support of that: lots of stretches, for example, to open up joints, lots of sinking the mind to your Dantian. And sinking was emphasized as a key: if you just place your attention in your Dantian then it won’t really be there, part of it will still be in your head. Don’t trust your mind: instead, do a combo of paying attention to where your body can feel contact from your mind and then letting that feeling skin. Also in support of this was a technique during sitting meditation: once it has sunk, then open your hands at your diaphragm with your Lao Gong down, that helps keep the Qi down there. And then you can move your hands to hold your Dantian like a ball, and play around with it. Also, if your Qi is sunk, you can do reverse breathing (but don’t do that if your Qi isn’t sunk): don’t make a big physical production of it, instead make sure that your attention is in your Dantian and then, when you breathe in, think of a bag contracting around where your attention is.

We also spent significant time on the Five Animal Frolics, though we only learned four of them. I’ll do a separate post with notes on that.

It definitely made me want to keep on doing the Lotus Neigong stuff. I think I’m going to replace the silk reeling exercises that I do at the start of that with stretches, and I’ll sometimes replace the Qi Gong sequence I’ve been doing with the Animal Frolics. (And, when I’m doing that, I’ll do the long Wu Ji before the frolics, with only a smaller bit at the end, that’s what we were doing in the class. Though the bit at the end is very important, it lets your body learn from the frolics!) And I’ll see if I can find more time to work in bits of practice, e.g. maybe doing some sitting practice on days when Liesl is walking Widget?

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Here are my complete notes:

First day:

Wu Ji: sink back more, arms noticeably wider, tilt forward a bit more than I had. When sinking into my feet, let my weight spread the bones of my feet.

Sink the Qi by noticing where my mind interacts with my body and letting it relax and sink down. Seems like a pretty key practice. Don’t try to directly place my attention on my Dantien, that won’t have the desired effect.

Reverse breathing: after sinking Qi, inside of abdomen contracts around where my attention is. Don’t move outside muscles. Not worrying about that so much for now, I’m not good yet at sinking my Qi…

Afternoon: in Wu Ji lean forward just enough to relax my lower back. Arms are spread pretty wide to the side, a little wider than my body. Got corrected on my neck once, I should indeed force it back and up a bit.

Felt like I’d sink my Qi correctly once, pressure inside my abdomen.

Second day:

Wu Ji: got told to lower my hands a bit more.

Third Day:

Open up space between joints, sink the Qi, have the Qi full up space between joints. This is probably what’s going on in Silk Reeling Exercises, with the gathering energy between exercises? So the exercises open up space, but we need to get Qi in there?

Should probably work in something stretchy, a Daoyin, hopefully I can find a good description of the animal frolics?

Cleansing: feeling a surprisingly concrete line going down my body.

Fourth day:

Morning was rough, but I made it through.

In Wu Ji I got corrected to not lean forward as much.

Maybe it’s the long days but if we do something quiet at the end day, I do feel like my mind is in my abdomen more. And having my palms at the diaphragm open and facing down might be having an effect?

Fifth day:

Interesting lecture at the start. I shouldn’t try to do the Microcosmic Orbit with my mind, it doesn’t help. But opening the channel in the back is key (and it leads to other channels opening.). Opening the Mingmen involves stretching it; so it can vibrate like a guitar string.

Separate note about animal frolics.

One hour practice: 35-40 minutes moving energy through the body. Wu Ji counts as this.

Spend remaining time on body work (e.g. Dao Yins) or sitting practice: they don’t stimulate the Yang Qi.

Dangerous to spend more than 35-40 minutes on Yang Qi exercises without support. Can start by foods to support kidneys, Yin, and blood.

Practices:
1) Wu Ji
2) Sitting practice we did to train sinking of the mind
3) Dantian work: rolling hands, for example
4) Animals

Avoid cold food until Dantian is consolidated.