The Tuesday lesson was a Tai Chi one, on Strengthening the Jin Line. Seems pretty interesting, though I need to put more time on Continual Jin first.

Wednesday: My feet were a bit achy today, as were my knees; maybe related to the walking yesterday? Not so worried about the feet, though having knees that hurt isn’t great. Still, things weren’t bad enough to make me want to really avoid standing work, so I did 30m of Wu Ji as well as 40m DTG.

Thursday: Acupuncture ended up giving me a leg cramp today, so I didn’t do any Tai Chi or standing work; I just did 20m sleepy Enquiry 1, 30m DTG. And, looking ahead, the acupuncture made my big toe feel bruised on Friday and Saturday, though not in a way that really stopped me from doing anything.

Friday: 25m Wu Ji + Coiling Snake; 40m Kidney Hui Chun. It felt good, I might have done more stuff if I hadn’t mismanaged my time this afternoon.

Saturday: I had my regular Chen class. And this was my last scheduled weekend acupuncture (I’m dialing back from three times a week to twice a week), so hopefully I’ll be able to get my Saturdays back to normal.

Sunday: Monthly Chen class. One finger of my left hand was hurting (I think because of Acupunture on Monday), so I mostly sat out the Guan Dao. And I did 10m of Enquiry 1.

Monday: I did the Du Stretch, and I went through the Ming Men zoom exercise again; I took notes, I’ll try doing this once a week for a while.

Tuesday: A bruised toe again (again caused by acupuncture), so I skipped Tai Chi. But solid Nei Gong: 25m Dragon 2, 1h DTG + thickening.

(Since I’ve mentioned acupuncture a few times above: my current TCM doctor also does something called “tension release” where he actively works to loosen up various spots in my body. Which usually doesn’t cause any more problems than any other form of acupuncture, but it turns out that both my left hand and right foot have unusual amounts of hard material inside, which took a lot of work (and will still require more work, especially on my right foot). So that required quite a lot of poking around in those part of my body, and also probably stuff shifted around more, and those body parts can feel it. But I’m pretty sure the problems are temporary.)

Tuesday lesson was a Nei Gong one, Qi Emission 1. Which is something that I have no interest in trying (and I would be quite surprised if I could get it to work); fortunately, with the IAA rework, I didn’t have to wait a week for the next lesson to unlock, so on Thursday evening I watched Enquiry 1.

Wednesday: I watched the video of Rick’s February 21 Zoom class, and I did 10m of Balancing Upper and Lower.

Thursday: 15m Balancing Upper and Lower; 30m Wu Ji; 30m Dragon 2; 10m Wood Wu Xing. As mentioned above, I watched the Enquiry 1 lesson in the evening. And I also noticed an unusual feeling of heat in my armpits while I was sitting in preparation for that; maybe a side effect of the Balancing Upper and Lower? Or maybe a side effect of the weirdly warm torso stuff that I mentioned in last week’s post.

Friday: 40m Dantian Gong. My Nei Gong time has lessened noticeably recently, and in particular I haven’t been doing Dantian Gong at all frequently; I should get back to that. (But also it would be good if I more often had enough energy that I wanted to practice more; hopefully moving out of Winter and into Spring will help…)

Saturday: My regular Chen Tai Chi class.

Sunday: 1.5h push hands. One thing that came out of that is that the person I learn the most from there (Jason) was talking again about your legs as the source of energy, your waist / Dantian as something that decides how to use the energy and how to direct it, and your arms / hands as something that senses your opponent and where stuff comes out. And he says that I’m too stiff; when I try it his way with his help, it does feel better / more effective. But also I’m working on connecting things up inside, and when I do that, energy goes into my torso and arms in ways that make things feel more full but also less flexible. So I’m genuinely not entirely sure what to do here – how much is me doing things wrong, how much is a difference in styles between how Jason does things and how Lotus Nei Gong does things?

Monday: Du Stretch; 30m Full Moon.

Tuesday: I reviewed Step Back to Ride the Tiger, and did the 37 form and the Chen pole weapon forms. For Nei Gnog, I did 20m Dragon 1, a bit of Balancing Upper and Lower, and 20m of Enquiry 1. And I read an article on Zhan Zhuang, which is I think relevant to what I was thinking about on Sunday; note the bit about the lower body being full / naturally pulled down and the upper body floating. So at first I thought it was saying the same thing as Jason, but thinking about it a bit more, I’m not sure: the upper body floating isn’t clearly related to the upper body being more flexible / directing traffic more. But at any rate both agree that the lower body should be quite full, and I’ve known for a while that I’ve got too much tension in my legs in a way that interferes with that, so for now I should focus on that, I think. In the afternoon, I walked quite a bit, going to and from lunch and a doctor’s appointment, so I practiced trying to soak into my legs a bit more and relax / fill them up; hopefully that helped? And I paid attention to how that was affecting my torso and arms (and my shoulders, too, I was actually feeling stuff there a decent amount); if I relaxed in the right way they did feel more light, but maybe more in a way that was like the Zhan Zhuang article than the discussion from Sunday?

Anyways, interesting week, stuff to work on.

I was visiting my parents for most of this week, and I did very little Nei Gong or Tai Chi while I was there, so not a ton to say.

Tuesday evening: no lesson; I mentioned last week that I did a late Anchoring the Breath, and I also did Shui Gong 2, and I think that one or the other of those (both of which felt quite strong) made it it hard for me to fall asleep.

Wednesday: No Nei Gong. And my sleep was messed up in an unusual way: I went to sleep fine but I woke up at like 5am and just could not get back to sleep. (And I was changing time zones, but in the other direction!)

Thursday: I did a bit of Wood Wu Xing in case that helped with the sleep problems I’d been having. (Feels like it matched the Tuesday problem but not the Wednesday one?) And my sleep was better the rest of the visit.

Friday: Sleep last night was good; I used nose strips for the first time in ages, clearly I should do that more often. I did the Chen Lao Jia first and second forms; it was quite windy outside, otherwise I would have done more. And I did the Du Stretch exercise. (I’ve been sitting down way too much this week, but hopefully that will help a little…)

Saturday: Travel day, I didn’t do any practice.

Sunday: I went to a Tai Chi marathon: I did the Lao Jia first form 6 times, and the Xin Jia first form 4 times. My Xin Jia wasn’t feeling that great and after an hour of Lao Jia and not starting from a super high energy level, I wasn’t really in the mood to focus on the Xin Jia properly; I need to get back to working on it again.

Monday: I went through Damo’s latest Foundations Zoom sessions. (The Being Present videos.) I should do the practice session again, I was half asleep during the first half of that video. Also, when talking to my acupuncturist that day, he was talking about patients who had gotten a lot better after retiring, which made me think that I’m running my life in too organized a way; and having a goal of two hours of Nei Gong a day plus significant amounts of Tai Chi four days a week is a sign of that. Not exactly sure where that leads me, I’ll probably have to write a post on my main blog so that I can think about it meore.

Tuesday: Reviewed Up to Seven Stars. I did a Continual Jin run-through of the 37 form, and a nice slow Xin Jia first form, it went much better than on Sunday. My torso is feeling weirdly warm; not sure if it’s allergies or the effect of the tension release from acupuncture yesterday or from the Zoom class or just the change in outside weather, but if I had to guess, maybe it’s the tension release? (It doesn’t feel super Ming Men localized.) And in the afternoon I did the Du Stretch, and I repeated the practice portion of that Zoom class that I went through yesterday. I got a pretty strong stretch in my spine at the end, and actually now I’m a little less sure that what I’m feeling isn’t Ming Fire related, who knows.

Tuesday lesson was a Taiji one, on Continual Jin. Interesting; I haven’t yet had much time to play with it, but I definitely will.

Wednesday: I attended Rick’s Zoom class, we basically went through the relaxing / internal stretch exercise that we did in the Foundations class. (Not as long, but still a while.) It was good to feel; my body is continuing to feel stretchier inside.

Thursday: I went through the Chen sword weapons, but otherwise I didn’t have time for Tai Chi. In the afternoon I did 25m Dragon 1, I rewatched Wood Wu Xing video, and an extra 10 minutes or so of the exercise after that, and I did 40m of Dantian Gong. And I wached the Taiji Pushing Hands – Opening the Joints / Yao Stretching lesson. (The recent IAA rejigger caused almost all the push hands lesson to be marked as incomplete; all the other ones up through here contained videos that I’d seen, but this one was new.) And I did a bit of Hunyuan 48 review in the evening

Friday: Went through video of Rick’s February 7 Zoom class. This time it was super intense – same stuff as Wednesday, I guess doing it twice in close succession was additive? I felt more pressure in my feet leading to connectivity up my legs and through my body than normal, and I felt more of a stretch in my Huiyin than I basically ever have. So I will certainly want to spend more time doing this; I took some notes on how Rick was guiding us through the process, so hopefully I’ll be able to do a decent job of trying it on my own? (And it would surprise me if he came back to that on future Zoom classes this month; if not, I can always rewatch the first two February videos.)

Saturday: My regular Chen class.

Sunday: An hour and a half of push hands; my main takeaway there was that I should spend more time (both when doing push hands and when going through the form) with my attention in my legs, and then extending up my body). And 25m of Calm Abiding in the afternoon.

Monday: I’m visiting my parents this week, so this was a travel day; I did 30m of attention to breath, but that’s it.

Tuesday: Mostly spending time with my parents (and my brother), though I did do 30m of Anchoring the Breath. It had actually been a while since I’d done that; I noticed that my breathing slowed down and deepened basically as soon as I started this, so I guess the other breath work that I’d been doing has had an effect, even if it’s not retraining my habitual breathing as much as I’d like. And the exercise got decently intense at the end.

No lesson today, since I’m visiting my parents.

No lesson Tuesday, because of my dog’s health problems; fortunately, he’s recovering fine, so it’s been a more normal week this week. (My practice sessions have been a little short, but not awful.)

Wednesday: 45m Wu Ji, 40m Spleen Hui Chun.

Thursday: I switched away from the wedge pillow that I’d been using for a couple of weeks, I think it was causing problems. (I think maybe it was outgassing in a way I’m sensitive to, even after that time? I wonder if I was this sensitive before I started doing Nei Gong.) For Tai Chi, I did 20m of theThree Ring exercise from Practical Tai Chi Training, 20m Rolling Power, and the Chen sword forms. And then in the afternoon I did 20m Wu Ji, 25m Dragon 2, 30m Kidney Hui Chun. And Hunyuan 48 review in the evening.

Friday: 30m Wu Ji, 15m Balancing Upper and Lower, 35m Dantian Gong.

Saturday: My regular Chen class; I got some good pointers on a couple of forms.

Sunday: Monthly Chen class, plus a little bit (10-15 min) of just sitting.

Monday: 55m Spinal Dao Yin; 10m Balancing Upper and Lower; 25m Spleen Hui Chun.

Tuesday: Reviewed Fair Maidens Weave the Shuttle. Chen pole weapons. I did the 37 form twice, once pulsing the Jin and once regular. Xinjia first form, plus the beginning of the Hunyuan 48. In the afternoon I went through the Du Stretch; and for a channge I tried out a video of a non-Nei-Gong class by Corey Hess on Non-Directed Body Movement, but I didn’t get too much out of it.

Though the reason why I didn’t get much out of it might have been that my mind was a little too restless, kind of like a week or two ago, it would be good to get that under control… I’d hoped that changing pillows would fix it, but it didn’t completely solve the issue.

My Tuesday evening lesson was a Nei Gong one, on Balancing Upper and Lower. And I also watched the Attention and Acceptance talk from Bali 2025.

Wednesday: 1h (kind of iffy) Wu Ji; 1h Dantian Gong + thickening.

Thursday: I had a sleep morning, so I didn’t do as much Tai Chi as I would have liked, but I did go through forms: the Chen sword forms, the Lao Jia first and second form, the start of Hunyuan 48, and the 37 form. In the afternoon I did Du Stretch; 25m Dragon 1; and 30m Calm Abiding. In the evening, I did a Hunyuan 48 review.

Friday: 30m Wu Ji, and 50m super iffy Microcosmic Orbit attempt. My back was actually feeling unusually good then, but when it came to moving Qi through my back, I just didn’t have enough Qi to do anything significant. (Even though I’d been at a Foundations workshop the previous weekend!) So that’s three days in a row when my practice was bad; and I was in a sleepy and/or scattered mental state all three days. Maybe it’s just being tired, maybe there was liver rising, maybe I’d just been letting other stuff distract me more?

Saturday: Regular Chen class. 10m Wood Wu Xing, to see if that helped with the problems I’d been having. Though I was tired again, because one of my dogs (Ulli) had been throwing up a lot that night.

Then, unfortunately, Ulli started throwing up again, so I took him to the vet; after doing x-rays, it turned out that he’d swallowed a stone, and it had made it into his small intestine. So I was shuttling him from one vet to another vet. He had surgery, it was fine, but I wasn’t going to be doing any Nei Gong or Tai Chi that day! And on Monday I was also distracted and I actually had a couple of (routine) medical appointments myself that day too, so I wouldn’t have had time to do much anyways.

Today I picked up Ulli from the vet, so that was nice. (And he seems like he’s doing fine: lethargic, but no more than you’d expect.) And I did get back to a bit of practice: Chen long weapons, the Xinjia first form, the 37 form, and 20m of the Rolling Power exercise for Tai Chi, and Du Stretch and 10m Balancing Upper and Lower for Nei Gong.

So we’ll see how things go this coming week! Hopefully I won’t have any crises to deal with, hopefully my sleep will be better, and hopefully I’ll get my mind less scattered. I’m not doing a lesson tonight, I could definitely use a redo on this past week’s practice.

Tuesday lesson was a Tai Chi one, on Pulsing the Jin and Pushing Hands – Rolling Power. Both parts seemed pretty interesting, I’ll definitely give both of them a try. And nice to see another exercise where I really can feel the Jin moving through my body: I still don’t think I’m good at building up Qi in my feet and releasing it, but it does show up and move somehow.

Wednesday: Du Stretch; I’m doing a better job with the bit where you’re simultaneously raising your torso up while rocking your pelvis, I’m paying more attention to feeling the stretch from rocking at the correct height in my spine. 40m Kidney Hui Chun. 25m Wu Ji / Ji Ben 3 combo.

Thursday: Chen sword forms. Lao Jia first form twice, once slow and focusing on my right Kua and once at normal speed. Lao Jia second form. Pulsing version of 37 form. 45m Wu Ji. I wanted to rewatch the Subtle Body video but I was too sleepy. 🙁

Friday: a travel day; I did 20m of Wu Ji, but too sleepy during the flight to do any seated stuff then. Though in the early evening I was noticing that my torso felt surprisingly energized, and my head went surprisingly far back when I relax my neck, so those are good signs.

Saturday, Sunday: Foundations workshop, year 2 number 3. A good session on Songing throughout the body, and some useful Dragon 2 reviews

Monday: 30m Dragon 2; felt abnormally stretchy inside, I think because of the aforementioned session from the workshop. 40m Spleen Hui Chun, that felt strong.

Tuesday: 20m Pushing Hands Rolling Power exercise. I tried out the Figure Eight Energy Circulation exercise from the book Practical Tai Chi Training that I’m reading (one of the people from the Sunday push hands group recommended the book to me). Chen pole weapons; Xin Jia first form; 37 form. And I went through the Sinew Work Principles video; I might take that out of the rotation soon, maybe I’ll replace it with going through a random new Zoom class, I’ve liked every one I’ve watched so far.

This week’s lesson was a Nei Gong one on Extending the Qi. Not one that I’m planning to spend much time on; I suppose I should go through it it one or two more times, but the other ones in the Subtle Body series are much more important for me now, I think.

Wednesday: 1h Wu Ji, for the first time in a while, yay. I was thinking I might do a bit longer, but I started to feel bad in a way that made me think I might be overstressing my body, so I stopped then. Good that I did, too – I was also planning to do 1h of seated work, but I decided it was wise to cut that off after half an hour of DTG, given how I was feeling. (And I wasn’t 100% the next couple of days, but good enough that I didn’t really mess anything up.) Still, it’s good to be building up my Wu Ji again; also, around 40 minutes into that, something interesting happened, with (faint) pulses coming out of my abdomen. And, observing them, it seemed like the pulse was actually going in for a bit before bouncing out – I think this might be an early form of the swallowing feeling that people say happens in your Dantian?

Thursday: 20m Pillar Pushing; 20m of the guard variant of Hook Punch. And I went through the Chen sword forms, the 37 form, and the Lao Jia first and second forms. In the afternoon, I did 1h Spinal Dao Yin and 25m Kidney Hui Chun. In the evening, I did my Hunyuan 48 review, and I watched the Dao De Jing verses 1/3 video from the 2025 talks, interesting pointers as to how to do an esoteric reading, though I don’t think I’ll be able to generalize that to other versus.

Friday: 20m Wu Ji and 25m Dragon 2; I’d been wanting to get back to the Dragons to open up my back more, so I’ll try to fit them in regularly now that I’m not as drained as I was for a while. (And of course the upcoming Foundations weekend is more motivation, too.) And 60m of Dantian Gong / thickening.

Saturday: My regular Chen class, with a particularly good Hunyuan 48 section. (We started going through the Hunyuan 48 a week or two ago, I’m looking forward to going through it now that I know the basic shape of the form pretty well.) And I spent 20m going through all four Dragons.

Sunday: A couple of hours of push hands; the main thing I got out of that was that, to try to control my partner, I first need to understand when I’m at my the edges of my comfort zone (my “box”), so I can learn what that edge feels like. And I did 35m of Subtle Mindset and Posture.

Monday: 20m Wu Ji; 30m Dragon 1; and a 1h MCO attempt. It didn’t succeed, but it made it most of the way up my back, not bad given that it was my first try in a while. At first I was worried that it was going to be too far forward, but it eventually shifted to the middle of my spine instead of the front (and it felt like it was going up a cylinder, I’m not used to that), so that was good.

Tuesday: I reviewed the Straight Line Section lesson of the 37 form. I did 20m each of Pillar Pushing and Wu Song Shen Fa 1, and went through the Chen pole weapons. And then I did the 37 form, the Xin Jia first form, and the start of the Hunyuan 48, going very slowly through all of them and paying attention to when I’m within my box of comfort; really rarely, it turns out! But if I stopped and adjusted I could get back under control, so that’s good. And then I did a short walk, also paying attention to how it felt; I’m using my right Kua much less than my left Kua. (Which surprised me, if I’d been asked I would have guessed the other way!) And I sat in a church for a bit. And in the afternoon, I went through the new Kua Work Basics videos; that turned out to be surprisingly relevant to all of this, it was certainly relevant to my feeling when I was walking but also to my comfort level more broadly.

Last Tuesday’s lesson was a Taiji one on Pillar Pushing. That was an interesting one, another look at moving / strengthening jin.

Wednesday: My monthly trip through the Sinew Work Principles video.

Thursday: 20m Pillar Pushing. Chen pole forms, Lao Jia first form, 37 form. 30m Wu Ji. Reviewed Hunyuan 48.

Friday: 20m Wu Ji; 40m Kidney Hui Chun.

Saturday: My regular Chen class.

Sunday: 25m Zhan Zhuang. My monthly Sunday Chen class.

Monday: Du Stretch; 20m Wu Ji; 1h Dantian Gong and thickening.

Tuesday: 15m Pillar Pushing. Rick’s December 20 Zoom class.

Certainly more days than I would like where I didn’t do much, but there were reasonable reasons for that. And there were some decently solid days, too, though I do need to work on getting back to longer Wu Ji. My acupuncturist today was working on releasing tension in my spine (after working on tension in my arms the previous two weeks), it’ll be interesting to see if that helps with Du channel stuff. (Hopefully I’ll be able to find time to do a Microcosmic Orbit attempt this Friday, and hopefully I’ll have done enough Dantian Gong to make that attempt at least plausible…)

I didn’t do a lesson on Tuesday evening, because the “tension release” that my current TCM doctor sometimes does really did a number on me, but I did do it on Wednesday evening instead. It was a Nei Gong Lesson, Subtle Mindset and Posture; rather interesting, both having the idea of actively stretching out your shoulder and elbow more to strengthen the power coming from spreading your Lao Gong and the idea of putting your mind at a more subtle level, the Yang Qi or (ideally, but I can’t really get there yet) the Yin Qi level. And while listening to the lesson, it did feel like I could sense more going on and it was building more strongly? It was harder for me to get that while doing it outside of the video, but still, definitely something to work on.

Still didn’t do much his week: partly because my kid was still here on Wednesday and Thursday, partly recovery from the tension release, and also it was raining a ton which meant less Tai Chi. But I was pretty close to being back to normal yesterday; and while I only did a little bit of Nei Gong today, that was totally on me for being distracted rather than because I wasn’t up for it. (Which was a pleasant surprise, honestly – I had tension release again today, but I held up much better.)

And the tension release is pretty interesting, and I think well aligned with what Damo says – my doctor talked about how he’s having the fascia and muscles (and, in some cases, nerves) not be so bound up with each other, which is I think related to what Damo talks about different layers of your body becoming more independent as you get better at Nei Gong. And of course my doctor also talks about the connections across the body that you see in any of the internal arts.

Anyways, on to the day by day notes:

Wednesday: New Nei Gong Lesson, as mentioned above, and 40m Spleen Hui Chun.

Thursday: 25m of a Wu Ji / Ji Ben 1 combo; 30m Subtle Mindset and Posture.

Friday: 20m Wu Ji; 25m Full Moon.

Saturday: Regular Chen class.

Sunday: 2h good push hands – I felt more connected, and I learned something about using different sizes of spheres in my body. 40m Subtle Mindset and Posture.

Monday: Du Stretch; 30m Wu Ji; 1h DTG + thickening.

Tuesday: 20m Taiji Hook Push variant with guarding; 37 form x2. 25m Spleen Hui Chun.