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.

I’m getting back into practice. Not so much Tai Chi: I was going to go through a few forms this weekend, then I noticed it was going to rain soon so I headed outside, then halfway through my first time through the form it started to rain pretty hard. But hey, once is better than none. And actually I’ve been managing to go through the smaller Silk Reeling set most workdays: if there’s a meeting that I don’t need to spend much time talking in, then I do that while listening.

And I’m getting back into Wu Ji: still need to build up my stamina (more mental stamina than physical stamina), but I’m usually managing 15 minutes without too much trouble now, hopefully I’ll manage 20 minutes tomorrow. And hopefully I’ll push beyond that; I’m hoping that I can use this enforced time at home as a reason to get closer to 30 minutes a day. Still haven’t done any Ji Ben Qi Gong or Animal Frolics since my recent break, though.

I had an interesting time doing seated meditation on Sunday; my start-of-the day sitting got cut off at 10 minutes or so, so I did another 15 minutes later, and that 15 minutes was surprisingly intense (in a sinky way, if I remember correctly), much more so than 15 minutes of meditation normally is. Heck, it was probably more intense than 25 minutes of meditation normally is. Not sure if it was just random or if two short sessions is somehow more effective than one longer one?

Damo launched his Internal Arts Academy. I’ve signed up for that, and I’m going to put in regular time; probably not as good as having regular in-person lessons (or at least regular in-person lessons with a good teacher), but I’m sure I’ll get a lot out of it. Means I’ll be spending more time in my evenings on Nei Gong stuff (and probably blogging less), but I think that’s the right choice for me now.

Interesting lecture on perception from a Vipassana point of view. It talks about how, at some point, you start directly perceiving all sorts of things as vibrating; I wonder if that’s related to the Chinese point of view that Jing, Qi, and Shen are all vibrations (at different frequencies)?

Not much to say this week: no class, and I’m still feeling like I have a low-grade cold so I’m restricting what I’m doing. Trying to stretch and walk around a little more, because my back was starting to give ever the slightest twinge; presumably I can do that in meetings, since they’re not in conference rooms these days, and since they usually don’t require me to be staring at my screen. In general, though, I’m still feeling like my spine is potentially a little freer in interesting ways; hopefully I’ll be able to hold onto that feeling until I get better and start practicing again.

Damo posted a video about Building Immunity in Qi Gong; unsurprisingly, he leads off by saying that Qi Gong just isn’t going to do magic for you in the short term (he says that yes, it helps, but it helps because you’ve been doing it!), and then goes into his usual theoretical analysis. There is one exercise he gives about two thirds of the way through that I might try working into things, though.

We actually had Tai Chi class on Saturday; not as many people, and I kept my distance more than normal, but it happened. But even then the Tuesday class had already been cancelled, and now we have a shelter in place order from the government, so no classes for the indefinite future. My teacher is putting up a series of videos of health-related exercises, I should give that a look.

What I was supposed to be doing on Saturday through Monday was going to a local Lotus Neigong course on the Ji Ben Qi Gong. But it got cancelled, as did Damo’s upcoming course in April. Joyce and Rick (the local teachers) ran a two-hour class over Zoom on Sunday morning, though, which was very nice of them. And pretty brutal; I feel like I did in part of it manage to relax in ways that helped increase the stretch of some of the exercises and reduce the pain? And something Rick said made me think that I have more work to do around relaxing in my Kua.

Also, right at the beginning Joyce said something that was related to my worries last week that Neigong practice might be not the best idea when I have a cold. She said that it’s potentially dangerous when you’re sick: internal work has the potential to move bad stuff further inside your body. So you want to stick with surface level stuff, or on exercises that are about expelling stuff (Dao Yins, I guess).

And I am feeling a bit off again; so, for now, no Wu Ji. And even when I do a little bit of Silk Reeling to stay active during the work day, I can feel stuff inside that I’m not completely comfortable with; on the balance, I think it’s still probably a good idea, but I’m not completely sure? (Hmm, maybe I should just do basic stretches instead.) I’m still doing a little bit of meditation, but I’m using this as an excuse to do the “focus on the tip of your nose” thing from The Mind Illuminated, hopefully that’s surface enough!

The frustrating thing is that I also feel like my back and neck are potentially starting to open up, they’re giving these faint tickles that feel good. So I’m really curious what progress I might be able to make if I were able to practice! But I just don’t think it’s the right time for that; hopefully I’ll be able to at least avoid regressing too much until I do feel better…

Not the best week for Tai Chi, unfortunately: I started feeling like I might be coming down with something on Thursday evening, so I skipped my Wu Ji practice for the rest of the week, and I skipped most of Tai Chi on Saturday, only going in for the Jian bit. And I skipped Tai Chi tonight, too.

Fortunately, the cold or whatever it is hasn’t been too bad; I think I’ll start venturing out in the world again tomorrow, and I probably would have actually gone into work instead of working at home yesterday and today if it wasn’t for the COVID scare. And hopefully I’ll be able to go to a Lotus Nei Gong course from Saturday through Monday; focusing on the Ji Ben Qi Gong, which I would like to learn better.

Anyways, during the Jian practice, in the hop near the end, you should keep your sword angled up, in the direction where you’ll be thrusting it next; also, the hop should be a little bit forward.

On Sunday I at least did Silk Reeling at home. And one thing I noticed there: in exercises where I’m moving forward and back some (e.g. during shoulder rotations), there’s more room to open my Kua than I’ve been doing. And I think that’s what I should do, that my teacher might say that I’d been collapsing my back knee slightly? Keeping my Kua open more requires me to maintain a bit of an active stretch, which I think is probably good?

The funny thing about Thursday is that I actually felt like I had a really good Nei Gong practice over lunch; but I also felt relaxed and open in a way which somehow fit with the ache that was the start of being sick. And, similarly, doing Silk Reeling on Sunday felt good but also left me feeling vulnerable. It’s nice to think that this internal work helps protect from disease, but I don’t have any real reason to believe that that’s the case, and it almost seemed like it opened me up to disease moving around this week a little more. Dunno…

I guess I am writing the notes this week after all, but they’re short. I was googling for Lotus Wu Ji images, and I ran across this one; what struck me there was that Damo spread his arms significantly wider than I’m used to doing. So I tried that, and wow, it felt super different. Less different a few days later, now that I’m used to it, but still, maintaining a bit of a stretch seems like a good idea. Probably means that I should stand a little farther apart, too, to get more of a stretch on my legs as well.

Anyways, I’ve been good about doing my practice on the trip. I was actually hoping to get up to 30 minutes of Wu Ji every day; didn’t manage that, though, I wasn’t consistently doing it at a time when I wasn’t tired. (I find it noticeably harder to keep up Wu Ji if I’m tired or have eaten recently.) But I did 30 minutes some days, at least. And I did about 30 minutes of seated meditation, so that’s good. I only did Tai Chi once, on Sunday; did some Silk Reeling, some Lao Jia first form (3 times), some second form (2 times, I think?), 30 minutes of Wu Ji, and the Ji Ben Qi Gong during that session, which added up to a good session.

Might be starting to get little tingles around my live gate? Would be nice if it opened up… And I’m hoping that the Nei Gong seminars I’m planning to go to in March and April aren’t canceled because of Coronavirus, but who knows.