A Tai Chi week this week; I went back and reviewed a bit more of the form. I should probably do that more often midweek – if I only review one section every other week then it’ll take me a while to review all of the sections that I’ve learned! Nei Gong this week; I still haven’t actually done Shui Gong 3, I should find time for that too…

I tried again to do the MCO on Wednesday, but it didn’t go particularly well: even during the prep work, I didn’t feel much volume going through my torso, and when I got to the MCO itself stuff just did not go very far up my spine. So I think I didn’t have much juice in my Dantian that day, for whatever reason. And actually my energy level got worse as the day went on (e.g. I only managed a half-assed Silk Reeling session); might have been an allergy shot that I had at the start of the afternoon, admittedly.

So I need to figure that out. At first I was thinking that it just meant that I should get back to doing regular 40 minute Hui Chun sessions, and maybe start mixing in Calm Abiding since I was curious about that and it seems relevant; and those both sound like good ideas? But also I’d been feeling on Monday and Tuesday that maybe I was eating too much, and I had a really big lunch on Wednesday, so maybe the answer is that I should pay more attention to how much (and what?) I’m eating? I experimented with that over the rest of the week, and it seemed to help, so now I’m thinking that food might be the main issue. (Also I’m thinking I should be a little more mindful in my downtime, instead of reaching quickly for random puzzle games on my phone.)

At any rate, my energy levels were better the rest of the week; fading some in the afternoon, admittedly, but with good signs of Qi and/or general alertness in the mornings on several of the days. (Good Anchoring the breath on Thursday, good Ping Heng Gong on Friday; good Wu Song Shen Fa on Friday, too.) Though, for the third or fourth week in a row, I felt unusually drained after the Saturday Tai Chi class; not sure if I’m just overexerting myself or if I need to bundle up still more or what.

I also randomly tried doing Zhan Zhuang before Tai Chi; I’ve basically never really tried that since getting more serious about Nei Gong, so I wasn’t sure how long I would last, but I figured I’d be slightly disappointed if I only lasted 10 minutes whereas I’d be quite happy if I lasted 20 minutes. I ended up doing 25 minutes, and if I’d felt like pushing it and if the class hadn’t been about to start, I could have gone at least a little longer, so that was nice. And I started to feel some interesting inflation around 20 minutes in. So maybe I’ll make a habit of trying that once a week, assuming that I continue to regularly show up early to class.

This week’s lesson was Shui Gong 3. Which I still haven’t tried, and honestly I’m a little nervous to: I usually slept badly after doing Shui Gong 2, and Damo warns about that at some point on this video too. I’ll try it out one of these days, but my sleep was iffy enough that it didn’t seem like the timing was right to try it.

On Wednesday I did the Spinal Dao Yin followed by the Maryland 2022 Practice Session video. Not as much Qi thickening through the torso as in some of the other variants from then, but it does succeed in getting my Qi rotating at the end; I’d forgotten that they spend some time going in a circle through the lower spine / diaphragm before letting it go and rotate on its own. And then I tried to move into MCO after that; barely successful, it was really weak once it reached my head, so I couldn’t feel much of anything going down in the middle, but on the other hand it did actually reach my head? Which is encouraging; and also gave me some ideas for what to play with next when kicking off the MCO, I’ll mix in some of the stuff from this video with some of the stuff from my notes, hopefully if I keep at it I’ll be able to get this working.

My energy levels were actually only kind of so-so on Wednesday, but still I managed to do three hours of Nei Gong and maybe two and a half hours of Tai Chi. So it might be that what feels like a moderate energy level is noticeably better than my energy levels had been.

Though unfortunately my sleep was crappy on Wednesday night. I think it’s probably the MCO’s fault: some combination of stuff making it most of the way up but then not down and/or me not properly closing down at the end? So I’ll have to be more careful about that in the future. Fortunately, the rest of the week wasn’t as bad as that one day, but it was also a little off on other days; at least once I was worrying about some house-related stuff, which wasn’t good. So, partly because of that, I didn’t try to kick off the MCO again on Sunday; hopefully I’ll sleep well enough tonight that I can give it a try again tomorrow. I did end up rewatching the Calm Abiding video on Sunday and then doing that for the first time in a while; glad I watched the video, I’d forgotten some of the details. And it’s hard, I’ve got a lot of work to do, but also strong, so I think I’ll try to find time to work that into the rotation.

I didn’t spend as much time this week doing Wu Song Shen Fa as the previous week, but I still did it enough that I don’t feel too bad. Feeling pretty good about 1 and 3, but 2 definitely needs work; I think I’m starting to feel the right feeling with 2, though. Also I had an interesting time in the park when doing that, some random person came up and asked what I was doing, we had an interesting talk, and I ended up pointing him at the IAA.

I rewatched the first of the Yang 37 form videos one day this week (Friday, maybe?); I’ll do another one or two tonight instead of watching a new Tai Chi video.

Good week; I had noticeably more energy than normal on several days, I continue to think that Coiling Snake is helping me a lot. Even my sleep is getting better; I remember my TCM doctor has linked that to my neck, I wonder if that’s been helping? (Because Coiling Snake had definitely been stretching my neck sometimes.)

Anyways, this week was a Tai Chi week. I’m pausing new lessons on that, because I’ve got stuff to review; this time I went over the Wu Song Shen Fa 2 video. And I did a pretty good job of doing WSSF practice this week; I did one of them almost every day (I added in an extra practice after work on a couple of days), and on a couple of days I did two or three of them. I’m definitely getting seeing the effects of WSSF1, I’m relaxing in the right way in my body and stuff is moving as a result. WSSF2 is still more of a mystery to me; I saw some hints of what’s going on there yesterday but it definitely needs more work. I’m worrying a little less about WSSF3 because I was already feeling something there, but it’s still pretty good.

I could definitely tell that I had more energy on Friday because I got two separate household errands done, did about two hours of Nei Gong and about two hours of Tai Chi. I thought that Saturday was also going to be a good day, but actually my energy kind of flared out during Tai Chi class? That’s the second week in a row where that’s happened; the previous week I’d assumed it was because of the wind, and I still think that’s probably it (the wind was super strong that day and the energy drain was much worse that week), but either there’s something else going on or I have to wrap myself up more than I thought when I’m outside, even if it’s decently warm? That plus an unusual morning in other ways meant that I also wasn’t up for doing a ton of Nei Gong on Sunday; though, once I got started and did Coiling Snake, my energy level increased noticeably again. Hopefully I’ll have a good amount of energy on Wednesday and/or Friday this week and I’ll be able to try out getting the MCO going; I’m thinking that, in an ideal world, I’d probably try that on Wednesdays and Sundays?

Good week. It was a Nei Gong lesson week, and the lesson was Taiyi Hundun Qigong 3; seemed fine, not a particular revelation compared to 1 or 2 though.

Wednesday was a good day: it was actually probably the best my energy has been since I had that breakthrough in December. For Nei Gong, I had a good Spinal Dao Yin session (stuff wasn’t getting stuck as much as it had previously in the rough parts in my spine, and my back was wanting to spread horizontally), the Taiyi Hundun Qigong 3, the Spleen Hui Chun, and some Ping Heng Gong. For Damo’s Tai Chi I did some Wu Song Shen Fa 3, some of the Releasing the Feet for Taiji exercise, and had a good session of the First Road part of the Yang 37. And for Chen Taiji I did my regular weapons practice, some extra staff review (and I made progress on a couple of moves), an hour of Silk Reeling, a bit of Lao Jia. So 3 hours of Nei Gong and maybe 2 hours of Tai Chi across the two styles, and it was high quality practice. And I’m definitely glad I spent the time on the Silk Reeling; that helped with my energy and helped my back feel better.

I asked in the Discord about what I can do to build my ability to release in my feet; the advice I got was to spend time on the Wu Song Shen Fa exercises. I was already thinking that the third of those was useful, so I should do that more and I should go back to the other two. I watched the videos for the Loosening and the Fang Song Gong versions of Wu Song Shen Fa 1; one interesting thing that I got out of rewatching the Fang Song Gong one is that he claimed the release is similar to the way your spine tugs up when relax your pelvis. And I know what that feels like and how to accomplish it; and, actually, I feel like I can do something like that on my feet as well now that I point it out? It’s not what I expected release on my feet to feel like, but it’s definitely something I can work on, good to have a route in.

On Friday I had my first acupuncture session in four weeks; I was expecting it to be more helpul than it was, but I didn’t particularly notice it helping my energy. And actually my energy wasn’t great on Saturday and got worse over the day, despite the Tai Chi class; my best guess is that it was a little rainy and then quite windy, and I was reacting to that more badly than I thought? (I was wearing a raincoat, but it wasn’t super thick, so while I didn’t feel actively cold, I guess the wind affected me somehow.) I actually kind of realized that at the time and avoided doing purging type stuff (I usually do a Dragon Dao Yin set after class but I avoided that this time, and I also considered doing Coiling Snake but skipped that as well), but that wasn’t enough. So my energy level wasn’t great over the weekend; but yesterday and today I got back to Coiling Snake, my back immediately started feeling better, and my energy level got better too; my energy level was quite solid today, and I found time to do some Wu Song Shen Fa 1 as well as some Nei Gong.

Also on Sunday I tried following my notes from the Maryland workshop for kicking off the Microcosmic Orbit. Honestly, I think those notes are maybe not so awesome – there’s one bit that I probably skipped, and another bit where I was pretty vague? So I think I’ll stop following those notes as-is, and either do a different variant inspired by some other notes from the workshop that are better (but that will need to be modified since they were from a session where we didn’t try to kick off the Orbit), or else just try to kick off the orbit after following the one that was on video, since that one reliably gets my Dantian moving on its own accord. Still, it was an okay experiment, and it probably would have better if my back had been in better shape instead of being a little messed up after Saturday; as is, the parts where I was thickening stuff in my torso felt quite effective, which is a good sign in terms of my internal readiness. But I didn’t do a good job of getting a rotation set up in the Dantian, and when I tried moving things into my spine, it did go in but didn’t go very high up, presumably because my back was off.

I’ll have to think about it more, but I’m thinking I should switch my MCO focus from going through like 6 different prep exercises to focusing on a smaller set? I’m seeing some signs that my preparation is plausible but that I need to get better at getting my Dantian going; so probably spending time on the Lesser Orbit, Mixing Kan and Li, and Anchoring the Breath on work days and then working on the Orbit itself (either via the version in his class or via my notes or via that one recorded lecture) on days when I have more time would make sense. (Though I also kind of like my habit of doing Advanced Dantian Gong on Saturdays, maybe I’ll stick with that.)

And then today I watched the video that Damo put out about the Foundations course. Thinking it over and talking it over with my wife, I think I’ll do that? It’s a manageable time commitment, and while I am making progress on foundational work, I’m not 100% confident that I’ll be able to avoid pitfalls just doing the IAA videos plus occasional random in-person classes. And those ten day sessions with Damo would be useful, too; I’m already doing one course of his this summer, but these seem like they might be a little more focused than that? So I’ve put down the deposit for the Texas course; I’m not 100% confident that I’ll do that but I think I will.

It was a Tai Chi week; in this week’s lesson, I finished the first third of the form. Damo recommended going back through all of the earlier lessons of the form after this one, to make sure you have the first third down well; I should probably do that. We’ll see when I manage to work it into things; hopefully I’ll have time to do it some during midweek practice sessions, but I’m not sure. There was also a push hands video, on an exercise having you pushing into your opponent via release from your foot; I tried it on Saturday, and failed completely. Which, honestly, wasn’t a huge surprise: I feel like I sometimes get glimmers of that, especially while doing Wu Song Shen Fa 3, but I never feel it super strongly. I should work on that while doing the form, too.

I had a good Nei Gong session on Friday. I’d been thinking after the workshop that I should do Pushing the Tides more, so I had a decent session of that, and I also did a one-hour Qi Thickening set from the Maryland workshop.

Unfortunately, I was a little more tired than I would have liked on Friday, and a lot more tired than I would have liked on Saturday morning; it had been three weeks since my last acupuncture appointment, so maybe I needed that more than I thought? But then I went to Tai Chi class on Saturday and I immediately started feeling better during Silk Reeling; so I guess my back had just gotten tight. I would have expected the workshop to have helped with that, but I guess it didn’t make a huge difference; probably driving two and a half hours each day didn’t help? And then it had been raining, so I hadn’t done my regular Tai Chi, either. At any rate, I was very glad to be feeling better; and probably I should start doing mid-week Silk Reeling, since it’s clearly helpful for me.

The other interesting thing from Saturday’s Tai Chi class was that our teacher had us do an exercise that he called something like the Dragon posture but that was almost identical to Coiling Snake from Nei Gong. And my back was definitely tingling in interesting ways after that; and, in retrospect, I remember it making my back feel good after that lesson. So I should spend time on that; I reviewed that lesson yesterday, Damo was indeed talking about effects that are very relevant to my situation, and there were some details that I’d forgotten, so rewatching the video was useful.

We had Sunday Tai Chi this week as well; fortunately, I’d done a good enough job of reviewing the Staff form (despite the rain) that I didn’t feel like I was particularly behind. I didn’t feel like I had every move down pat, but we just reviewed it this time instead of moving on to new moves, and I think the review has put me in pretty good shape for next month.

I’m still a little more tired than I’d like, but it’s manageable, and my back is tingling in interesting ways. And doing other odd but good things, too: e.g. it was randomly wanting to spread sideways while I was sitting down today. So hopefully I’m still making progress; and hopefully I’ll get back to making improvements on my fatigue levels?

This week’s lesson in the Nei Gong course was a Yin Qi Gong set. You should only do it when the sun is down, so it won’t fit into my normal practice routine, but I did it Tuesday and Thursday evenings; it got me feeling pretty mellow, which is nice. So I’ll probably try to do it on Thursday evenings for the next bit? But I won’t go out into a park at midnight to do it…

It was super rainy this week, so I didn’t do my normal Tai Chi practice. And I didn’t even go to Tai Chi class on Saturday, because I was at a Nei Gong workshop that Joyce ran from Friday through Sunday.

Which was good, but I have surprisingly little to write about it? Mostly an excuse to spend more time than normal on exercises that I was mostly familiar with, though there was a five elements seated set that was near to me. She said I was a little on the serious side, which is true, something to work on! But she also seemed to think that I’d been making progress.

I also wish I’d been a little more alert during the workshop: my energy levels weren’t awful, but my sleep was bad all three nights before the workshop. I had reasons why: on Thursday night I had Thai Iced Tea for dinner and I think that had more caffeine than was wise; on Friday I got woken up for a while by an alert from work (and I think something else happened, maybe I had to let Velvet go out back); I can’t remember what my excuse was for Saturday night but I had one then too. And I think that at least two of those are real reasons that I don’t want to generalize from, but also my sleep really hasn’t been as good as it should be, I think. And also my energy levels during the day aren’t as good as I’d like; might be mostly just the sleep, or it might not.

Thinking about it more, I decided that maybe my Liver Heat was rearing up a bit. So on Monday I did a ten minute session of the Wood Wu Xing exercise, and it felt like that calmed down my mind. Unfortunately, I got woken up that night by Velvet throwing up, and my brain decided to worry about that (though, in the light of day, nothing particular to worry about), so I continue to have excuses for why my energy levels are bad; hopefully I won’t have external interruptions tonight… Also I was pleased that, yesterday and today, when I was doing Wu Ji, I felt like I had good energy levels going up my spine, and when I paid attention to how that was making it up to my head, I felt alert, so I’m optimistic that my tiredness really is largely just the sleep issues, that I’m continuing to do better on Kidney Qi. (Certainly we did enough back exercises during the workshop that my spine should be in better condition!)

Solid week this week. On Tuesday, I did the next lesson in Damo’s Tai Chi course, on Play Pipa; that was fine, some interesting bits about sinking. The other Yang Tai Chi thing that happened that week was one day I was doing Wu Song Shen Fa 3, and again I wasn’t getting the feeling I wanted, but then I realized I was doing the hand movement completely wrong, moving my arms twice instead of once per foot. So I’m glad that I figured out what I was doing wrong, once I fixed that then it was properly effective again.

I had a good Nei Gong session on Wednesday: doing the Hundun Qigong, I could feel the right heights for my hands at all four locations, and I could feel a kind of syrupy column slowly going down my body to those points. So hopefully that’s the central channel opening up, though it didn’t feel like a thread? And then the Water Hui Chun after that felt particularly good, thick Qi moving around. Pretty good Swimming Dragon Dao Yin session today, too.

In terms of Chen Tai Chi, I made a bit of progress on the staff, though I still have work to do there. And Silk Reeling was very interesting on Saturday: it felt like I was doing Qigong, stuff was really moving around inside, seemed like it was a good Qi thickening exercise.

Joyce is holding a workshop this weekend, I’m really looking forward to that.

This was a week for the Nei Gong course, so I did the Opening the Du lesson on Tuesday. Damo warns in that lesson that, unless you’re particularly well grounded, you should avoid this lesson; and, sure enough, my sleep was lousy that night, so clearly that one wasn’t wise for me to pursue. So on Thursday I did the next lesson in the Taiji course, Releasing the Feet for Taiji and Shoulder Dao Yin. Both of which were interesting; I’ll want to keep at the Releasing the Feet exercise to see if it affects my rootedness, and that particular Shoulder Dao Yin does get my body shifting around a bit more than most of those shoulder exercises do.

Chen Tai Chi was going pretty well. We had the Sunday class, I picked up a decent amount of refinements on the Lao Jia second form and on the Xin Jia first form. (The second form is good cardio if I do it enough, I should do it repeatedly more often because I don’t get enough of that currently…) I’m behind on the staff, though one of the other students was helping me with some of the bits that I was getting wrong; yesterday I watched Chen Qingzhou’s DVD on that and I ripped it today for easy reference, so as long as I put in the time I should be able to catch up.

As part of my Microcosmic Orbit preparation, I watched the practice video from the Maryland course. It was pretty effective, as it had been the last time I was watching it, my Dantian was rotating on its own. So I decided to try actually kicking off the orbit, my first time attempting that in over a year; it went pretty well, I think? Stuff definitely went most of the way up my spine; not sure it made it all the way to the top of my head and down, but that’s okay, it went as well as it did during my first attempt in the workshop itself, I think.

Pretty good week. Health wise, I was feeling like I was starting to feel a little tired, and then on Friday I was definitely feeling it during my Nei Gong practice; I had acupuncture that day, and my doctor noticed one part in my spine that wasn’t quite right, so maybe I’d been being sloppy with how I hold my back? Though I’d done Spinal Dao Yins a couple of days before, I would have expected that to last.

Anyways, he adjusted my back a bit, and then on Saturday I was doing the Dragons and my energy started to feel better in the middle of that, so I think that must have been it. (The other hypothesis I had was Ping Heng Gong, which I hadn’t done as much recently because of the rain.) And I’ve been focusing on proper alignment on my lower back; I’m pretty sure that’s been helping. When I make that adjustment while doing Nei Gong, it feels like the lower half of my torso is like a cylinder (or maybe a cyclinder-like thing with an oval cross section); interesting feeling, but I’ll take that as a good sign.

My Chen Tai Chi is going well; I’m feeling like both my Xin Jia first form and my Lao Jia second form are getting to a shape where I know them pretty well and can work on doing them better. (At least except for Sweeping the Hall…) And I feel like I’m making progress with the Hunyuan Dao and the Jian, too: circles everywhere in the Hunyuan Dao form, and for the Jian, I’d been feeling connection between my hands and Dantian during the empty handed form and I’m starting to see how I can get a connection like that extending out the Jian, too.

I did the next bit in the form from Damo’s Tai Chi class last Tuesday, seems fine.

Another good week. In terms of my energy levels, I talked to my TCM doctor and he said that my Qi levels looked higher to him too and that my back was cleared up, so that gave me a feeling that my basic diagnosis for why things had gotten better was correct. But my energy level, even though it had gotten better, didn’t feel as good to me as it had a couple of weeks better; what was the difference there? My guess was that I needed to build more Qi in my Dantian, and if I could do that, it would be able to make it up my spine to my head, and that would help.

My first theory was that I should try Advanced Dantian Gong; and I am planning to do that once a week. Though if I want to give that a serious try, I should probably do it more often than that? But then one day I did Wu Ji for about 20 minutes; doesn’t sound like much, but honestly I’ve been doing other kinds of standing work most days for the last several months, so my Wu Ji was pretty sporadic. And when I did that, and got into a good position (relaxed and expanded properly, with my weight going down to my Yongquan in a way that let energy flow up) then, sure enough, my Dantian started feeling good and that feeling went up my spine and to my head. And I felt noticeably more awake that day, like I had a couple of weeks back.

So that’s my current theory / plan: I think my spine is in good enough shape that things can make it up my spine. (I had a good Spinal Dao Yin session, too, Qi was moving back from the center of my torso into my spine pretty readily during that session, so another sign that my spine is loosening up.) And I think my Wu Ji form / body preparedness is good enough that I can generate a noticeable amount of Qi. And, if I put those two things together, then good stuff happens inside my body in general and in my head in particular. So my plan is to try to find time to do 20 minutes of Wu Ji every day; I’ve been doing that the last few days, and my energy level has been noticeably better. I’m really feeling optimistic about this: it feels to me like something sustainable that will leave my health in a significantly better situation.

And also I’m optimistic because one of my other goals is to get to where I can kick off the Microcosmic Orbit without having to spend a week at a half at a workshop dedicated to that! But one of the big stumbling blocks there was that I just wasn’t convinced that I had enough juice, especially since my spine was iffy enough that I thought I needed some power to make it through the blockages there. But those are the exact same two areas where I think I’ve made progress recently. So hopefully I really will be able to kick off the MCO in a few months; I’ve started adding in the exercises right before the MCO lesson back in (Mixing Kan and Li, The Lesser Orbit, Orbit Preparation), and I’ve also gone back to my notes from the Maryland workshop and gone through an hour-long Qi thickening exercise from there. It’s a decent number of exercises, especially since I still want to work on some of the earlier ones (like the Line of Ming one), but hopefully I’ll make progress by chipping away at it, and hopefully with my energy levels I’ll have more days when I can work through multiple of those exercises.

Not the only thing I’ve been working on; and also the time for Wu Ji is taking away from other standing work. Some of that standing work had actually been from Damo’s Taiji course instead of Nei Gong work, and actually I feel like I’ve been regressing there: I feel like I was starting to feel Jin before but now that’s pretty faint. So I think the lesson there is that I should get serious enough about the Taiji course to carve out time specifically for that, instead of having it steal time from either my Nei Gong or my Chen Taiji; and, as part of that time, I should keep on mixing in the foundational exercises, spending more time on those than on the form. Though I definitely want to progress with the form, too, of course; and I want to pay attention to what Damo said about having the Jin constantly being on the move during the form.

And, to make the time crunch worse, I do want to stick with my newish plan of getting back to the Nei Gong course. (So I’ll alternate weeks between the two courses.) This last week was my second week working on Taiyi Hundun 1; I think maybe things are opening up inside a bit? It’s also the full moon, which had me working on that exercise, which is also related to opening the central channel. And I’m chipping away at the dragons; I watched a couple more Awakening Dragon videos and had one or two practice sessions on that specific dragon, and also I did my weekly session of all four; that latter one went well, Soaring Dragon in particular felt quite effective in terms of opening my chest.

Chen Taiji is going fine. It was raining so I couldn’t do my regular practice on Wednesday and Friday, but things were clear enough for class on Saturday, and that went well. Not as dramatic as the previous week but I felt more stuff moving around inside than had been my norm before this week, and push hands felt kind of interesting. And on Sunday I practiced the Guan Dao / staff / spear; I watched my teacher’s Guan Dao video to remind myself of a few points, and I was struck by how the circles of the Dao in the video looked, how they were flowing in a way that related to his body. So I tried to pay attention to that; and yeah, if I can get the weapon moving smoothly and balanced properly, then it goes in circles without too much effort, and I can feel the changes from the weapon feeding back into my body. So that was cool.

It’s supposed to rain some this Wednesday and Friday, but fortunately Christmas meant that I could practice Tai Chi on Monday as well, so I’ve gone through all my forms for the week. And if I’m lucky I’ll be able to get in practice tomorrow before the rain starts; we’ll see.