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It's been a while. 

A long while. 

What's been happening?

Lots.

Life.

Global pandemic. 

Getting older.

On Dec 16, 2020 I began Tom Bisio's online Ba Gua Zhang program. Now six months in.

I started the practice one per day. Usually in the mornings before the rest of the family woke up. Then in the afternoon, on my lunch hour, I would jump into the garage and do my typical workout - some sort of weight training, kettlebells, clubbells, gymnastic bodies and some cardio. Nowadays, I still do my early morning session and in the afternoon, I do more ba gua.

Morning routine rests around standing meditation, or post standing. Typically now between 20-25 minutes. This includes Wu Ji, Embrace, and Floating Ball posture. Then depending on the time and my mood, qi cultivation exercises, linear mud walking, maybe phoenix stretch. 

Afternoons have recently, with the warmer weather, been based around circle walking. I now practice working through each of the ten postures. Either 3 minutes each, or 6 times around the circle (split in half for each direction) for a total of about 30 minutes. Then follow up with the 12 Standing Postures linked together, yin yang patting, joint rotations out of the Ji Ben Nei Gong series, crane stepping, phoenix walking, and plum blossom stepping patterns.

Over the past several weeks things have been getting real. Lots of those things that you hear people say about how things might feel that you never believe are starting to develop.

In the morning, first thing, I practice dao yin. At the end, as I sit and breathe, I can feel the energy in all of the individual areas swirling around. I can feel the energy in the bottoms of my feet now rising up toward my knees. I can feel it in my face. My chest. My arms. Kidneys. Dantien.

While practicing standing meditation, definitely feeling something stirring and moving around in my Dantien. It's not a ball rolling as some describe it, but more like a pancake flipping. At least that how it feels right now.

And when performing the opening preparatory posture, as my arms raise out to the sides, for about the first third of the movement, it feels like my arms are being inflated with air. They are raising, but it doesn't feel like I am doing it with my muscles.

So this blog is now more about me putting some of these things down in writing so that I don't forget what's been going on with my practices.

Stay tuned for more.