Journal Entry–in retreat, Winter Solstice, etc.

PRACTICE RECORD (so far as of 6:30pm):

11:35am-11:55am I-Chuan
12:00pm-12:50pm Tao Yin
1:00pm-1:15pm Primordial Qigong
2:05pm-2:15pm Qigong Warmups
2:20pm-2:40pm Ocean Breathing
2:50pm-3:20pm Five Animals
3:30pm-4:50pm Inner Smile Meditation
4:55pm-5:10pm Big Dipper Qigong

JOURNAL ENTRY:

6:30pm
I am now currently in a remote location
at a hermitage for my annual winter retreat.
There is no phone access, and only very limited
internet access (if I drive to the main building).
My time is spent full time in cultivation
and in the quiet solitude of a winter forest.

I decided to drive in to record some of the
earlier activities of the day because in part
my body is sore and I needed a short break
(I had a lot of energy earlier, so I did a lot of
physical qigong as opposed to doing a lot of
sitting alchemy or meditation).

However, another reason for coming in was already
today on the lead-up to the Winter Solstice
event tonight, I had some amazing experiences.
For some reason today I felt compelled to return
to some of the fundamentals practices, in particular
a lot of practices from QF1. I have to admit
that I haven’t done the Five Animals in a while, or
Ocean Breathing . . . but I’m glad I did.

I did twenty minutes of Ocean Breathing with some
deep internal focus, and it about knocked me on
my ass! I remember it feeling good, but nowhere
near the intensity I was experiencing. There
was just this HUGE inner pulsation of qi
expanding in and out of my dantian. It was amazing.

Later I started doing the Five Animals. I almost
didn’t even want to do them. I had moved on in my
practice to other things, and it felt like “old school”,
but I decided to do it anyway as I took that feeling
to be resistance. At any rate, here I am in my
hermit cabin doing the Five Animals against the back drop
of winter woods, and I get to the Deer Movement.
Suddenly, right as I start doing Deer, two deer appear
out of nowhere, and run right past my bay window.
I’ve been at the hermitage for four days now, and I’ve
not seen any deer yet, but as soon as I started doing
deer–at the EXACT MOMENT–two deer race by the window.
My jaw hit the floor. The two deer ran around the
hermit cabin completely circling it. They would
stop periodically, and every time I would make the
springing movement during the Deer movement, the
two deer would leap forward to a new location, and
pause waiting for the next movement. I’m just shaking
my head the whole time, thinking to myself “this is
too much; I can’t honestly believe what I’m seeing”.
I finished doing Deer, and decided to temporarily stop
and look out the window and check out the deer. The deer
were now several hundred feet away from my cabin now and
just standing there. But then, almost as if they were
now bored that I had quit practicing their movement, they
leaped away with three others I hadn’t seen that were
hiding behind some trees. I never saw them the rest of
the day.

At any rate, I’m going back to my hermit cabin now to
eat supper, and then round out the remainder of the
evening with my last blitz of qigong and meditation
before my Winter Solstice ceremony tonight.

I wish you all well!

Lots of love to all!
Steven