Hello everyone! This is not exactly 'Alchemy' related, but in a way I guess it could be! My wife and I just got back from a weekend trip to southern Italy (we live up north in the Tuscany region) where we visited a tenuta (farm) that specializes in producing some of the BEST Buffalo mozzarella cheese in the country. !00% organic, this herd of over 600 buffalo are kept completely clean and healthy and most importantly - HAPPY! They sleep on memory foam mattresses, listen to Mozart, and have massages all day at their leisure. It was SO interesting. The milking machines are completely automated, so typically twice a day they let themselves in through gates, and sidle up to the machine where they are automatically milked and then washed. The milk is then computer analyzed to verify its purity and cleanliness. Seeing the buffalo live like this was truly wonderful! They have become extremely civilized, even patiently waiting in a queue to get milked, or to use one of the massage machines. Fun to watch! They only limit their production to 400 kilograms per day which is about 20% of a similar sized corporate ranch would produce. They only sell their cheese in small quantities to the local families in limited amounts. They also make wonderful gelato and yogurts, butter and have a fantastic bakery on the property as well. Like i said, not exactly Tai Chi related, but just wanted to share some pics if anyone cares to see. I find the videos I took simply mesmerizing, and I keep catching myself watching with a dumb grin on my face - lol. Thanks - and sorry for the long post! ☮️

Intention: On a longer horizon, my intention is to build a steadily strengthening practice. I am happy to be about 5 weeks into this journey. Practice: right now I am alternating between recorded sessions of Yin Yang Qigong from the archive and the most recent sessions. Today was yin and yang. After: I really enjoy this progression of movements. I always feel better after my practice. Also, I had an interesting dream last night in which I was reflecting on yin and yang and connecting it to the concepts of action and contemplation. These ideas are already central to my spiritual life, and I was marvelling in my dream how neatly these ideas map onto yin and yang. This made my practice extra meaningful this morning.

I've been doing quite a bit of 8 Pieces lately. I don't want to get stuck on it to the exclusion of other practices, but it does provide a thorough full body workout, is easy to remember, and to practice almost everywhere. So a few questions: 1) I did a version of it the other day in my garden where I slowed all the movements right down, and interspersed them with some extended static poses: it felt really good but to my surprise it had taken a good hour and a half; often, I feel I practice too fast, but slow seemed to really work with Brocades -- how valid an approach is that? 2) Archer I've mentioned elsewhere: I tend to take the stance very low, about as low as I can take it, and incorporate elements from actual archery I did years ago (I must take that back up again!) so I look down the imaginary arrow as if I'm aiming a real one, try to "feel" the weight of the imaginary draw in what would be the bow and the string hand; 3) Punching: although I did the rest of Eight Pieces very slow, I felt the vibe to do Punching quite fast, compensating time-wise by doing more rounds of it than the other elements, and putting some force into the blow as if it were an actual martial arts practice; 4) Kidneys, on the way up my legs I like to exert gentle massage pressure on some problematic leg veins, especially around my right knee which gives me problems from an old injury, I also when down touching my ankles put a bit of acupressure on some points there, I do something similar with ones in the knee in other movements. I don't always do Brocade slow, and generally when not following live or recorded sessions I think I tend to practice QG too fast, left to my own devices. But this seemed to work. Any advice most welcomed!

My cat really enjoyed my Qi session this morning 🤣

Im at the beginning of my journey and am pleased to have a community to join me in my learning