Dantian -- north vs. south, hard vs soft

[Trick]

vertical, horizontal, diagonal, round and round spinning your imaginary inner belly button. some serious introspective navel gazing going on

I don't need any visible movement to do that ... but OTOH small movements in, for example, hand position in zhan zhuang with absolutely zero movement change the structure, outer shape, inner energy stuff in a tangible way. So if we are talking about something sort of "beyond" that, I'm curious in case anyone is willing to elaborate. If we're talking only about outer movement, not really as curious lol... unless maybe you could give an example with, say, basketball shots or golf shots or something "simple". No worries if not...

Sorry my post was not directed to your post. Just my general impression of what is talked in the thread.....I’m not an baseball or golf player, so I don’t know if they do any specific navel gazing exercises in order to do an home run or sink a put.

[Trick]

Making a circular rotation vertically or horizontally is too slow for many combat applications.

i also think using the word rotation causes confusion.

The horizontally rotation makes perfect sense when you apply the "切 (Qie) - front cut".

In that gif, is that dantian rotation? I’m askin because I actually don’t know how deliberate dantian rotations look. Does wrestling arts have specific dantian exercises - Greco/Roman, Judo, GJJ/BJJ, ShuaiJiao?

[everything]

We should have our wrestling experts answer, but it certainly doesn't seem to be the case in judo or bjj. "dantians" again are from Taoist arts. There aren't "third eye" or "heart center" moves in wrestling, either.

[jaime_g]

In that gif, is that dantian rotation

Nope, it's a hip swing. Useful for many things, but not horizontal rotation.

One easy way to check horizontal rotation is doing this:

Back against a wall, a partner puts a fist in your belly and leans with his weight into it. Dont touch him with your arms. Move him sideways without leaving the wall, just using belly area muscle movement. No hip thrust, no hip swing, no ass leaving the wall, no shoulder turning, just belly.

Once you can do that, put your chest against a wall, your partner puts a fist in your lumbar area and leans. Move him sideways using your lumbar area muscles. Dont leave the wall.

Once you can do this, you can think on using horizontal rotation in martial movements, turns, strikes, throws...

[robert]

Regarding translation of 轉 - I thought I'd point out there is one character, but two pronunciations (tones).
zhuan3 - to turn / to change direction / to transfer / to forward (mail)
zhuan4 - to revolve / to turn / to circle about / to walk about / classifier for revolutions (per minute etc): revs, rpm / classifier for repeated actions

A native speaker tells me

zhuan3 - you are walking, riding a bike or driving - turn left

zhuan4 - the earth rotates/spins/revolves/turns around it's axis

[everything]

vertical, horizontal, diagonal, round and round spinning your imaginary inner belly button. some serious introspective navel gazing going on

I don't need any visible movement to do that ... but OTOH small movements in, for example, hand position in zhan zhuang with absolutely zero movement change the structure, outer shape, inner energy stuff in a tangible way. So if we are talking about something sort of "beyond" that, I'm curious in case anyone is willing to elaborate. If we're talking only about outer movement, not really as curious lol... unless maybe you could give an example with, say, basketball shots or golf shots or something "simple". No worries if not...

Sorry my post was not directed to your post. Just my general impression of what is talked in the thread.....I’m not an baseball or golf player, so I don’t know if they do any specific navel gazing exercises in order to do an home run or sink a put.

not directing my posts at you or anyone here in particular. It seems there is always a lot of confusion, probably coming from many years and generations of confused knowledge passed down. I think it's far easier to separate things out temporarily:

1. neidan - comes from ancient Taoist practices, arts, sciences, medicine, cosmology, etc., mostly not having to do with MA. it's better to delve broader and deeper into this area if one wants to know about things like dantians.
2. musculoskeletal, biomechanical, CoG, producing a lot of force from moving one's center, etc. - that all great athletes are masters of, let alone IMA or MA practitioners.

once we do that, it's not really possible to confuse one for the other. we can try to have some "neijing" synergy, which presumably is the main topic of RSF (and it oddly doesn't get discussed here ... but RSF is great for other reasons).

we can produce a Tiger Woods without him doing neigong. A qigong or yoga master who has done a lot of work on dantians or chakras or other things might have immense difficulty with golf. Generally speaking it's probably FAR easier to get into meditation and then neigong than to have any success with golf. Heck, you can download an app now to wade in. https://rumsoakedfist.org/viewtopic.php ... 1ea726bea5

As LeBron James says in the commercial:

we're so focused on strength and we forget to strengthen our focus...while the greats master the body, the greatest master the mind

(such genius copy) and that's not really 1mm deep into the neidan stuff. it's "just" the Phil Jackson "Zen" stuff...

for the thread topic, I'd guess the "north" folks went into #1 and can't do #2. the "south" folks are expert at "2" but maybe didn't look into "1" as much. it doesn't make much sense there should be any conflict. the "navel gazing" should be immensely helpful for something like golf or basketball. there is already quite a lot written about that.

[everything]

it's weird that there is so often a false dichotomy put forward, especially here on rsf.

to get good at "2" (see above), for an ma context, generally one should get good at mma. but any given individual and most individuals will never be any good, at least not elite (by definition), just as in all sports and movement arts. we can be recreational level usually. we cannot all be olympic medalists. it just isn't going to happen (statistically).

to get good at "1" is also difficult. it's not a competitive sport, but it's not easy.

it doesn't make sense that if i'm recreational at "1" and it makes my "2" better, relative to myself, that i can do "2" better than an elite athlete. that makes zero sense at all. yet sometimes that's the false argument that seems to happen.

[Trick]

We should have our wrestling experts answer, but it certainly doesn't seem to be the case in judo or bjj. "dantians" again are from Taoist arts. There aren't "third eye" or "heart center" moves in wrestling, either.

tanden is also a concept in TJMA....(maybe borrowed from taoism)

[Bao]

We should have our wrestling experts answer, but it certainly doesn't seem to be the case in judo or bjj. "dantians" again are from Taoist arts. There aren't "third eye" or "heart center" moves in wrestling, either.

tanden is also a concept in TJMA....(maybe borrowed from taoism)

There has been many Chinese TCMA people living and teaching in Japan, as well as japanese studying TCMA in China, so the most simple answer is that it has been adopted from the Chinese martial arts to the Japanese.

[johnwang]

In that gif, is that dantian rotation?

Here is my concern. I can prove with video that waist rotation is useful in combat. Can anybody be able to prove that Dantian rotation can be used in combat?

If you don't even use the waist rotation, why do you even bother to use the Dantian rotation? Use Dantian rotation for what purpose?

[D_Glenn]

John,
In the first picture, the movement of the hips would be the same. The legs and hips are moving opposite the directions that the arms are moving. In Baguazhang the arms would be connected to the turning of the Dantian. Dantian and arms turning in the opposite direction of the scissoring leg, adds a tremendous amount of unstoppable torque to the throw.

And the second picture/ gif is not Dantian rotation.

[everything]

We should have our wrestling experts answer, but it certainly doesn't seem to be the case in judo or bjj. "dantians" again are from Taoist arts. There aren't "third eye" or "heart center" moves in wrestling, either.

tanden is also a concept in TJMA....(maybe borrowed from taoism)

I assume it’s the same... with the same confusion

[johnwang]

Dantian and arms turning in the opposite direction ...

That's exactly how you will train the linear "rhino guard".

When you move your hip to your

- right, your arm will move to your left.
- left, your arm will move to your right.

That's also exactly how you will train the circular "double spears".

When you rotate your hip

- clockwise, your arm will move clockwise.
- counter-clockwise, your arm will move counter-clockwise.

Since there is always a "delay" between your hip pulling your arm, the speed consideration should be an issue. When a fly flies in front of you and you want to use your hand to knock it down, you may not have time to start your power generation from your hip and then reach to your hand. So the true usage of hip rotation may have difficulty if lighting speed is needed.

Again, whether you want to call this hip rotation, waist rotation, or Dantian rotation, it makes no difference to me as long as you can make it works in combat.

And the second picture/ gif is not Dantian rotation.

Will you call this Dantian rotation?

Please notice the time delay between his waist movement and his arms movement. When his waist starts to move, his arms have not start to move yet.

[D_Glenn]

Basically, Dantian rotation is using the tendon and fascia that form muscle-tendon groups (jin mai), that with a lot of deliberate movement and thought, can be linked up to the deep muscles in your abdomen. Namely the deepest muscles called the Transverse Abdominal Muscles. So this can be trained to the point where, just by moving/ contracting your abdominal muscles, (which is not visible from the outside), you can move your arms in the same direction and add extra, almost a secondary power. So your arms are not just moving with the strength of your shoulders. They instead use the strength of your whole torso. The movement of the hips and pelvis is independent of the Dantian movement and is powered by your thighs.

Imagine that the pelvis is like a bowl of water you’re holding in your hands. and the Dantian is like a ball floating in the water. You could quickly spin the bowl but the Dantian won’t spin.

There of course needs to be a lot of loosening up in the abdomen and freeing up of the fascia that separates all the different layers which can allow the Dantian to be free from the hips. And be able to move with a great amount of speed.

.

[everything]

Nobody as far as I can tell thinks "dantian" is the same thing as anyone else seems to think. That's why I brought up the origins of it.

I strongly urge you guys go outside and try to hit 100 to 1000 golf balls using whatever rotation you like, and then come back and relate whatever you think is "dantian" rotation to this discussion. We have champions in shuaijiao like johnwang and other champs here. I defer to you guys on sports and biomechanics. Many top pro athletes in the world are actually quite good at it (as you might expect from the most coordinated people on the planet). However, golf is deceptively difficult and humbling (in a good way). It should be remarkably easy to talk about "center of the body" rotation with its simple examples. After that, I truly doubt we'll talk about "dantian" the same way.