Trick wrote:vertical, horizontal, diagonal, round and round spinning your imaginary inner belly button. some serious introspective navel gazing going on
Not navel gazing at all, but in fact a lot of practical physical exercise. Perhaps that's going over some people's heads.
everything wrote:... 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...
Nothing IMO will change your movements in tanglible way more than this if you've never done it. This is one of the missing keys for a lot of people. Tying this into the other neigongs is almost obvious. So-called "outer" movement and "inner" movement are connected. The videos provided above should be enough to get started. Another accessible source in the West is Dr. Yang's Taichi Qigong DVD. That's the only place I've senn it talked about in detail via English video.
D_Glenn wrote:In the Yin style Bagua I do, the Lion System has purely horizontal power. It takes a lot of dedicated practice but it’s using the transverse abdominal muscles, which can become really powerful and the amount of growth they can develop is essentially unlimited (Dantian just gets bigger and more solid). And the ability to contract gets faster. You have to develop the same skill used in Nauli Kriya because if you can completely relax one side, then the other half can contract more powerfully and quickly. Jinbao can even sync up the arms to the contraction, but sort of parsing out the degrees, so he can hit you with a turning of only say 10 degress, with more power than you can get out of a full length of contraction and 170 degrees of motion and momentum. It’s crazy. Most Chinese arts don’t ever delve this deeply into the horizontal power. It has to be felt first hand in order to understand the potential.
Thanks for chiming in. I was hoping you'd get the chance to respond. Thanks for pointing out what style you meant as it gives people direction where to get more good stuff in this vein. I found that bagua systems that overemphasize coiling make dantian movement hard to do but other systems with different body movement styles are more conducive to it. BTW, I've seen some Yin style people completely against the idea of a hard dantian and some Cheng style people definitely okay with it so the breakdown is 100% one way or the other. It seems to come down to the individual teacher.
I bolded the part you wrote about actually using the muscles and how the potential for the training is nearly unlimited. I think a lot of people miss this. Doing these physical exercises produces results on day one.It isn't some nebulous "do this for 20 years to be effective" thing. As you get into it, you can tell it can be endlessly refined. I guess that's why I'm so excited about it. Once you get the basics, there are more advanced teachings but it mostly depends on your willingness to do the exercises. I personally enjoy practices that encourage individual effort and this is certainly one of those.
johnwang wrote:The horizontally rotation makes perfect sense when you apply the "切 (Qie) - front cut".
Ok but we're talking about dantian movement, not hips. I think hip movment is widely understood. As I have already said, full circular dantian rotations maye be good for larger,slower apps like throws and push hands but many of the Fujian systems (granted not all) train, shorter, sharper dantian movements for rapid-fire punches and other hand techniques.
C.J.W. wrote:I suppose there's some confusion at play here due to translation. The original term for dantian rotation in Chinese is 轉丹田, with 轉 often translated as "to rotate" or "rotation." However, 轉 can also simply mean to "turn" with the connotation of "adjusting and changing angles." The meaning that better describes dantian movement in combat, IMO, is the latter.
Yes, this is causing a lot of confusion. i was confused in Chinese for years because how the 丹田 was 轉ing wasn't being made clear. "Dantian breathing" helps in a way because people can at least picture it moving in and out but HOW it's moving still isn't clear from the term and often people aren't more specific about what they mean. As I said elsewhere, loose kungfu-ey clothing doesn't help.