Extracts of discussions in the e-group at taichichen.com
By Tu-Ky Lam
Question: Can you clarify the confusion of Dan-tian rotation?
Hi Ralph and everyone,
The dan-tian rotation you describe in here is only a beginners' guide. Dan-tian rotation in the Taiji routines is much more complicated than that and is by no means for beginners or intermediate practitioners. Here are my experiences.
There are quite a few pre-requisites you need to tackle before you can do the dan-tian rotation.
You need to be able to sink qi (chi) to dan-tian, and comfortable with using reverse abdominal breathing.
You need to be able to use your waist (and legs) to move you hands, instead of moving your hands by themselves.
You need to be able to connect your arms and legs to dan-tian.
It takes about 365 hours (7 years if you practice at home one hour a week; 14 years if you practice half an hour a week. Many of my students practice only half an hour a week) of practice to be able to meet the first two requirements. It will take another 365 hours (it is the hours of practice you put in that count. It is misleading to say one has learned Tai chi for 20 years. People who have learned Tai chi for 20 years and practiced only half an hour a week will go nowhere.) of practice to be able to connect your arms and legs to dan-tian. So you can see dan-tian rotation is not easy to do. Only those who try hard can learn it.
Dan-tian rotation is used mainly by some (not all) Chen stylists (new frame). Others styles of Taijiquan do have this. Of course they can still borrow it from Chen style and use dan-tian rotation in their practice.
Before you start to do the dan-tian rotation, try to make your qi sink to dan-tian and breathe with your abdomen, and more importantly use your waist and chest to move your arms.
Connect your arms and legs to dan-tian is quite difficult. First imagine the internal organs in your lower abdomen is like a water ball (or balloon filled with water). Try to make your dan-tian sit on your legs. This is exactly the same as what I said "sit on our legs" before, but with our mind concentrating on dan-tian. (Exactly as what Mark said sit on a balloon.) The sitting helps to connect our legs to dan-tian.
If you can use your chest and waist to move your arms then connect your arms to dan-tian is easier. Stand in a posture as if you are doing a two-hand push-hands practice with the body weight more on the front leg. Imagine you are holding a big beach ball and your opponent is pushing your front arm. The beach ball give you support to receive your opponent's energy and let it go into your dan-tian. (This is also the same as Mark's description of pressurized dan-tian.) Of course your torso has to be straight to let qi or energy go in and out of dan-tian easily. (Remember head goes up and sit on legs. Push ground when we need to.)
The connection of our arms and legs to dan-tian will give our dan-tian strength to move our arms. Without this strength, dan-tian will just rotate by itself and have no connection or control of our arms at all. Now every move should initiates from Dan-tian. Dan-tian always moves first and drives our hips, legs and chest, which in turn will move our arms.
How does our dan-tian move? It does not jump everywhere like the balls in a Lotto machine on Saturday nights; nor does it go everywhere like a soccer ball in the football field. A lot of times, it just rotates horizontally - turning left and right with our waist, and does not usually rotate more than 90 degrees. (In the beginning, it may be easier if you can imagine the edge of dan-tian move rather than the whole dan-tian.) But at other times, it moves diagonally like when we do the last move in "The White Crane Spreads its Wings" or "Punch to the Groin" etc. Our dan-tian can also move back in a curve and then bounce forward again like when we do the last move in "Cannon Overhead" or "Dash to the Left" or "Dash to the Right".
To make dan-tian move our arms, we should always keep our arms round in our practice as if we are embracing a beach ball, and our arms should move in curves or spiralling circles. To start with, just use the edge of our dan-tian to move our arms. (Imagine there are two arms clamped to our dan-tian. The imaginary arms move our dan-tian and also our physical arms. The imaginary arms move exactly like the actual arms. Not sure if this visualization will help.) The easiest thing to do is: practice for many times "Change Palms Three Times" or "Bai Ba Qi Gong Zhuang" where our waists turn right and then left to move our hands (arms) in and out in a curve. Once we have got the hang of it, the rest will not be difficult.
I want to add that dan-tian alone cannot move our arms. Once it moves, the movement ripple through to our waist (including hips) and legs below and our chest above. It goes down to our feet first and then goes up to our hands in the way described by the Taiji classics: "The internal strength is rooted in the feet, released through the legs, controlled by the waist and manifested through the fingers." Some internal stylists think the internal strength originates from dan-tian while most others, from the feet. They look at things from different angles.
I have an article on dan-tian rotation on my site. This is a supplement to it.
Have a good and safe weekend.
Regards,
Tu-Ky