Waking Up the Lower Dantien
All serious martial artists are always striving for martial excellence. Very much like monks strive for enlightenment, there are many paths to enlightenment, just like there are many paths to martial excellence.
In my practice of 37 years in Chinese martial arts I have heard many theories; here are some examples; as I workout harder I get?, as I get faster it seems? Timing is everything, and the one I have heard the most is now that I know all of these movements I can? When true efficiency really depends on being at one with the movement. Not how hard I push it, or how fast I become, yes timing does help, but having a lot of movements is over rated.
If one person has practiced ten root basic movements, and another person has learned and practiced two hundred and fifty movements with basics included, with both practitioners studying for the same amount of time, I will always bet on the one with less movements to prevail, because having to many movements without understanding the first few only causes confusion.
Here is an example of how one traditional shaolin root basic becomes many things. If you take something simple like stepping forward and add the five elements, then add the right amount of weight distribution, put in how much forward & how much back, then allow for a certain amount of openness in the joints and body, add in proper breathing, you now actually have a minimum of ten things, and a maximum of infinity. Also known as true openness, or also known as the proper balance of yin & yang. So we haven’t talked yet about the lower dantien, the reason is because I feel a lot of practitioners must first have a little understanding of how one thing is not really one thing. One thing is many things, and many things are one thing.
This same idea applies to dantien movement. If I learn a lot of movements and forms and then believe I can add the dantien movement later as I become more developed (proficient) with my moves, this in fact is possible. But the problem is dantien always leads the movement, so going about using the dantien in this way is after the fact, and the proble with taking this path is the dantien always end up following the movement instead of the movement being lead by the dantien. So that is why dantien movement or waking up the lower dantien is considered to be one of the root practices, so before a person learns too many movements he or she should first have a basic understanding of dantien movement, and do some very basic root practices that are designed to wake up the lower dantien, this type of root practice should be done after a person has become more familiar with centerdness or internal balance, which only comes out of having your mental, emotional, and physical levels of mind in order and in balance, and this comes from another root practice called ‘observation of thought’.
OT teaches a person how to get out of there own way, so naturalness can come through, it also teaches you who you are, and what you think about; through the understanding of self a martial artist then will begin to understand how the dantien works, and this is the beginning process of waking up and using the lower dantien.
