Q: I've practiced a good slew of chi gong and tai chi methods from famous teachers. They make me feel great. But one thing I don't understand from any of their stuff and not from yours either is what's with all the talk about energy in the dantian abdomen? I do all the difference kinds of reverse breathing and marrow breathing and breath of fire etc. They feel cool while I'm doing them. But I don't think I'm feeling all this dantian resonance that you always write about. I've also learned internal martial arts drills where they say move the dantian or move the dantian energy or move from the dantian etc and those feel good too, but still feels just plain physical. You seem to be saying there's something more. Am I missing something here or frankly is your stuff just made up fantasy, or what are you talking about with the whole dantian angle?
A: I can't comment on other specific other people's stuff and i cut out the names of teachers and methods that you mentioned. However I can assure you 100% that if you practice my stuff, the Tai Chi, Xing Yi, Mantis, and Yi Quan drills that I call out, based on the ARC concepts that I've written up. eventually your lower torso overall, not just your dantian as a 'point' will absolutely resonate with extreme vibratory power. You will experience it as local 'hard wave' in lower torso, which you can learn to transition to whole-body 'soft wave' washing though, which in turn you can relocalize on mental command back to a tight integratoni in the lower torso again, kind of a storage or zipped mode (in the sense of the compressing utility on macos and unix, zip). You can begin by learning to isolate and experience the dantian as a point (i've given lots of drills for that work in my books), and after a while the supercharged zone around there will expand or overflow well beyond the 'dantian as a point' mode.
You'll realize that your entire lower torso is super-charged, including: dantian point, guts, hips, pelvis, sacrum, coccyx, butt, femoral sockets, and perineum. I call this entire assemblage MUX (Muladhara Unit Extension) because the Muladhara in yoga is the huiyin (會陰) point at the root of this unit.
Yes many teachers talk about dantian but for them it's usually either: a solitary 'chakra' point on the microcosmic chain; or else they teach dantian as a surrogate for hip movement, giving physical exercises for rotating or tensing your abdomen. All those things aren't bad but none of them are what I'm talking about.
You'll know you're on the right track when you can start with the following:
(i) Stand normally, nothing special.
(ii) Relax shoulders and arms by your sides, nothing special.
(iii) Very gently, very minimally, move your lower torso or hips. This could be as simple as just very slightly, very gently bending your upper body forward just a degree or so, causing a very very slightl physical 'compression' in your trunk. Or something similar.
(iv) If you really are starting to have the power, you'll instantly feel the massive energetic response in your torso.
You entire lower torso/MUX will respond instantly and reverberate with your movement, as though you had struck a giant gong with a mallet. The vibes will literally kind of 'earthquake' through your entire torso, guided by your mind and your very minimal, very gently physical gesture of motion. Then you'll know, beyond any teacher's description or discussion, that you're on the right track. But most people are too tense in their body and too narrow in their minds to get out of their own way and allow this to happen.
The picture above (from '5G Tai Chi' book) shows the approximate area of the MUX. The flat white disc represents the position of the activated Muladhara as base of the MUX. The main purpose of all this work is to train the lower body as Yukiyoshi Sagawa emphasized. But most Qi Gong methods emphasize arm stretching and flapping much more, because arm stuff is vastly easier for regular people to do. If they address hip or lower body work at all, it becomes just a physical calisthenic.
I will show how to internally train the lower body power, corresponding to Sagawa's mandate, in my forthcoming tutorial film: "The Hot Zone: ZMQ Tai Chi as Apex Nei Gong". It's not easy but it's amazing.