Lower Dan Tien Attributes

[三江源]

I want to know more about the attributes associated with the lower dan tien other than simply energy storage. For instance they say the middle dan tien relates to emotions, and the upper dan tien to perception. So what about the lower dan tien, what are its attributes emotionally, mentally, ect.... ???

 

 

Here's a very clear answer from Michael Winn that could be helpful :

 

...<The> three dantian together reflect the trinity of the Life Force's three energetic streams of receptive/yin, creative/yang, and primordial/yuan... I experience it as a portal, an inter-dimensional opening...On one side of the portal is the external or manifest sea of chi, called dantian. On the other side of the opening is the inner formless sea of unborn chi, called "mingmen" , or the Door of Life...

 

Dantian is the inner space where our essence is refined and rebirthed. It receives chi from both the outer manifest world as well as flowing in formlessly through the Door of Life. This is where our "karma" or "destiny" chi is flowing in from our core self or soul.

 

Dantian is originally an ancient term borrowed from external or laboratory alchemy, where various herbs and minerals were fired in a round cauldron or alchemical furnace. So dantian implies a place where transformation occurs.

 

Dan literally means "elixir" or "pill" and tian literally means "field" or "open space". So it is the field where internal alchemists cultivated the Inner Elixir. The simple idea is that your body-miind contains the raw ingredients of higher consciousness, but that they need to be mixed together and cooked into a more refined state.

 

This "cooking" happens naturally in life as we face challenges and find the resources within to change and evolve who we are. Qigong and inner alchemy are just powerful ways to speed up that process of developing life wisdom. But it important to note that one's "field" does not automatically have an "elixir" or "pill" in it. That elxiir must be cultivated. Until then, your field is open space, it does not yet have any "dan" or fullness of the elixir in it yet.

 

Dantian in this sense is similar to the space of a woman's womb. It is an empty space, that potentially could become fertilized and grow the embryo of a physical child. But the process of spiritual pregnancy requires proper preparation....< through inner alchemy > fertilization and pregnancy can happen, and a special feeling is ignited... <it becomes > ready to rebirth a truly manificent inner child or newly embodied spiritual self.

 

[Maddie]

Ok previously I had started this thread about the lower dan tien in regards to energy level / fatigue issues. Now I am still pondering the LDT but in a new way. I am very curious to know about what effects it has on our mental / emotional / and sexual health?

 

Reason I ask is because I've been working on/with it more lately for some specific reasons, and have been feeling "different" ....

Edited February 25, 2011 by dmattwads

[Ada]

Always a pleasure to get to the bee's knees of it all -- thanks for supporting them, dwai and rene!

 

 

 

Well, e.g., the human eye. At the center of the macula, a single neuron connects to the optic nerve, and all the input filters down to a single point -- the rest of what you see is interpretations by the brain, which gets its whole scope of what you are looking at moment to moment in single-point entries (but VERY fast, which creates the illusion of continuity of your seeing). This is what a "point of view" really means: it is not panoramic, it is reduced to a single "point of oneness" -- the "one" being you when you're observing from "your point of view," or me when I'm observing from mine. This narrows down a voluminous and expansive reality to something that can fit a single point -- the observer -- at a single moment -- while you're looking. This reality is never real, because an infinite number of other points of observation exist simultaneously and independently of whether this particular observer is looking, and each of them registers a different "point of view" because it actually IS -- no two observers can occupy the same point of observation, no neuron at the center of the macula feeds into two brains simultaneously. Which to me challenges the whole "we are all one, and the only real time is right now" line of thinking tremendously, because it is blatantly a "point of view" (something that reduces to oneness and immediacy by anatomical default), and reality is not. But I digress...

 

Another example of a point that is not, under normal conditions, "voluminous and expansive" is an acupoint. It sits on a particular meridian and its mobility and "expanse" are limited to a fraction of a millimeter. If you suffer an injury that cuts a meridian, the whole meridian will move to circumvent the scar and position itself elsewhere, but it will move together with its acupoints, like a necklace -- you move it, all the beads on it move together.

 

Of course the needle you stick into an accupoint is an antenna that can connect it to other parts of reality if it is positioned correctly so that it starts to "receive" or "transmit." With acupuncture, you can turn a point "voluminous" and "expand" it to reach qi where it previously couldn't (whether inside your body or outside of it). If you need to keep it in this state for a length of time, you have to leave the needle in, however (this is occasionally done with auriculoacupuncture) or, to avoid the obvious inconvenience of having a needle stuck in you, use a tiny gold pellet instead to press on the point continuously. So an acupoint is "expandable" into "real reality," but not "expansive" by itself.

 

So... saying that the lower dantien "has volume and expanse" is another way to say "it is a phenomenon of real reality, not of the point-of-view kind."

 

 

 

I agree.

What about the dantien 2 meters underneath the body? Does anybody know something about that? Doesn't the different locations have a name besides upper, middle and lower?