Your Body’s Dantien

Do You Want More Peace?

Have you heard of dantien? How would you like to be more grounded and centred, even as you are walking around and going about your day?  If you have meditated or practiced relaxation you will be familiar with the inner peace and calmness you experience after a session.

It is a feeling of harmony with the world.  Life feels as if it flows effortlessly and carries you along.  You feel connected to yourself, other people and to the universe.

Eastern philosophy and martial arts talk of a point within the body that is generally described as two or three finger widths below the belly button.  If you put your attention there you can get a sense of there being something fixed but not solid.  It is a sensation of grounded-ness, of stability, of potential.

I first heard of this point in 2003 when I did a one-day training in psychocalisthenics. Psychocalisthenics is an exercise routine that you can do at home with nothing but comfortable clothing.  15 minutes of 23 stretching and movement exercises combined with disciplined breathing is designed to awaken all muscle groups and increase energy flow throughout the body.  Practiced regularly it offers clarity of mind, strength of spirit and body.

Anyway, back to the centre point.  This point has various names, Dantien being one or Dan Tien or Dan Tian.  You don’t have to be practicing a martial art to tap into the power and peace that comes from ‘living’ from this place.

When you place your awareness here, or you feel as if you are moving, breathing and living from there something different, new and extraordinary happens.  You experience greater effortless-ness in being or doing.  No matter what your task, being conscious of this point and allowing this Dantien point to be the lead will increase your awareness, relaxation, power and integrity.

Excerpts from Principles of Effortless Power by Peter Ralston page 10…

There is more to “intelligence” than that which we attribute to intellect…When we put our feeling-attention in the center region, a place located in the lower abdomen, we shift our mode of intelligence.  The more our attention is fully centered, the greater the shift in our mode of consciousness.  Centering is perhaps the best way to calm our thoughts and emotions.  Putting attention and feeling in the center region of the body allows a shift to a state of being that is calm, nonthinking but aware, balanced, in-the-body, grounded, present and alive.