Storing Ch’i in the Tan-T’ien (Response to Drew Hempel, from The Tao Bums)

I guess the question for us both is how the chi comes to be “stored” in the tan-t’ien. Chunyi Lin seems to encourage you to think the long sitting will work the trick for you; his remark about looking at how long someone can sit the lotus to see if they’ve mastered energy says it all, in that regard.

I realize that there can be a feeling of absorption occasioned by impact when consciousness occurs in the vicinity of the tan-t’ien, and this is a pleasant thing, which informs my sense of location along with the feeling of near-pain occasioned by other impact of consciousness at stretches away from the tan-t’ien. I think I have a natural affinity for this feeling of absorption, and that affinity constitutes the storing of ch’i at the tan-t’ien in the parlance of Chinese martial arts. We’ll see!

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