Recently one of our new online Qigong class students posed a question about the Dan Tian. At the end of most all of our postures we do a maneuver called ‘collecting in the qi’ (my loose translation of 收功), in which, while moving the hands down in front of us and sinking, we visualize everything in the body returning down to the Dan Tian (丹田), the space in the abdomen between the navel and Ming Men (命門). As I frequently point out in class, our’s is the Neigong (i.e., Qigong) in the lineage/tradition of Hu Yaozhen (胡耀真), one of my great-grand teachers, and a key feature of this tradition is the almost constant focus on Dan Tian.
The Dan Tian, from a colorized version of the Diagram of the Inner Landscape 內經圖 found at the White Cloud Temple 白雲觀 in Beijing.
A common English translation for Dan Tian is the ‘elixir field.’ The word ‘tian’ (田) just means field. The word ‘dan’ (丹) is a bit more complicated. One meaning of the word is cinnabar, a scarlet-red mineral form of mercury sulfide (HgS) that is a common ore source used for refining pure liquid mercury. Since Daoists used mercury as one metaphor in their descriptions of the meditative processes used for transcendence or immortality (and in some unfortunately cases experimented with ingesting actual mercury while seeing the same), the term ‘dan’ became associated with the process of spiritual transformation. ‘Dan’ and the compound term ‘Dan Tian’ thus becomes a synecdoche - a stand in for the entire process of cultivation. It is the symbolic elixir that, when taken, confers a higher state. Hence, the translation of Dan Tian as ‘elixir field’ – the place that is used to create the elixir of immortality and transcendence.
In the body, the Dan Tian is conceived of as a physical location, although the physicality of Dan Tian is a topic of debate. For our purposes however, we will take it as a physical location. Properly speaking, there are three Dan Tian in the body: an upper (上丹田), middle (中丹田), and lower (下丹田). There are some slight variations on the locations of these three structures depending on the source. Most agree that the upper Dan Tian is located in the head. The middle Dan Tian is sometimes associated with the area of the chest, that location that in Chinese medicine is referred to as the Sea of Qi 氣之海 (not to be confused with the acupuncture point of the same name), or the Tan Zhong 壇中. In Hu Yaozhen’s lineage, we located the middle Dan Tian not in the chest, but rather in the abdomen between the navel and Ming Men. Hu Yaozhen then places the lower Dan Tian at the base of the abdomen in the pelvic cavity, just above Hui Yin 會陰 – the perineum. While a large number of modern Qigong texts situate the middle Dan Tian in the chest, it is interesting to note that in some older texts it is located in the abdomen as Hu teaches. For example in the Yuji Qiqian (雲笈七籤), an anthology of the Daoist Canon written circa 1029, the middle Dan Tian is associated with the middle jiao, the abdomen, and the area ‘below the heart’ (心下).
Regardless of the variations, somewhere in the area of the abdomen seems to be the most important of the Dan Tian used in various schools of meditation, Qigong, martial arts, etc… But why is this? Why is it so important?
A large (about 4 inches from top to bottom) piece of Cinnabar ore 硃砂 in my private collection.
For Chinese medicine practitioners this is an interesting question. If we look at the earliest of Chinese medicine cannons, we can’t find the term ‘Dan Tian.’ For example, the only chapter of the Huangdi Neijing that mentions it is the Treatise on the Origin of Disease (本病論). Unfortunately, this is one of the two apocryphal chapters of the Su Wen. While it may have been in circulation for over 1000 years by now, it is most likely not original to the Han Dynasty version of the text and was not a chapter Wang Bing would have seen or worked with in writing his highly important and definitive edition of the Neijing. That said, the abdomen is an important location. Most of the Zang Fu are located there. Furthermore, highly important vessels originate in the abdomen. For example, according to the Treatise on Bone Hollows (SW60 骨空論), the Chong, Ren and Du all originate from a location in the abdomen. These are extremely important vessels, with the Ren and Du respectively being tied to the core Yin and Yang of the body. For example in the Song Dynasty text Xi Shang Fu Tan (席上腐談) the Ren and Du are called the Seas of Yin and Yang (陰陽之海). The Chong is associated with all the channels, and in the Treatise on the Seas (LS33 海倫) the Chong is said to be the Sea of the 12 Channels (衝脈者，為十二經之海) – i.e., all the channels. Clearly, even though the Dan Tian is not mentioned by name, the abdomen is tied to basically all the important structures of the body.
While the Nanjing (Classic of Difficulties) does not specifically mention the Dan Tian either, it does get a little closer in identifying the Kidneys and the Moving Qi between the Kidneys (i.e., the Ming Men) as being core aspects of our vitality. The idea of Ming Men the way we conceive of it today is absent from the Neijing, unless of course you are a creative reader in the way that Zhao Xianke was (there’s a good Chinese medicine inside reference for you!). This Moving Qi between the Kidneys, in addition to being associated with the Ming Men, have also been associated with the Dan Tian by some physicians. For example, the 66th Difficulty says that, “the Qi moving below the navel and between the Kidneys are a human’s life. They are the origin and root of the twelve channels, and thus are called source” (臍下腎間動氣者，人之生命也，十二經之根本也，故名曰原). Yang Xuancao, a commentator writing in the 7-8th c. CE said of this line that, “the Qi moving below the navel and between the Kidneys are the Dan Tian. The Dan Tian is a human’s origin and root” (臍下腎間動氣者，丹田也。丹田者，人之根本也). Yang continues with a beautiful description of the Dan Tian that is too long to quote in its entirety here, but, for example, he says that the Dan Tian is yellow in the center, green-blue on the left, white on the right, red on top, and black on the bottom. This of course is just metaphorical language that says the Dan Tian in the abdomen is connected to all of the Five Phases, and thus all the organs and all the channels.
It may very well be that this sort of medical theory that we see in the Nanjing, and not in the Neijing, arose because of the influence of people such as the inner alchemists and Daoists – an example of cultivational literature influencing medicine (we see many other examples of the opposite of course). Some of the more conservative medical commentators (i.e., the Neijing purists) have pointed this out as a criticism, and an example of adding theory to medicine that has no legitimate right being there. I’ll let my medical providing readers decide for themselves if they find these ideas relevant to their clinical practices.
Hua Tuo’s Chart of Neigong from the writings of Hu Yaozhen (who was probably the actual author of the chart). Notice the upper Dan Tian in the head, and the lower Dan Tian just above the perineum. The middle Dan Tian is located in the space level with the navel, although here called the ‘Entrance Hall’ - a Buddhist term.
Aside from our discussion of medicine, the Dan Tian is described extensively in the literature of internal alchemy and other aspects of Daoism (which in turn become some of the important sources from which Neigong/Qigong concepts of Dan Tian spring). For example, the Direct Pointers to the Great Elixir (大丹直指 DZ 244), a Quanzhen text attributed to the Daoist master Qiu Chuji (1148-1227 CE), discusses Dan Tian as a part of the process of cultivating transcendence. It says that the navel at the center of the body is the Central Palace (中宮), which it also identifies as an alternate name for the Dan Tian (但臍在人身之中，名曰中宮、命府、混沌、神室、黃庭、丹田). The Direct Pointers goes on to say that the Dan Tian stores essence and marrow, and connects the hundred channels and nourishes the entire body (此處包藏精髓，貫通百脈，滋養一身).
In Hu Yaozhen’s teaching, the meditative process of bringing attention down to the abdomen is called the Three Senses Return to the One (三性歸一). In reality the number three here is a symbol for all of the senses, not just literally three of them. By bringing the meditative focus to the interior we can induce a still calmness. I am not qualified to talk about this from a real internal alchemy or Daoist perspective, but certainly this inward focus can have a profound effect on centering the mind and pulling us back into a state of centered focus. In other words, it helps to tame the monkey mind that is our norm. Even in the clinic I will often ask patients undergoing acupuncture to simply bring their focus down to their abdomen and breathe deeply. In terms of Tung’s acupuncture this is another example of how we apply the Moving Qi (動氣) needling method that is a part of achieving De Qi (得氣 – for more on what De Qi really is please see my class on classical treatment strategies expressed in Tung’s acupuncture). But I digress…
Aside from inducing calm centeredness, the cultivation of Dan Tian, from both the alchemical and medical perspectives presented above, must also have a beneficial health effect on pretty much all the channels and organs. If the Dan Tian is connected to everything and nourishes the entire body, it means that a robust Dan Tian leads to robust health.
Hu Yaozhen may very well have focused heavily on the Dan Tian because one of his main teachers was a Daoist master and practitioner of inner alchemy by the name of Peng Tingjun (彭庭隽), and Peng in turn was a disciple of a Daoist hermit by the name of Huo Chengguang (霍成光). It is from Peng that most of Hu’s Neigong came down to us. To be honest, I think the better question is why don’t all schools of Neigong/Qigong focus more on the Dan Tian? It would seem natural to me that it be a major part of most every posture in one way or another.
I hope my short musings help stimulate more thought, as they have for me just sitting down, collecting my thoughts, and putting them to paper (or screen as the case may be). Whether you, the person reading this, are a physician, Qigong practitioner, or just someone interested in East Asian medicine or cultures, I hope thinking about the role of Dan Tian deepens your own practice.