Tai Chi’s crotch dantien — how to store and release energy in the legs
In Tai Chi we all know we are told we should “round the crotch area” — sometimes called “kua”, but more accurately “dang” in Chinese — but why? What does that mean anyway? I’m going to try and unpack this little Tai Chi mystery with this post.
The three dantiens
There are three main dantiens (a kind of shorthand for “hubs of power”) in the body that Tai Chi is concerned with. Firstly there’s the main one in the lower belly, which acts as a nexus, or control point for the whole body, but slaved to it are two other dantiens — the chest dantien above it and the crotch dantien below it.
There are clear parallels here to the idea of chakras in Yogic folklore, and indeed there are more “dantiens” in the Chinese system that relate to the other chakra locations in the body too, but for the purposes of internal martial arts, it’s the crotch and chest dantiens that are most important.
These dantiens are points where you can use to store force that can be used in the release of power in the way that the internal martial arts express it — i.e. from the ground to the point of application.
It’s often said that Tai Chi is “boxing with the legs”, and this relates to the use of the crotch dantien. The crotch dantien is located at the Hui Yin point, which is between the legs, but the knees are also in the domain of the crotch dantian, so, you need to think of the crotch dantien as the legs, hips and crotch all working together.
So what is that supposed to feel like? Well, It’s a bit like sitting on a space hopper or sitting on a gym ball — that feeling of grasping something with the inside of your legs, but not too forcefully.
When you take up your stance in Tai Chi you should feel this ‘energy’ inside that leg arch, as if you are sitting on a space hopper. That’s not exactly a scientific way to describe it, but hopefully, you get the idea.
Your knees are involved too: when you rotate one leg forward, the other leg must rotate backwards to keep the grip on the ball. This forms the action of opening and closing, and is part of the overall action of opening and closing that is going on all over the body.
Squeezing the ball
As you move through the Tai Chi form you ‘squeeze’ this ball between your legs (just as you do a space hopper). So the crotch (the part of the body where the legs join the torso) can close on one side of the body and open on the other, but the feeling of there being something there is maintained throughout.
In Zhan Zhuang practice you get a lot of people describing holding a balloon between the legs, or a ballon supporting your limbs — that’s the same idea, and with enough practice it can actually start to feel like this.
While the space hopper or balloon may be imaginary, the feeling isn’t. It reminds me a lot of the verse in the Tao Te Ching about the value of what’s not there:
“Thirty spokes share the hub of a wheel; yet it is its center that makes it useful. You can mould clay into a vessel; yet, it is its emptiness that makes it useful. Cut doors and windows from the walls of a house; but the ultimate use of the house will depend on that part where nothing exists. Therefore, something is shaped into what is; but its usefulness comes from what is not.”
This feeling of buoyancy in the crotch dantien forms part of the way the power is transferred from the legs to the torso, and ultimately out to the fingers.
Store and release
Trying to focus on just developing this crotch power while doing the whole Tai Chi form isn’t optimal, as there are too many other things going on at once. In terms of training this power, traditionally it’s common to stand in a low horse riding stance for a long period of time. However, I think that is really more about building leg strength though, so while there’s nothing wrong with it, I’d rather point you towards a moving exercise to best practice what I’m talking about.
Instead I’d recommend focussing on the crotch danten while doing the following simple single-arm wave silk reeling exercise, like the one I demonstrate in this video:
It’s important to stress again that there is no actual ball of energy between your legs — it’s just a useful metaphor for helping you get the right feeling for the particular winding in the legs and hips that helps produce power through the store and release mechanism in the horizontal plane.
As you turn one way then the other, the windings of the legs result in opening and closing actions which store power, that can be released into movement.
This is another reason why you really need to turn the waist a lot in side-to-side motions in Tai Chi Chuan (usually a lot more than you think). Without sufficient turning of the waist, you’re just not getting the hips and legs involved enough and activating their store and release potential for power.
The Tai Chi move ‘Wave hands like clouds’ is a good example of correct waist usage, if you would like a move out of Tai Chi to practice instead.
My Tai Chi teacher always admonishes me to ‘relax the waist’ when he’s critiquing my form. Over the years I’ve learned that what he’s really asking me to do is increase the range of movement that my waist goes through. Obviously, stiffness inhibits the range of motion of the waist, but just realising that you need to turn more than you are currently doing is a valuable insight in itself. And now hopefully you can understand the reasons why.
I hope that helps.
