“dantien=abdomen (or at least work synonymously).”
Origenx—well, the dantien is in the lower abdomen, so yes, for this discussion I’m kind of talking about them as the same thing—maybe somebody with more knowledge would differentiate, but I would have to think that they work synonymously. With huiyin cavity I mean the anus.
So, what I’m saying is that while we’re sitting here typing on a computer, we’re doing normal breathing—that is, our abdomen expands when we inhale, and draws in when we exhale. But if I want to emit energy—say my cat is clawing up the furniture and I want to yell at him—when I yell “get off that goddamned chair!”, my body naturally reverses the normal breathing pattern(it goes to reverse breathing)-- when I inhale to yell, my abdomen draws in, and as I yell, I’m exhaling sharply and my abdomen pushes out and compresses. This is the same pattern that the body goes through in ANY circumstance that it has to emit energy.
The way I’ve been taught to do the slo-mo Taiji form is to keep this exact pattern—the same way you would use reverse breathing for the full power strikes, you breathe for the slo-mo form—you just slow everything down a lot and stretch it smoothly over the time it takes to do the posture. As far as the huiyin cavity—maybe that depends on the invidual as to whether the movement is synonymous with the abdomen on power emission. I just know that one time I was doing slow soft qigong, and the teacher reminded us to coordinate the huiyin with the breathing, and I hadn’t been doing it.
"However, having studied a couple kinds of kung fu, we usually restrict the abdomen (ie the dan tien) when “emitting”. This is accompanied by a yell of “ha” for backfists, “yeet” for leopard fists, “deek” for kicks and “seet” for roundhouse punches. I don’t quite get this breathing out and expanding the dan tien. Any thoughts on why this is better? Could I apply this “Taoist” breathing to kung fu, a shaolin “buddhist” derived martial art? "
Fu Pow, to my understanding, as you described it you’re already applying Taoist (reverse) breathing to your kung fu. I tend to call it “exhailng while expanding the dantien”, because when you’re doing the form in slo-mo, the exhalation and expansion is long and slow. But when you do an offensive Taiji jing fast, you yell “ha” during a sharp exhalation, and compress or restrict the dantien as you described.
I’m not going to deny that there’s some major differences between Taiji and the limited experience i"ve had with external styles, but in my opinion the breathing pattern for application has to be largely the same, because that’s just how the human body works.
