Abdominal Exercises and Qigong

[dissidente]

Any thoughts on whether abdominal exercises like crunches affect dantian / qi development?

Or perhaps there is a difference between doing normal crunches and more holistic exercises like those in pilates/yoga?

[Dave C.]

Or perhaps there is a difference between doing normal crunches and more holistic exercises like those in pilates/yoga?

Yes, there just might be.

The normal crunches etc. will build some useful connection of the torso to the lower body. It will also get the viscera loving around -- always a good thing.

But Pilates is a big step up. Pilates considers the entire torso as important and will help if your martial style considers the torso to be the dantien. Some versions of chen style like Hong Jun-shen's (sp?) do this. For those styles that emphasize whole body power (Gao style BGZ, xinhyi liu he, etc.), Pilates is tops.

The yoga that I do is a bit rare - svastha yoga. But it uses the dantien (as in the lower belly) as a catalyst to produce all movement. The dantien and the breath lift and lower the limbs in the yoga. This is a step up in complexity beyond Pilates and is more in line with IMA that treat the dantien as a separate power source. But this type of yoga is quite rare.

Hope some of that helped.

[dissidente]

That's very interesting information. Though some Chen styles may do direct abdominal exercises, I'm assuming that your implementation of Yoga is otherwise atypical of most neijia training systems.

I was especially curious because I know of neijia systems have weight training for arms via weapon work, etc, and legs (zhanzhuang), but nothing specifically for core strengthening exercises.

I think your point on using dantian for all movements is major, here.

I'm doing the negative portion of the dragon flag (done by Bruce Lee and in the Rocky movie), and various swiss ball exercises, which seem more whole-body and employing of complex muscle groups. I've to say it's been a while, and my lower back, near the bottom of the spine, hurts from the workouts. I think Yoga tells you to keep your back straight and butt tight during all core exercises, and I'm not sure if I always do that.

The muscles also feel sore round the dantian area, and so I can't seem to 'roll' my dantian as well as before. That was why I was curious about the effect of ab exercises on qigong.