Flat Stomach Improved Vitality, Production&Insulation

 

五臟六腑，各安其位，各司其職

The five viscera and six internal organs, each in its place, each in its function.

肛門不提，丹田氣散，内中空虚，元氣¹虧損
When the anus is not pulled up, the vapours around the cinnabar field disperse, the inside becomes empty and one’s vitality depletes.

A flat stomach is not only an issue linked with the body verticality, it is also an even more important one which concerns our capacity to correctly produce and maintain vitality. As mentioned earlier in this blog, the main machinery used to generate vitality are the organs, hence the first quote. The concept of 气 in its original writing refers to a process between fire and water which creates vapours. Therefore insulation is another key issue. But insulation will also relate to the emotions, which are supposed to deplete one’s vitality (one can actually experience it easily, the sudden tiredness after a heightened emotion like a fit of anger, or stress, for example).

I. Keeping the Production Line in Check

The organs are like a production line in a factory. Therefore, the space they occupy, the distance between them and their relative size matter. Flattening the stomach is the way to keep them in their most productive pattern, the one that a healthy teenager during puberty has.

As we grow older, after reaching adulthood, eating, drinking, etc. habits take a toll on the organs. Furthermore, our tissues slowly wither and become lax. How the whole stomach area (from the upper abdomen all the way to the pelvic) bulges is, of course, a very good indication of the relative health of the organs. Still, it may be hard to decipher problems such as visceral body fat, relative size and health².

For this, the general idea is to attempt to keep the stomach as flat as it is for a healthy teenager during puberty, if not even more. Flat does not equate, of course, to chocolate bars. Indeed, in some cases, one can train abdominals up to a six-pack with still some protuberance. Here the question is to try to stick as much as possible the front part of the stomach to the back. The idea is to basically maintain the viscera fascia elasticity and firmness against all odds. While doing that, one will force all the organs to remain in place and not outgrow themselves, keeping the production line the way it should be.

Still, as far as vitality is concerned, heat being a great part of the process, insulation becomes an issue.

II. Keeping the Heat

Most of the heating process goes in the stomach area, hence trying to keep close its downer and upper parts are important.

2.1 Locking Down

This issue, which has actually been described in detail in a previous post, is indeed linked with the flat stomach one.

To grasp it, one has to fully understand the opening process that happens when defecating. Then, it is necessary to realise that, because of a lack of a proper training, an ageing body will slowly decay towards a posture getting closer to the one used when going to the washroom. As getting older, one will naturally more often feel, with the same food intake, the need to go to the toilet, the pelvis adopting a posture closer and closer to the one used for defecating. Not controlling the pelvic floor while sitting most of the day will, of course, accelerate such ageing process. The decay is direr for women, as the loss of firmness can lead to what is called pelvic organ descent at a very old age.

As far as heat is concerned, the more those places are opened, the more heat is obviously lost. Hence, tucking the butt and realigning the pelvic floor will keep those closed and insulate more the body, especially preventing heat from being lost during exercise. For those who train cold resistance as well and have their joints already opened, a noticeable improvement can be felt when one correctly keeps everything closed most of the time.

The link with the flatness of the stomach will be as such: correctly aligned and the perineum held up, one’s pubic area should naturally flatten. If not, it means something is not done correctly. In other words, the flatter it is, the more the tucking in the butt, lifting the perineum … is done correctly.

2.2 Locking Up

When we throw up, the upper part of the stomach reacts to a pressure coming all the way from the neck to the diaphragm. It is when it’s the most opened. Understanding this process, one has to do exactly the opposite to lock the upper part of the stomach. Relaxing the diaphragm, the chest, and straightening the neck are quite known techniques to do so.

Still, the neck and the abdomen have an interesting relation³. Indeed, the more one flattens the former the more the latter should inflate, a practice one can still sometimes witness (neck tendons becoming visible). Therefore, the flatness of the abdomen also translates to a correct head posture.

Finally, one has to realise that locking up and down pressures the stomach and if one lock is stronger than the other, it might lead to the weaker to open under pressure. Hence, there is a sort of hierarchy between the two which makes the pubic part more important, because there is more heat generated down and of the extra pressure gravity brings.

Apart from heat insulation, our emotional state can also be linked with a flat stomach.

III. Avoiding Heightened Emotions

The link with what has just been described above is quite obvious, the need to urinate for the least or to throw up in a very intense situation are quite common and most of us have experienced one or the other. The way to deal with a stimulus too intense to bear just follows the principles explained above, trying to flatten even more the stomach or keeping its upper and downer parts closed.

3.1 Stillness

Old practices consider that emotions are our organs ‘moving’ in reaction to any kind of situation, stimulus… Then, the idea is to keep them still whatever happens. But actually, this is more about maintaining an even activity. Indeed, the organs are living things that always move whether breathing, digesting, blood flowing… Furthermore, there are also some training which insists on a way to mobilise them in order to make them more or less active.

So, basically, the emotions are just supposed to disrupt their normal behaviour and the idea is to prevent that. Dyspnea and Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy are some examples of an easily noticeable impact of one’s emotive state on the organs.

The flat stomach actually goes in pair with the necessity to have also developed the Cinnabar Fields. Basically, the latter leads to pressuring the organs while the former ensure that such pressure remains as high as possible. Putting them under this kind of pressure protects them from losing the evenness of their normal activity.

3.2 Keep Your Door Shut

Intense emotions like fear or disgust can lead to fouling oneself or vomiting. This is an obvious example of an interaction between our emotive state and our body or more precisely our organs. Less intense, they still have the same kind of impact, though less obvious. Keeping the butt firmly tucked in and the neck to the diaphragm area correctly aligned and relaxed are also means to control one’s emotion.

In other words, keeping the impact on one’s body alignment to a bare minimum is another way to try to control our emotive state. Doing so, as it has been described above, will lead to have a flat stomach.

There are actually other parts of the body to take into consideration, like the feet, but this would make the post a bit too long. Still, one part cannot be totally left aside even though one tends to avoid the issue, the one which concerns the sexes, the next post, or not ,-).

1. 元氣, vitality, also means original vapours, referring then to the inborn vitality while vapours are a general term whether the vitality is inborn or nurtured.

2. For Old practices, they still can be spotted by the 髪舌齒指, hair, tongue, teeth, fingers method or our emotional characteristics.

3. The neck is also linked to the ‘stomach swallowing’ training which aims to avoid the whole area to fall progressively down due to the impact of gravity. The importance of the whole neck area as an opening can be reversely witnessed through what is generally referred as ‘angel lust’.