Tanden-Breathing, Meditation, Self-Realization

Center Breathing

To use one’s center properly, it should also be the center of one’s breathing. Of course, breathing is done by the lungs, but there are different techniques of inhaling and exhaling. The one used in aikido and all budo is what by western terminology goes as diaphragm breathing, often called belly breathing. It feels like you are breathing with your belly. What way the air actually goes is another matter.

Belly breathing is a good start, but it should at length be done as if the center is at the core of it, a breathing into and out of the center.

A focused belly breathing is easy enough to see – the belly is moving, but the chest not at all. Most people find it much more difficult to do than to observe, though.

One has to have a good posture in order to learn a deep belly breathing. That’s why it is difficult to do in a chair, where the posture tends to be bent. Sitting in seiza, the Japanese style of sitting on the floor, works better. In this position the back is more straight. The same is true for standing up or lying down on one’s back.

When in a good posture, you can exercise belly breathing by putting your hand on the belly and making your breathing push at the hand. When you inhale, this is easy enough, but you should try also to push at your hand when exhaling. You can put your other hand on your chest, to check that it doesn’t move much.


If you find it hard to push at the hand when breathing out, a similar exercise might do the trick. You make a short and sudden exhalation, trying to make your belly push distinctly at the hand – sort of like coughing. It’s quite Ok if you make a sound, too. Actually, that is how a proper kiai is done.

Do not make the mistake of breathing in to your center by pushing air from the chest downwards. A hand on your chest would reveal that. It should feel like you actually breathe with your belly, like that is where the lungs are.

You should practice belly breathing daily, in order to make it a habit. It may take a year or so, before it becomes automatic.

The more you get comfortable with belly breathing, the more you should try to focus it to a center breathing. Try to make the breathing feel like you suck air all the way into your center when breathing in, and out from your center when breathing out. The whole belly keeps on moving, of course, but the center should be at the core of your breathing, as if it is the actual organ of breath.

Breath is a physical sibling of ki. They behave similarly. Therefore, focusing on breathing increases the ki flow. What you actually inhale and exhale with your center is ki.

Because it is ki, and not air, you can “inhale” it and “exhale” it through any part of your body. For example, when you do tsuki, you “exhale” ki from your center through your fist – specifically through the base knuckles of the index and middle finger. When you pull someone or something to you, it helps if you “inhale” ki through your grip.

Normally, but not always, a movement away from you is done best with exhalation, and a movement towards you with inhalation. It is important that you exercise the feeling of breathing all the way to and all the way from inside your center. 

Meditation

Tanden is also a center of meditation. This you can see clearly by the posture used when meditating, whether it is seiza or with crossed legs. The back is straight, the belly is accentuated, and the hands form a figure right in front of the center.      When you meditate, it helps a lot if you focus on your center and try to remain in it. When this is automatic, you don’t need to focus on it anymore, but just let you mind go blank – not an easy thing, either... 

Self-realization

People in mental confusion lose the sense of rooting, of stability, which would give them a chance to recover after emotional storms. They must learn to get deep down within themselves, peel off all mental pollution and confusion until they reach a pure and steady sensation of who they fundamentally are. We need to get rid of all distractions to find and remain ourselves, through the turmoil of living.

Man’s center in Eastern thinking is a similar thing. In the core of my being, there is no doubt – I am and I remain, through all the dramatic events in life. Contrary to psychiatry, though, this center is not just a mental therapy gadget or an object for concentration exercises. Tanden is something quite concrete – a nucleus in the bottom om the stomach, as palpable as the heart’s beating in the chest.

The center is as real as anything else in the physical world, and therefore accessible through physical means – such as deep breathing and aikido exercises.

Look at small kids who have just learned to walk. They push their bellies forward like sumo wrestlers, and walk with just as heavy steps, just as much concentration on their center. Unfortunately, many people lose contact with their center when they grow up. The immediate effect is bad balance and weakness in movements, but an increasing confusion of the mind must also follow. Sadly, many live their whole lives that way.

  If you exercise sensing your center in the bottom of the stomach, and use it for support whatever you do, then your certainty about your own being will grow. You regain contact with yourself, the security in both knowing that you exist and learning more and more who you are. The way to self-realization goes through tanden. 

In aikido training you should always focus on your center. This physical exercise of your tanden gets a mental counterpart. The more you familiarize yourself with your center in training, the more you get in touch with a center of your mind. You get rooted in life, and run less of a risk of losing your physical or your mental balance.      It is through one’s center that one grows whole and becomes self-assured, independent of success and victories – therefore unharmed by failure and defeat. 

This self-assured state of mind is simply: I am who I am.