It’s very important to have blockages cleared throughout the abdominal area, so that energy can be run through, and stored in, the area.  It’s key.

What’s presented here is a gentle and simple, yet very profound, CNT self-help technique.

This technique takes as its’ premise that the human body is made up mostly of water.

This is all done lying down, on your back, relaxed. You can put your feet flat on the ground / bed, if that helps you to relax.

If you’ve ever seen a water bed, you’ve probably sat on it, or pressed on it with your hand, in a rhythmic up and down motion - creating waves.  You can keep the waves going by continuing to press up and down rhythmically, in sync with the rhythm of those waves.  The waves, as well as creating motion along the top of the bed, also create waves of pressure all the way down to the bottom of the bed... all without having to press deeply into the water bed, just the rhythmic soft touch at the surface.  The human body can be addressed in the same fashion.

It goes very deep, relatively easily.  By pressing rhythmically, and gently, on the surface of your abdomen you set up waves of gentle rocking pressure that ripple all the way deep into your abdomen (as deep as your kidneys and spine, and everything prior to that).  The waves travel through the medium of water / liquid in your body, and pass relatively effectively through denser blockages, gently dislodging tensions.

Yet, it’s non-invasive.  If you’re like me, when I first started this, you’ve got some tension in your abdomen (maybe shallow, maybe deep).  If you were to start digging around by pressing your fingers into your abdomen, your body (to a certain extent) tenses against the gross intrusion.  Working out knots by such direct manipulation is mildly traumatic, and takes a long time (perhaps months, or longer, of regular treatments) to dig to the deeper layers of the abdomen.  This "water-bed" technique goes very deep, very quickly, with no invasive trauma.

So, the technique is simply to press gently and rhythmically on the abdomen with your finger tips - keeping a feel for the ‘waves’ and staying in sync with them.  You’ll find that you can do faster or slower rhythms, shallow or more deeply, and you’re welcome to experiment with that, but you’ll also find that there are speeds that are out of sync, and ones that are in sync, with your body’s natural waves.  The out of sync rhythms will ‘stop’ the waves, while with the in sync rhythms sustain them.

I’d suggest working on a single area for a session.  For instance, you might start an inch or two away from the belly button, and gradually work your way around the belly button, for a session.  Perhaps the next session explore the lower abdomen, and the next closer to the ribs.

It takes some time for the rhythms to really have an effect, and to dislodge tensions, in an area.  Keep the rhythms going for at least 5 minutes, to perhaps as long as a half hour.  In my opinion, a session should - at the minimum - go as long as it takes in order for you to feel the warmth of increased circulation all the way into your back; this takes as little as 5 to 10 minutes.

Don’t push it.  If you feel you’ve initiated enough change for one time, stop - no matter the length of the session.

The techniques presented above are not necessarily representative of Mantak Chia’s "Chi Nei Tsang", nor of The Chi Nei Tsang Institute’s views of the subject.  They are simply born of my own experience, observation, and experimentation.

If you’d like to explore Chi Nei Tsang further:

- To use the more aggressive CNT techniques, you really need personal and thorough training (or you can simply receive treatments from a trained pro, see below).  Simply reading books on your own is not enough.

Unwinding the Belly always gets good reviews from the online community.  The authors' website is UnwindingTheBelly.com.

- Contact the CNT Institute.  They have information, workshops, courses, resources.  There are a number of CNT Institutes throughout the world.  Be sure to ask for the resources nearest you.

The Chi Nei Tsang Institute

Berkeley, California

web-site: www.ChiNeiTsang.com

 - The book Healing From Within With Chi Nei Tsang: Applied Chi Kung to Internal Organs Treatment, by Gilles Marin (the director of The Chi Nei Tsang Institute), published in 1999.  This book is also available directly from the CNT Institute (Amazon.com doesn't always have it in stock).

Note: There are other Chi Nei Tsang Institutes, elsewhere in the world.  If you are not near Berkeley location, you might ask them for a resource near you.

1. Contact the CNT Institute, and ask for a referral of a practitioner near you. They have the most comprehensive list of trained practitioners.