The Dimensions of Hara, Revisited

Dear Readers,

It’s been a while since our last post. The delay is because Ellen and I have been focusing our time and energy on our new online course, Foundations of Hara Development. We hope to release it soon and will let you know when it’s ready.

In the meantime, I want to share a quick update on something I’ve been reflecting on. My recent post on Hakuin prompted me to reconsider how I conceptualize hara—or perhaps more accurately, how I depict it.

For years, I’ve described hara as the intersection of three dimensions of human experience: physical, psychological, and spiritual. I’ve often used a diagram to illustrate the relationship among these aspects:

However, after a deep dive into Hakuin and Taoist alchemy, I realized that this model omits a crucial aspect of hara: its energetic qualities. As you may know—or recall—in Taoist thought, the dantien (or tanden in Japanese), located in the lower abdomen, is the vital center for the generation and circulation of energy within the body.

As I explained in my last post, the hermit’s instruction to Hakuin to “gather together the flames of fire in your heart and place them under your navel and below your feet” is a directive to lower the seat of breathing from the chest to the abdomen. The result is the generation of kiai (or chi, ki) throughout the body, as represented by steam coming out of a boiling pot of water in this illustration:

At first, I considered adding a fourth circle to the diagram to represent kiai. But I don’t see kiai as a separate dimension, but as something that emerges from the interaction of the other three. Below is a working draft of how I’m now depicting this relationship:

As always, we welcome your thoughts or comments—on the new diagram or anything related to hara development. You can use this link to contact us.

Keep the fire down below,