My acupuncturist recently treated me for some persistent injuries and through the course of the treatment I noticed many of the sensations I have learned or have been taught to know as sings of malfunctioning energy work. When I checked for other signs (burgeoning chi on hands and feet, inability to place my awareness at that spot) I found that no other signs where present. I talked to my acupuncturist about this and my energetic practices and he commented that the dan tien is a reservoir not a dam. This indicated to me that although I do circulations (admittedly not well) and also dissolve of the energy gates I still have a poor circulation probably arising from my cultivation techniques.

I have been using dan tien as a place to store energy -and have gotten rather good at it- and have been taking that energy and either using it or circulating it and when the circulation is complete I lead the chi back to my dan tien. Most of the sources I have looked into suggest that this is what I am supposed to do until I reach I point where energy is able to circulate on its own- some 100 days by most counts, though others say a year. However, the amount of chi that I felt moving during the acupuncture treatment was far in excess of what I can normally circulate.

My question then, is on role that the dan tien plays in circulations and how this might be effecting my ability to circulate chi - assuming of course I am not simply bad at it.