The Body

The Dan Tien: Mo Pai's Map of the Body

Three centres, three gates, one circuit. Mo Pai inherits the whole apparatus from Taoist internal alchemy — and then works exactly one of the three fields, which is the single most useful thing to know about the system's shape.

Front view. The three fields lie on the midline. The ren mai runs down the front of that midline through all three, from the face to the lock at the perineum.

Side view. The same body from the side, where the fields show their depth and the spine is visible: the du mai climbs from the coccyx through the three gates, over the crown, and closes the circuit down the front.

Cinnabar marks the three dan tien, gold the gates and the lock; every marker on both figures is a link. The drawings are schematic — they show where practitioners are told to place attention, not anatomy.

The three fields

The Lower Dan Tien 下丹田 · xia dan tian The only centre Mo Pai's published curriculum works. Everything from levels 1 to 4 is filled, stored, moved, or spent from here. Jing → qi. Essence refined into energy. documented The Middle Dan Tien 中丹田 · zhong dan tian The chest centre. Described in detail by classical alchemy, and passed over almost entirely by the Mo Pai sources. Qi → shen. Energy refined into spirit. reconstructed The Upper Dan Tien 上丹田 · shang dan tian Between the brows. Where the spirit bodies of the upper curriculum are said to be gestated — by sources that never say how. Shen → xu. Spirit refined into emptiness. fragmentary

The circuit

The route the qi is said to travel is the small heavenly circulation (xiao zhou tian, 小周天): up the back along the du mai, through three gates that are described as genuine obstructions rather than landmarks, over the crown, and down the front along the ren mai to the lower field again. Completing it is level 2.

What the sources present as Mo Pai's distinctive move is the order of operations. Most systems open the circuit and then circulate whatever is available. Mo Pai fills the vessel first and opens the circuit second, driving a large accumulation up a channel that has never carried that much — which is also why the level 2 accounts are full of pain, heat, and stalled progress at a single gate for a year.

Structure	Where	What it does	Named by Mo Pai?
Hui yin 會陰 Point	The perineum, between the genitals and the anus.	Drawn up and held throughout Mo Pai sitting — the single most consistently emphasised mechanical detail in every version of the level 1 instructions. Its stated purpose is to seal the bottom of the vessel so that what is gathered does not drain away. Glossary →	Yes
Wei lu 尾閭 First gate	At the coccyx, the base of the spine.	The first of the three spinal gates forced at level 2. Described as a genuine obstruction rather than a landmark: it yields, and the yielding can take months. Glossary →	Yes
Jia ji 夾脊 Second gate	The mid-back, between the shoulder blades.	The second gate. Accounts describe local pain and a "plugged" sensation while it is being worked. Glossary →	Yes
Yu zhen 玉枕 Third gate	The "jade pillow", at the base of the skull.	Traditionally the hardest of the three to open, and the one whose forcing is associated with head pressure and ear ringing. The classical literature treats trouble here as a warning rather than as progress. Glossary →	Yes
Bai hui 百會 Point	The crown of the head.	The turning point of the small circulation, where the route crosses from the spine to the front of the body. In the classical accounts of the upper curriculum it is also the aperture through which the spirit body is said to emerge — a claim Mo Pai inherits but never details.	Classical context
Du mai 督脈 Vessel	Up the back, from the coccyx over the crown.	The governing vessel: the upward half of the small circulation, and the channel in which all three gates sit.	Yes
Ren mai 任脈 Vessel	Down the front, from the face to the perineum.	The conception vessel: the downward half of the circuit, returning the qi to the lower dan tien.	Yes
Ming men 命門 Point	On the lumbar spine, directly behind the lower dan tien.	The "gate of life" of classical theory, paired with the lower field as its back wall. Included here as context: the Mo Pai instruction sheets do not name it, and nothing in the published curriculum depends on it.	Classical context
Yong quan 湧泉 Point	The "bubbling well", on the soles of the feet.	The classical route by which earth qi is said to enter the body. Mo Pai describes its yin qi as drawn from the earth and from the body's own jing, but the instructions do not specify a point of entry, so the connection is inference rather than lineage teaching.	Classical context

Why the vocabulary matters

The map itself is not particular to Mo Pai. The three fields, the three gates, the two vessels, the jing–qi–shen progression and the language of furnaces and cauldrons all come from neidan, the Taoist internal alchemy that developed roughly between the eighth and fourteenth centuries.

That is useful to know while reading: when a Mo Pai source uses a technical term, the place to look for its full meaning is the alchemical literature, where these structures are described at length. See The Lineage and Mo Pai in Context.