Any time a stick is put on a shoulder, there’s a point where it can not fall due to gravity. The human body uses the same principle, just a bit more complicated

As for anatomy, the real anatomical structure looks something like this.

http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=anatomy+lower+spine&id=31291585CB2C6D9F40B490909AE564EF37745440&FORM=IQFRBA

The hips, the lower spine (the ganglia of nerves is considered a second brain), and the guts form the general area, with the cog somewhere in there.

There’s been significant reports on patients receiving transplanted hearts, and acquiring the tastes or habits of their donors. No spinal nerve or brain neurons were transferred from the donor, yet the neural patterns were transferred. This is the phenomenon of neural processing conducted outside of the brain, along the “second brain” in the human body, the peripheral nerve system around the spine itself.

Because a lot of things are in the general zone of contact at that location, it’s important to specify what people are referring to.

The hara, for example, may be referring to the cog or it may be referring to the guts, which transmute nutrients into energy via the blood stream, which can be accelerated by accelerating the breathing as that accelerates the heartbeat.

The neural control of balance may be processed mostly at the lower spine, and not at the upper brain as currently thought of in the field. The further neural signals have to travel, the more “lag” there is in responding to imbalance.

Ancient cultures kept talking about that area because a lot of things happened from there, whether they knew it or not. Modern cultures talk about things they know happens at certain places, but that’s not absolutely true either.

And here I thought ballet was timeless.

I’d rather think of it as the still point of the turning world:

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.

I hate clocks like this.

Anyway, http://tonyhaletest.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/walken-morecowbell.gif