dan tian qigong, and question on microcosmic orbit, is it needed later on?

From my experience, your practice will evolve, and you will find the right balance of what works for you. As for continuing every practice, you necessarily need to do EVERYTHING. I don’t do a lot of the older practices every day, but focus more on the newer practices I am working on. Once you have practiced something long enough, it becomes “a part of you” and as Michael says “you own it.” I read something he wrote to the effect, you can do a qigong movement 1000 times, and the next time when you do it once all of those 1000 times come back to you. However, I do find that as my practice evolves, older practices will spontaneously come back and I instinctively will start doing them again.

As for Fusion, from what I understand of it, the microcosmic orbit is a big part of it. You do it at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end. You also start with the inner smile.

I’m sure Steven will have much to add on all of that and also he made a post about dantien qigong recently. It sounds like a gentler form of chi “packing” that has replaced the iron shirt packing process.

I concur with what Jeff said already.

Yes, you do want to continue doing the Inner Smile, Six Healing Sounds, Microcosmic Orbit etc., they are all Fundamental important practices that never grow old. Even getting to the point of doing Kan & Li, the basic practices are still vital and beneficial. That said, once you have gotten to the point where you have practiced enough to where you “own” the practice and you know it, you do not need to do it *every day*. As you say, there is the time commitment issue. Most people simply do not have the time to do every practice every day.

A more effective strategy is one of “rotation”.

New practices you do every day. Then you fill up the remainder of the time you do have with some of the ones you already know. You can rotate through them through the week, or simply allow yourself to spontaneously choose the one(s) that you feel you most need on any given day. Personally, I like to just do that, and listen to my inner voice to choose what I need, but for those that feel they want a disciplined schedule, you can also make up a rotating schedule. I.E. Monday, do this; Tuesday, do this; Wednesday, do this; etc.

Yes, what Jeff said is correct.
Dantian Qigong is a newer qigong system developed by Master Chia designed to correct the flaws in the qi packing process from Iron Shirt 1. Rather than doing the old qi packing process, which can be somewhat dangerous, Dantian qigong is a way to do qi packing in a safe, gentle form by using 11 easy animal forms. Key to this is the use of the Dragon and Tiger Breaths (taught in the course) which create an empty force and space for which qi can packed into, without having to “force” the qi harshly into your core via the IS1 packing method. This is not currently taught at Michael’s retreats, although I hope to get certified in it in the next year or so and begin offering it (combined with other material).