Thanks for the replies

I know how you guys feel in a way, I'm not entirely used to the terminology here and I dont "think in those terms" really, so I keep having to go back and google, wait, what's piti again, what
exactly is vispassana again

So its just a little additional effort to understand, then the knowledge gets put away again until next time I come across the terms.
MoE: I will write about my experiences with laogung & yongquan breathing to relate to that...a little later!
DZ: I attempted to go from a somewhat broad overview to prerequisites in the first post, the second was an additional preparatory practice, the third post is the full practice. For me the effects were unambiguously strong enough that I felt it was necessary to break it up a bit. The bigua hexagram set is that wheel that is the first picture, among the descriptions of it, it is also representative of the phases of the moon.
Pablo: haha, I am most certainly no guru, but I did have a couple good teachers and an inquisitive mind, I'm sure were I taught this by someone I would have been sworn to closed door secrecy on it...and I'm not trying to sell anything either, I'm just trying to make sure I can find this again if I need to, if you know what I mean

To answer your questions:
-Anapana is a prerequisite for this. Imho you dont get to a good stage of lower dantien breathing until you have done your anapana work. I advocate a focused, rote method of anapana - I basically started out with YMAA's embryonic breathing material and worked at that until my breaths were well over a minute, brought the flow of air beneath the threshold of turbulence, the body having almost completely disappeared and I discovered a shining awareness back there somewhere...in a nutshell. Life has brought me in and out of the depths of the practice a good 6-8 times at least over the years and I have a bunch of phenomena that get reproduced every trip through the stages...it took me a good 3 months to get there once I basically knew the ingredients, but subsequent immersions of practice time dont take as long to get there since I've already ridden that bike.
-Shamatha also sounds like a prerequisite. Pretty much any of the 'visualization' I had done was in the initial stages of lower dantien breathing, a couple teachers showed me methods to more directly use the Yi to affect the waxing and waning of the lower dantien energy center - this is why the anapana prerequisite is so important, if you dont tame the noise then it is harder to identify a signal amidst the noise. So in doing LDT breathing once there is a bit of an energy-potential and one has become familiar with how to harmonize the waxing and waning of the potential along with the breath, one can simply "express the change in energy-potential" there instead of visualizing something happening there. I hope that makes sense - so these days when I do LDT breathing I feel it right at the energy center, no thinking, no visualization - the mechanisms have been streamlined and the signal of the energy potential noticeable enough that I do not need to contrive it. So then take that concept and apply it to each of the 3 dantiens and there you have how a hexagram relates to "breathing" - naturally each energy center has its own nature, or frequency, vibration, however you want to describe it, so that is also part of the combination of ingredients.
A synonym for "Vipassanā" is paccakkha (Pāli; Sanskrit: pratyakṣa), "before the eyes," which refers to direct experiential perception. Thus, the type of seeing denoted by "vipassanā" is that of direct perception, as opposed to knowledge derived from reasoning or argument
In this context, yes, that makes sense, I am trying to encourage a direct perception of the phenomena. I think by the time one is ready to practice this 3 dantiens mechanism, one should probably have gone past visualizing this and done enough signal to noise ratio enhancement that these energetic expressions are merely guided extensions of phenomena that already happen, one is just enhancing, adding amplitude via mindfulness, then the progression manifests the "turning of the wheel."
-8 jhanas...forgive me if the descriptions I am finding right now sound somewhat like a mishmash, but most of it sounds familiar and the extent they manifest really depends on how good my present level of practice is. I'm sure in some hardcore sense I have not reached the pinnacle of any but have accessed most. So stuff like stilling thoughts, if you relate to some of my other writing about the reactions of the cranial nerves and such, does have direct physical correlations - that's why bringing the focus of awareness in to the niwan is basically "arresting the energy potential that the cranial nerves extend out into the world through the senses" and when practice well enough it manifests a very quiet, calm, clear mind.
-Seeing and knowing the true nature of craving and aversion is really the only way to get past them. I had already done other practices in the past that brought about such a response, the best way is just to stay diligent and realize the true nature of the phenomena in question and not let the monkey mind convince you its ok to ignore what you already know.
-3 Characteristics....the 3 marks of existence? I think if one is investigating them then one will find their signature....if one isnt, one won't necessarily but they may also arise spontaneously...pardon if it also sounds like pre and post requisite but not necessarily an integral component of this practice.
So how would MCO benefit - I've found that one isnt ever fully able to separate mind vs energy, there is always a component of one in the other. I've also noticed that the depth of meditation, lengths of breath, ability to stay in deep states, are also dependent on how streamlined, harmonious, settled, the practitioner's mind/energy/body is. For example when I do a longevity breathing practice, I almost always start out with a period of physical anapana to calm and settle, then move on to lower dt breathing to refined, enhance, grow the energy potential like turning a prayer wheel, then settling into a longevity breathing framework, the additional energy cultivated absolutely helps how deep the session is, how long the focus of awareness can be maintained, how long the body remains comfortable. Spending time working on streamlining and harmonizing the physical enhances the energetic - and so long as the energy remains good and strong - the limbs dont bother you, the breath stays deep, the mind stays settled. In some of my best stages of practice I'd sit down and I couldnt really discern if I had been sitting for 20 minutes or two hours, but that requires a pretty diligent practice and at that point I was getting the feeling that the rest of my life was starting to impinge upon my meditation, it made me want to disappear into the woods to practice, but of course I have a little much going on in life to abandon it, right

I dont think I got to MCO-benefit yet, haha...so I related how establishing a good energy potential allowed for sessions of greater duration and depth - so the mco is helping take that energy potential and propagate it to the rest of the body. I was looking for some description of Nan Huai Chin talking about the qi in the microcosmic...I'll post it if I can find it, but this practice produced what he described and it also set the stage for being able to experientially feel the MCO doing it "the normal way" via a single inhale-exhale up back down front. Also if you relate to any taoist alchemy books, when the generative force becomes full and vibrates in the lower dt, doing the microcosmic orbit helps propagate the potential of the generative force throughout the body, basically permeating the body with this coherent energy potential.
Thanks again for the feedback, I will continue working at this to try and make it a little easier to understand. If there are further questions, by all means, ask