on your second point, that's an excellent opinion... but how does it hold any water? i'm assuming you at least have a bachlor's degree in anatomy and physiology or neuroscience to be able to claim specific ratios between the snesitivity of blood and nerve endings to that of the geomagnetic field... the rapid, uniform movement of dipoles in the blood around the capillaries in small circles could be enough to produce electric current...since nerves work in practically immeasurably small currents (sorta), it's unbelievably easy to see how after working biomagnetic dipoles in the blood that you could induce sensations in the extremities as a result of induced current.
Could it not be possible that chi is made up of more than one factor. One of these to any degree large or small , ebing bio electricity.
Maybe if you put a tai chi master in front of an electromagnet, he'd stick to it and start to break apart, like the robot in Terminator 3. Next time I see Erle, I'll use my fridge magnet shirukens on him.
I was going to bring some fridge magnets and plyers to the park next time... I'm convinced from that photograph that this is the future of martial arts. One thing though... the picture looks a bit external though. Shouldn't the hammers and other objects be on the inside? Is this Bunnings Style Palm? Or are we talking BBC Style Palm?
God, my minor point about chi is that all the research has been done. You are free to ignore all that and rephrase it all in such a way as people who don't give a monkey's can work with it with gadgets n stuff. I'm just a bit of a Luddite and see technology and dry scientific research shoe-horning us into Armageddon. The annoying thing is I'd lap up all this research to justify my practise I've had musings in this general area myself years ago. I once began to look into Kirlian photography. It transpired the necessary equipment would cost me over £300 which equated to two months' money at the time. That was game over for my research. Some random thoughts: A girl I once knew would interfere with TV pictures when she was within a couple of feet of them. The thing about men knowing which way to go while women have no idea is a common experience for me. The human body has a natural tremor of 8-12Hz which is precisely the frequency at which you can listen to thunder-storms around the world. Chi is motion, mind, blood, fluids, electricity. It's supposed to be considered as a whole when applying it to the human condition. Rgds, David
David, Quite seriously, I was an old student of Traditional Chinese Medicine and while at University I studied Western Medicine and the regular Nursing studies right alone side TCM. Something that frequently came to the fore was the fact that while Chinese medicine looks at the body Wholisticaly, Western Medicine has the habit of isolating and disecting aspects of disease and alienating everything else from anything else. So while an Accupuncturist or Tui Na massage therapist will treat a Kidney problem taking the whole body, mind and spirit in mind, Western Medics will look only at the Kidney and fail to take into account the entire being and all that implies. This for me is where, how and why Science fails to come to grips with the concept of Qi because the paradigms are so disctincly removed from one another. What does not make sense though is that because science fails to explain or prove a thing, many of this bent tend to rule everything outside it's purview out, entirely. Best, Syd
david, the "minor point" you so hastefully made in deep reflection of your past naievete completely debunked something i had my heart set on doing... this must be a tough concept to grasp for the arm-chair phds of all things who frequent this board, but there is information someone on earth knows that i do not. a generally accepted term for collecting this information is "research". and Syd, you self-righteously-enlightened smartass peon, for someone who clearly has a good deal of knowledge on the subject, you really exemplify the ancient western art of comprehension without conclusion. western medicine was based on similar holistic ideas until "science" was invented. i believe some of those ancient ways still carry over...such as calling the circulatory system a system and not just looking at each individual capillary clearly, since western science has a lot of myopic microbiology, it's the only thing studied. it's much more difficult and worth more time, research, and study to understand how the nervous system works as a conceptual system rather than the individual, physical components. therefore the majority of neuroscience should be devoted to this... actually, in western science, no one has ever studied the nervous system as a conceptual whole. we have no idea how it works together...no one ever thought of that. it would take the genius chinese to do something like this. this is clearly the hole in western biology. most things were learned because scientists dug up corpses, ripped them up, threw everything they could see under a microscope and said "LOOK AT THAT! i'll call it a cell! who cares what it does? those little things inside it! let's calll them organelles!" this is so because of the hyperactive, extrospective western culture we live in. these researchers wanted instant gratification, which they got through the arduous and painstaking field of scientific research and debate. microbiology is highly easy to understand, unlike the chinese approach. the chinese, on the other hand, sat and thought. they relaxed their body and pondered the difficult task of making **** up and seeing if it works. the chinese thought this all up two thousand years ago. if they were wrong, don't you think someone would have corrected them? unlike it's profound negative effect on western science, the microscope did not phase the chinese. at that time, chinese medicine had been working for hundreds of years. the chinese, being the stoic, enlightened researchers they were, simply cast the microscope aside. it's been workingbefore? only a fool would question it. and now, as a result of the invention of the microscope, chinese medicine has been effective for thousands of years, and is even more sound and effective. thank you sir for such an enlightening observation. you are truly gifted...hopefully you will do great things someday and i will be grateful for having known you! just as the chinese did not go to great lengths to describe their medicine, you chose the minimalist approach at explaining why a holistic view is best. just as the chinese did not arduously and dilligently ponder and question, you did not ponder or question the validity or meaning behind your myopic observation. you also posted a humourous picture, revealing the ignorance of my ways. of course!! western science is ignorant and wrong. by OUR account, that simply wouldn't happen if chi was biomagnetism...because we have these crazy, detailed descriptions of how dipoles function...and it's all simply wrong. if we only understood how it worked. the chinese would realize this and say "what a foolish notion. a magnet the size of a man would attract metal things, so if there is any magnetism in a man, he owuld attract mangetic things. this idea is wrong" i am very glad you have shown me so gracefully why my theory is wrong. and without scientific proof of any sort! i am highly impressed. i will spend the remainder of my life pondering your intellectual gift and perfection.
Woah, Woah, Woah, God. I have been in enough debates on this board to know that Syd and David are stand-up gentlemen. A lot of people have been pretty nasty about chi cultivation on this board, and if that is what you are looking to discuss, I wouldn't be so quick to anger with these guys-- they know what they're talkin' about. Keep it easy... just a forum for discussion, after all. That's what happens here- we discuss it.
*L* Gee... what a brain ache you must have. All those large pronouncements and with no-where to go. As to the picture, it was not I who posted it but rather someone else of ingenious wit, to stir your lumpy gravy. I made my statement and ofcourse chose a simplistic model for expressing myself in the efficient and concise manner, unlike you who spouts reems, appears knowing but who is entirely boorish and without substance other than that skidmark which feigns a fine line between clever and stupidly clever. Spare us the cutter... *yawn in ancient Chinese*
Good post God, but if we can be serious for a moment, it was lack of money rather than naivety that led to me aborting my own ground-breaking research. I encourage you to do yours, though I qualify that encouragement with the advice that if you spend all your life researching it without cultivating it, you will have missed the point of life. This is what I've said in all but my first post. If I can get philosphically simplistic about it (yeah, yeah 'what's new?'), what if you researched love without having the feeling from inside you? :Alien: It is precisely this missing gestalt (a western term) principle which leads to pharmacological solutions to mental and emotional problems just because certain chemicals are/aren't present in the 'sufferer'. It's the body that made/stopped making the problem chemicals. It's the mind that told the body to do it and it's the mind that can put it back together. So what if modern science's methods are clever, if the resultant understanding is off-target then it's off-target. The target for all of us should, finally, be understanding of self. This is only my opinion, as Killbill says in his sig: I'm just 1/6,4000,000,000 of the World's population. Right, that's enough soft-headedness from me! Who wants a fight? Sincere rgds, David
God - you're getting mighty testy under that sarcasm aren't you? It was me who put up the pictures, I admit it, and my stirring obviously worked. You haven't answered my question though. What does magnetism have to do with chi, when it can be proven conclusively that magnetism has absolutely no effect on the human body? I think the only similarity that chi has to magnetism is that they're both invisible. David: What's this about humans having a "natural tremor of 8-12Hz"??? I'm really interested in that. I am a part time hack writer, and I'm working on a story idea that includes something like this. Can you point me in the right direction for the evidence for this - it would help a lot to give scientific backing for my story. Cheers! Bring it on guys - this is fun!
My problem is that I have 4,540,325 bizarre snippets in my mind and no bibliography. I am the guy who goes to the bookshop and buys a book he already owns because he forgot he had it. I've just had a look around google to try to remind me where it came from. No luck. I'll sleep on it and see if it comes back to me. Rgds, David
Hey ric you could have a look here http://www.eegfree.com/English/product.html also mentioned here http://www.eng.nsf.gov/engnews/2000/00-03_parkinsons.htm and maybe more interestingly here http://moebius.psy.ed.ac.uk/MagFields_H.html
Found some more links http://www.earthvibemusic.com/cd/brainwave.html http://www.brainmachines.com/frequencies.html http://www.mindsurfing.com/understanding.htm THIS ONE maybe more apt here though http://www.universal-tao.com/article/rhythmical.html
I've got quite a few tasty books on the shelf which talk about these matters, I'll do a bit of a biblio search... Theremin and people like Tesla are also nice places to look for such.
