Internal power generation

I'm all for describing "chi" as an outdated cultural artifact of an earlier time that really means good body mechanics, a high level of skill, good understanding of relaxation and tension, body awareness, alignment and any other clearly concrete "things" that can help with fighting.
I'm all for internal arts being good vehicles to learn such things.
I just don't think such things are exclusive to internal arts and I think ALL arts have aspects of the internal and external.
There's no way you can classify BJJ as external when yuo watch a high level practitioner flow and move. The same with boxing IMHO

 

That's because he is arguing against spurious logic

 

That will never fly with the chi bunnies.

They already have to concede that they can't fight as well as these guys, now you're going to take away the one thing that keeps them feeling special? That's just cruel

 

As far as I'm concerned my argument that chi doesn't exist because we don't see its effects in the olympics is logically consistent.
That's what we would expect to see if such a thing existed.

Actually the Russian had widespread "chi cultivation" in their training and as a result got fantastic results in many events over the last few decades. Oh no hang...that wasn't chi cultivation...that was performance enhancing drugs.

 

Moving away from the debate / argument forum and back to the discussion forum.

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFLIACla2Qk"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFLIACla2Qk[/ame]


What I am unable to see in this video.

Cannot see the patterns of tension in his legs so cannot tell if he is gripping and spiraling. The wide win chung stance would allow him to do this.

Cannot see what the muscles in the mid section are doing.

Cannot see if surface muscle tension is present to activate acupuncture points or meridians.

What I can see.

Can see good positioning of the shoulder blades relaxed and down.

I can see paired exercises each using the same muscle sets first stretching then tightening.

I can see a lot of spiraling in the tightening and stretching. Consistent with "sinue washing" excise.

What I do not see. Little particular emphasis on breathing. No use of sound. No use of emotion.

What I like. Very much like the degree of sinue washing going on, excellent stretching technique.

What I do not like. Dont like the way he opens his arms wide and moves his hands back behind his shoulders. this takes the shoulders beyond thier comfortable range of movement. he does this slowly so it is ok but if it was done with explosive power it could potentially injure soft tissue.

 

If it were simply an effect of internal practices then everyone with chi(remember everyone supposedly has it) then the results would be more replicable. I suspect that in cases of people enduring extreme temperatures there is more at play than that of what is the effects of internal practices.

There is a couple of problems with thinking like this. 1)That the believers and unbelievers are on equal footing and 2) that you seem to be implying that the fairy tale is/was a valid way of describing a phenomenon that science could not explain. Though I could just be reading wrongly what you wrote.

As per point one, if someone were to let's say catch a cold, a believer would say something like "my chi is disrupted" and have no evidence to support that claim where as a non believer might say "I got a virus" and could easily come up with endless evidence as to why they are sick.

This brings me to my next point, not only does one have overwhelming evidence while the other lacks evidence almost completely, believing in the fairy tale explanation impedes learning about a phenomenon in any meaningful way. If we want to advance our knowledge of how the body works then we need to let go of older notions of how it works. To paraphrase a scientist that I can't name at this moment, we need to transform our thinking in the way that alchemy transformed to chemistry, that astrology became astronomy, etc...

 

If he was nude you might see those things lol.

I am not sure what makes his exercises more internal than other exercises. If it's the meditative aspects then I think that can be added to more economical and less esoteric movements.

 

It should also be noted that the Dutch "ice man" has, to the best of my knowledge, never studied in a Chinese internal art.

From what I've read, he looked at books on various forms of yoga and meditation, then essentially trained himself through biofeedback - as simple as sitting in freezing conditions until he didn't get cold.

 

Actually the philosophical problem is in the belief not in what is believed.

I do not believe in unicorns. I believe in unicorns. I am agnostic about unicorns. All very unscientific sentiments.

I am not convinced that the weight of evidence supports the existence of unicorns. I am convinced that the weight of evidence support the existence of unicorns. I am not convinced that the weight of evidence supports either case. This leads to a structured debate about unicorns.

Much of what we see on this thread is a statement of belief - one way or the other.

I personally think that medical trails showing the existence of a hither to unknown processes by which the mind can directly effect the function of the body adds weight to the argument that internal effects may exist.

 

But the traditional Chinese models are not the way we will come to understand these effects. That will be through creating new models via the scientific method.

It's also interesting that this poster boy for IMA is not an internal martial artist. So we can do away with all the associated dogma and concentrate on sorting the wheat from the chaff in terms of technique, again via the scientific method.

 

I say ideas because that's what they are to me...things to explore to help get better at fighting.
Internal to me is tension, hyper irradiation, proprioception, mindset, innate reflexes, alignment etc.....these are the western words. Chinese systems might put these things in a different way, less easy to understand and make it seem more mystical. Which is why I say a person could get lost.

I say fighters discover these things because concepts like Demseys falling step ..or Ali's going backwards right cross, or Ralph Gracie's pressure or dieselnois alignment in the clinch and use off rebound off the floor and how he uses his arms to help knee more powerfully ....all ,to my mind, would be using internal concepts in real fight time, that Chinese systems might talk about.

When I say noticed things I mean some things are based on innate reflexes that come out under certain circumstances and it's a good bet the Chinese noticed these things and realised they could enhance attributes.....burning your hand, being shocked, doing things in an emergency we wouldn't would do normally ...these things make us and our body's do things that if we could do any time we wanted, they would enhance our attributes...power, speed, higher pain threshold etc.

 

Once again many of you are distorting what meditation and the Chi concept really is. Chi is not magic and it's not super natural. It's simply mentally connecting to yourself in a deeper way. Many western doctors may not call it the same name, but they themselves do not discount the affects. Here are some good articles to ponder.

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/2002/04.18/09-tummo.html

https://tepemagazine.wordpress.com/2013/07/27/shaolin-monks-myth-or-scientific-mystery/

 

I meditate daily.

I don't buy into chi being anything beyond the uinty of breath, moevment , and intent.

If it's "energy" then what energy and surely it can be measured.

If it can't be measured then how was it discovered? By that how do the funky power brigade justify it being an independent thing and not just a case of mistaken identity or cognitive bias?

 

Totally disagree. If the belief wasn't there, people wouldn't be able to hold it. Moreover not all beliefs are the same. Some allow you to advance knowledge while others simply impede it.

Debates are an antiquated form of finding truth and are not nearly as good as scientific testing.

That may be true but that hardly means that they are equal.

As David said we are not going to come to their understanding using an outdated model. The internal effects aren't what we are talking about here, it is the internal causes. I don't think that you can say chi is the cause anymore than you can say that prayer is the cause.

 

Thanks for the articles, believe it or not but I am fascinated with these mind-over-matter techniques.

However, I didn't see anything in them that validated Chinese energy models.

If you're into Chinese culture, traditions and history, then I'm sure Qi is a very important concept to understand. For everyone else, I see no reason to put a barrier of cultural artifice between you and your understanding of certain phenomena.

 

This is my biggest problem with people clinging on to outdated hypothetical models, such as meridians, chakras etc.; doing this is an impediment to us discovering more and improving on the practices associated with these models that actually do something.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitalism

 

Maybe I'm on the wrong forum. I thought this was a Martial Arts forum. As far as I know, most martial arts origins can be traced back to Kung Fu.

 

You are wrong - that is myth perpetuated with little to back it up

Pankration, Kalari, Kushti, Glima, Zulu stick fighting, wrestling....I could go on

One thing you will learn in martial arts is that there are many myths, fables and half-truths passed off as fact when they are no such thing - it is a bitter pill if you are in the early stages, but quite liberating latterly

 

You need to study more.



Even so if we, for now, assume that Chi isn't simply a cultural construct used to explain mechanisms beyond the understanding of the time then David's point should still stand.