What is 'Qi', to those who believe.

The reason I am starting this thread, is that the last thread on this topic entitled "what is 'Chi'...", turned in to a slugging match between the internists and externalists. This in turn obscured any chance of learning anything useful. Thus, this thread is for those that believe, have an open mind, or just curious. So, please share your thought, experiences and feelings on ‘Qi’ for all our benefit.

However, if you are one of those people that disbelieve the existence of 'Qi' even though there are whole martial arts based on the concept, as well as various religious and philosophical establishments, well then stay off the thread, please.

Bellow is my latest essay on the subject and some of you may have seen it before in other threads, but after typing that much up, I have not got much to say on the topic, mainly because of lack of inspiration and negativity imparted on me from the thread mentioned earlier.

So, here is what I currently think.

What is ‘Qi’?

‘Qi’ is the name given to the energy of the mind. In other words, ‘Qi’ is your consciousnesses, focus, intention, awareness, you are your consciousness, thus, you are your focus, intention and ‘Qi’. Your focus/intent is your awareness of your external world (trees, people, buildings, etc), and your internal world (feelings, thoughts, emotions, instincts, sensations, etc). The way ‘Qi’ moves in your body is by following your focus/intention/awareness, in addition, internally the blood follows the ‘Qi’, hence, where your focus falls externally or internally ‘Qi’ follows.

A simple test to feel your ‘Qi’ is to straighten out one of your index fingers, and concentrate on feeling the tip of your finger, (this will take various amount of time to work for different individuals). After, intently feeling the tip of your finger for however long, you should feel your blood pulsing in the area of your focus, if your focus is strong enough, you can feel past the pulsation and feel the ‘Qi’ or energy put on your finger by your intent/focus/awareness, this feels like a warm, numb, expansive feeling. This feeling is your ‘Qi’, it is very subtle and requires relaxation and strong focus to feel, with practice the awareness/focus/intention grows stronger, thus the ‘Qi’ also grows stronger. Now we have to look at what consciousness is.

Consciousness is awareness, which is in turn your focus/intent/awareness. A living conscious being is always focusing on something, whether it be consciously or subconsciously, the intent is always on something, either internal (dreams, feelings, thinking, fantasizing, etc) or external (eating, walking, doing, etc). Thus, we may say that in a living conscious being the ‘Qi’/focus/intention/awareness is always active whether internally, externally, consciously, subconsciously or any combination of these. Hence, we may also say that a non-living being, is not conscious, and has no ‘Qi’, intent, focus, awareness.

The ‘Qi’, focus/intent/awareness can be trained, this may be trained by any means that directly require your concentration/focus/intent/awareness to be stable and strong, thus it may be said that we can train ourselves in everything we do by being more aware/intent/focused. However, there are specific exercises called ‘Qi Gong’ (Internal Martial Arts are high level ‘Qi Gong’) that specifically and very cleverly train the focus/intent/awareness and with practise move to more subtle levels that we call ‘Qi’. The way ‘Qi Gong’ works is by gaining awareness of all of your being internally (organs, muscles, fascia, thought, feelings, emotions, etc) and externally (touch, sight, hearing feeling, etc). Through these exercises we strengthen our intent/focus/awareness/’Qi’, thus in turn we gain fine control (this increases with practice) over our internal and external components.

How do ‘Qi’ and ‘Qi Gong’ relate to martial effectiveness. By increasing our control over ourselves by means mentioned above. An internal martial artist gains superior control and coordination over the body. This control is in turn used to move the muscles, joints, fascia in wave like motions. In other words, the controlled yet relaxed coordination and movement allows an individual (after a lot of practice) to stack the energy from different parts of the body in to one or several points, creating an increased force at the point of contact. This is in turn increased by moving intention/focus/’Qi’ in circular patterns (like gears), aside from increasing the force generated it also overcomes inertia, allowing the practitioner to move seamlessly and fluidly. This method of coordinating the various parts of the body, with all the different parts in turn circulating, can both produce and absorb large amounts of energy, it works similarly as gears would work to decrease and increase power. On higher levels this circular coordination becomes more and more internal with practice. Thus at these higher levels the internal movement of the practitioner is not visible to the eyes of the opponent, yet create powerful energy vortexes in the practitioner that may be used to absorb and emit energy, this is known in Internal Martial Arts as ‘Spiral Force’, and is one of the first levels of attainment of martial proficiency. However, in order for this force to grow stronger and become one with the practitioner a lot of practice is required. This is to make the ‘Spiral Force’ inert in the practitioner, down to a subconscious level, so that the practitioner can manifest this force spontaneously in any external movement, wit the same natural manifestation as a sneeze would be if you got pepper in your nose.

The reason ‘Qi Gong’ is good for a practitioners health is as follows. As mentioned previously the focus/intention/awareness leads ‘Qi’ in the body, the ‘Qi’ in turn leads the blood. Some ‘Qi Gong’ exercises work directly on the internal organs, by focusing, moving your intention and being aware of your internal organs you can in turn lead the ‘Qi’ to them, which will in turn lead the blood. The blood will increase circulation in the internal organ, and bring extra oxygen and nourishment to it, thus helping it regenerate and enliven the organ. At higher levels when the ‘Qi’ is strong, one may even enliven the organs to such high levels that they operate beyond their normal capacity (like supercharging an engine). This regeneration and optimization of the internal organs directly effects the performance of the brain, which in turn increases focus/awareness/intent/’Qi’ which then revert positively by allowing you to optimize your internal organs to even higher levels, it is a self contained beneficial cycle. This is why the first step in Internal Martial Arts is to gain health, thus in turn affecting ones focus/intent/awareness/’Qi’ positively.

However, the ‘Qi’ is imbued within the ‘Tao’. The ‘Tao’ being the way or path of ‘Taoist’ self cultivation, for the perfection of the human, for the benefit of all and everything. It is impossible to explain how far reaching and profoundly deep the ‘Qi’ and in turn the ‘Tao’ are within existence, but I will humbly try and point the reader to some of its all encompassing splendour. Though I forewarn that I am no expert and anything from here on may be quite bizarre, this is also coupled with the fact that this topic at higher levels transcends language, or at least normal ability of language users.

Consciousness being awareness/intent/focus, thus in turn ‘Qi’ may be cast on to anything internal or external, thus it may be understood that your attention/focus/intent/awareness may observe anything. This discipline of ‘Qi’ cultivation is of Chinese ‘Taoist’ origin and several facts about the Chinese language must be understood. The Chinese language, unlike English is character based. Each character may represent an number of different meanings, when spoken this would be down to pronunciation to differentiate between meanings, whereas when written it would be down to the interpretation of the reader. An example of this is the character ‘Wu Li’, this character has several meanings, one being ‘Physics’, another ‘Patterns of Organic Matter’, another ‘Enlightenment’, these are just a few. In the same manner the character ‘Yi’ means ‘Mind’, ‘Change’, ‘Intent’, ‘Focus’, and more. Thus in classic ‘Taoist’ texts it is said that the ‘Qi’ follows the ‘Yi’ and the blood follows the ‘Qi’, this is the main basis of all Internal Martial Arts of ‘Taoist’ origin.
There is a multitude of ‘Taoist’ classics on all manner of subjects, but the greater ones were written by people imbued with the ‘Tao’, in other words those who cultivated their ‘Qi’. Thus it is hard to find the correct interpretation of these texts, or what the author meant, without yourself not cultivating the ‘Qi’, because the ‘Qi’ once again relates to the mind. In order to understand correctly one must reach a level of awareness/focus/intent/’Qi’ to the a level comparable with the author. This will allow one to grasp the correct, objective meaning. Since awareness/intent/focus, thus in turn ‘Qi’ may be cast on to anything internal or external, it may be said that ‘Qi’ is everywhere. So it may also be said that anywhere your ‘Qi’ may fall, that on which the ‘Qi’/focus/intent/awareness is on at the moment may in turn influence your level of ‘Qi’/intent/focus/awareness. In to the above paradox the Yin/Yang diagram comes in to play (Yin/Yang diagram is called ‘Tai Chi’), this diagram represents balance, this balance is stands for objective awareness/focus/intent/’Qi’. Thus, in other words it is a balanced state of mind that may perceive and react without being skewed towards any extreme. This sate of mind is in turn what is used to perform martially in Internal Martial Arts. However, on higher levels this sate of mind is moved to ‘Wu Chi’ which is complete emptiness or void, from this ‘void’ state of mind, all and everything may be perceived perfectly. There are various other concepts that come in to play here, but are to complex and require practice of ‘Qi’ cultivation and objective study of ‘Taoists’ classics to be understood. Thus, they will not be discussed here.

Conclusively, I hope that the reader may now have a feel for the depth and immensity of the ‘Qi’ cultivating arts. Particularly the understanding that everything one does internally or externally, consciously or subconsciously has an effect on ones ‘Qi’. Thus, one may see why Internal Martial Arts are more than a hobby or pastime and are more akin to a way of life.

 

Firstly, the slugging match wasn't between internalists and externalists, it was between believers and non-believers.

Secondly there's already a thread covering this: http://www.martialartsplanet.com/forums/showthread.php?t=18617

 

ZillaBilla, thank you for posting the essay; it looks like there's a lot more to qi than I would have thought. What recommendations would you have for a beginner just starting on this journey -- reading, practice, etc.?

(By the way, I don't think there's any harm in having a separate thread where people can discuss qi without constantly having to justify themselves to non-believers, or trying to explain it in terms of western science. Unless I'm mistaken, qi involves more than just being a better fighter, which is where the linked thread was heading. Just my humble opinion).

 

Bunny,

I’ll assume you have problems reading and understanding, I guess those big ears take away a lot of blood from the brain.

Keep out externalist, non believer!!! You have shown this thread is not for you. Pollute some other thread with your carrot ends.

Since you haven’t got anything productive to contribute, why bother.

 

Hey Kinjiro,

Genki Deska?

Nice to see some enthusiasm. The thing about 'Qi Gong' is that it is all initially centered around the breath, once what is called 'abdominal' or 'Taoist' breathing is achieved and can be done with ease, one may then progress on to more advanced 'Qi Gong' exercises. However, the ‘abdominal’ breathing itself has vast physical and mental benefits, and doing ‘Qi Gong’ without it is quite useless. The best book I've seen on this topic is a book by B. K. Frantzis called "Relaxing in your being", it basically outlines the breathing method mentioned above, and gives various other interesting and important information, here is a link to it on amazon.co.uk: (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos...550/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl/026-1508981-7937241), if you want to see what it looks like. If you don’t want to get the book, private message me your e-mail and I’ll send the exercises to you in a word doc via e-mail. Though, I would recommend the book, as B. K. Frantzis is a high level internal master with vastly greater knowledge than mine. Here are a few links with his interviews you may also find interesting:

http://www.energyarts.com/hires/library/media/qisummer94.html

http://www.energyarts.com/hires/library/media/qifall94.html

Enjoy mate, hope I could help.

 

Although I doubt you'll agree that this is productive, here we go.

From my experience chi theory is an exceptionally good visualisation technique and practice. Practicing chi, along with good technique, helps relaxation and correct biomechanics to produce truly spectacular results with a little training and hard work.

I believe that used correctly this visualisation technique can lead to much improved techniques, where repetition and constant practice would take much longer to produce the same results. It also allows an easier way of focusing the body's structure towards a single aim than by reducing it down to individual movements, although initially the reductionist approach is necessary in order to learn the movement in the first place. The two combined can massively improve power, speed, and proper technique, leading to a great enhancement in training, whether external or internal.

 

ZB

Why bother mate, your clear attempts to start a positive thread for interested parties to have a healthy and informative debate have been hijacked again. FWIW I think the wrong person is getting the warnings.

Paul

 

Ahem. Firstly I've already made an attempt to simply start a healthy and informative debate, which didn't include me insulting anyone, although it has been hijacked by Zilla in order to throw yet more insults at me. On top of that, how exactly has this been hijacked? I put forwards my own beliefs in chi, in a non-combative, constructive manner. I simply stated what I believed chi to be, and what I believed it to do. I did not attack the theory, I did not attack Zilla, I fail to see how I've hijacked anything.

And finally as for the warnings. I have not yet thrown personal attacks at Zilla, or anyone else. I have been insulted repeatedly by being accused of close-mindedness, stupidity, being an idiot, and having a lack of blood to the brain. I have yet to respond in kind to any of these insults. This forum has a policy against personal attacks, hence the warnings that Zilla has received. I have not yet resorted to any personal attacks, nor do I intend to.

 

Fair enuff. However, in ZB's defence he did make it quite clear at the start of the thread that this was for like minded individuals. If you didn't want to cause a problem you didn't really need to post (truthfully - did you???). There is a separate thread for the for/against argument. Still, I agree that there is no point in getting personal over this type of subject although I would say that you can come across more than a bit strong in your posts. Let's all be friends....even in disagreement.

Paul

 

Well, this post was redundant, since there was already a thread set up for this exact purpose (which Zilla attempted to hijack), and I did feel it was necessary to point out that the argument was not between externalists/internalists but between believers and non-believers. There is a huge difference between these two groups, and tarring anyone who does an external art as a non-believer, or anyone who does an internal art as a believer, is probably a slightly offensive generalisation to both.

As for the for against argument, I didn't bring it into this thread at all. The question was what is 'qi' to those who believe. I stated what I believe 'qi' is. I said nothing about various types of qi not existing, nor anything else, I simply put forward my own opinion in as non-combative a way as possible.

Finally for the friends thing. I'd love to be, if people would stop accusing me of being an idiot, close-minded, blind, trapped by my own viewpoint, an ignorant westerner, or of having too little blood supply to the brain. Yet strangely I'm the one who comes across too strong?

 

I think PaulS has the right idea here. We can do without the name-calling, but it's become obvious to me that some folks here would like to be able to discuss chi in a thread without always having to debate it -- there's a distinction.

 

As far as I'm aware, there's not yet any debate about the existence of chi in this thread, nor in the other thread. I apologise is my post in this thread was taken as an attack on chi, but I honestly was just trying to put forward my opinion of what chi is, answering the original question posed. I have not tried to hijack anything, nor attack anyone. Nor was I planning to debate if someone disagreed with me in this thread.

 

Sigh.......can't be bothered any more.

Bye

Paul

 

You're right, you haven't done any of those things here -- I just think your "reputation" is preceding you!

I understand the desire to have just one thread where there is discussion only, and not argument and debate. When it comes to chi, it seems particularly difficult to achieve this. I think we've all been burned a little in some of the other threads, and are now a bit overly-sensitive, perhaps.

 

KT,

As a moderator, I'd like your opinion about the following (and I personally think it best for that opinion to be here, otherwise I would have just PM'd you). What about those of us who have carefully researched the matter to the best of our ability, including looking at philosophy, history, medical research, scientific journals, internet debates, personal discussions with those who do/don't believe, other forums, and other threads, and have come to the conclusion that we don't believe in chi, as presented by most IMA-ists in this and other threads? Would it be possible and appropriate for us to post in this thread why we have come to the conclusion that we don't believe in chi, without it being assumed we are trolling, arguing, kicking someone else's belief, or being stupid/braindead/close-mined/rude? I understand the desire of those who believe in chi to discuss it with like-minded individuals, without feeling they are being attacked. At the same time, I would like to be able to discuss it, and better understand those who do believe in chi, without being accused of all of the above.

 

Hi Capt Ann

No problem about posting this up in public. However, I am glad to see you couldn't quote any personal insults and hope that you will see fit to confirm this in your reply.

Anyway, as a moderator I'm sure you will see the value in having separate threads on this forum. One where the debate is open and honest about the pros and cons of chi and one where the evidence can be shared on both sides. This is a healthy exchange of views. The second is one where either side can air their own views with like minded individuals without fear of having that thread overrun with the same people from thread one with the same arguments. This "believers" thread applies equally to those who believe in chi and those who do not. In other words, there could be three threads running here.

1) The debate on chi/no chi
2) the discussion among chi believers
3) the discussion among chi non-believers

I appreciate that the forums are open. However, I can also appreciate ZB's frustration at not being able to have a discussion with like minded individuals when there was a clearly defined thread already open for the wider debate.

I do not condemn anyones views in any of my posts. I just state my own preferences and opinions. I would ask you to examine any of my posts on any thread where I have deliberately sought to attack anyone personally. I am confident that you will find none and that you will actually find that I aim to help rather than hinder.

I will admit that I thought the language of certain posters was (perhaps unintentionally - but nevertheless) overly antagonistic and could have been more diplomatic. You will always have tension over peoples dearly held beliefs and it is easy for some to quote science at you with no regard for faith or feeling.

I think as a moderator you have a duty to safeguard the rights of both sides of the equation and, in my view, I think both sides to this debate have been treated shoddily. Again, I do not believe that I have made any personal comments in ANY of my posts. However, if my posts have upset anyone unduly then I apologise wholeheartedly and would extend the virtual hand of friendship to any fellow martial artists on this board - regardless of their belief in chi.

I hope the same applies in reverse.

Yours, with the best intentions.

Paul

 

Because of course, people quoting science haven't spent years studying the subject and putting hard work into their study, and so don't have any reason to hold their own beliefs. And the people who study silence have no right to be irritated over someone misusing something that's quite evidently not even understood, since science can't be something that involves feeling.

 

Obviously, that hand is not offered back.

Best regards
Paul