Perception and Qi

[RAF]

Wonder what the so-called Masters of Qi see?



Man Sees, Hears Words in Color
Tue Mar 19, 5:58 AM ET
By PAUL RECER, AP Science Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - Black and white words on a page and the sounds of language explode into many colors in the mind of a middle-aged man. "Two" is blue, "2" is orange, "3" is pink and "traffic" is both blue and brown.


The man has synesthesia — an altered perception in which printed words and numbers burst with color, flavors take on shapes and the spoken language turns into a mental rainbow.

For some people with synesthesia, say researchers, a newspaper is never black and white — it's red, orange, blue, beige, pink and green all over.

"This is an alternate perception," said Thomas Palmeri, a Vanderbilt University psychologist and the first author of a study reporting on tests given to one man. "He is normal — a highly successful, intelligent man — and he suffers no problems from this unique wiring of the brain."

The study, appearing Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (news - web sites), explores the multichromatic world of a man identified only as W.O. The man, a university professor of medicine, did not respond to requests for a direct interview made through the study's authors.

Palmeri said researchers are starting to realize that W.O. is one of what some suspect is a large number of people with synesthesia, many of whom take joy in this rich symphony of sensations.

"They often experience a great deal of pleasure from this altered perception," said Edward Hubbard, a synesthesia researcher at the University of California, San Diego.

For W.O., his synesthesia helped make learning the complex words of science easy — when the colors weren't distracting him from study, Palmeri said.

"He sees a palette of different colors when he reads, and sometimes he is more interested in how pretty the page looks than what the words say," he said.

In the Proceedings study, Palmeri, Randolph Blake and other Vanderbilt researchers put W.O. through a series of tests.

Palmeri said that W.O. sees all printed words in colors, sometimes letter-by-letter and sometimes syllable-by-syllable. Short words have a single color while long words may have many.

When W.O. was given a list of 100 words printed in black and white, he said each one had a specific color. When the list was presented a second time, weeks later, W.O. gave most words the same color, missing only some that were either beige or off-white.

"These associations are highly reliable," said Blake. "W.O. says that the colors have stayed the same all his life and our observations lend credence to the claim."

In W.O.'s view, each numeral, except for zero and one, has a color even if printed in black and white.

When the researchers presented an image of the number 5 made up of much smaller number 2s, W.O. saw the whole image as a five and it appeared green. However, when he looked at the small 2s that made up the image, each of the numerals was orange.

When the numbers were written out, such as two, they assumed another color.

And the hues prompted when W.O. hears words are generally the same as those he sees when the words are printed, Palmeri said.

Even foreign languages prompt bursts of colors, he said. When W.O. heard Korean spoken, his mind flashed colors, even though he couldn't understand the meaning, said Palmeri.

Hubbard said the experiments with W.O. match some performed in his lab that show synesthesians see colors where others see only black and white.

Just how W.O. perceives this color is difficult to understand, the researchers said.

"He tries to describe it to me, and I still can't appreciate it. It's like trying to describe colors to a person who can't see them," said Palmeri. "How could you describe color to a blind person? You really can't."

Some researchers believe that about one in every 25,000 people has synesthesia, Palmeri said. Some studies suggest it may be much more common, closer to about one in every 200 people, Hubbard said.

One theory holds that the perception is inherited. W.O.'s mother, maternal grandfather and great uncle also experience synesthesia, but his siblings and children do not.

Hubbard said that little is known about synesthesia because many people won't admit it. Others, however, are surprised to learn that they are unusual, saying they thought everyone experienced the colorful world that they saw.

It's believed that synesthesia occurs because some parts of the brain that perceive color are very close to parts that process speech, language and music, Hubbard said.

___

On the Net:

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: http://www.pnas.org/

Synesthesia: http://www.ncu.edu.tw/(tilde)daysa/synesthesia.htm

Vanderbilt: http://exploration.vanderbilt.edu

[Braden]

Yay brain stuff!

If you're interested, look up gaze tinnitus and phantom limbs, which likely share the same underlying cause as synesthesia. Ocular dominance columns are a different and more well-established perspective on the fundamentally the same thing.

Of course, if you like synesthesia, you'll love blindsight and disconnection syndrome from callosectomy. Not to mention monothematic delusions like cotard, capras, and fregoli.

[RAF]

Here's another one for you Braden. I can't find the original citation but it was in November, Reuters, and the study was conducted at the Cleveland Clinic, near here.

I am not a reductionist and don't care if Chinese concepts can be reduced to Western science. (although I appreciate the role science plays in helping sort out the fakes). I am fascinated at the junctions where they cross.


The synopsis of the original article is below. Althought the researchers never explored it, the findings provide some interesting speculation regarding qi gong and some of the Chinese ideas on training. I think bagua has yet to be fully explored regarding its conditioning and strength development.


I'll leave that to others (the speculation). I've had my fill of posts for the week!
__________________________________________________ __
You Can Increase Your Muscular Strength by Just Thinking
It is a couch potato's dream - just imagining yourself exercising can increase the strength of even your large muscles. The discovery could help patients too weak to exercise to start recuperating from stroke or other injury. And if the technique works in older people, they might use it to help maintain their strength.

Muscles move in response to impulses from nearby motor neurons. The firing of those neurons in turn depends on the strength of electrical impulses sent by the brain.

That suggests you can increase muscle strength solely by sending a larger signal to motor neurons from the brain.

Investigators have already found that mentally visualizing exercise was enough to increase strength in a muscle in the little finger, which it uses to move sideways. Now his team has turned its attention to a larger, more frequently used muscle, the bicep.

Thought experiment

They asked 10 volunteers aged 20 to 35 to imagine flexing one of their biceps as hard as possible in training sessions five times a week. The researchers recorded the electrical brain activity during the sessions. To ensure the volunteers were not unintentionally tensing, they also monitored electrical impulses at the motor neurons of their arm muscles.

Every two weeks, they measured the strength of the volunteers' muscles. The volunteers who thought about exercise showed a 13.5 per cent increase in strength after a few weeks, and maintained that gain for three months after the training stopped. Controls who missed out on the mental workout showed no improvement in strength.

Annual Meeting of Society for Neuroscience conference in San Diego, California November 2001


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

DR. MERCOLA'S COMMENT:

It sure would be a lot easier to exercise this way; but I include this study not as an easier way to exercise, but as an example of the incredible power that your brain has on your body.

I would be curious to know if a similar study might work on cardiovascular changes that one receives from aerobic exercise.

I would still highly recommend a combination of aerobic exercise and strength training on a regular basis. Exercise not only lowers insulin levels, but it improves insulin receptor sensitivity, which is one of the reasons it is such a powerful health-promoting tool.

Related Articles:

Exercise Decreases Death From All Causes

Exercise Can Be Fountain of Youth

Exercise May Slow Some Effects of Aging

Exercise Helps Blood Flow in Arteries


:)

[Braden]

RAF :) - It's interesting to note that western science is not necessarily reductionist! Jerry Fodor wrote an interesting article on this, where he introduces the idea of 'special sciences' rather than strict reductionism.

I read the original citation when it was put out, but it's actually just the latest in a long trend of investigating this phenomenon which started over twenty years ago. One of the 'tricks' though is that the real performance boosts come from BOTH imagery and 'doing.' Imagery on it's own isn't particularly effective.

The thing with muscle fibers is that they are basically all-or-nothing contractions. You get stronger muscle organ contractions by either recruiting more fibers or causing the same number of fibers to contract repeatedly in very short time frames. Either way, the difference between a weak contraction and a strong contraction is how active the neural pathways for the contraction are (and also, in most cases, how much interferance you're getting from nearby pathways).

Neural circuitry for complex movements (which basically all practical movements are) is formed in the central nervous system through practice to facilitate the behavior. Mental consideration of a physical activity activates these same circuits (and again, we have evidence from the learning literature to back this up, for physical tasks and others), so will facilitate their development.

Tie these two ideas together and it's not too difficult to find a physiological analogy to ideas about intention.

[Daniel Madar]

I am color blind but I can see chi. Its not the same.

Its also not consistent at this point. I dont know what caused it to be visible, but I do know that my teacher and other high level internalists I know can see it. I only found out she could see it when I asked her what the hell I was seeing.

I also met someone who was naturally born with the ability.

[bamboo_ leaf]

This would be a natural question only asked in curiosity.
Based on your ability what dose chi look like to you?

I can feel this in others and myself, i can also sense it as a field around people but I never heard of people being able to see it.

How’s land of the rising sun :)



david

[Repulsive Monkey]

too true Daniel colour blindness is in no way an obstacle to seeing Qi. Most objects by most people are subjectively seen, however Qi is objectively perceived. You can't fake seeing Qi its somewhat absolute.

[bamboo_ leaf]

“You can't fake seeing Qi its somewhat absolute.”

objectively perceived dose this then mean they found a way to measure it ?

how would you fake something that most can’t see?
Absolute? As in ?

Could you clarify for the slow like myself please ;)

[Nexus]

What that means essentially is someone who is perceptive to seeing qi would see the lines drawn by the body when someone is doing t'ai chi. For instance, if you do your t'ai chi properly, an energy adapted perceiver would see you as being much larger than you actually are, as they would be perceiving your energetic space/size rather than your physical one. To them, you might expand several feet beyond the physical body. That's why a master can tell when your t'ai chi is being done without full circles and such in many cases, as they can see those lines being drawn energetically. For instance vectors will run off of each of the circles in t'ai chi creating lines of power, 2 lines of power, 6 lines of weakness - so on so forth.

Great articles by the way.

- Nexus

[bamboo_ leaf]

If this is what it means then I can see/ sense this too, It’s what I watch for when I see people playing TC among other things. never thought of it as vectors and such, my terms are simple as in lines, circles, broken and un broken.

Never heard it expressed as such if this is what Daniel M. means.

[Daniel Madar]

Sorry, been away for a while. No that is not what I mean. I mean I see an actually flowing field around people, not just people practicing taiji or other internal arts. Like I said, its not an always thing. Sometimes it has colors, sometimes it appears like the kind of disturbance created by a mirage. In most cases it is very faint. It moves when power moves, I can see it settling in different areas of the body, or getting stuck when someone applies fah jing improperly.

Exactly what it looks like, is kind of hard to say without falling back on cliches.

That being said, Ive never done any hallucinogens.

I have, however, always had strong ting jing, from the beginning. I could feel people, depending on their strength, from a distance, regardless of touch. I believe this is just another development of ting jing. At this point I find the "touch" ting jing to be more useful than the "see" ting jing, except when viewing peoples technique from a distance.

[bamboo_ leaf]

Mmm hallucinogens, used properly . I mean in my younger days might have accidentally tried some.. ;)

Can’t do this, but I can say that I have some small ability with ting jing.

Interesting, luck in the land of the raising sun.

[Daniel Madar]

Thanks. I miss SF. My teacher is in China now, and i am trying to convince the wife that flying to shanghai for our anniversary is a great idea!

I expect that if you practice long enough it will come to all of us. As I said, the majority of the high level people I know have it--which is not to say I am high level--, but they all do. I think its simply a matter of time and practice. As I said, for me it still comes only in flashes, and also depends on the person. Some people are simply too weak to see.

[Nexus]

Some people are simply too weak to see.

This is pretty much how it works. Feel your own chi, begin to feel others chi. Feel your own emotions, begin to feel others emotions. Feel your own expressions, begin to feel others expressions. Feel your love towards others, begin to feel others love towards you.

See your own inner nature, begin to see the inner nature of others. See your own energy, begin to see the energy of others.
So on and so forth.

- Nexus

[Daniel Madar]

Sounds nice, but I have found that the actual method goes more like this:


Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice.

Stand for an hour.

Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice.

Hold Swallows tail for an hour.

Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice.

Hold cloud hands for an hour.

Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice.

Go to class and have your teacher correct you.

Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice, Practice.

The other things are merely the side effects of practice, not goals or methods of practicing. Understanding is best attained through doing, less through analytical thinking.

[Nexus]

Understanding is best attained through doing, less through analytical thinking.

When I said, "This is Pretty Much how it works" that statement was in agreement to what you had said, it was not emphasizing that what I was about to say was "how it works."

As for intellectualizing, analytical thinking is exactly what you applied when you took my post, interpreted through your own perceptions, and clarified it to fit your perceptual process of the internal arts.

- Nexus

[Daniel Madar]

I appreciate your point nexus, but perhaps you misunderstood mine. I was not focusing on your comment persay, but merely the fact that it lead towards intellectualization. My post was not an attack on the post, but the methods that it could be construed to endorse.

That being said, there is a wild difference between intellectualizing the practice of a martial art, and misreading or reading too much into a post on a discussion board, which is by its very nature an intellectual exercise.

Which I suppose means I should never have posted anything in the first place.

:confused:

[RAF]

Just another piece in the puzzle. Note the Chinese researcher and wonder if he is on the road to testing qi gong.

Guang H Yue of the Cleveland Clinic presented to the Society of Neuroscience at San Diego meeting, December, 2001

MENTAL STRENGTHENING OF MUSCLES

Gabe Mirkin, M.D.

A study from the Cleveland Clinic shows that thinking about strengthening muscles makes them stronger.

Volunteers thought about contracting muscles controlling their fingers and elbows fifty times in a row, five days a week. After 12 weeks, the fingers were strengthened 35 percent and the elbows, 13.5 percent. How can this be? Muscles are made of millions of fibers. When you contract a muscle, you use only about one percent at the same time. You become stronger by enlarging muscle fibers and by being able to contract a greater percentage of muscle fibers at the same time.

Thinking about exercising did not enlarge the muscles, so thinking about muscles helps your brain contract a greater percentage of fibers at the same time. That's why an athlete who has a broken arm can strengthen that arm by lifting weights with the other arm, but he cannot strengthen that arm by exercising his legs. It's called cross transference.

Guang H Yue of the Cleveland Clinic presented to the Society of Neuroscience at San Diego meeting, December, 2001.

Health Topics from • The Dr. Gabe Mirkin Show • Box 10, Kensington MD 20895

Transcripts of segments of The Dr. Gabe Mirkin Show are provided as a service to listeners at no charge. Dr. Mirkin's opinions and the references cited are for information only, and are not intended to diagnose or prescribe. For your specific diagnosis and treatment, consult your doctor or health care provider

[dfedorko@mindspring.com]

There was an article in KFI last year that dealt with measuring QI. There is even a website that, if I remember correctly, sells a machine that measures QI. All of this is fine but, I feel, that as long as you know you have Qi there is no need for any type of machine or measuring device but, as Dan Mader stated, practice, practice and more practice. In doing so, I believe some of these instances with Qi that we experience will happen more often than not. Only thing I would be interested in is controlling it but, I don't see it happening in this life time.

Damian