The realness of martial Qi (chi)

[ShaolinWood]

I've bee training Shaolin and Chen Style Taiji for quite some time now, and I really would like to hear what others feel about the concept of chi and how one can know if you are starting to "feel" chi flow and of any excercises to test your chi strength.

[TaiChiBob]

Greetings..

Chi is simply energy.. it is the same energy that powers muscles, that animates our bodies, that completes the circuitry of the brain, that forms the patterns of thought.. the same energy that, without a body, we conceive as spirit.. Energy is the fabric of the universe and Chi is no less than that, its only limitation is our own beliefs..

Chi, in the Martial sense, is our ability to direct and control it for a specific purpose.. to draw on the wisdom of our predecessors and our own current understanding/experience and train our energy/chi to manifest our goals and intentions.. It is not a single aspect of being, it is being itself.. it is not just alignment and technique, its not just channels, meridians and chakras.. it is manifested according to our individual beliefs and intentions.. it is the clay and our consciousness is the potter..

Test it? Feel it? We do that every moment. the question ought to be, how can i train my awareness to sense what is already there? Once we can sense it, we can refine it..

Anyway, that's just my take on it, others will have differing perspectives... Be well..

[Tainan Mantis]

We hit each other.

For example, the student fills his belly with chi and the other student knees him there.
or
Fill the chi to the floating rib area and the other student hits there with his shoulder.
or
Fills chest with chi and the other student pounds there with his fist.
etc.
Anybody do these kind of drills.

When the student pushes the chi to a certain area we say Un Chi.

Taichibob,
This seems to be different from your definition that chi is energy.
For us it is air under pressure.

[Repulsive Monkey]

Both of you are right and noeither or you are wrong. Tian Mantis what you speak of is Qi packing surely where one concentrates it like a Hrad qigong manner to use like a temporary Iron Shirt method for defence. What Taichibob speaks of is in a more foundational sense thet fact that Qi is always present within us with everything we do and it is most internal martial arts path's to highlight through sensitisation to it and then conserve and refine it.
As from a martial point of view one can pack it to sustain injuries which is a selective method not used by all arts, all one can use it in Tui Shou and for that matter in every form to enable full na empty differentiation to highlight when and where to attack someone. Depending on one's art and one's needs Qi will remain a tool for advancement to understanding how the body can work whether it be martial, healing, spiritual or day to day.

[Vapour]

Chi is flow of energy *perceived* by individual. Whether that exist really as energy in physical sence is missing the point. We know love exist because we feel it. Whether love is energy or mere body chemistry is missing the point.

If correct movement to push is to push *from* tantien, obviously, if one push correctly in that way, one ought to feel the flow of connection eminating from your tantien to your hand(s). If you do any technique correctly, you will feel flow of enrgy from your tantien as if energy geing ussed from your tantien to your hand because we feel our coordination of body.

My experience with push with ki is that when being pushed by proper coordination (i.e. ki push), you simply can't resist that push.

I have received one particular aikido technique from 3rd dand and 6th dan. When 3rd dan done the technique to me, occasionally I felt I could attempt to get away with it. Or sometimes, even thought I can't stop his technique because he had correct leverage, I could at least resist his push with my strenth for a while. Basically I felt his li(brute strenght) so I could respond with li. When 6th dan did his technique on me, it was jing not li. I just felt this rush of push and I was down. I didn't feel his push though I knew I was being pushed and no where in the point of execution of technique I thought I could do anything.

[Vapour]

I should add that, in this section of forum, some consider chi as real energy (TaiChiBob, I think) while other consider chi merely as metaphysical concept (me, for example). Each side think other side don't get "it". So don't get confused.

[Shaolin-Do]

Actually....
Chi can also be described as the electromagnetic field produced by a human, or any other living thing. Chi is energy yes? Chi could then be described as the bio-mechanical energy. By the body metbolizing protiens, there are tiny chemical reactions. Each time one of these reactions occurs, biomechanical energy is released. or, "bio-electricity". henceforth, we can conclude that a "chi field" that surrounds people, would be a bio-electromagnetic field. So basically... Chi is real. Or we couldnt live. :)

[Daredevil]

(yawn)

Of course you can feel Qi. You're alive, aren't you?

Qi is just one part of the whole Chinese paradigm. For some reason people have just heavily jumped on it, probably because "energy" is such a sexy concept.

However, I'd be wary of just writing Qi off as bio-electricity. Qi probably certainly includes various aspects of the Western science paradigm and there is overlap between the two worldviews, but don't expect one to fit the other quite so neatly.

Personally, I don't care that much. I train and let Qi happen.

[Walter Joyce]

Qi by Scott Phillips
The nature of qi is that whenever you try to pin it down, it transforms, coalesces or disperses. What I would like to communicate in this chapter is the idea that qi is a vast concept, a worthy concept of adopting, and a comfortable concept, something that enriches our view and experience of life.

What is Qi? The word Qi has been in common usage since about 300 B.C.E. It is usually translated as 'energy' or 'vital force' which is far too limiting a definition. "In the very earliest texts qi is the vapor or steam that arises from the heating of water and watery substances and subsequently appears as the actual air that we breathe. By the time of the Huainanzi (139 B.C.E.), qi is the universal energy/matter/fluid out of which all phenomena in the universe are constructed,..."1

An important thing to understand about this word is that it is adaptable to the 'scale' in which our bodies2 are capable of feeling and practicing. Fortunately the term qi is already in the process of being adopted into the English language, so readers are likely to have some experience with it.

The first thing to say is that qi is absolutely rooted in experience, not fantasy. This is all one needs to know to begin practicing; however, for those interested in exploring the concept further, consider the following statements. When the term qi was adopted into the Chinese language, logical thinking and analysis of historical precedent had already made a mark on the philosophical thinking of the time.

The choice to use the word qi carries with it a comfort or ease with experiences of ambiguity. It is an expression of ambiguous experience, which never the less has a feeling quality, an experience of time(s), direction(s) and can include shape(s). Qi is only experienced in context, when jing3 or substance is in motion or in relation to motion. For example, when we are touched, when we visually track motion, or when we feel time passing, we have an experience of jing.

Jing, is an aspect of qi. Qi is the quality of our experience which we clearly experience, but which to enumerate or dissect or 'nail down', would obscure the totality of the experience, shrinking its multidimensionality, and it's connection to cosmology. Thus, qi transmissions done through some practice, playing the flute, calligraphy, martial arts, etc..., can contain innumerable layers of intimacy.

Though we can have clear experiences of what blood feels like under the skin, a somewhat ambiguous experience is far more common. With in or around our bodies there may be 900 different cycles or rhythms going on at once. All of these can be felt. Perhaps they can even be felt simultaneously, but differentiating even five of them at a time, seems daunting. Any of the 900 may actually be undifferentiatable.

The arbitrariness of naming and the contextual nature of names are imperfect tools for communicating experience, this very concept is key to understanding the use of the word qi. Qi is unifying, it connects and permeates everything. It is zaohua--to take form and transform. " ...Qi gives form to (zao) and transforms (hua) everything, in a two-sided operation, since it defines the fixed form but also changes it constantly. Zaohua is the Chinese equivalent of our word "creation," but it is a creation without a creator.

The only constant reality is Qi in its transformations, the continuous coming and going between its undetectable, diluted state and its visible state, condensed into a defined being."4 Qi is what holds things together and what shapes and changes them. It is inspiration, that which has no substance and yet permeates everything. Qi is time and direction, it is a body, a community or communities, in ever increasing, or decreasing, concentric circles, or spirals or formations, of smaller and larger entities which are connected because of their participation in a larger body.

The body which is inclusive of everything known and everything unknown is called the Dao. Qi is the central focus of a unifying cosmological view of the universe, which includes the known and the unknown, the detailed and a broader calculus which extrapolates the unity of all things. It can be summarized as breath but it would be a breath large enough to inhale tables and chairs, whole battle fields, and planets. It includes an ordinary sense of breath but is not confined by time, space, density, purity or refinement.

Though it is not confined by history or density, it can be practically defined in a scale or a context. The temperature of one's blood can be measured but its particular qi quality can never be proved, it can only be experienced. Qi has nothing to do with questions of belief, and it is not romanticism. Qi is not human centered and is not given a value, good or bad, personal or tribal. Qi as a concept was harnessed by Daoists or proto-Daoists to unify different tribal, linguistic and cultural groups.

The concept of qi was used to consolidate and categorize supernatural forces, including the cults of local ghosts and gods, into natural categories, like wind, water, thunder and fire. So there are fire type spirits and wind type gods. It is the experiencable qi aspects of the supernatural which allowed them to be categorized. Early Daoists used this consolidating notion of qi to bring people into unity by including them in larger qi bodies. This expansive notion folded supernatural and mythic thinking into larger categories of condensed or rarefied qi, including, larger categories of identity. It is the foundation of Han culture, the seed of Chinese civilization. This process is captured in the image of a dragon: "As a composite totem, the dragon possesses at least the head of a tiger, the horns of a ram, the body of a snake, the claws of an eagle and the scales of a fish. Its ability to cross totemic boundaries and its lack of verisimilitude to any living creature strongly suggest that from the very beginning the dragon was a deliberate cultural construction.

The danger of anachronism notwithstanding, the modern Chinese ethnic self-definition as the "dragon race" indicates a deep-rooted sense that Chineseness may derive from many sources. "5In this world view things with out substance, or with virtually immeasurable or imperceptible substance (mass), are included in (not excluded from) a larger cosmology. The modern notions of science expand fragmentation by increasing the perceptible, not decreasing the imperceptible. Folk culture everywhere speaks of ghosts, demons, spirits and gods. Modern culture everywhere speaks of bacteria, rates of infection, surgical cures, viruses, nerve dysfunction, blood pressure, toxic waste, and ultra violet rays.

To Daoists they are all manifestations of qi, because qi is what we experience directly. Any of the above explanations of experience may be useful in a particular context, yet there is no need to make 'leaps of faith'. For Daoist's, science which claims-to-know, belongs in the same category as reckless shamanism, trance mediumship, and blood sacrifice. It is something to coexist with, but not encourage. If this definition seems overwhelming, keep in mind that talking about the qi of a time sequence, a work of art, or an event is far easier than describing or defining the whole concept at once. Actually, feeling it requires no effort at all. By practicing the same movements day after day a certain comfort, ease the familiarity with this ambiguity emerges. Add to this the element of time and one will be feeling qi momentum.

[Walter Joyce]

The following is from one of the earliest surviving commentaries on the Daode jing: "Ho-shang kung says: "The Dao gives birth to the beginning. One gives birth to yin and yang. Yin and yang give birth to the breath (qi) between, the mixture of clear and turpid. These three breaths(qi) divide themselves into Heaven, Earth, and Man and together give birth to the ten thousand things. These elemental breaths are what keep the ten thousand things relaxed and balanced. The organs in our chests, the marrow in our bones, the spaces inside plants allow these breaths passage and make long life possible."6 (Red Pine)

Qi comes into being at the moment of polarization between any two divisions of experience. Movement and stillness, time and space, twisting and wrapping, up and down, or clear and turpid.Qi gong can be viewed as an experiment with altering our physical relationship to any two polarizations. Let's look at time and space. By slowing down the time it takes to do a movement, the refined details of that movement unfold in space, continuously transforming over a longer cycle of time, and eventually changing one's range of motion.

From a purely physiological point of view both time and space are sensory perceptions, which all emerge in utero with the development of the nervous system and the inner ear, in relationship to movement.7 With qi gong the amount of time you do some movement is always being calibrated against the space you do it in. The more slowly you go, the more details emerge in the space you are moving through. Simply doing the same gentle movements over time will give the practitioner a measure of how all the other things they do in the space of their lives effects the movement of their bodies; noticing first the effects of food, rest, and work, perhaps becoming more subtle or refined in one's observations over time.

Time cycles can be sped up or slowed down. Qi gong is relating to time in an unusual way. There are an infinite number of clocks, or swirling colored clouds, growing and shrinking around substance (jing). We can give them names like gonad time, nose time, finger time, hair time, sun time, moon time, and computer time. Qi gong sensitizes us to time, and the relationship the factor of time has to everything else, including other senses of time. This is the practice of qi gong, bagua zhang, taiji chuan, and is a link these practices have to ritual. So as the saying goes, when we rush we are speeding toward our own death.

So what is happening to our bodies over time when we regularly sit, stuck in traffic, in our cars wishing and trying to go faster? Pain itself may be a forward or a backward movement of time. Diarrhea is fast, constipation is slow. If my finger hurts, is it because I'm getting to re-experience all the time it moved over the last three days all at once? Or is it perhaps that the next three days are being thrust upon me all at once? Repetitive stress vs. sudden trauma. When we are aggressive, we tend to get catapulted forwards in time, when we are gentle perhaps we can go any direction in time.

Qi is a sense of many times, felt together. Qi gong is moving while feeling time.Part of what has been the inspiration of Daoist hermits and ritual practitioners alike, is a deep sense that we are all connected. This same feeling can also be a strong and clear inspiration for the practice of qi gong. However: Those who seek the heart of qi gong will also find themselves swimming in the weak and the murky.


Footnotes:
1 Harold D. Roth, "The Inner Cultivation Tradition of Early Daoism", p.125, in Religions of China in Practice, edited by Donald S. Lopez, Jr., (Princeton University Press, 1996). 2 The Daoist concept of body is not meant to be limited to the 'flesh bag'. It could also be translated as community and could refer to anything from all the 'entities in the body of the adept, to the limitless cosmos itself. (see Schipper) 3 Different jing from the one mentioned earlier which means classic. This jing, which I am here calling substance is an aspect of condensed qi usually translated as 'essence'; however, it also has the meaning of "the self-reproductive quality of nature" as it manifests in things, i.e. pollen and seeds in trees, the part of our bodies which makes scabs, and as some vulgar individuals have translated it: semen. 4 Robinet, Growth of a Religion, p.8.5 Tu Wei-ming, "Chinese Philosophy: A Synopsis," in a companion to World Philosophies. Edited by Eliot Deutsch and Ron Bontekoe. (Oxford: Blackwell). 6 Red Pine, Lao-tzu's Taoteching,( Mercury House, 1996).7 A sense of timelessness and infinite space also seem to emerge in utero. See Bonnie Cohen, "The Action in Perceiving," in Contact Quarterly Dance Journal, Fall 87, Vol. XII no. 3. The Daode jing is a classical Chinese text said to be authored by Laozi. This text is a foundation text of religious Daoism. Two terms which summarize the most essential thrusts of the Daode jing are wuwei and ziran.1 . The T'ai chi chuan practice known as push-hands (tui shou) appears to be a natural expression or embodiment of these two important concepts. - from "Push-hands and Wuwei" by Scott Phillips
North Star Martial Arts | (415) 752-1984 | scophillips@yahoo.com

[Former castleva]

"any excercises to test your chi strength."
Completely impossible?

A small clip from the history of neuroscience.

4000 B.C. to 0 A.D
ca. 2700 B.C. - Shen Nung originates acupuncture
ca. 1700 B.C. - First written record about the nervous system
ETC.

This may seem a bit of a stupid note,but I added it for a reason.

[Walter Joyce]

Care to share your reason?

[Former castleva]

I´d like to but it can be a bit tricky,perhaps less rewarding.
I might get back to this a bit later.
:)

[prana]

The Dao gives birth to the beginning. One gives birth to yin and yang. Yin and yang give birth to the breath (qi) between, the mixture of clear and turpid. These three breaths(qi) divide themselves into Heaven, Earth, and Man and together give birth to the ten thousand things. These elemental breaths are what keep the ten thousand things relaxed and balanced. The organs in our chests, the marrow in our bones, the spaces inside plants allow these breaths passage and make long life possible."

This is very similar to Buddhist, except words and metaphors used are different :)

[No_Know]

"... and I really would like to hear what others feel about the concept of chi and how one can know if you are starting to "feel" chi flow and of any excercises to test your chi strength."

I might be.

[Liokault]

No such thing as Chi....but breathing exists and what ever you want to call it and no matter how magical you think it is, its still breathing.

[prana]

Originally posted by Liokault
No such thing as Chi....but breathing exists and what ever you want to call it and no matter how magical you think it is, its still breathing.

:D can opener :p

[Miles Teg]

Has anyone run into one of those Chun Do Bup people?

Chun Do Bup originated in Korea and it is a practice of meditation and breathing techiques (as far as I can tell).

I meet a practioner of Chun Do Bup once and had a very interesting experience in regards to the demonstration of Chi.
Anyone else met these people?