Chi vs. "Chi"?

[Fu-Pow2]

Could someone please explain the difference between Chi as in the mechanical force (ala Taiji) and chi the elecromagnetic life force (ala TCM). Are they the same thing? Josh_f (who I consider to be very knowledgeable says "no", by the way Josh the article you posted on the internal/external thread about the Bagua master seemed to have TCM theory in it) Then I read an article by Chen Xiaowing, he seemed to be talking about mechanical energy in one sentence (ie the dan tien) but then seemed to be espousing traditional chinese medical theories about Chi.

Lets take a look at Standing meditation. You are not moving..you are not moving the the Dan Tien. You supposedly are supposed to be able to do this Small MicroOrbit thing where you lead Chi around your body with your mind.

Dr. Yang Ywang-Ming (sorry spelling) states that the Dan Tien is really the large intestine and that it acts as some kind of capacitor that stores energy. What does this have to do with Taiji? I'm really confused on this issue and would apprectiate clarification....

[JerryLove]

There is a stong element of qi (one of the two words commonly spelled "chi") in Taiji. That is what you see in acupuncture, and TCM. It is what is considered stored and released from your DanTien. In Japanese and Korean it is referred to as "ki". Literally, it means "breath"

The "ji" in "Taiji" is not "qi". It is just part of the name (probibly best translates as "Nexus").

[honorisc]

Part of what word? And please do not only point out that I No_Know. Please at least respond with which word to which you are referring.

There is enough variety of romanization in which ch'=j=ch=q with some misconstreuing. Also do you infer that the ji symbol of Taijiquan is different from the symbol which has been translated as air,energy.?.

Very some such,perhaps might have been, likely say some, some not.

[JerryLove]

Yes, that is exactly what I said. The Chinese idiogram for "ji" in "Taiji" is not the same idiogram used for "qi" in "qigong".

Chinese is very simple and very poetic, so the meaning of a word varies on syntax and inflection. But "Taiji" translates most literally as "Grand Nexus".

This is why the romanization has been changed from the single "chi" to the two "ji" and "qi". To differentiate what are in Chinese, two different words with two different symbols.

[patriot]

Chinese is by no means simple.

Taiji - the ji here means the extreme or the ultimate; pole (e.g. North Pole).

Qigong - the qi here literally means air. Of course there are many interpretations of air in Chinese culture.

[walkthecircle]

YES....

It's very confusing.

There are so many different types of chi that you use and can feel. Endless amounts of sensations. All different kinds of orbits and merdians you can move your chi around. Then you have chi in the environment and the cosmos.

The key is to find out WHY to move it and WHEN to move it and HOW to move it. A pa kua book will describe chi differntly than a tai chi book. Yang style energy for combat feels differnt than chen style.

Reading differnt teachers books will limit and confuse your practice. Find ONE source, one teacher, a good source, a complete system, and follow their approach. NOT that the others are wrong but approach the body and fighting from a different angle or way of thought.

Once you have a foundation of 7-10 years in one style then you can start to look at learning another approach. BUT with the modern life style how many hours can you put in to one style to truly master it and use it?

Strong practice.

[JerryLove]

Tiger, among other Asian countries, Chinese is referred to as "baby talk" because of it's simplicity. OTOH, that simplicity is what makes it imprecise and difficult to understand.

Cricle, you are talking about different interpretations of one word. Like saying "there are many ships in the sea, and then there are airships". I'm talking about two different words that sound alike (like "which" and "witch") whose meanings are unrelated.

[walkthecircle]

it sounded like, from the original question, that the question was a confusion about what all this chi stuff is about.

He talked about dr. yang, chen xio wang...et al.

my whole point is don't get caught up in ideas and perspectives. TOO MANY TO COMMENT ON. You can talk about food chi, air chi, pre birth, post birth...circultion of this that and the other meridians...etc till we all die.

sounded like he was getting all confused about different interpretations of one thing..."chi."

My whole approach is to simplify and look at what's useful for progress in each person's martial art.

Straight fact is there's too much information available to us. We can go in circles (no pun intend) for 30 years trying to digest it all.

Get focused and stay the course.

[patriot]

Jerry,

Obviously you are not familiar with Chinese. I've never heard Chinese as being referred to as "Baby Talk". To translate the Ji in Taiji as nexus is absolutely wrong.

[Ky-Fi]

"Reading differnt teachers books will limit and confuse your practice. Find ONE source, one teacher, a good source, a complete system, and follow their approach. NOT that the others are wrong but approach the body and fighting from a
different angle or way of thought."

I think that's excellent advice, and I can give a practical example of that. Last year I went to a William CC Chen afternoon workshop. I had been studying Taiji a couple years at the time, and my teacher always encourages us to absorb information every where you can. I had heard good things about CC Chen, so I thought I'd check out a workshop. I went, and was very impressed with WCC Chen--a very intelligent, patient, kindly teacher, who obviously had a great depth of knowledge and a great deal of skill. But still, his breathing patterns during the slo-motion form were very different from what I had been taught. After absorbing a lot of lectures and demonstrations from my teacher and knowing the justifications for his method of breathing, and seeing it integrated into the bigger framework of his Taiji, I couldn't really agree with CC Chen's method. Does this mean that CC Chen's method is wrong or inferior? I don't think so, it just goes to show that Taiji is a complex art with MANY facets, it's not an exact science, and a lot of different methods can work for different people. I would wager that his method would make a lot more sense to me if I were a student of his, and was getting the whole training. When you isolate one specific aspect of a teacher's training, unless you really have a deep understanding of that teacher's whole art, then any criticism you have is largely based on ignorance, and may not be that valid. Now, that's not to say that anything is OK, but you have to be careful about criticizing different training methods or different theories if you don't fully understand that teacher's perspective.
On the other hand, I think it's good to read and study other opinions on an art--you can always learn things from other practitioners-- but I agree you have to be careful about picking and choosing from various sources for your actual training.

[walkthecircle]

Great example!

CC Chen has good stuff and competed in many full contact tournaments.

Until I found a teacher that could answer all my questions and concerns I searched for something deeper. Looking into long fist, southern style, tai chi, various japanese arts, tien shen pie, etc...

Eventually found that it was not the system but the lack of the sifu in that system that had the whole story. the integration of fighting, health, chi gong, weapons, internal power, all for use NONE for show or picture taking...though some movements are artful.

[JerryLove]

Couch,

Reference I can actually remember. Get the DVD of "Rumble in the Bronx" and watch the behind-the-scenes. There is discussion with the translation and editing tem that made the English version. They use that term exactly.

There is a discussion of a Manderin movie where they have what are supposed to be Itallian Gangsters. Though for some reason, the actors are speaking English. The English phrase is "F*** em up!", the translation to Manderin was "Go forth and exert your influence".

Quick, what is the difference between the chinese word for run and ran? How about person and people? This is why the language is simple. Otherwise there would not be this discussion over weather Taiji was "Supreme Ultimate", "Grand Nexus", "Polar Opposite" or "Yin Yang".

[patriot]

Love,

Have a nice day!

[Water Dragon]

As in "That's sick" I will post the correct meaning later.

Although there are many styles, they all depend on the strong beating the weak and the slow falling to the quick. These are not related to the power that must be learned -- Taiji Classics

[GLW]

Grammatically, Chinese IS a very simple language.

It has no verb tense, no subject/predicate agreement, no real gender in nouns and verbs, etc.... Contrast this to English or Spanish where you have to have the right tense, subject predicate agreement, gender, etc... and you begin to see why native Chinese speakers tend to make the same mistakes in each language they speak...all based upon the rules that do NOT exist in Chinese.

The richness is in the vocabulary. Chinese has two aspects that make it quite complex: One is the ability to put two words together, just add an extra stroke to a single word, or to two words, or drop a part of a single word, add a part of a word to the beginning of a word and come up with a totally new word or meaning.

This is what happens with Tai and Ji in Taijiquan. By themselves, they mean one thing. Put together, they refer to the Grand Terminus, the Grand Nexus, the Concept of Yin/Yang...it is an idea and not a word per se...translations should ALWAYS be idiomatic and NOT word based. There is no direct correlation to Taiji in English that does NOT come from a Chinese translation. Amazing for such a simple yet profound concept.

The second is that Chinese is also a CONTEXTUAL language. The meanings of words can change depending on how and where in a sentence they are used. This is the basis of Chinese poetry. It is quite simple in structure but complex in how the words are used.

An example of English to Chinese:
An English scholar will have a vocabulary of 20,000 to 30,000 words. A Chinese scholar must have a vocabulary of 40,000 to 60,000 words.

It is a simple syntax with complex vocabulary while English is a simple vocabulary with complex syntax. It is no wonder we often misunderstand each other....

[Fu-Pow]

Thank you for your responses. However, I didn't want this to turn into a thread on Chinese semantics.Also, I understand that teachers have slight differences in the way they teach their art.

What I'm getting at is this. In Josh_f's post on the internal/external thread, he refers to internal arts making the body like a "spring". Ok, that is a mechanical phenomenon. I think I remember Yang Ywing-Ming referring to it as hydroturgic pressure (ie the bodies natural internal buoyancy, a sort of water piston) However, most articles I've read about Taiji refer to Chi eminating from the dantien as some sort of electromotive force. These are two very different ideas about chi. Now, one way that you could reconcile these is to say that: If the body is relaxed and springy that it is possible to move the chi around the bosdy with the mind. If the body is not relaxed then the chi cannot flow. However, I could be totally wrong about this....

Fu-Pow
http://www.makskungfu.com/images/Graphics/logo.gif
"If you are talking about sport that is one thing. But when you are talking about combat-as it is-well then, baby, you'd better train every part of your body" - Bruce Lee

[walkthecircle]

Talking about things like these are fruitless.

These are sensations you must feel within your own body.

It's like describing the color blue or what does sweet taste like for those who have never tasted or seen them??

Or what is that feeling of peace and oneness you feel while meditating? Just gotta put in the time.

AND each level you acheive the spring or piston or wave will change. the power changes and the location changes. Once you think you know where the ultimate comes from BOOM you find out it's somewhere else.

Practice practice practice.....

[patriot]

I agree totally with Walkthecircle.

Find a good teacher and practice, practice, practice. The Tai Chi Classics tell you that oral face-to-face transmission is essential as tai chi cannot be learned by words/videos.

[Josh _f]

Fu-pow I would be careful blindly accepting what Dr. Yang Jwing-Ming writes about Taiji. His real speciality is White Crane and much of what he writes comes from that perspective.

One of the more difficult stumbling blocks in learning taiji is disabusing onself from the idea that chi is a single thing and accepting the fact that chi is paradigm, used to explain a multitude of disparate phenomena. From low blood sugar, to bacterial infection, to lack of natural light in one's house, chi is a catch all description. Let us say you skip breakfast in the morning and go train, in the middle of training you crash. In the western paradigm you have low blood sugar and eat power bar; in the chinese paradigm you have low chi and eat a power bar. Now let's say after your work out you go apartment hunting. As you enter the apartment you notice it has only one window and it faces a wall. In the west we'd say the apartment is poorly designed; fengshui, however, would say the apartment has no chi or maybe even bad chi. Chi is a word used in chinese culture to explain almost any phenomena, the important thing to remember is that chi is not the same for each phenomena. No one thinks that low chi from missing breakfast is the same as low chi in your house. In the same way chi is used to descibe many things in both internal and external martial arts, but most of the time this chi is not same as the chi referred to in TCM. I say most of the time because I havn't done enough research to say absolutly that nowhere is it the same, but I am convinced that within taiji it is different. If you think about it only makes sense that TCM and Taiji be different.

TCM is very complex and requires a high level of literacy to learn. An apprenticeship in it lasts for over ten years. Chen village is a farming village; the people there weren't known as scholars, they were mostly poor farmers made tough by the difficulty of their lives. Most of the Chen Taiji masters were illiterate, even Yang Lu-Chan was illiterate. Even to this day I've heard people refer to the Chen villagers as "rednecks", and it is often pointed out that the Chen villagers train taiji so hard because its their only way out of the village.

This is not the environment for a complex martial art built around TCM. This is the place for and art built around a single simple method that is very physically difficult, but upon mastery allows many skills to be derived from it. Farmers are not going to memorize (remember they can't read) hundreds of pressure points, but they will train a very difficult physical movement requiring perfect body coordination over and over for 8-10 hours a day. When it becomes to describe this movement the most educated of the village will use the paradigms that already. (this is is normal cultural method) Thus, the'll refer to chi, the i-ching, wuji, and taiji. To round off the descriptions they will incorporate sayings from popular boxing manuels of the time(like "five ounces to deflect 100 pounds"). The words are the same, but what is described is not.

When the classics talk about storing chi in the dantien they simple mean sinking the breath and diaphram into the lower belly. Circulating the qi through the dantien refers to the ability to power the arms and upper body through the articulation of waist, spine and lower back independent from the hips. When you develop the musculature to do this your belly will take round shape (looking something like a pot or beer belly except instead of fat it is solid muscle) this is often refered to as a "chi ball" in dantien. I've seen Chen Qingzhou chin na people using only this "chi ball". I don't mean a lite wrist lock, I've seen him drop people screaming using only the muscles in his belly. You might check my post in the dantien topic. (http://forum.kungfuonline.com/1/OpenTopic?q=Y&a=tpc&s=126197291&f=123191102&m=6221913322)

I hope this helps. Don't take this the wrong way but I see you keep coming back to the chi as bio-electric energy and I wonder why. As I said before I've seen people ask Yang Zhendou to shock them with his chi, and him tell them that taiji does not have the type of chi. Until you convince yourself that the neijia arts don't use etheric chi you will find that the nature of the neijia arts will elude you. If you're ever in San Francisco let me know and I'll be glad to show you what I mean. I will In the mean time you might keep an eye on Seattle as Li Tailiang, Yang Zhendou, and Chen Qingzhou all give seminars there. There is no substitute for seeing the high level professional martial artists who have earned not claimed the title "master". You might also consider joining the neijia list as there are several skilled people who have developed excellent skills and can answer many questions regarding getting real physical skills. Be forewarned, however, all views are not considered equal and the ideas of those who can not are weighed accordingly. I

Do not attempt to share your interest in martial arts with pedantic, narrow-minded scholars. As soon as they find out, they will quote from the classics and regale you with all kinds of irrelevant non-sense. This is infuriating. You can deal with this by either avoiding them or keeping your art secret.
--Ch'ang Nai-chou

[Fu-Pow]

Thanks Josh_f. As usual your response is well thought out and thorough....even if you didn't plan it that way. :D

Fu-Pow
http://www.makskungfu.com/images/Graphics/logo.gif
"If you are talking about sport that is one thing. But when you are talking about combat-as it is-well then, baby, you'd better train every part of your body" - Bruce Lee

[walkthecircle]

Many books including many used in TCM are refering to chi as bio electic energy.

That's how "scientist" can prove the validity of chi.

They've done all kinds of useless experiments using copper walls and people with martial skill to show current running through the body. And relating the amount of current to energy centers of the body.

Chi is such an odd thing. AFter studing asian body work for a couple of years now I can actually feel an amazing amount of infomtion about a person just by touching. Trapped emotional feelings are incedibly strong and the energy they emit is great. Helps me in treatment.

BUT neither here nor there...this is good for the body worker and the scientist but no relevance to us as internal martial artist.