Qi, Spirituality & Health

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Finding Qi and Chicanery in China
A Harvard historian lets qi under her skin.
Anne Harrington

When I first went to China, this is what I thought I knew. I knew that organizing the current preoccupation in the West with phenomena like qigong was a narrative of modernist discontent. The narrative tells us that we in the "West' have fallen out of touch with our bodies' deeper rhythms and wisdom, become out of balance within ourselves. It urges us to look to the wisdom of the "East" that never forgot the ancient practices of mind-body integration and may be in a position to help us complete ourselves.

I also knew that, in 1993, PBS had aired a hugely influential three-part special, "Healing and the Mind," with Bill Moyers. The dramatic opening called "The Mystery of Chi" took viewers on an hour-long journey to China, a "mind/body culture," and it was made clear that we were here in China to bear witness to understandings of healing mind and body that were not to be found "back home." The focus of the show was on qigong, presented as a series of meditative movements said to be good for health.

Qi was identified in Healing and the Mind (the best-selling companion book) as a "mysterious force, a force that, as a physical reality...makes no sense at all." Moyers goes on: "The fact that the [qigong] exercise is thousands of years old, and a hallmark of Taoist, Buddhist, and imperial Chinese scholarship, does not necessarily mean that human beings hold within them rivers, streams, and pools of vital energy. Nonetheless," he says, "the mystery challenges." The message was clear: Was our scientifically based skepticism — rooted in a mere couple of centuries of experience — any match . . .

But even at this point, perhaps some conclusions can be drawn. The most important has to do with the question of what an effort like this is all about — is it really to discover whether qi exists? For me the question itself is wrongly put. There is an old Chinese saying that speaks of a finger pointing to the moon and then exhorts us to avoid a common human error of confusing the pointer with the target: "Look at the moon, not the finger that points." In this sense, the more time I have spent trying to discover what might be interesting and important about the phenomena that the Chinese describe as evidence of qi — and it is a long list indeed — the less I am persuaded that qi is the point. It is, rather, a thing that points — a conceptual reference point on a particular cultural map that can potentially serve to help direct our attention to subtle aspects of human functioning that are perhaps less well mapped on our own system.

Anne Harrington is a professor of the history of science at Harvard University and co-director of the Harvard University Mind, Brain, and Behavior Initiative. This essay is adapted from a larger work to be published in the Festschrift volume Science, History, and Social Activism: A Tribute to Everett Mendelsohn (Kluwer Academic Press, December, 2001).

Brain Imagery and Qi — Tracing the Body's Emotional Wiring
Recent studies of accupuncture's effects on the brain
(not available for downloading)