What is qi?

[YouKnowWho]

2. People who have actually practiced qigong and have got to a reasonable level in it.

I have heard that China, Taiwan, and US have spent resource in the area of:

- see through a concret wall.
- make a seed to grow within 2 minutes.
- get into the spiritual world.
- ...

There are 3 different kind of people who can achieve this much easier than others. Those who:

- was born with it.
- has near death experience.
- has Qi Gong medatation training.

The 21th centry may be the period that we start to understand the "spiritual world". If we believe in UFO, we should believe in "spiritual world" as well.

[nasmedicine]

I have heard that China, Taiwan, and US have spent resource in the area of:

- see through a concret wall.
- make a seed to grow within 2 minutes.
- get into the spiritual world.
- ...

There are 3 different kind of people who can achieve this much easier than others. Those who:

- was born with it.
- has near death experience.
- has Qi Gong medatation training.

The 21th centry may be the period that we start to understand the "spiritual world". If we believe in UFO, we should believe in "spiritual world" as well.

In the worlds of Hendriks, this would be labeled "new age thinking", and unfortunately that is exactly why Chi Gung loses some of it validness with the many people. It is this "new age thinking" that causes many to ridicule the practice.

[xinyidizi]

Yes, that's astral projection and remote viewing.

[nasmedicine]

Yes, that's astral projection and remote viewing. It sometimes happens accidentally mostly as sleep paralysis when you are very tired but in order to do it consciously one needs sufficient reserved qi and the ability to stop the inner conversation completely. Some people use different meditations, visualizations, focusing on a high pitched sound etc to achieve this level of calmness but I personally prefer to stop thinking directly. There are many active forums about out of body experience on the internet.

As I like to tell everyone, "What ever works for you.". If it works for you then more power to you.

[YouKnowWho]

It is this "new age thinking" that causes many to ridicule the practice.

Someone said there are physical world, mental world, and spiritual world. I'm still in my physical world no matter how hard that I have tried to move into the other world.

[Hendrik]

In the worlds of Hendriks, this would be labeled "new age thinking", and unfortunately that is exactly why Chi Gung loses some of it validness with the many people. It is this "new age thinking" that causes many to ridicule the practice.

yes. all kinds of stuffs which mess up what it is.

[GlennR]

Yes, that's astral projection and remote viewing. It sometimes happens accidentally mostly as sleep paralysis when you are very tired but in order to do it consciously one needs sufficient reserved qi and the ability to stop the inner conversation completely. Some people use different meditations, visualizations, focusing on a high pitched sound etc to achieve this level of calmness but I personally prefer to stop thinking directly. There are many active forums about out of body experience on the internet.

I did notice that

[Hendrik]

Please do Hendrik, I always respect your views, and I anticipate that you will respect mine as well. I also anticipate that you won't assume what we have or don't have in the IYTC and KL22 systems.

Thanks John!

[Hendrik]

1. in the YKT, I catagoraized a Mind layer, in the mind layer there are only

Thinking, intention, aware, visualization , and all of these four function are power by Shen or I call present-ness.

That's all what is needed in Qigong development.


also, I address the fact that one needs to have the body loose, the mind quiet down, the breathing naturally deepen in order to let the Qi layer surface.


it is not that complicated if it is the same Zhen Qi we talked about in TCM accupuncture and herbals.


why not just grow it have it and one will know what it is.


2. so called New age thinking or cult trying to link qi to everything from fung shui to ET and God, it really getting things screw up big time, and to the worst is, it screws up the proccess of development and mislead those who really needs it for healing.



3, another issue is lots of people who has no experience or autherntic training even from China translate the subject with imagination and lost the facture and the real process.


4, then there is the Qi blast in martial art, it is extremely ridiculus.


5, then there is the western Doctor and scientis who keep talking and thinking and argueing what they want instead of just take it as what it is.



so, well, the world is a fun place like a mecca of everyone knows it all but almost none knows what the heck it is.



it is just a phenomenon of energy flow which will surface in human body when the body is loose, the mind is quiet down to have only singer thought, and breathing naturally deepen. what is the big deal? with all these philosophy, thinking, mid set, science, research....believe... spiritual..... all and goes no where.



BTW

so what is visualization for in the Qi development?
it is like seeing the whole river at the same time.
and Intention or Yi is like tracing a long the river a point at a time.

those are mind tools use in different development situation and conditions. it is not those OMM or visualize the ET flying down to give one an qi blast.....etc.


so what is aware ?
Sensing and hold on the focus in the slightest effort.

So what about thinking?
one needs to cut the thinking down to a singer thought or subject. it is a Qi de - surface element. one wants to switch off thinking and switch on awareness.

so what is shen?

that present-ness with its present one feel fresh , alert, and with ease.

that is all what one needs. no philosophy no believe is know how things functions. if you are human you can get the first feeling within 40 mins.

[taai gihk yahn]

If you follow certain qi cultivation techniques you feel something. What are you feeling?

various aspects of autonomic function, either sympathetic or parasympathetic, depending on what u r doing

I don't think Chi/Qi is a single thing, but as a way to explain a variety of observable phenomenon.

pretty much: if u look at how TCM practitioners assess qi, they ask questions about energy level, sleep patterns, bowl function, etc.; they look at ur tongue, smell ur breath, listen to ur guts, read ur pulse; sum ask ooh at ur eyes; look at the color of / feel the quality of the skin; these r all macro-observable phenomena that correlate to physiological function in different ways; if u look at "old style" clinical medicine of German / Russian school, many of these sorts of techniques were used as well (this from my wife who was educated as physician in USSR back in late '80's where they still used many things of this nature due to lack of technological availability; to wit, she can still "predict" things like pulmonary embolism days in advance of other docs educated here);

And a lot of such observable phenomenon cannot be fully explained by contempary scientific models, yet.

really? please give one example of this;

But NOTHING escapes the laws of physics/nature/biology.

yeah, so?

Like how we laugh at medical science of the 18th century, future generations will also laugh at how little we know today.

as should be the case; by that logic, we should be rolling on the floor at TCM...

Nice post, you are correct chi is not just one thing but rather an amalgamation of many things. However what those things are is an extremely debatable topic.

yes; so anyway, once the TCM practitioner has looked all the above, they derive a pattern-diagnosis based on a synthetic process;

A lot of very experienced acupuncturists would tell you that they locate acupincture points not by sight or touch, but by "sensing" where there is a dip in Chi flow;

it's no big mystery: from my training / practice in osteopathic manual therapy, I can palpate changes in tension / texture various different ways; nothing to do w acupuncture points per se; it's just practicing over time, knowing what to look for;

.

There are two types of people in a discussion like this:
1. People who haven't really practiced inner cultivation or are very low level at it
2. People who have actually practiced qigong and have got to a reasonable level in it.

The first group would either deny the existence of qi and would say that it's a superstition or would try to justify it by connecting it to modern scientific terms and would say that ancient people would use qi as a metaphor to explain the unknown energy that modern science can explain.

it is a metaphor; it's a synthetic process that allows u to develop a descriptive / predictive model of the net effect of macro-observable processes in the body; it's not a discreet "thing" that u measure directly; that's why u have so many different types of "qi" in TCM; go read "Web That Has No Weaver", it really answers the whole "debate" rather succinctly

Personally I like to follow the new advances of the modern day science in this field and there has certainly been some progress but I think most of it is just at hypothesis level and at best they can only explain the effects of qi on the matter not the qi itself.

this is if u hold the perspective of "qi" as "other"; but this is an a priori bias - u think "qi" is indescribable to begin with, so it's self-fulfilling prophecy;

I am not high level at qigong but so far my limited personal experience is that while doing zhanzhuang or slow qigong/taiji moves you can gradually feel something like a magnetic field around everything and you can also feel that in doing something like taiji it will connect your body like elastic bands. After you progress in qigong and start doing the meridian circulations you will feel it as a an energy that moves the liquids and the blood in your body.

u do feel something, but the fact is that if u understand anatomy and physiology, u actually have a pretty good capacity to describe everything u r feeling;

It is also possible to learn seeing these energy fields though I didn't actually learn this part in qigong. Many years ago I read a book about seeing auras and by some practice gradually learned to see them. At first you will start seeing colorful fields around everything which can be mistaken for eye errors but after you progress you will see these big colorful fields more clearly. Inside them there are a lot of small particles like shining dust making a very similar shape to metal powder in a magnetic field. It is not just limited to objects and there are clouds of this thing everywhere however it's denser around objects and especially living bodies.

self-delusion is a wonderful thing...

Probably there are different types of these small particles but I am not sure. The reason that I am saying this is that I have seen one special type mostly around electrical devices
a few times but again I'm not sure.

so rather than go for the simple, accepted, verifiable explanations, u'd prefer to rely on something about which u r not even sure?

As I like to tell everyone, "What ever works for you.". If it works for you then more power to you.

that's a big mistake, and allows people with crazy subjective experiences as much credence as those who have done objective study of a given issue; the "it's all good, whatever works for you" perspective is a huge impedance to generating a consensus of what's what;


fact of the matter is this; if you haven't practiced qigong in depth, u can't say anything about the subjective experience; OTOH, if u have studied qigong in depth and have had certain experiences, if at the same time u haven't studied anatomy / physiology in depth, u will be very quick to start talking about how "science" can't describe adequately what is going on; the problem w that is what u shut b saying is "I am not aware of what "science' has to say about what i am feeling" and leave it at that; in my case, I have done both; and as such, find very little difficulty relating the subjective experiences I have had doing qigong to descriptions of things like autonomic nervous system function as well as other phenomena - for example, the feeling of unimpeded ground reaction force acting on the postural system during standing practice: this is what gives u that feeling of "floating' of the head on top of the body; the biomechanics make perfect sense, but u have to understand it in depth;

all he conjecture is just that - better to start w what is known about the body, which is a tremendous amount more than was known 100 yrs ago, and an infinitely greater amount that 1,000 years ago;

[xinyidizi]

@taai gihk yahn： The things that I talked about have been mentioned in many of the old spiritual meditation and spiritual systems. I admire that you try to make a connection between the old teachings and modern science but if as you sound in your post you don't have a first hand experience of what has been mentioned in these systems what makes you so sure that your scientific findings are exactly what the daoist and other systems were talking about?

[imperialtaichi]

fact of the matter is this; if you haven't practiced qigong in depth, u can't say anything about the subjective experience; OTOH, if u have studied qigong in depth and have had certain experiences, if at the same time u haven't studied anatomy / physiology in depth, u will be very quick to start talking about how "science" can't describe adequately what is going on; the problem w that is what u shut b saying is "I am not aware of what "science' has to say about what i am feeling" and leave it at that; in my case, I have done both; and as such, find very little difficulty relating the subjective experiences I have had doing qigong to descriptions of things like autonomic nervous system function as well as other phenomena

TGY, if you assume you are the ONLY person on this forum with such unique knowledge and authority, you know very little about me and many of the other guys on the forum.

[taai gihk yahn]

TGY, if you assume you are the ONLY person on this forum with such unique knowledge and authority, you know very little about me and many of the other guys on the forum.

I assume nothing; I only state regarding my own experience / knowledge base; why would I assume anything about anyone else?

Addendum: as I always invite people - read the links in my sig; if it makes sense to u, u pretty much "get" where I am coming from in terms of how I "explain" my experiences

[taai gihk yahn]

@taai gihk yahn： The things that I talked about like seeing auras and astral projection have been mentioned in many of the old spiritual meditation and spiritual systems. I admire that you try to make a connection between the old teachings and modern science but if as you sound in your post you don't have a first hand experience of what has been mentioned in these systems what makes you so sure that your scientific findings are exactly what the daoist and other systems were talking about? To be honest if you can't see auras and you can't do astral projection I doubt that you have even taken the first elementary steps in meditation let alone practicing qigong "in depth". This is from my perspective based on my first hand experiences in accordance with the ancient teachings but if you'd rather go with "this dude is delusional" that's also fine with me.

been there, done all that (100 day opening, zhuenti pu sa practice, "seeing" auras, doing projection of different kinds); did lots of "off body healing" silliness; grew up; got over it;


so much for your "doubt"; of course, as typical, if I have the views I have I can't possibly have done any meditation / what I did I did all wrong, because it doesn't jive w your / some dead Chinese guy's ideas of "correct"

yes, lots of that stuff is mentioned in "old systems"; there are also "old systems" that dismiss all of it in pretty much the same manner that I do (Ch'an Buddhism is particularly excoriating of Taoist Alchemical practices), so where does that leave things? the ability of people to convince themselves that they are doing something special and extraordinary is limitless; one can have all sorts of "experiences", for certain - if people want to drag a rotting corpse around with them, that's their business, I suppose;

[imperialtaichi]

really? please give one example of this;

it's no big mystery: from my training / practice in osteopathic manual therapy, I can palpate changes in tension / texture various different ways; nothing to do w acupuncture points per se;

1. Example: a. experimental data suggest a subject's blood pressure can be influenced by an "issuer" sitting in the next room. More scientific studies are being carried out to find and answer to this observable phenomenon.
b. closer to my work, an infected dental nerve, which sometimes can be a "hot pulp" where no matter how much anesthetics we put in, even at nerve trunks at remote site which is supposed to block all nervous communications, the signal is still going through. The mechanism is still not fully understood; I can explain it through "Qi/Energy", but if you can explain to me in scientific terms please educate me, and the entire dental profession.

2. It's no big mystery since you are touching the spot; I'm talking about locating without looking nor touching.