Defining Qi

Discussion on the three big Chinese internals, Yiquan, Bajiquan, Piguazhang and other similar styles.

Re: Defining Qi

Postby Wanderingdragon on Thu Feb 23, 2012 7:26 pm

So how does that translate into the rock's chi or food chi tue chi of a fallen tree? What is the great mass? Is chi breath while intermingling? How would a healer transfer their chi into a patient, simply put chi is breath, but I still don't know what is chi.
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Re: Defining Qi

Postby Daniel on Fri Feb 24, 2012 1:41 am

Edited for brevity.

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Re: Defining Qi

Postby Pandrews1982 on Fri Feb 24, 2012 3:26 am

Personally I've always been led to believe that it depends on the context as to what qi means, but at the root of it qi is simply energy.

The xing yi classic of unification states:

Fundamentally the thousands of changes and infinite variations
consist only of structures and only of Chi.

Even though the structures are endless,
the Chi is one


Matter and Energy = structure and qi.

All matter has some energy so a rock has qi but is mainly structure. Light is almost entirely energy but photons still have some tiny mass so have some structure.

More interesting to me is the question whether a rock has a spirit (xin/shen) or even a distinct nature/character (xing).

I'm not sure what goes on in faith healing traditions. I've experienced traditional japanese based faith healing similar to reiki (but not reiki) and I am inclined to think that it is more spiritual (xin/shen) than energetic (qi) on the part of the healer. To speculate I would say that the healer tries to reach out to the patient at a spiritual level and assist them in correcting something which is affecting them spiritually thus enabling the patient to help themselves.
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Re: Defining Qi

Postby Harvey on Fri Feb 24, 2012 3:45 am

My take on qi healing is more pragmatic, simply like conduction the healers organized qi when amped up and focused is inducing order in the disorganized qi of the patient. All this qigong we do is simply organizing our bodirrs to let qi move better, much like tuning a car, qi is fuel, the dantien is the engine and our bodies the transmission. You could have the highest grade fuel with 555bhp v12 but if the gearbox is shot it's useless.
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Re: Defining Qi

Postby Pandrews1982 on Fri Feb 24, 2012 7:49 am

In my understanding of qi and energy, energy transmits best in a conductive medium. My qi can be passed to another if I interact with them, if I place my hand on you we can share energy through movement, heat etc. If I'm not in contact with you then my energy will find it very difficult to interact with your energy as the space between us is relatively unconductive. If I put a pole on your chest I can push you with the pole, if you're in a swimming pool I could possibly hit you with a wave a create but the effect would be relatively small. If you're stood away from me and there is air between us I can't really do much to you with "energy".

As such I can't really see how the healer's qi can reorganise the qi of the patient directly. Things like faith healing and linkongjin/empty force I therefore believe are more to do with the spirit/nature/mind of the person than any actual energy interaction. I think that maybe the interaction between spirit causes the patient to reorganise the way they use/process qi?

The same with empty force, I don't think that you can project a significant amount of energy into an opponent to make them back down or fall over but you certainly can affect them spiritually, sap their confidence, scatter their intention etc.

I disagree about the fuel analogy, to me qi isn't fuel it is energy, it is what is released from fuel by some transitionary process:

Firewood isn't usable energy it is fuel (structure which is potential/stored energy), fire/burning is the process, heat and light are the energy (qi which is free energy/usable energy).

Things get more complicated when you recycle/reuse energy either your own or an opponent's. This is a bit like boiling water over a fire. Again the wood is fuel, burning is process, heat is qi/energy. The first lot of qi then excites the water (which is a fuel, contains energy bound up in structure), boiling becomes the process, and heat/steam/movement is the qi/energy.

Example, person A pushes on your right shoulder, you yield but take the energy from the push, roll the shoulder away then bring it back to push back at them. You didn't use your own fuel to create the energy for you push, you stole the energy from the other person.

You can start to see from this how different jins (combative forces) might be formed because in one example creating heat from fire, the burning process is quite direct, the process of burning fuel releases energy quickly. But in the example of boiling, the process involves steadily increasing movement of particles to release more and more energy. The end result is the release of heat but it has come about due to 2 different processes of manipulating energy.
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Re: Defining Qi

Postby Wanderingdragon on Fri Feb 24, 2012 8:02 am

Daniel, it's okay to take a sentence out of context and expound on it, but to take a sentence out of context and represent it as the entire notion is amfalse premise. That said, I would defy you or your students to e press any "Yi" or "Qi" without breath, maybe then you will under stand the simplicity in which the complexity exists.
I would tend to combine Pandrews pragmatic definition and Harveys ideas on organizing and focusing, in coming close to a functional definition of Chi/Qi.
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Re: Defining Qi

Postby Daniel on Fri Feb 24, 2012 12:40 pm

Edited for brevity.

D.

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Re: Defining Qi

Postby Franklin on Sat Feb 25, 2012 3:20 pm

very interesting

but i am left wondering if anyone read my post at the start of the thread?

everyone has shared some thoughts on what they believe qi to be

but so far no one has ventured to enter the conversation
on the premises that I laid out on my first post

so I will try again and maybe be a little more clear

practicing the internal arts we have all heard about qi and what qi supposedly is

I would be interested in engaging in conversation with individuals who can qualify their experiences of the subject
the reasons being 2 fold
1- we can have an intelligent conversation based on experience of the subject matter
2- maybe such a conversation could benefit others - because in the IMA world there is a lot of "parroting"
where people will tell others a "truth" without any direct experience but because someone told it to them

as a bench mark for experience I suggested a book that details the physical transformations that people experience through cultivation
the book is geared towards people who practice meditation
but I personally experienced many of the things detailed in the book as a result of my IMA and meditation practice

the theory is that through practice the body becomes stronger, the qi/energy increases, and then it transforms or purifies the body
the basic stages of this process are physical transformation

from the book excerpt on amazon
Using the Greek story of the Twelve Labors of Hercules, which outlines the progressive stages of spiritual development that spiritual practitioners in all spiritual traditions go through, this book presents full details on the step-by-step progression of the physical transformations that occur to practitioners. Whenever someone starts to consistently cultivate spiritual practice in a devoted way, there are physical changes that will occur to the human body. These physical transformations, called "gong-fu" in the eastern spiritual schools, are non-denominational signposts of spiritual progress. If you cultivate spiritual practice sufficiently then these phenomena will arise. If you don't practice correctly, they simply won't appear. Their appearance is a matter of proper devoted effort. These phenomena include such things as the awakening of kundalini (yang chi) within the body, the opening of the chakras and purification of the body's energy channels, hormonal transformations, the calming of consciousness, the experience of refined mental states described as "emptiness," and various other mental and physical phenomena. Normally people think these phenomena only occur to individuals following eastern cultivations traditions such as yoga, Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, and Vajrayana. However, these phenomena that arise are totally non-sectarian and non-denominational. They equally occur to devoted spiritual followers within Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. If you cultivate spiritual practices sufficiently, these purification transformations will occur and if you don't cultivate meditation or other spiritual exercises, you will not experience them. Your religion has nothing to do with it. All genuine religious traditions employ cultivation practices designed to help you achieve a quiet mind. Because thoughts die down due to these practices, this resulting mental quiet is described as peacefulness, silence, cessation, calming, purity, and emptiness. Your mind empties of busy thoughts and so you begin to experience mental peace. When your mind quiets, proper spiritual practice requires that you remain aware during this experience rather than try to suppress thoughts from further arising. The practice of maintaining awareness while mentally quiet is called witnessing, observing, knowing, or introspection. As the mind quiets, you continue to watch your mental continuum but without attaching to it. The gradual calming of your mind results from successfully letting go of thoughts, and because your body’s life force (chi) and consciousness are linked, as you let go of thoughts you also drop the habit of clinging to the energies you normally feel in your body. With proper spiritual practice you learn how to detach from these energies and let them function without interference. Once you learn how to do this, your kundalini energies will arise and their natural circulation will start to transform your body. Those energies will open up your chi channels and chakras and transform your physical body, purifying it. As your chi purifies, so will your emotions and habit energies. As you progressively let go of your chi, it will also revert to its natural circulation which has been suppressed by errant thought patterns. Cultivating a quiet mind leads to your kundalini arising, those energies purify your channels and chakras, that purification leads to a greater degree of mental purity or emptiness, and the two components of body and mind reach ever increasing levels of refinement. This book presents full details on this step-by-step progression of transformations that occur to practitioners on the spiritual trail. It covers the meditation practices that successful adepts have traditionally used throughout history, and non-denominationally links the gong-fu experiences of these practitioners with the stages of the spiritual path and the ultimate quest for self-realization, or enlightenment.



I don't want to debate:
if IMA has any spiritual components
if to be an effective fighter you need qi
etc


my initial post that started this thread:
This seems to be a topic that we all can not come together on.

But I think we should establish the benchmark on who is qualified to talk about Qi

In my experience- this books details the different physical changes that people will experience through practicing IMA and Mediatation
The Little Book of Hercules
by Willaim Bodri

these are not some wishy washy fantasy, imagine crap
but things that you experience

and from my personal experience what he wrote about is spot on
even some of the information he provided shed some light on things that I had experienced before but did not have a framework to understand

so if people are interested in discussing qi and how it relates to the IMA and meditation
I would be interested if they had any of the experiences described in this book



cheers
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Re: Defining Qi

Postby Wanderingdragon on Sat Feb 25, 2012 4:49 pm

I see, you are in terms of the mindfulness which in my opinion is the first stage, that includes the achievement of fullness that would lead to the emptiness. I unfortunately think we would be hard pressed to find many that have reached even this basic stage as is evident by the endless debate on style and technique. In my experience one must have completed his physical training to even begin, and again I come back to a very basic beginning, the breathwork that will lead to the letting go that would be the emptiness. I will stop here because you are looking for the experience, I have only reached the hollow created by the circulation of breath, as for how it feels, to me it is a fullness that is complete, like a barrel filled or unfilled complete in it's essence. Ill have to consider it, it is an interesting topic that I have only discussed with me.
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Re: Defining Qi

Postby Darth Rock&Roll on Tue Feb 28, 2012 12:48 pm

What is breath? Is it only air? What's in the air? What happens to air to get the molecule of oxygen into the red blood cell to take it to a wound to release the oxygen and heal the wound?

It can be explained 1000 times. If you are not ready to comprehend, then that's not the fault of the explainer. :)

Intention (yi) is not chi at all. It's intention. Intention doesn't exist without Chi.

Like the tao, the more you try to define it, the further from definition you will go until you are completely in error. :)

qi is exactly what teh character says it is. "breath".

But what is breath? What's in that breath you take and what happens to it once inside? What is kept? what is expired?
If you want a molecular definition of qi you can certainly have that.

What is an atom and how was it come to be known when the concept is ancient greek?
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Re: Defining Qi

Postby D_Glenn on Mon Mar 12, 2012 6:58 pm

This chart may help:

Image


Good food, good water, breathing in clean air, then the autonomic functions of the body generate 衛氣 Wei qi (defensive qi) and 營氣 Ying qi (Nutritive qi), Yang and Yin.

Wei qi is the insubstantial feeling that moves in the spaces between the skin and muscle (fascia). You can listen (ting) to your own wei qi and that of other people as well.

Ying qi is a substantial feeling that guides and moves in the blood. These 2 are coordinated and harmonized and can be consciously directed by the Yi (mind; intent).

Through the practice of 站桩 Zhan Zhuang (Standing Practice) and 行桩 Xing Zhuang (Moving Standing Practices), such as Baguazhang's Circle Walking or other slow-moving meditation type of practices, one naturally begins to a develop a surplus of Wei and Ying Qi or what's called “后天之氣 Post heaven Qi or Acquired Energy. This surplus of energy then promotes or rather returns to our 先天之炁 Pre heaven Qi or Innate Energy. This type of 炁 Qì begins to build up and is stored in the 丹田 Dān​tián and eventually throughout the whole body.

The meditative type movement exercises that develop/ cultivate this are called 炁功 Qi Gong.


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Re: Defining Qi

Postby Ron Panunto on Tue Mar 13, 2012 6:43 am

I think the problem with defining Qi is that it has a meaning in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and it has a meaning in Martial Arts (MA) and these two concepts get tangled up. So the challenge is to map a Chinese paradigm over to a western scientific paradigm while not getting the two meanings confused. The TCM approach sees Qi as a mysterious, circulating type of "energy" that can be increased, balanced, controlled and manipulated to improve health and well being. On the other hand, Qi as understood in the context of MA has more to do with the unification of structures of the body, including muscle, tendons and fascia by using intent and breath. For instance, pressurization of the fascial suit through reverse breathing and percentage breathing is used to achieve iron shirt abilities.
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Re: Defining Qi

Postby D_Glenn on Tue Mar 13, 2012 7:42 am

Ron Panunto wrote:I think the problem with defining Qi is that it has a meaning in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and it has a meaning in Martial Arts (MA) and these two concepts get tangled up.


I don't see them conflicting, especially in the CIMAs, where the practices go beyond just conventional healing side of it and go into the cultivation side of it (storing, gathering) and how to affect another person and defend against an opponent.

Ron Panunto wrote:For instance, pressurization of the fascial suit through reverse breathing and percentage breathing is used to achieve iron shirt abilities.


That's just learning somatic control over the Chu (going out) and Ru (entering in) of the Wei qi (defensive qi). When wei qi enters in the skin and flesh tightens and contracts to guard against external pathogenic factors like wind and cold but in the CIMAs we also understand that a punch or blow to the body is also an external pathogen. This is normally an autonomic reaction but it requires some awareness of the strike to work, hence the reason that a sucker punch is so devastating is because the person's wei qi didn't get a chance to properly move back in and tense up the skin, flesh, and underlying muscle and structure to defend against the strike. That's also why in the CIMAs we have a saying something like "The obvious hand is for set-ups but it's the hidden hand that wins a fight." Note that this isn't a literal hand, it could be a hand, elbow, shoulder, hip, knee, etc. that strikes to the place where for some reason the opponent's wei qi is not. This is where the various strategies of the CIMAs come into play - overwhelm the opponent (works against an opponent who hasn't cultivated and gathered enough to have an iron shirt type quality), confuse the opponent, trick the opponent, instil confidence to lure an opponent to come out, etc.


粘 Zhan (sticking) is also a high level skill and is coordinated with the breathe.


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Re: Defining Qi

Postby Ron Panunto on Tue Mar 13, 2012 10:47 am

D_Glenn wrote:
Ron Panunto wrote:I think the problem with defining Qi is that it has a meaning in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and it has a meaning in Martial Arts (MA) and these two concepts get tangled up.


I don't see them conflicting, especially in the CIMAs, where the practices go beyond just conventional healing side of it and go into the cultivation side of it (storing, gathering) and how to affect another person and defend against an opponent.

Ron Panunto wrote:For instance, pressurization of the fascial suit through reverse breathing and percentage breathing is used to achieve iron shirt abilities.


That's just learning somatic control over the Chu (going out) and Ru (entering in) of the Wei qi (defensive qi). When wei qi enters in the skin and flesh tightens and contracts to guard against external pathogenic factors like wind and cold but in the CIMAs we also understand that a punch or blow to the body is also an external pathogen. This is normally an autonomic reaction but it requires some awareness of the strike to work, hence the reason that a sucker punch is so devastating is because the person's wei qi didn't get a chance to properly move back in and tense up the skin, flesh, and underlying muscle and structure to defend against the strike. That's also why in the CIMAs we have a saying something like "The obvious hand is for set-ups but it's the hidden hand that wins a fight." Note that this isn't a literal hand, it could be a hand, elbow, shoulder, hip, knee, etc. that strikes to the place where for some reason the opponent's wei qi is not. This is where the various strategies of the CIMAs come into play - overwhelm the opponent (works against an opponent who hasn't cultivated and gathered enough to have an iron shirt type quality), confuse the opponent, trick the opponent, instil confidence to lure an opponent to come out, etc.


粘 Zhan (sticking) is also a high level skill and is coordinated with the breathe.
.


I think this is part of the problem Glen. You are still defining Qi in the Chinese paradigm which doesn't mean anything to those not privy to your training. For instance, your claim that a sucker punch is equivalent to the wind and cold makes no sense to one raised in the western scientific model. The mechanism for getting sick from a pathogen ( like a virus) and its defense mechanism the immune function has (IMO) absolutely nothing to do with neutralizing a punch to the face, and trying to equate them leads a student of CIMA confused.

There is a similar thread on converting Jing to Qi to Shen via zhang zhuan. This again is confusing Taoist alchemy with martial arts training. As far as I'm concerned, Taoist alchemy has no equivalent in western science. IMO there is no way to change jing (cum) into qi and then refine qi into shen (spirit). This is a carry over from pre-scientific times and certainly has absolutely nothing to do with becoming proficient at defending yourself. Zhang zhuan is used to develop real skills like rooting, relaxation of muscles without loss of structure, tendon twisting, etc.

I'm not (at least purposely) being arrogant, but I really think that in order to come up with a western martial arts definition of what Qi is, we have to separate Qi in the sense of Taoist alchemy, and Qi in the sense of TCM, from the Qi as used in the CIMA. The so-called Qi in CIMA should be demonstrable by noticeable improvement in self defense skills.
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Re: Defining Qi

Postby Daniel on Tue Mar 13, 2012 1:32 pm

Edited for brevity.

D.

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Last edited by Daniel on Sat Mar 02, 2013 10:49 am, edited 1 time in total.
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