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What's going on with Qi/Chi/Ki nowadays?


Senkoujin

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What you call "chi" is just focused attention. It's delivering a message directly to the subconscious in order to produce a mind-body effect. 

Take 1 unlit candle and place your index finger above the wick (either hand will work.). Now close your eyes and visualize your finger tip in the candles "flame". Think of the heat, the pain, the reddening of the skin, it charring to blackness and how much it would hurt. Continue to focus on all those details while imagining it is happening. Do this exercise as often as possible and daily. Eventually you will feel the "heat" and the finger tip may very well become reddened. Possible producing a blister. This is one tactile exercise.

You can do the same thing by imagining a spider is walking across the hairs of your arm. Close your eyes and visualize the spider walker, think about it's movement, how it would feel. Again repeat this till the point where you "feel" as if a spider is crawling on you.

Now imagine your favorite food. The smell of it, it's taste, the texture. Like the above repeat those thoughts over and over. A few thing might happen, you will catch a phantom smell, a phantom taste, and/or the desire to eat that particular food. 

Lastly is my favorite is the yawn. Imagine yourself yawning, the sound, sensation, how it feels. Other people yawning. Do this to the point where you actually yawn, repeat. Do this till the very thought of yawning causing you to do just that.

With any of these exercise you are putting a lot of attention to a single thought. Given enough practice you may find that the sheer thought of it will induce the effect. This is how "energy manipulation" happens. You think about how the "energy" feels. You focus (through visualization) on what it's doing and where it goes. It is through your imagination that you produce those mind-body/psychosomatic effects. It's an information game. 

The only thing the Law of Attraction got right is the 68 seconds of pure thought to "manifestation". However manifestation isn't some external event and if you actually do just one of these exercises daily whenever you got a spare moment you'll see it work. 

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B2E you do sticky hands exercises? I used to do a lot of don/shaun chi sau in wing chun.

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6 hours ago, XenoFish said:

What you call "chi" is just focused attention. It's delivering a message directly to the subconscious in order to produce a mind-body effect. 

Take 1 unlit candle and place your index finger above the wick (either hand will work.). Now close your eyes and visualize your finger tip in the candles "flame". Think of the heat, the pain, the reddening of the skin, it charring to blackness and how much it would hurt. Continue to focus on all those details while imagining it is happening. Do this exercise as often as possible and daily. Eventually you will feel the "heat" and the finger tip may very well become reddened. Possible producing a blister. This is one tactile exercise.

You can do the same thing by imagining a spider is walking across the hairs of your arm. Close your eyes and visualize the spider walker, think about it's movement, how it would feel. Again repeat this till the point where you "feel" as if a spider is crawling on you.

Now imagine your favorite food. The smell of it, it's taste, the texture. Like the above repeat those thoughts over and over. A few thing might happen, you will catch a phantom smell, a phantom taste, and/or the desire to eat that particular food. 

Lastly is my favorite is the yawn. Imagine yourself yawning, the sound, sensation, how it feels. Other people yawning. Do this to the point where you actually yawn, repeat. Do this till the very thought of yawning causing you to do just that.

With any of these exercise you are putting a lot of attention to a single thought. Given enough practice you may find that the sheer thought of it will induce the effect. This is how "energy manipulation" happens. You think about how the "energy" feels. You focus (through visualization) on what it's doing and where it goes. It is through your imagination that you produce those mind-body/psychosomatic effects. It's an information game. 

The only thing the Law of Attraction got right is the 68 seconds of pure thought to "manifestation". However manifestation isn't some external event and if you actually do just one of these exercises daily whenever you got a spare moment you'll see it work. 

Thanks for the simple test suggestions for producing such psychosomatic effects, however, I was already aware of these types of sensations that could be produced on concentrated thought alone, as I've actually done similar things in the past.  There's a few things about my techniques though, when I perform my psychosomatic effects, I have no need for visualization or even breathing; it is the sheer will of my conscience that allows the psychosomatic effects to 'flow' through my body; naturally, when I do it internally, I feel it traveling up my legs, and then continuously going up into my lower stomach....if I concentrate hard enough, I can make it travel even higher, and then distribute the flow to whatever part of my body that I desire.  This is tasking however, because the harder I try to pull in more and more of this psychosomatic 'energy', the more strain on the body; I'm talking both physical and mental strain simultaneously.  If anything, from a logical perspective, I'd say that this has been quite the intense information game I've been playing over the years.

Edited by Senkoujin
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You are still not working "chi". It's only your mind and imagination. Same thing I'm talking about with a different description.

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8 hours ago, XenoFish said:

You are still not working "chi". It's only your mind and imagination. Same thing I'm talking about with a different description.

Okay, given your conclusion, would you also dismiss Zhou's seemingly decent documented feats?  Perhaps the reason is that his mind and imagination is so strong, that it made his hand(s) hot enough for other people to 'feel the burn' and have the associated body reactions as such?

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19 hours ago, internetperson said:

B2E you do sticky hands exercises? I used to do a lot of don/shaun chi sau in wing chun.

Occasionally ... and used to do  ' sticky foot ' 

Wing chun?   Aha!   Now there is an interesting system  !   Mine originated in white crane .  

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8 hours ago, Senkoujin said:

Okay, given your conclusion, would you also dismiss Zhou's seemingly decent documented feats?  Perhaps the reason is that his mind and imagination is so strong, that it made his hand(s) hot enough for other people to 'feel the burn' and have the associated body reactions as such?

I'm still right. I can think about my hands being icy cold and this will start to slightly restrict blood flow to them, leaving my hand quite chilly.

Mentally increase body temperature

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My background is Shaolin Five Animal, Jeet Kun Do (my teacher studied with Bruce) and Chung Moo Quan.

Xeno, I love and respect you mate, but your absolute surety reduces your credibility in my world.  Particularly in dealings with subtle aspects of internal processes.  But I fully believe and respect what your experience tells you is right for you.  It's when you start speaking in absolutes and thinking you know how it is for everyone else that the credibility breaks down. 

What you feel is true about your experiences, does not hold for the rest of the universe.

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I deeply appreciate and respect your keen mind wit and I love your freqeuently awesome insights of the world and people around you.   And while I deeply respect your own personal experience and stance on this, I don't agree that you possess (and thus may judicate and dispense to others), the one answer and the all truth about the matter.  Your take is based on your personal experience, it thus remains subjective, and so blanket statements of absolutes tend to break down for me, particularly in matters of the subtle

Subtle energy is an exceedingly challenging subject to discuss productively, even among those with decades of experience in the traffic of it...  since subtle energy is not directly observable, only the effects of it are... like you say, your feelings when you focus are tangible to you and while your reaction to them can be observed by others, yet they can't be felt by others, even while you are feeling them. 

As I am unable to measure just how happy you say you are in any given moment and must rely on my observations and your words about your inner subtle state... I also cannot measure how much pain you say you feel when you imagine the heat of the imaginary flame on your fingertip and subsequently dismiss the concept of Qi as woo woo. 

Yet consider that it is quite common to correctly identify when someone is feeling ill, or awesome.  Even though their experience is entirely subjective , personal and subtle in nature and not sharable... the effect of the subtle is observable.  So subtle energies may be and are observed indirectly everyday.  Some affects of Qi are quite palpable and I have direct experience of them.  Even though I do not experience what the others feel when the teacher is working on them with subtle energy... I do not assume their description of their experience is useless, baseless, wrong, or dismiss it as woo woo. 

I understand it is sutble in nature, personal and since I can observe the effect on their behavior and health, I do not dismiss it as woo woo, but accept there are processes that are challenging to discuss, without needing to be absolutely describable in the left brain manner of life without being categorically denied. 

We can observe the effects of subtle energy on physiology, yet so far, not the subtle energy itself.  It is not possible to observe or even measure the emotion itself (what shape is anger?  how big is contentment and what color is joy?) , yet my direct experience of them is quite palpable, just as are the observations of their effects on others.

 

This is the nature of interacting and engaging in subtle energetics in my experience.

*deep bow* to all involved in this conversation.  It's providence indeed to me that these teachings are becoming so openly debated.  Thirty years ago, my teacher and myself would have been killed for his openly teaching such things... now they are spread across the globe like dandelions kicked angrily in Autumn, only to return a thousand fold in Spring.

 

 

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What I think is what it will be, what it will do, and what I will feel. This Chi/Ki/Qi is thought itself. You think of the energy moving through you, around you, filling you. You think and those thoughts "manifest" the sense of this energy. You think of the elemental energy of the air and your sense of body weight becomes lighter, draw upon the earth element and you become heavy, with the fire element you feel heat raising your core temperature (as per my provided link), and with the water element you can cool your body down. 

It is all mind, all thought, focused and shaped by the imagination and will. 

It must be subtle as to avoid detection by the Hadron Collider.

Edited by XenoFish
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Well said.

And what a great (for me) synchronicity as just yesterday a good friend at work said almost verbatum what you shared above when the topic of mind and body came up at lunch.

How would one go about to separate the mind from the body?  He asked to the universe at large.  He is a self described atheist, yet not a materialist.

He went on and I'm paraphrasing but he said these exact words several times... All is Mind.  (incidentally I've shared with him several of your observations and arguments on some topics over the last years, particularly related to some of your more poignant observations on dogma and religion... you two remind me of each other, he's a friend at work, you are a digital friend in the interwebs.. anyway).. All is mind he said several times... or sure seems to be (he's versed in e-prime language and not prone to projecting often beyond his own experiences.  Body is mind.  When is body not mind?  Sensory awareness, body awareness is Mind.  Indeed, what exerience has any of us had, that wasn't consciousness/awareness at its core?

And Mind itself is subtle... How big is the mind?... not the brain mind you... the Mind. 

How large and what shape are thoughts, memories, emotions and imagination? 

While I can't think your thoughts, nor can I observe your Mind as these are subtle, I can observe and measure their effect on your physiology and we may share words that allow understanding of matters subtle. 

So subtle energetics, while subjective are palpable and it is possible to share understanding.

 

 

 

 

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While we can debate names and functionality, even the reality of metaphysical thing. And we will always reach a stand still.

It would be one person happy thought vs anothers. I still get a giggle when I think of my daughter's first baby laugh (freaking adorable). Yet I can not present that to you, I can only look at the cause and effect of those thoughts on my own subjective experience.

We are subjectively experiencing an objective reality. 

Even with the energy meditation, its just like my example, cause and effect through thought. 

Like your friend I'm not a materialist. It might seem that way, but I'm not.

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49 minutes ago, XenoFish said:

While we can debate names and functionality, even the reality of metaphysical thing. And we will always reach a stand still.

It would be one person happy thought vs anothers. I still get a giggle when I think of my daughter's first baby laugh (freaking adorable). Yet I can not present that to you, I can only look at the cause and effect of those thoughts on my own subjective experience.

We are subjectively experiencing an objective reality. 

Even with the energy meditation, its just like my example, cause and effect through thought. 

Like your friend I'm not a materialist. It might seem that way, but I'm not.

Yup I agree and again, well said.

Indeed.  Subtle energy is as challenging a subject as there is to have productive conversations about... yet it's still very productive I find, to make the attempt as long as it's affable and well intentioned.  Many conditions of life, even some of the concrete ones, do not easily lend themselves to being accurately reduced to sharing via the symbols of language.  Written words even make this tougher, lacking the context of vocal tones, and physical and facial cues, so this whole conversation has impressed me with its congenial tone and respectful nature.

And for clarity, you don't and never have seemed to me like a materialist.  Your succinct methods of describing your inner process lend the air of an atheist, but not a materialist.  You seem to me, to be a very observant and connected individual, who can describe well, what you experience, even though our experiences and what we take from them may differ greatly.  

I always find diversity points out just how much more in common there is, and what diversity exists, makes us stronger as a species, not weaker, so I welcome it.

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On 4/18/2017 at 3:51 PM, Podo said:

I've been doing chinese martial arts for about 9 years now. I can say, with full confidence, that qi is not a thing. It also IS a thing, however. Allow me to elaborate.

Qi, in the sense that it is some mystical force, is utter nonsense. Complete trash. Nothing to it. Qi in the sense of directed energy and focusing of one's mind to bolster their martial capabilities? Totally a thing. But, there's nothing magical about it; it is merely a form of mindfulness wherein you focus on your body to a level that most people do not, and therefore can use your awareness to accomplish what most people cannot. My first sifu called it "engaging your qi" to punch "through" someone. He talked about it in mystical terms, and still does, but all he really meant was that you had to aim through your target instead of at your target. This awareness of what you were truly trying to accomplish is what he calls qi. It's not mystical, nor is it even particularly difficult, but it definitely requires practice and discipline to achieve.

Ultimately, qi is just that: it's a word used to describe a level of body awareness achieved by those who wish to make their bodies into weapons. Anyone can do it, and it's not hard, it just takes a lot of diligence and practice. You can pretty it up with spiritual malarky, but at the end of the day it's nothing but training and physicality.

/\ This.

I've also been involved all my life in martial arts, specifically, Taijiquan. Over 45 years (yeah, I'm an old guy!).

My Sifus also referred to qi in the metaphysical sense, and as a 12-year old beginner I lapped it up.

But in time, I discovered that it was indeed just the usual Chinese way of obfuscation, coupled with their lack of our modern medical knowledge.

As a mystical Dragonball-Z fireball that flies from your hands? No, sorry. But as a tool for focusing your will, intent and physical abilities? Most certainly.

Even in my practice as an OMD (Doctor of Oriental Medicine), I studiously avoided mentioning qi to my patients. I explained practices such as acupuncture as nerve stimulation, finding that this cut down on misconceptions and expectations.

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25 minutes ago, SifuPhil said:

/\ This.

I've also been involved all my life in martial arts, specifically, Taijiquan. Over 45 years (yeah, I'm an old guy!).

My Sifus also referred to qi in the metaphysical sense, and as a 12-year old beginner I lapped it up.

But in time, I discovered that it was indeed just the usual Chinese way of obfuscation, coupled with their lack of our modern medical knowledge.

As a mystical Dragonball-Z fireball that flies from your hands? No, sorry. But as a tool for focusing your will, intent and physical abilities? Most certainly.

Even in my practice as an OMD (Doctor of Oriental Medicine), I studiously avoided mentioning qi to my patients. I explained practices such as acupuncture as nerve stimulation, finding that this cut down on misconceptions and expectations.

Welcome, brother! Yang style, chen style, or something else? Since my previous post, I started doing taijichaun myself! Welcome to UM!

Edited by Podo
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1 hour ago, Podo said:

Welcome, brother! Yang style, chen style, or something else? Since my previous post, I started doing taijichaun myself! Welcome to UM!

Ni Hao, Brother!

Mainly Yang style, spots of Chen here and there. Simultaneously studied hard styles (Taekwondo, Hug Gar and Kempo), but I was lucky enough to have a Sifu that was into applications such as chin-na rather than the sad dance that so much Taijiquan has become here in the West.  I suppose it was what is now called "Combat T'ai-Chi".

When I had my schools I ended up teaching Taijiquan exclusively. Too many McDojos offering tournament "karate" to bother teaching hard styles. :rolleyes:

Hope your studies prove exciting!

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I play a Qi Gong from the Dragon Gate lineage known as Fire Hands, and used it to heal my body about six years ago.  Irregular heartbeat, high bp, high cholesterol, high blood sugar.  Chronic pain in the left ankle and shoulder. 

 

Within a year or so of playing the form every day, all those symptoms had been ameliorated and now at age 48, I wake up daily with no pain and am taking no medications of any kind.

 

Simple breath and gentle relaxed stretching are incredible powerful under the right conditions.

 

 

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The Qi/Chi topic has led me to watch a number of hilarious YouTube compilations. For that, I give thanks.

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Interesting discussion. Whether it's called Qi, mental focus or psychosomatic phenomena, it does exist as a "force" that can be harnessed and tamed for a specific purpose.

I work with a woman who is deathly allergic to pet dander. One day we were told that a woman was bringing her dog to the workplace. As soon as the woman arrived, my coworker became congested, her face swelled up and her eyes became bloodshot. That would be a legitimate reaction, except that the dog owner had actually left her dog at home. 

I thought that maybe there was enough dander on the dog owner's clothes to trigger a reaction, but then I remembered that probably half of our employees and customers are pet owners. My coworker should have shown a reaction every day at work.

I suppose that mental focus works in many ways. After a long day working here on my acreage, I sometimes find myself bleeding in two or three places, with no recollection of how I was cut. 

 

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On 8/9/2017 at 6:54 AM, Timonthy said:

The Qi/Chi topic has led me to watch a number of hilarious YouTube compilations. For that, I give thanks.

Unfortunately most videos there are of the "watch this fake guy and laugh" type. There aren't a whole lot of videos of the real thing, mainly because it ISN'T a thing, at least not in the sense of fireballs or knocking guys back 15' without touching them.

It's a lot more subtle than that.

There used to be a guy based somewhere here in Pennsylvania that was (in)famous for his "knock-out" power, supposedly using qi. He was big back in the '70's ... his name escapes me at the moment, though ... but he put on quite a show, knocking his students down from 10' away simply by waving his hand at them. When a local TV team showed up to do a documentary, one of the reporters volunteered to be knocked down by this power.

No matter how the "Master" tried, he couldn't do anything to the reporter.

Count Dante also comes to mind - he of the "Death Touch" and the Black Dragon Society.. He wore his little black goatee and tried to look Satanic as he prowled around the dojo. His correspondence course was in ALL the best comic books, so you KNOW he was the real thing! :rolleyes:

Count-Dante-Deadliest-Man-Alive-Black-Dragon-Society-Ad.jpg.71f188360861ef112aad65f4889d5e79.jpg

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