Something About Qi
If you want to learn a little bit more about taijiquan, you are inevitably going to hear someone say something or other about ‘qi’ (or ‘chi’). Frankly, every time I hear this I immediately want to run away. That’s because it’s something that I’ve never been comfortable discussing, and the more I learn about it, the less I think I know. But inquiring minds will want to hear more, so here’s my current best take on the subject.
As I mentioned in the previous section, learning to do the slow taijiquan set requires people to ‘dissect their bodies with their minds’---which is a pretty alien concept for most people. In the process of doing so, the student learns a lot about the complexity of the geometry of the body, how different muscles work, and, mind/body interactions. One part of this is beginning to feel weird things in your body.
I mentioned the loud cracking sounds I heard from my chest and lower spine. When I was learning how to take a punch, I had the weird feeling of force flowing through my ribs into my spine and down through my legs into the floor. There are lots of other things besides these. For example, I remember one time after a couple hours of practice I felt my my spine vibrating---sorta like a coiled spring slightly expanding and contracting slightly, but very quickly. Other times I’ve had sensations like the cores of my teeth were pulsating and spinning. I’ve also often felt my hands warming-up and tingling in the middle of a set. I could go on and on---it’s an extremely common part of everyday practice.
Another Digression: Sign Versus Symbol
Philosophers have identified a distinction between what they call ‘signs’ and ‘symbols’. For them, a sign is a word that points towards a very specific, simple experience. In contrast, a symbol is a word that brings with it a whole constellation of different implications. The problem that I have with the way people use the word qi is that they confuse the sign (ie: the specific sorts of bodily feelings I’ve described above) with metaphysical speculation about they mean (that’s the symbol).
Here’s an example of a definition of qi that is far more symbolic that the sign-based description I mentioned above.
Central to Taoist worldview and practice is qi (chi). Literally, the word qi means "breath," “air" or "gas”, but figuratively, qi is life-force—that which animates the forms of the world. It is the vibratory nature of phenomena—the flow and tremoring that is happening continuously at molecular, atomic and sub-atomic levels.
This principle of a driving life force is, of course, common to many cultures and religious traditions. In Japan it is called “ki,” and in India, “prana” or “shakti.” The ancient Egyptians referred to it as “ka” and the ancient Greeks as “pneuma.” For Native Americans it is the “Great Spirit” and for Christians, the “Holy Spirit.” In Africa, it’s known as “ashe” and in Hawaii as “ha” or “mana.”
In China, the understanding of qi is inherent in the very language. For instance, the literal translation of the Chinese character meaning “health” is “original qi.” The literal translation of the character for “vitality” is “high-quality qi.” The literal translation of the character meaning “friendly” is “peaceful qi." (Elizabeth Reninger, from the LearnReligions.com website.)
Reninger is an example of how many people discuss qi---they take an experience and impose upon it a whole lot of theoretical assumptions. My training in philosophy teaches me, however, that it’s important to just report the phenomenon---as experienced---and ignore all the historical/metaphysical explanations.
If we do that, it seems to me that the above sort of statements make sense as an ancient scientific hypothesis. In ancient times people didn’t have a clue about how complex the human body really is. They didn’t know about hormones, brain chemistry, instincts, etc. They just knew that sometime people feel good and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes bodies are alive, and sometimes they aren’t. Some people are really inspiring, and some are just ‘nobodies’. So folks came up with the hypothesis that there was this thing called ‘qi’ that explained all the differences.
At that time, this made about as much sense as any other explanation. But nowadays we have learned a great deal more than they did. And one of the things we’ve learned is that the body is really, really, complex. So it makes sense that there are going to be things we experience that we really don’t understand---like the strange feelings in the body I described. Another thing we’ve learned (at least some of us) is to ‘suspend judgement’ about things we don’t really understand. That’s what I try to do with regard to qi. And that’s what I suggest most people who start to do taijiquan should do too.
Qi Follows Intent
What makes all of this even more complex is the boundary between objective and subjective reality falls apart when we are talking about qi. There’s a saying to the effect that ‘qi follows intent’. What this means is that if you see an automobile you can be pretty sure that you didn’t just wish it into existence---there’s a real car there. But with regard to qi, the idea is that your looking for it in the body can actually cause it to be there.
This is the basis of something called ‘qi gong’, or ‘qi work’. The idea is that if you visualize a stream of ‘energy’ flowing up your spine and down the front of your body (your intent), you will eventually feel qi doing this (qi follows intent). Here’s a visual from some website I found on line which I don’t want to promote.
I wish I could say that this is just a modern perversion of traditional Chinese wisdom, but this sort of thing has been around a long time. (At least the ancients had the excuse that they didn’t have the benefit of our modern scientific understanding of the brain and body.) Here’s a symbolic chart of the human body that was carved into a stone stele at the White Cloud monastery in Beijing, in 1886. It is obviously cut from the same cloth as the diagram above.
Since this really is part of the Daoist tradition, at one time I experimented with this ‘cosmic orbit’ stuff as part of an ancillary meditation practice. I can certainly attest to the idea that if you work at it, ‘qi really does follow intention’---but I could never really figure out what the point was supposed to be. Indeed, if you look into the literature, all sorts of strange stuff starts popping up---culminating in the idea that you can create a ‘cosmic body’ out of qi that you can end up using it to become an immortal.
I’ve come across people who seemed to believe that this is possible, but I’ve never met anyone who was actually able to do the sorts of things it was supposed to do. This includes extending their lives much past whatever the fates had decided for them. (If memory serves, the teacher who initiated me into all this stuff died of chicken pox at the advanced age of 62. So take that for what it’s worth.)
What I have found, though, were lots of clips of self-deluded people on YouTube who think that they are able to use their qi to become invincible fighters. (There’s at least one Chinese mixed martial arts guy who delights in challenging guys like this to ‘friendly matches’---where he proceeds to clean their clocks.) There also seem to be a fair number of charlatans who use pretty obvious stage magic to separate fools from their money.
I’ve done a lot of reading in the literature of mysticism and one thing I’ve come across repeatedly are warnings about the dangers of becoming deluded by things like visions. In Zen practice, for example, it is extremely common to see visions and sometimes what seem to be genuine psychic experiences . (I know I’ve had both from my ‘sitting and forgetting’ practice---which is the Daoist term for Zen meditation. Zen is Buddhism that has been very heavily influenced by Daoism.) But the sutras warn against students becoming too interested in them. That’s because the point of meditation is something else besides what my teacher called ‘circus tricks’.
In Zen, these sorts of things are called ‘Makyō’ or ‘devil illusions’. The idea is that in the course of someone’s meditation practice certain ‘barriers’ arise on the quest for enlightenment. One of them is pain while sitting. Another is falling asleep. And seeing visions or having psychic experiences is another. They are not to be embraced as a good thing, but rather something to be endured as a test of the student’s resolve to continue ‘thinking about thinking’ until they gain enough wisdom to have made some progress towards insight or ‘realization’.
IMHO, the experience of qi is an example of a ‘devil illusion’, and making a big deal out of it is just a way that our minds can distract us from what should really be the goal of all meditation, including taijiquan. But that will be the topic for the next chapter.
I agree with much of what you say here, especially the importance of suspending judgement.
A lot of the bodily sensations that occur while practicing can be attributed to mundane factors such as muscles suddenly relaxing, blood vessels expanding or contracting, changes in alignment shifting the pressure on internal organs etc. etc.
Most of the theoretical frameworks around qi that I've come across are ... problematic.
But we can not reject the possibility of qi as a physical manipulable entity altogether. I think the effects of acupuncture are more than placebo.
The best suggestion I've seen so far is, that qi could be interstitial fluid squishing its way through the body transporting, among other things, MAST cells.
I like it as a working hypothesis, but I suspend judgement 🙂
A wonderfully instructive post!