In my last blog I explained the difficulty I had in initially understanding the concept of Chi. It is easy to be sceptical of something that you don’t understand and I have seen much sceptisism directed towards Chi Masters.
I’ve never been one for blind faith and readily accepting unqualified information. My father taught me to question everything and then to question the answers that I was given, which I have continued to do throughout my entire life (much to the chagrin of some of my teachers!)
So when I first encountered the concept of Chi, I needed scientific evidence of this phenomenon. Unfortunately not a lot of scientific research had taken place at that time (although we have much more scientific evidence now – more about this in later blogs).
I researched and pieced together all of the information that I could find in order to draw my own conclusions on what Chi is. And finally I came up with an answer that satisfied me.
I am now certain that Chi is ‘Electromagnetic Energy’.
Electrical energy is everywhere – just look up the process of photosynthesis! I’m no physicist so can only explain in layman terms, but we know that humans have an electrical frequency that can be measured and that can vary from one individual to another. Nerve impulses are electrical bursts of energy and the more densely packed our nerves are, the greater the magnetic field surrounding them.
I personally feel that in order to fully benefit from something, you need to know it’s full workings and so I will go into more detail on this in future blogs. In the meantime, please feel free to visit our new myspace page where we have started to post free tuition videos of Chi Kung exercises.
April 10, 2008 at 12:24 pm
Welcome to the blogosphere
Personally, to me, qi is just qi
I generally don’t try to explain what it is, but if someone really presses me I tend to relate it to oxygen or the flow of blood, a life force, so to speak.
Example, instead of saying that in zhan zhuang the goal is to relax so we can get the flow of qi to our extremities, I will generally say that when we relax, our vessels in turn relax allowing the flow of blood and oxygen to our extremities, thereby resulting in the body naturally refreshing and healing itself
April 10, 2008 at 5:32 pm
Hi wujimon, thanks for the welcome! For me, Chi is also just ‘Chi’. However, I do feel that a lot of people are missing out on the benefits of Chi Kung due to their initial sceptisism, so when teaching I also like to provide a little scientific background for them. Good work by the way, had a look at your page!
SiWenSha