Anyways,...
Today I feel I should post about something which has eluded much of the Western world, mostly due to misrepresentation by "wannabes" (people looking for FAR too easy ways to establish a foothold in credibility before they learn all that needs to be learned, those who acquire mail-order licenses to "teach" Reiki, balding pony-tailed white guys who practice "Tai Qi" publicly in parks for sake of image, etc. - you know what I mean) - cue; soundbite of Keanu Reeves as "Neo", saying, "I know Kung Fu"...
Yeah, I'm a mite snarky about this. Bear with me here just a wee bit...
See, even though "New Agers" (yep, they're still out there) try - even with the best of intentions, though the least of real, hard education on the topic, beyond whatever books they might read from the "New Age", "Occult", "Esoteric" etc. sections of their local book store... they grossly misrepresent the whole concept, knowingly or not, by their (as innocent as they may be), shennanigans.
The reality - particularly known to all out here in Asia - is that the Bio-electromagnetic Field, and the Bio-electromotive Force, ie; Qi/Jing, is a real scientific reality - it's a goddamned real thing, seriously... as it always ever has been, a known and accepted fact for at least 5,000 years.
Allow me to try to explain...
First, perhaps the biggest misconception, is the mental image of this; a martial arts tournament... two fighters face each other... one performs a cyclic, swirling move, projected at his opponent, and without even touching him, his opponent seems to be wildly flung out of the ring by invisible forces. While this has, to one degree or another, actually happened in Asia some few times in the past, the biggest mistake made is when people say, "HE DID THAT WITH HIS QI!!".
The Truth? The happening happened, but the reason why - Qi - well, it's a bit more complicated than that.
Much of the misconceptions that arise from this and other instances, is the difference between alphabetically based languages versus those which use ideograms and ideographic text.
You can fit FAR more meaning(s), nuance(s), etc. in the ideographic writing of China (what the Japanese call "Kanji").
"Qi" (pronounced "chee"), isn't quite the Bio-electromotive Force itself, but it *does* facilitate it.
There are a few other factors involved, Qi being just one among them, but all of those factors being taken as a single concept in speech, is also collectively referred to as "Qi" (and, depending on the ideogram, not incorrectly so), referring to the entirety of the whole phenomenon collectively under that single umbrella term, and therein lies the root of the misconception.
Now... let's all try to think back and remember something we, perhaps all, may be familiar with for one reason or another - perhaps school - where the teacher would take a piece of paper, spread some iron filing dust upon the surface, and then place a bar magnet underneath it, touching the bottom surface.
Time for a visual aid...
Now, as you can see here, the bar magnet is beneath the piece of paper, with the iron filings scattered upon it - the magnetic field interacting with the iron particles causes them all to arrange themselves along the lei lines of the magnetic field, thus rendering the invisible, visible. This is a perfect analogy for Qi in most living beings, particularly human. Imagine that bar in the center is a human being standing upright, and you can see the "Qi" lines surrounding and penetrating him.
The pole ends being at the crown of the head and at the base of his feet, we need to understand this as though like a doughnut, or a torus shape - relatively. This shape obviously isn't round like a donut, unless you could imagine an elongated one (and in truth, a bit egg-shaped) - but the point is that there is a central area of flow... if this human be male, the direction of flow is down in through the crown of the head, through and along the central core, out through the base at the feet, and spreads outward and upward along the outside of this "tubular doughnut", and all turns back in on itself at the crown and continues cycling again... for females, this direction of flow is in the opposite direction; out from the crown, down the outer edge of the shell, coming in together at the base, up through the central core, and out forth from the crown once again, and so on.
Or at least, this is the flow of the bio-electromotive force, which runs along the lei lines of one's Qi.
If you notice, the lei lines themselves have no motion whatsoever - and this is a key thing to understand here - the iron filings, once aligned to the lei lines of the field, do not move... there is no motive force. Therefore, the Qi is merely a template of the paths along which the force would flow.
Now, while the Chinese word for the field itself is Qi, the word for the Bio-electromotive Force which runs and flows along the lei lines of this field is Jing.
Of course, to be certain, technically, there can be motion of Qi, but only in changing the shape of the field - which is done in two major ways; rising/falling, and expanding/contracting.
So it can be said that while the practitioner of, say, Yang style T'ai Qi Quan (different schools of the same art tend to have different spellings), sends that opponent flying in the previous sparring illustration mentioned above, he does so by sending a surge of Jing through his field, cycling it along the lei lines, and then expands his field forward, sort of bulging it out, protruding a bit in the opponent's direction - in effect, pushing against his opponent's own bio-electromagnetic field, with his own, and sending his opponent off, very similar to two like-poled magnets repelling each other.
Understand? ^_^
Developing/accumulating this Force is done by focusing upon the natural flow of the field, Qi. Once this has been firmly set in the Mind, focus is drawn towards drawing in more surrounding Force into the Qi field, via the inlet point (at the crown for males, at the feet for females), and forming it into a sphere, about the size of a candle pin bowling ball (the smaller variety ball, you know). This is formed at a point called the Dan Tien.
Where this is in the body is simple to understand - imagine your pelvic bone as though a bowl, and place such a sphere within it. Where it rests, is known as the Dan Tien.
There are techniques which combine breathing and directing of this sphere up and down the core of the field, evenly dispersing collected Jing, but though such is beyond the scope of this post, I will mention a very valuable resource at this post's end, which will give far better information than I ever could.
Eventually, according to the techniques, Jing is collected and condensed within the marrow of your bones - by then, a warm, electrical sensation can be felt.
These are the parts of T'ai Qi Quan, internal form, which are not publicly taught in the West.
In the resource I'll mention below, there are also techniques to go through in order to manipulate the Qi field, flow the Jing force through and along the field, in order to affect things beyond your body - such as the sparring example I've mentioned above in this post (a technique known as "Fa Jing").
Certainly, one cannot acquire abilities from reading books - but following manuals, as a martial artist, this can be a very different thing indeed.
Please see this as a valuable manual;
"T'ai Chi Classics (Shambhala Classics)" by Waysun Liao
ISBN-10: 1570627495
ISBN-13: 978-1570627491
Any Google or Amazon search with this data should find it, for anyone out there who may be seeing this post.
Okay, I think that should be all and well and good enough for this here post for now... until next time, May the Force be with you!!
- Tarran ^_^
