Are You Suffering From "Chi Tolerance"?

Have your feelings of chi from Tai Chi or Qigong diminished over time? Are you feeling chi less intensely now than when you started learning?

Students often find that their first lessons in Tai Chi and Qigong bring strong sensations of chi. But over time, these sensations diminish or even disappear.

As one of my students once asked me:

"When I first began practicing, I could feel chi now and then in the form of "floatiness, warmth, tingling", etc... As I practiced more, these feelings became more and more intense. However, now that I have been practicing for several years, these feelings seem to be dropping off...what's the deal? "

Has this been your experience as well?

Well, assuming you are still practicing with as much enthusiasm as when you started, and assuming no other physical, mental, emotional, or energetic problems, I'd say you've built up "chi tolerance".

Chi tolerance is similar to drug tolerance. Drug tolerance (as Wikipedia describes it) is where "a subject's reaction to a drug (such as a painkiller or intoxicant) decreases so that larger doses are required to achieve the same effect."

The same thing can happen with your Tai Chi and Qigong practice. When you first start practicing, the chi feelings can be quite intense, because your mind/body/energy system has never experienced it before. After a period of time, you become "habituated" to it. Again assuming no problems, the same circulation is probably happening, but it no longer feels as intense as it did.

I normally see this as a positive sign - a sign that your practice is maturing. While the "feelings" of chi are what captures people's attention at the beginning stages - and an important motivation for beginners - these feelings are essentially a "passive" experience. The feelings seem to just "happen" during certain Qigong and Tai Chi practices.

Once that has settled down, the next step is trying to make those feelings of chi an "active" experience. Ultimately, you want to be able to create those feelings just through focusing your mind on a certain part of your body/energy system, and to have it happen nearly instantaneously with the thought.

As you probably guessed, that's the goal of the ChiFusion Tai Chi and Qigong program - to make chi an active experience. Starting right away in Level 1, we work towards providing you the skills you need to awaken your mind, body, and energy system to the active awareness of chi. We do this through a unique kinesthetic approach, with specific details and specific mental techniques incorporated right into the movements.

While this process starts in Level 1, we actively pursue a number of mental chi skills in Level 2 and 3. Eventually these skills culminate in what I consider the best training for "focusing your mind" on your chi energy system - Centering Elements Qigong in ChiFusion Level 4.

Of course, Centering Elements does use body positions and a special vibrational technique to help you focus on your chi centers. But much of the work is done with the mind rather than the body. And over time, as you become skilled with the techniques, you may reach the point where you can do Centering Elements totally mentally - without the body positions and the vibrational technique.

Once you get to that point, you should also be able to use the mental component more actively during your Tai Chi movements, directing your intention to create chi feelings in harmony with the purpose of the movement.

One of my favorite teaching "tricks" to demonstrate this mental aspect is to show the students my hand in its normal state. Then I talk to them for a minute or so about something, anything really, and then show them my hand - engorged with blood from vasodilation and in its red-and-white mottled state. While I was talking, I was intently focused on directing chi to my hand. Yes, it's a bit show-off-ish, practically a "parlor trick", but demonstrates the skill quite clearly.

Of course, the feelings even from the mental direction of chi will never be as intense as when you first started - unless you stop practicing for a few weeks or months and then go back. (I don't recommend that of course, but it works.)

But the intensity is not necessarily the goal. I consider regularity and repeatability much more important.

Yes, there's no doubt that the intense chi feelings from your early days of practice are quite pleasurable. But being able to mentally direct chi to any part of your mind/body/energy system - regularly through practice, and repeatably every time you practice - is the goal. If you can regularly and repeatably do that, then the health and stress relief benefits will be much greater, even if the feelings are less intense than when you started.

In other words, it's better for your health, stress relief, and Chi Development to have a modest skill that you can perform easily, rather than an intense experience that's left to chance and luck.

So keep practicing your Tai Chi and Qigong skills, no matter which level you are currently practicing. You'll find that you are building the Chi skills you need step-by-step to make you healthy, relaxed, and confident in your practice.