Chi (or Qi) For Skeptics - A Practical Approach To Understanding Chi Or Qi

That's just mind over matter

I have a filmmaking buddy who thinks he is a skeptic. What's more, he's proud to be a skeptic, and just like any self-respecting fashion-victim, he wouldn't be seen dead wearing the belief-system of an old hippy, new-ager, crank or other brand of foolish person.

I can well imagine what he thinks when he sees me practicing tai chi (taiji) or on occasions when I might comment on the energy (I generally avoid using Chinese terms around non-practitioners) in a scene or piece of music.

Call it Chi, Qi or just Energy

For me, the concept of chi (qi) has evolved over three decades from something exotic, mysterious and unfathomable to something obvious, omnipresent and able to be observed in any and every situation. In a sense, it's become mundane.

I remember an occasion many years ago when I was teaching tai chi (taiji). A new student, a young man with above-average talent for imitating and memorizing movements, asked me to check his performance of the latest sequence. I watched his well-rounded, elegant movements with some admiration, remembering how clumsy I had been when I was at his stage. I was happy to be able to give him feedback at a higher level than your stance is too narrow or relax your shoulders. I told him that he needed to sink his chi, which was now in his upper chest, down to his belly. How can you tell where my chi is? he asked, mystified and visibly irritated.

I was on the spot. I didn't have an answer for him, although I knew beyond doubt that what I observed was true. There was no fog of blue light hovering around his body, I couldn't see the ingredients of his stomach (thank goodness) and yet I knew that his chi was in his chest, and that he didn't yet know how to sink it.

First feel it, then see it

If what I'm writing about here is a mystery for you, and one that you're interested in understanding, here's an exercise you can start doing whenever you feel like it. It'll do you no harm, and actually it could bring miraculous results over time. Begin to form a habit of checking how the inside of your body feels in different circumstances. In particular, pay attention to your startle reflex. Your shoulders suddenly rise, you may even feel something like a mild electric shock run through your arms and legs.

Familiarize yourself with the feeling in your body when it's flooded by a glandular response to some stimulus or other. Then pay attention to the sensations as your body naturally tries to re-instate equilibrium. The more familiar you become with the movements of your own internal energy, the more easily and precisely you'll be able to detect the same phenomena in other people and animals. Practice Makes Better is the maxim here. The study of energy has infinite subtlety.

The finger pointing away from the moon

My film-making friend would describe all of these sensations in scientific terms, and dismiss my energetic model as some kind of silly magical thinking. Actually what he's doing is replacing direct physical experience with learned abstract thinking, which in turn is limited by the prevailing received wisdom of the scientific community. It's simple. As long as we are alive, we have energy. When we no longer have energy we die. We only experience energy in the form of movement/change, no matter how tiny and imperceptible.

Classical skepticism

Montaigne, the great French Renaissance thinker wore a medallion on which were inscribed the words Que sais-je? - What do I know?. This is real, classical skepticism - not a bigoted, reductionist dismissal of anything outside of one's own limited experience.

I know nothing about the vital energy which animates my mind and body beyond what I can experience directly. Any ideas I may hear or read are abstract expressions of that same energy, signposts pointing toward or away from the experience of energy itself.

Put aside language and thought, and listen to energy, any time any place.