h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I was doing some qigong yesterday, that thing that looks like slow motion kung fu. It´s all meant to manipulate chi, the life force that the chinese claim exists. I was wondering if anyone had ever done some proper scientific experiments to determine if there is such a thing? I can´t say I find it likely myself, and martial arts do seem to have their share of superstition.

I would think it has been investigated, but I also doubt its existence. I used to go to Tai Chi classes (I still should really) and afterwards I felt physically and mentally different. I see chi as a metaphor used to explain this. I would call it a training aid to visualise chi as real.

I think its a lot about proper breathing (helps you take hits and dish them out better) and also getting 'in the zone', which is related somehow.

I haven't heard of any experiments on it, but I'm sure there must be some.

The Japanese have a thing called Ki, and obviously the Chinese and Japanese like to claim their versions are about entirely different things, but they're not so much. Ki involves a lot of shouting, which actually makes you feel a lot better when you're running out of steam.

Could it be (simply!) DNA?
"Life just wants to Be"

I don´t think you need to do strange arm movements to keep DNA in your cells.

But it can't help!

Well, in order for something to really be "detectable" it has to exist in the form of a wave or a particle (although, in quantum mechanics, waves ARE particles) and scientists have to have a way of detecting it. For example, until the later part of the 20th century we could only predict the existence of neutrino's but could not observe them. That is until we bury highly photo-sensitive cameras deep under the ice in Antarctica and hope for a neutrino to collide with a water molecule in the ice just right to give off a photon. Now the difference between a neutrino and "chi" is that there is no real natural phenomena that predicts chi, just superstition.

Standard science only admits to four forces: gravity, electromagnetic (which includes magnetism and electric), weak nuclear and strong nuclear. There is no evidence for Qi or any other form of "life force".

Traveller in Time thinking
"--Is there reasearch been done to find out more about chi?
I guess there is, just none of it comes out conclusive there is such thing.

Flexing your muscles in a controlled manner does give you more control over your body, you will feel better. Do not think this is chi, I would call it health.

For anything else I think chi is the placebo effect of performing a ritual. "

I do imagine that if it had been proven I would know about it. I just wondered if anyone had actually tried.

"There is no evidence for Qi"

I've seen it on the telly

Having done a bit of Tai Chi (Lee style) and some other martial arts, and read a good deal on this subject, I think it's fair to say that if you mean some mystical "life force", then no, it has not been detected because it doesn't exist.

One thing that rapidly becomes apparent in the practice of any martial art is the importance of control over the breath. Where your breath is can have a massive effect on how well you respond to being hit, and how hard you hit back. Proper control over the breath is at least as important as strength to the power of a punch, and a MUCH weaker person is quite capable of comprehensively flattening a strong opponent if they can disrupt their breathing pattern and strike at just the right moment. The effect, when you experience it, is shocking to the point that you think there MUST be something magical about it.

One thing I read was a rather disparaging comment that the Chinese looked at beheaded bodies and saw the tubes going into the neck and assumed they all carried air (that being what's in them when you look into them a while after the head has been detached...). So basically - chi = breath.

I've seen a lot of martial arts demonstrations, in which people do amazing things with chi-control. They basically break down into two types - things you're amazed people can do (e.g. walk on blades, lean on spears with their throat, balance their whole body weight on their index fingers), and things people can't do with trickery or willing dupes.

I offer as an example of the latter, the following videos. They're of the same fight, from two angles. The first explains most of what you need to know in captions. The second is clearer and shorter, and shows someone having it forcefully demonstrated to them the reality or otherwise of the power of chi...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEDaCIDvj6I&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jf3Gc2a0_8

things people can't do withOUT trickery or willing dupes, I should have said, obviously...

I'm curious, of the people here who have done chi kung or martial arts or tai chi, do you experience chi in your body? And if so, how do you experience it?

Well, after a session of Tai Chi I usually feel *something*, but it's quite hard to describe. Limbs feel quite light and I feel like I could run for miles. But at the same time I feel a little sleepy. Not like I want to go to sleep - just sleepy .

Thanks laconian.

I was meaning do people experience chi in their bodies at the time they are practicing.

I can't say I ever have, although my system (Goju Ryu) has lots of bits nicked from China in it. Having said that, I seem to be immune to spiritual experiences for whatever reason, and also I'm not very good at it.

I think SoRB probably nailed it with the breathing.

Often when people talk about chi in martial arts it becomes a sort of umbrella term for 'doing it right': hitting someone in the right places becomes 'chi strikes' etc.

I mentioned getting 'In The Zone' earlier, and that is something you drop into quite frequently when you're fighting, or with any sport or risky activity. Hell, computer games do it: you get a cocktail of hormones and snap into a very focused state. That gets labelled 'empty mind', I assume because it shuts up the inner monologue for a bit, and I expect some people might consider it a spiritual experience.

Some of the more regimented traditional martial arts have a lot in common with monastic lifestyles as well. Prolonged tiredness, undereating, and very repetitive fixed schedules all encourage mystical experience.

There was a thing I saw on the teevee when I was home over Christmas where a CofE cleric of some sort went around the world looking at other religions and searching for spirituality. The episode I saw he went around China, and seemed very unimpressed with the Shaolin stuff, which has gotten rather commercial. He ended in a remote community up on some random mountain, and didn't get it at first, but found that learning basic breathing made it spiritual (and a lot easier to do) for him.

I might see if I can dig you up a link for that, I expect you'd enjoy it.

Its called Extreme Pilgrim, I only watched the one episode but liked it, and the guy seemed a sensible enough sort, despite the hair. Program synopsis:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/programmes/misc/extremepilgrim.shtml

(Obviously the BBC wouldn't take well to its own programs being advertised for download, so no proper link, sorry.)

Thanks, that looks interesting Not sure if I'll be able to access it but you never know, the networks here might pick it up.


I think what you and laconian are describing are the effects of working with chi, which is cool that people are noticing those.

As for the chi itself, it is possible for many people to feel that directly while in practice. So when Xan asks has chi been detected, my immediate response is 'of course', people feel it all the time with their body senses. I get that in a science view, it would need to be externally validated (I can feel chi in my body but someone or something else has to detect that in order to prove that chi exists). And that's fine, I don't have a problem with that. But it does seem very very strange to have people who can't measure something that other people experience and then say that it doesn't exist. Kind of like Newton saying that subatomic particles don't exist.

I don't experience or view chi as being particularly mystical or supernatural or even spiritual necessarily*, although spiritual paradigms do seem to make it more 'accessible' in the sense that people who have a spiritual life seem more likely to have direct experience of chi than those who don't. Which begs the question - is there some reverse placebo effect at work for people who don't experience it? If you don't believe it exists does that block the senses that are needed to perceive it?

(*I think chi gets viewed as mystical because it's so alien to western cultures).


With regards to breath, the basic concept of chi (lets call it life force) appears to be in most cultures, and is often associated with the breath eg prana in Hindu cultures, and pneuma in old Greek. But breath in that context has a wider meaning than it does in Western medicine i.e. I don't think you can explain either chi or the effects of chi by defining it as what the respiratory system does.

Well you could give Newton all sorts of demonstrations of atom smashing. By comparison, people's senses and minds are very unreliable. I expect its entirely possible for someone to convince themselves that they don't feel something, or that they do. People have a strong tendency to identify patterns and to turn things into plausible narratives.

This probably goes double for our internal senses. The mind and body play all sorts of weird tricks on each-other.

Plenty of people all over the world do view chi as supernatural or mystical, its not necessarily just a confusion/misinterpretation.

If you come at it with chi as an explanatory framework about our body/life, well its an interesting idea and you can see why people would arrive at something along those lines. It seems similar to ideas about vital essences or Hippocrates' four humors, and is likely ultimately not an accurate description for similar reasons.