Talk:Qi

Having been involved in martial arts for 11 years i have to say; don't count chi out. Personally (and yes i realize this is purley ancedental evidence but it is enough to make me not disregard it) I have had some interesting experiances. Today I was in a martial arts supply store and i started talking to the owner, a 75 year old 90 pound chinese man. he demonstrated several different techniques on me (my ribs still hurt like hell) then proceeded to talk about chi. Now lemme say, this fucked looked good for being 75. I woulda put his age visually at maybe early 50's (this may not have anything to do with chi. Chinese food is notoriously healthy and daily tai chi is sure to help keep him supple)any ways, he demostarted several things including helping the pain in my hand my hand (which i broke two years ago in a fight and still pains me to this day)and causing an undeniable wave of heat to move between his hand and mine. long story short, don't discount it, there mayb be somthing there--BenB (talk) 01:59, 13 April 2010 (UTC)
 * From my understanding, chi (in the martial arts sense) is more about meditative focus than anything else.  Is this interpretation correct?  02:46, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

it depends on how you look at it. To many martial artists chi is the same as breath, you focus on your breath and breathing and it helps increase your stamina, dulls pain, and helps hit harder. others do think of it as simply being able to focus on the task at hand, not just paying attention, but paying attention to one thing that makes it the only thing in their world while still being aware of whats going on around you. like the article says its an enormously complex subject, one that i am not an expert on. That being said, my sister (a massage therapist) told me about a study the chiropractor she works for participated in in which the "hot spots" in the bodies bioelectric field were mapped out and roughly 95% of them corresponded to accupuncture points. I'll post a link if i can find it--BenB (talk) 02:51, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

I've been a qigong practitioner and martial artist for years. Qi is an eastern way of describing and understanding a collection of phenomena in living bodies that in western science and medicine are usually considered separate but universally recognized as intertwined. Specifically, a human's qi is electromagnetism, kinetic energy, blood flow, nutrition, and metabolic energy. All lifestyle activities influence these factors; hence, they influence qi flow. Qigong is a set of practices known to improve overall health by altering these factors. The earliest Chinese doctors, researchers, and theorists pictured qi as a single vibrational pattern through and around the body; later, as three different vibrations (jing {the physical- blood flow and metabolism}, qi {the emotional/mental- nutrition and electromagnetism, carried along the same channels as blood flow}, and shen {the spiritual- consciousness}). Nowadays, the term has great utility in specific contexts, but far too many mutually exclusive paradigms to be readily understood in general conversation. --Ke Borong 03:20, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

An interesting pair of videos on and quoting Sam Harris: "Master Ryuken apparently believed himself capable of defeating multiple attackers without deigning to touch them. Rather, he could rely upon the magic power of chi. Video of him demonstrating his devastating abilities shows that his students were grotesquely complicit in what must have been a long and colorful process of self-deception. Did these young athletes actually think that they were being hurled to the ground against their will? It is hard to know. What seems certain, however, is that Master Ryuken came to believe that he was invincible; otherwise he wouldn’t have invited a martial artist from another school to come test his powers."


 * Qi is an awesome Scrabble word. We can't get rid of it. steriletalk 13:55, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I read it as "Sam Harris on QI" and got all excited... :( Scarlet A.pngpostate 14:31, 22 March 2012 (UTC)
 * As a magician, I can replicate damn near all the effects attributed to qi. Feeling heat? Placebo effect; I use the same crap doing mentalism effects. Same thing with healing BenB's pain; placebo. All other effects are due solely to physics and bio-mechanics, and/or outright fraud. All the other things BenB and Ke Borong mentioned are pure and utter pseudoscientific woo. TokenSkepticMagician talk 20:42 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Qi and Scrabble
Has anyone else noticed that this is probably the most useful word in language for Scrabble?Man of Perspective 01:03, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Oh yes. Many a game has been won thanks to Qi. Humorless fascist sociopath 01:17, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
 * And Xi... Man of Perspective 03:49, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
 * Talk is Qi. P. 04:29, 26 December 2012 (UTC) C ® ackeЯ

Minor linguistic error
The Japanese concept of 'Ki' is noted along with 'Prana', 'Mana', and 'Pneuma', but 'Ki' is in fact the Sino-Japanese reading of the same character as 'Qi'; i.e. it is to 'Qi' roughly as English 'garden' is to French 'jardin', which I feel puts it in a little bit of a different category. I'm not really sure how to appropriately rephrase the page, however.