Qi -- an answer

[Guest guest]

Chinese Medicine , " kenrose2008 "

<kenrose2008> wrote:

....What is qi, anyhow?

>

> What's your answer?

 

My current working definition:

 

Qi describes the behavioral or active aspect of phnommena. Said to be

Yang in nature. Must be viewed in relationship to a substrate -- it

takes something to exhibit behavior -- Yang in necessary relationship

to Yin.

 

As in Qi and Xue/blood. Blood's the substrate (the mother of Qi), has

the oxygen, the glucose, proteins -- all the right stuff. Put the

stuff together in the right context (Jing) and trigger (Shen)

reactions and you get activity, observable behavior. Activity

includes things like creating circulation of (Qi the commander of)

Blood.

 

The textbook defining characteristics -- Qi moves, warms, transforms,

defends, holds in place -- are all descriptive of activity.

 

The " right context " involves Jing, i.e. a well-formed (via Yang)

assemblage of organs (formed Yin) -- bones, sinews, vessels, Zang,

Fu, DNA/RNA, etc.. When alive, Jing is infused with Shen (of the

classical JingShen, not the modern ShenJing narrowly denoting the

nervous system). In this context, the Blood and Qi are properly

channeled around, fueling and acting-out the process of living.

 

Considering behavior more generally than just physiologically, the

same viewpoint holds for emotion, mentation, and " spititual "

experience. (The latter is problematical when interpreted in terms

of " disembodied " phenomena.)

 

Possible problems or limitations of this view:

 

Some characterizations of Qi include some sense of substance, as in

projecting Qi through space. The guy videotaped somewhere in Asia

working himself up and doing something from his hands to make a pile

of paper burst into flames. The KungFu movie tricks of eminating

invisible forces to throw people or objects around. These would imply

activation along some substrate dimension not yet recognized by

physics.

 

And then there's " projecting " Qi, as in medical QiGong. The times

when I have seen this demonstrated (and use it myself in treatments)

it seems to be some sort of vibration and heat (plus " intention " ).

And possibly some not yet understood substrate and its activation.

 

In borderline cases, something mysterious can be hypothesized, but

for theory and application I believe it can be adequately seen as

very direct and down-to-earth.