RE: - What is Qi ?

[Guest guest]

Well said !

 

I suggest that Qi is a metaphor for any type of substance or energy that

happens to be the focus of attention. It could be 'nutritive Qi' (vitamins

and minerals, OR essential fatty acids, OR carbohydrate calories OR protein

aminos - wherever you are coming from) or it could be 'defensive Qi' (the

immune system, a TH1-TH2 shift, anabolic processing - again wherever you

care to come in on).

 

The point here is the Chinese used language and metaphor to describe the

world. They did not have a well developed quantitative (numeric) system. I

think the notion of a 'zero' was not part of the Chinese number system:

Large and small numbers (embodied by standard notation), the decimal place

and 'accuracy', 'degree of error, 'falsifiability' and 'P - values' are

things unique to western society. We need this highly focussed approach to

get robots on Mars (and get your car out on the road each morning). We need

the broad, systemic and qualitative approach that TCM has inherited to

remind us we humans are NOT robots !

 

* somebody who almost died come to see me, and described it as the sky was

calling.

 

Yes, I know those feelings too. In the west I would have needed a priest to

make sense of it and he/she would have tried their damdest to make a

Christian out of me. The beauty of TCM thinking (at least our post

revolutionary PRC-TCM) is that it gives us a chance to acknowledge these

'experiences' without turning it into some kind of religious gathering or

freak side show at a mental institution. [ Speaking as a psychiatric social

worker from an earlier incarnation I speak with authority on these things

;-]

 

Qi is a metaphor for substances or energies we have no better way of

describing. No need to mystify it, no need to invoke the ancestors, no need

to invoke the ancient hidden teachings available only to the cognoscenti,

the chosen few. The Chinese used language and metaphor to describe these

things and they ended up with a system that was *quintessentially poetic* as

well as highly functional and effective. Like a moth to a flame that poetry

lures and distracts the unwary visitor, tricks them to turn away from the

hard-nosed factual reality, the dialectic materialism behind the word " Qi " .

 

Sammy.

 

 

 

ykcul_ritsym [ykcul_ritsym]

20 January 2004 05:52

Chinese Medicine

Re: What is Qi-Ken Rose

 

C'moc kids, let see a little more heat and a little less flame, we're

getting close to the purely subjective, jazz of chi/qi. the elan

vital ,etc i had somebody who almost died come to see me, and

described it as the sky was calling. thank you all, great group.

 

 

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