The Trouble With Qi

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Articles on this site express varying points of view, to encourage mature thinking on serious issues. For more details please read the full disclaimer and a summary of my views.

The Trouble With Qi

The longer I spend in martial art circles, the more wary I become of the whole qi methodology. Here are three issues that need to be examined.

1) Is qi real?

By this, I'm referring to qi as an explicitly spiritual phenomenon - as something that is specifically outside of natural, or scientifically explainable phenomena - the qi that we are told is NOT just breath, or physics, or mental focus, or body mechanics, or the combination of all these things. Here I'm referring to the qi that is allegedly some kind of supernatural "life force." Exponents often claim to be able to manipulate this force, both inside and outside of their bodies, to derive and develop powers that are, by definition, superhuman.

2) If it is real, where does it come from?

This poses a very real problem. If, as we are told, qi is an omnipresent, spiritual "life force" - the animating energy within all things, shouldn't there be moral limitations on drawing upon it for personal power? How does the force differ from nature spirits, fairies, angels, ghosts, demons or djinn? How would manipulation of such forces differ from magic? If you invite such a force to enter your body from outside, how does that differ from spirit possession?

Despite the fact that there is absolutely no scientific evidence to support the concept of supernatural qi, many people willingly believe in it. For some, belief in qi in itself acts as a kind of religion, and religious cults are built around it, on that basis (the Falun Gong / Falun Dafa cult, for example).

The phenomenon of experiential qi (usually in the form of physical sensations) is somewhat akin to the seeing of ghosts. People claim to see ghosts and I'm quite sure that they do experience something - it would be foolish to deny that. But just because someone experiences something, that does not prove that their interpretation of the phenomenon is correct. Today's ghosts are, after all, yesterday's fairies and some people see aliens instead. I'm sure that most people would agree that to worship or deliberately try to summon ghosts, fairies or aliens would be a very bad idea.

I myself have experienced the physical sensations and visual disturbances that some people decribe as "qi." I have experienced similar sensations with the practice known as Reiki. I now know that qi and Reiki sensations are utterly meaningless - merely a psychosomatic trick - a form of deception and self-deception working in unison. And far from being beneficial or at worst harmless, as is usually claimed, such charlatan methods are potentially very harmful. As with many other pleasant sensations or altered states of consciousness, such practices can be habit forming and can even lead to more severe psychological problems, such as the condition known as "Qigong Psychosis" or "Qi-Gong Psychotic Reaction."

3) Is it morally or spiritually acceptable to use qi?

This is an issue where surely there is no room to sit on the fence. However, many people do just that, without really thinking through the issue of whether or not they have a consistent religious or spiritual justification for what they are doing. In 21st century culture, people's souls are up for grabs, whether you are into Qigong, Reiki, Yoga, Crystal Healing, Tantra, Tenaga Dalam, Channelling, Wicca or whatever. Some people will dabble freely in anything and everything, without any concern other than "Does this feel good to me?" "Does this feel right for me?" This is in spite of the fact that we are specifically warned against consorting with supernatural or occult forces in several major world faiths, including Sikhism, Christianity and Islam. People might need to think carefully before entering into practices that would not normally be considered acceptable or credible within their existing moral, religious or scientific world view.

Even within Chinese Daoism, the original philosophical texts are very different from the folk superstitions and occult techniques that were merged with them hundreds of years later to create Religious Daoism. Religious Daoism was created to compete with the incoming Buddhist religion, but in so doing, much of the original message was lost. Rather than trying to live a simple life in harmony with nature, and accept death as an inevitable part of life, the religious Daoists absorbed all manner of contradictory folk beliefs including the worship of local gods, exorcistic and mediumistic techniques and chemical and meditative procedures from elite traditions, relating to the pursuit of longevity and immortality. In much the same way, Buddhism changed shape dramatically in Tibet, when it was fused with the local shamanistic Bon tradition.

The question is, can we really afford to treat spiritual practices as lightly as any other consumables on the supermarket shelf of 21st Century consumer culture?

Where I stand

Qi, in the way it is often explained, is NOT real and furthermore, if it was, it would be a force that I, for one, could NOT justifiably manipulate, for to do so would be akin to magic, which is another phenomenon I have experienced and now turned my back on completely. "Qi sensations" can indeed be cultivated, but to interpret them as the presence of some kind of malleable supernatural force is a flawed mystification of natural sensory phenomena. Any demonstration of qi to achieve superhuman feats is simply a combination of trickery and trained natural skills. Further, any form of deception, including self-deception, is morally corrupt. Simply put, martial arts are better off without the tantalising trickery and temptations of qi cultivation.

A practical problem

Consider now the very small number of T'ai Chi and Qigong practitioners who are looking for fighting skills, rather than the vastly greater numbers who are looking for magical health cures or spirituality. There, as everywhere, qigong promises things it can not deliver.

Wild promises are made in connection to the cultivation of qi, through the supplementary qigong practices of T'ai Chi and other martial arts that have taken on the recent "internal arts" methodology. Consequently, people come to T'ai Chi Ch'uan / Taijiquan classes expecting magical powers for very little effort. These people generally fall into two camps:

1) Those for whom the so-called "internal styles" are the only martial arts they are prepared to practice, because they have been sold the lie that all of the other martial arts use only crude, unsophisticated, or maybe "overly brutal" methods. This last consideration won't be of concern for all "internal artists" however - some will be more than eager to discover the fabled "death points" that knowledge of "internal energy meridians" can allegedly warrant. I've been asked several times by visitors if I would show them how to kill people just by touching them.

2) Those for whom T'ai Chi will be seen as a supplement to their other (main or "real") martial art.

Neither camp is likely to be very impressed by plain old martial techniques that require technical precision, physical effort and lots of practice to perfect. They expect instead that martial abilities will magically appear in their bodies as a result of standing practice, meditation, energy visualisation and ancient "sacred" sequences of effortless flowing movements.

Few from the first camp will have any kind of realistic expectations of martial practice. Few from the second group will be prepared to unlearn their current martial repertoire; the big lie being that they can go on doing their Karate or Wing Chun (or whatever) and simply get the edge over their fellows by injecting a little extra qi or flow into their movements, cultivated by their T'ai Chi practice.

Rest assured that if either kind of prospective student visits your class to "see if T'ai Chi is for them," you could throw someone twice your size on the floor and relieve them of the knife they'd just thrust at you, and your visitor would most likely think "oh, is that all? If I wanted to learn how to do that, I'd take up a martial art."

Challenging the Myth of Qi

If, like us, you are concerned about the problem of qi, we'd like to hear from you. We can not promise to post every link we are sent, but we do intend to provide links to articles or sites concerned with this matter. You could be a scientist who thinks the whole qi phenomenon is a load of pseudo-scientific claptrap, a concerned religious voice who thinks that the use of "internal energies" is wrong, or a martial artist who thinks that it is time to get real in our martial practice and work to eradicate silly or even downright dangerous myths and superstitions. Like ourselves, you might have multiple concerns. We think that the time has come to put the myth of qi under the triple microscopes of science, religion and rational martial practice.