So the fact that they teach this in school, and I google sin and came up with that in three seconds, is biased and one sided. What side are you on?
OK. Any sort of evidence that chi works. Or not or whatever.
- Thread starter drop bear
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Here is another possibly offensive analogy. If a billion Christians believe they have a soul, you can't prove, to them, they don't, and they can't prove, to you, they do. It is all in or heads, one way, or the other. Chi is the same. Saying it isn't real is just going to offend those that believe, and define their lives with that term.
So the fact that they teach this in school, and I google sin and came up with that in three seconds, is biased and one sided. What side are you on?
You do understand what's wrong with this don't you? They may have taught you that in 'your' school, doesn't make it true. You can google anything and come up with wildly varying results.
What has 'sin' got to do with 'chi'?
I came up with this off Google and 'sin'
Sin, Cos, Tan | S-cool, the revision website
Here is another possibly offensive analogy. If a billion Christians believe they have a soul, you can't prove, to them, they don't, and they can't prove, to you, they do. It is all in or heads, one way, or the other. Chi is the same. Saying it isn't real is just going to offend those that believe, and define their lives with that term.
So you are looking to offend people then? that's why you are posting. I don't find anything like that offensive, I don't think anyone else does either so you are probably wasting your time.
I don't need to look to offend. Offense finds me, just fine
OK fine, so those dirty Greeks lied. What, pray tell, did they say when the archer missed his mark? 
Crap, he missed.. What, pray tell, did they say when the archer missed his mark?
An offense against a deity.
An offence against another human being.
Don't forget idolatry which is indirect.
Which religion are you talking about, not all have idolatry as an issue.
23rdwave
Green Belt
I'll take a shot at this.
Chi or ki or whatever you want to call it, exists in my experience. I have seen and experienced it being applied to me by my instructors, and perhaps more importantly, I have seen and experienced it NOT working when applied to me by others.
Now, if you ask me what it is, I do not know exactly. I believe it is not supernatural. I believe it is an application of physical laws. Some might call it good body mechanics, and I would not argue with that definition, although I suspect it is more than just that.
I will say that it is difficult to explain and harder to demonstrate without an in-person demonstration by a skilled practitioner. Seeing, and in some cases, feeling, is believing.
I believe that one cannot describe a given technique to another and then expect that person to be able to perform it. It does not appear to be the type of knowledge that can be easily transmitted verbally or in writing, or even via video. One has to experience the technique, mimic it, and then practice it over and over again, in some cases thousands of times, until one day it just seems to happen.
Chi (again, to me) can be seen in relatively simple things, like a soft strike which overcomes a hard blow - and hurts the recipient far more! It can be felt in the manner of absorbing a blow by connecting oneself to the ground via what some might call good body mechanics. To feel the incoming power go flowing out and leave one undamaged is an interesting experience, to say the least.
And although I do not wish to play the part of the elitist or the purist or anything like that, I do believe that many are those who study and train their entire lives, experience nothing resembling chi flow or power or whatever you want to call it, do not believe it exists, and are fine martial artists. But those who have, have, and know differently.
I have heard it described as living inside the art as opposed to living on the surface of it.
I won't argue with anyone that it does or does not exist, or that it is or is not beyond physical laws. I have no idea, no proof, and only my own experience to guide me.
The above are my opinions and nothing more.
Koshiki
Brown Belt
Fair enough, and I certainly don't want to play the part of the arrogant naysayer who dismisses everything outside of his own experience as BS.
That said, this is, in many ways, a faith-based discussion. If I may draw a parable:
I have a friend, a close friend, who is deeply, deeply Christian in the most compassionate and commendable of senses, and also in the most Biblically literal of senses. If it is written, it occurred, when and how and why the Bible records it. no question. No room for creative interpretation. He's very conservative in the American sense as well. I was raised without any sort of religion, and continue to be non-religious, though I find it fascinating. I'm quite Liberal in the American sense.
We talk about religion a great deal, and we always stay friendly. At the base of it though, he does believe, 100%, that I am blind, devoid of human spiritual realization, living in sin, destined to literally burn in hellfire until judgement day, and affronting and rejecting all that is beautiful in life. I think, mostly, that he puts a great deal of weight and bases life decisions on what is basically an imaginary friend. And we have, with smiles on our faces, discussed this exact phenomenon with each other, with quite similar wording.
Point being, if you say that Chi exists, is the pinnacle or the highest plane or whatever of martial arts, and that some people just never get there, then your are saying that those who don't experience Chi are missing out on the most fulfilling, the most rewarding, the highest level of their potential, that they are falling short of what they aim for because they don't even know to seek it. And that's Ok. That's discussion. To actually discuss something like Chi, everyone has to be willing to say "no, you're wrong," and to hear the same thing in response, and be ok with that.
Conversely, people like myself look at those who believe in Chi, and believe they experience it, and no matter how we say it, we are insinuating that their experience is nothing more than a subpar understanding of body mechanics. And that's ok too.
The truth is, in a yes-no chi dichotomy, both views are necessarily incompatible, and both views clearly state the proponents of the other are misguided and missing out on "true" martial arts because of their assumptions.
With that in mind, these are my particular views on people's perception of Chi in the martial arts. I don't doubt that many practitioners who believe they are utilizing Chi are skilled martial artists. I only doubt that it is actually Chi that they are utilizing. I think they are just skilled martial artists.
Definitely true, although I would quibble that believing does not make a think so. How many times have we seen variants of images wherein two objects are shown, and we all believe one to be larger, or a darker color, though both are identical? There's a famous musical trick where overlapping ascending or descending scales create the effect of the sound getting infinitely lower or higher, while in reality neither is happening, you are presented with the same notes over and over, yet you think that they are continually rising or falling. Give me headphones, and with a different pitch played in each ear, I can make you think the sound is one pitch orbiting your head. We all know the pressing on a doorway trick, after which your arms helplessly rise. How often have you recalled a childhood memory and almost sworn you could smell the accompanying scent? Touched a cold object and thought it was burning you or the inverse?
I do not doubt that practitioners of many arts, my own included feel what they presume is Chi. Are they feeling the same application of technique as flavoured by the nuance afforded by long practice as I do, and just calling that skill Chi, or are they really experiencing something beyond that? In other words, I don't doubt for a moment that people feel Chi. What I question is whether that sensation is any different than the aforementioned Shepard Tone.
Check out the link and keep listening. Most people would say that the sound gets lower and lower indefinitely, which would be impossible, as we would quickly get below 20 Hz or so, the limits of defined pitch in human hearing, and then seconds later we would reach 0 hz, at which point there literally is no sound. Trained musicians or those with naturally gifted ears might hear the separate component sin waves and entrances, and realize this is not the case. It seems to transcend basic aural ranges, yet it never does anything close. It's a very simple, otherwise un-noteworthy bit of audio, except that our brain struggles with truly comprehending it, and so comes up with an incorrect explanation, you hear it, so you believe it, but it's not real.
Seeing, hearing, smelling, and feeling may be believing for many people, but again, to believe a thing is not to demonstrate its existence.
I would agree with this, one hundred percent. I also play contemporary classical guitar, and would say the same holds true for that discipline as well. I can tackle a tricky passage over and over, seemingly getting no closer to performing it without error, let alone smoothly, and not even close to being able to emote anything other than technical competency through the passage. One day, for who knows what reason, it will be locked in, and my fingers will find the passage thoughtlessly, expression coming to the notes almost unavoidably.
The same goes for martial arts, although the process is longer and more difficult in many ways; with music, no one is trying to stop you playing. (Although my wife does love to walk up and grin at me while slowly detuning a string in the midst of a complex passage. Grrrrr.)
However, in neither study do I find the experience of that effortlessness that comes with absolute familiarity to indicate Chi or anything like it. I won't argue that it feels like a magical experience, that there is a joy and a deep, quiet satisfaction that comes from the unthinking fluid performance of a motion drilled through thousands of repetitions over the years, but to me, that's just my brain saying, "wow, my body/fingers are doing a thing I can't explain, wow, this is magical!" For those of you not involved in music, there is every bit as much mysticism and romantic thought in that realm of study as in the martial arts.
Perhaps that is Chi, a vital energy, a life force, a power flow; but I prefer to explain it as nothing more than skill gained through hard work. To my personal ideaology, that's a actually a more beautiful concept.
And again, to me, that's nothing that isn't suitably explained by a basic understanding of human motion, and the subtlety contained therein. Minute differences in the striking angle, the exact portion of the hand that impacts, the exact portion of the area it strikes, the exact position and motion of the target at the point of impact, differences in speed, in breath of the recipient, in which muscles are tensed and loose, etc, all contribute to the effectiveness of any given strike.
To take a ridiculously simplistic example, (and I realize you are referencing something much less blatant, but simple illustrations explain best I think, and the principles are transferable), let's look at a simple straight punch to the general middle of the abdominal muscles.
If I stand in a strong forward stance and have someone punch straight at the center of my lower torso, I'm probably going to be pretty ok, even if that someone is big, beefy, and knows how to hit. It's easy to take a hit there, we all know this. I can take the hit even better if I allow myself to roll, both preventing an impact at the ideal point, and prolonging the duration of that impact so that the force has time to spread rather than disrupt. Again, this is basic, and we all know this.
We also all know that in the middle of explaining something to another student, some thirteen year old you're training with can wing a sloppy old punch into your gut and wind you. In the first two cases, you're ready, you react well, and the strike comes at a relatively ineffective angle, to a well protected target. In the third case, the strike catches you at the worst moment, and though lacking in skill, power, and certainly concerted Chi, has more effect. The same basic idea manifests itself in every strike, the combination of numerous tiny, unplanned, imperceptible details dictating the effectiveness of the strike.
Does the young teen's floppy pot shot have focused chi? Does your reception of the expected, well-executed punch exemplify your defensive chi in action? I think we all would agree that most likely not, at least not necessarily. Can the sucker punch or the well received strike feel inexplicably powerful or extra-skillfully absorbed? Sure, but if we can also explain all of that through really simple principles combining in a more organic way than we can feasibly categorize, why invoke the arcane?
When I can't explain something, I like to accept that I, personally can't fully explain it, not that the principles contained within the last thousand years of rational study can't explain it. I certainly don't like to flip it around and say that, since I have no rational explanation that seems suitable to me, that therefore "Chi did it."
I realize that last paragraph sounds dismissive, and I suppose in a way it is. As I said at the beginning of this foolishly long post, the essence of the discussion is really that a belief in Chi means that those who don't believe are training without the deepest possible understanding, while a dismissal of that belief means that those who believe are in a certain sense living in a fantasy world, though their skill itself may be sound.
So, I don't mind offending, but I hope not to upset, and that anything said is interpreted in the most amicable and earnest of possible tones.
Which religion thinks its cool to worship false gods and Idols? Start there.
OP
OP
drop bear
Sr. Grandmaster
Like working on a sunday. Wearing mixed fibres or eating pork?
I like the chi/religion comparison. I dont believe god exists. But it helps some people who do.
OP
OP
drop bear
Sr. Grandmaster
There was a dark ages.
I think you are mixing up your religions there.
That was written by a Jehovah's Witness who I believe had reason to disparage the Amish beside it's just hearsay that a few people think the earth is flat, doesn't mean all Amish do. I rather like the Amish, I like any peaceful people who don't push their views onto me.
BBC - Religions - Christianity: The Amish
At any rate before we can understand power, we must understand weakness. Sinnin' sinny sinners are weak, because they are slaves to their desires. And lets lot forget when you become weak it has a direct effect on those around you. The Chi is very low there.
