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If you haven’t heard of Qi, it doesn’t matter. This article is for everyone.
I will use plain English to try to demystify the term and explain what it is. Note that I can only do this within the limits of my own experience.
Qi, Chi, Ji, or Ki?
The concept of Qi (氣 or 气 in Mandarin Chinese) is central to many East Asian philosophies and healing practices. You will find it expressed in different ways.
Qi is the pinyin transliteration used in modern Romanisation systems and most accurately reflects the Chinese pronunciation: chee.
Chi is the more commonly used spelling in the West.
Another far less frequently used variant of Chi is Ch’i.
Ki, pronounced kee, is the Japanese equivalent, used in Karate and other disciplines such as Aikido (Ai-Ki-Do) or Reiki (Rei-Ki). It represents the Japanese pronunciation of the same Mandarin Chinese character.
Despite the differences in spelling and pronunciation, these four terms all point to the same idea. It is a vital life force or energy that flows through all living beings and the universe. To keep things simple, I will only refer to it as Qi from this point.
Finding the Essence of Qi
If defining Qi were as simple as this, there would be no need for an article. ‘A vital life force or energy that flows through all living beings and the universe’ is unsatisfactory. It leaves the door open for people to embellish it. That is exactly what has happened in the mind-body-spirit space. We also see it with some self-appointed martial arts gurus from disciplines such as Tai Chi and Aikido.
I am alive. I have a vital life force that gives me energy. Tell me something I don’t know. What can I do with that? Let’s explore what it means to increase and preserve Qi from a purely practical, materialistic perspective.
Posture
Improved posture means greater stability and structural integrity. It leads to less stress on the joints, more efficient movement, and deeper, more effective breathing.
Connected Body
Employing the pelvic floor muscles ensures the whole body is working as one unit and saves energy. It ensures better posture, and provides greater access to power.
‘Activated Body Suit’
Full body awareness improves coordination, kinaesthetic sensitivity, and visuo-spatial awareness. This allows the body to maintain optimal form and structural integrity while moving.
Correct Breathing
Our state of mind affects how we breathe, and vice versa. Better breathing brings more oxygen into more of the lungs and helps us to exhale more carbon dioxide. More vitality.
Focused Intention
The one with the most focused intention will win the race, all other factors being equal. This is more than trying hard. It means the body, mind, and spirit are fully comfortable and committed to the task without conflict.
Mushin (No-mind)
This is not mindlessness. The mushin state is the absence of conscious or subconscious thoughts that can interfere with the flow state.
‘Unfettered Mind’
Consciousness needs to be everywhere at once. When awareness settles on one thing, the mind is taken. It is fettered. The distraction can be how the arms are moving, a competitor pushing ahead, or the look on a spectator’s face.
Finding the Governor — Mindfulness and Meditation
Even those seven considerations are only the tip of the iceberg. Along with other factors such as sleep quality, good nutrition and sufficient hydration, they all contribute to increased vitality, i.e. increased Qi.
Mindfulness underpins everything— staying present and aware. Without that, everything else falls apart. One of the most persistent distractions is the mind itself. These could be memories and emotions. Or reflections, such as my posture is good, or I feel great. They are often projections into the future, such as I will be glad when training is over.
Mindfulness is staying present and aware of ourselves and our environment, without judgement or analysis. Meditation is mindfulness of the mind. We observe our thoughts, feelings, and emotions as phenomena of the mind. We recognise that we are not the mental phenomena that occur in the mind.
Mindfulness comes to the fore when we are engaged in an activity, especially practices such as Tai Chi or Yoga. But we can be mindful while doing the mundane things like ironing clothes or washing up. Meditation becomes more relevant when we are sitting, standing or lying still. When the ideas that spontaneously arise in our minds are more noticeable.
Linking Mind, Body and Spirit… and Qi
How does the mind talk to the body, and vice versa? And where does spirit fit into this equation? What about Qi?
When I mention the mind, I am referring to the place where thoughts and feelings arise. I am talking about the thing that processes, compares and contrasts, and feels emotion.
Spirit is the entity that watches the mind and sees everything we think, feel and do. The consciousness that comes to the fore when we meditate. It doesn’t think or experience emotions. It oversees. Some call this the soul, and others argue that this consciousness is collective and universal. That discussion is for another article.
Two-Way Communication
Given the profound relationship between our breathing and our state of mind, breathing provides a conduit between mind and body. This is why it features prominently in most meditation and mindfulness exercises.
Mindfulness increases our sensitivity to internal and external stimuli. Proprioceptors provide important feedback about the body’s status to the brain. They tell your brain where your body is in space, for example. Others report on movement, tension, and balance. Other receptors detect temperature, pain, pressure, stretch, and vibration. Baroreceptors detect changes in internal pressure such as blood pressure.
But how do we tell the body what we want? When you decide to raise your arm, what happens?
We know the brain sends impulses to the muscles through neurons and synapses. That doesn’t explain the relationship between the intention, the decision, and those neurons firing.
You could say you want it to happen, and that’s all that’s necessary; your will is your body’s command. You decide to do it, and the arm rises. But I believe there’s a more sophisticated connection between the mind, intention, and the body. What about the nuance? How do we control the speed or the level of force applied to the action?
Instructing the Body — Qi Versus Neurology
Neurons are the pathways for messages to travel as electrical impulses. Qi determines how efficiently the body moves by fine-tuning communication from the mind to the body. It is the difference between picking up a glass of water and gripping the vessel so hard, it shatters.
For the body to move efficiently, the different muscle groups must work in harmony. Those that are activated for the task must use as little energy as possible. That means understanding which muscles are needed and which ones should be switched off. Efficiency requires fine control of the relevant electrical impulses to ensure minimum effort.
While neurology describes the how, Qi explores the felt experience of that how.
The Body’s Natural Wisdom
Left to its own devices, your body already knows what to do. For example, when you stand on one leg, consider how the body detects your centre of gravity. For something as irregular as a human body, calculating the centre of gravity mathematically would be a mammoth task. So, we use a sophisticated in-built closed-loop control system instead.
Fluids in the inner ear and proprioceptors from our ankles and other key areas detect whether balance has been achieved. If there is instability, neurons fire impulses to the right muscles to fix the issue.
Returning to the glass of water, breaking the vessel can be avoided if we are sensitive. Feedback from the hand to the brain tells us whether we are applying enough pressure to lift the glass. The more sensitive we are, the less energy we need to use to achieve the objective.
We carry out these tasks without conscious thought or calculation. The body knows what to do. All we have to do is not get in its way. That brings us back to the factors affecting Qi that I mentioned earlier. If our posture is good and we are mindful, balancing on one leg will be easier to achieve. We are optimising the flow of Qi, improving efficiency, and not letting tension and clumsiness get in the way.
Mental Rehearsal
Here’s another powerful example to illustrate efficient movement. Start by kneeling on the heels of the feet with the toes flat on the floor. Without practice, many adults struggle to kneel in this way. Now imagine trying to stand up quickly from that position. Try launching into the standing position with one leap.
Assuming you can achieve the starting posture, rising quickly is challenging because it requires complex teamwork between several muscle groups. Some muscles have to be completely relaxed while others must contract explosively enough to launch you into the air. Without a coordinated effort, muscles work against each other.
The secret of success is a combination of relaxation, meditation, mindfulness, and mental rehearsal. Keep a straight back. Soften the body as much as possible without losing form. This allows for more efficient breathing and lets the mind settle into a meditative state.
From this position, anything the mind imagines the body doing becomes an instruction. Remember, the body already knows exactly what to do. Electrical impulses from the brain to the various muscles ensure the mission is accomplished. Mental rehearsal provides the body with a dry run. The moment you believe it’s possible, your body is ready. All you have to do is have faith, stay relaxed, and let the magic happen.
It won’t be perfect the first time around, but the task becomes achievable. At almost fifty-five years old, I can rise to my feet quicker than a teenager. From kneeling to standing in less than half a second. I can do it without having to rock my body first or swing my arms for momentum.
The Dream Body
You can compare this process to the dream state. We experience dreams as a vivid alternative reality. It’s a playground where we can do all the things we can do in our waking state. We can also achieve the impossible, the things we can only imagine. This proves your mind’s ability to build a three-dimensional, fully sensitised replica of your body mentally.
The Proprioceptive Body
The mind can build a dream body easily. During every moment of our waking lives, proprioceptors send signals to the brain about our body status. The brain can map out an internalised version of the body subconsciously.
Close your eyes and pretend to draw a circle on an imaginary whiteboard. Proprioceptors tell your brain everything it needs to know exactly where your hand is at any moment. It reports on the movement’s power, speed, and direction.
The practice of mindfulness and meditation makes it easier to tune into the proprioceptive body. This full-body awareness improves Qi flow in the body and primes us for efficient movement. The proprioceptive body is the key to communication between your body and mind. The more sensitive and aware of it you are, the more control you have over your body.
The Qi Body
Brian J McKinney of Seven Stars Martial Arts Academy in the Northwest of England, is my martial arts master. He asked me to imagine using a torch to see the inside of my body. When we use a torch in a dark room, it will only illuminate the small area we point it towards. Even if we had several torches, we would still have the same issue.
What we need is a floodlight that will illuminate the whole body. Mindfulness, meditation and practice can help us to achieve that state of full illumination. We want to be so full of light that our body is filled with it. This ‘light body’, says Master McKinney, is our Qi body. It is the life force that feeds us. This is a great way of thinking about Qi.
He asked me a very powerful question, which I am putting to you. If your skeleton is holding up your body, what is holding up your skeleton? What gives it its structure? You may say that your muscles hold up the skeleton. The question would then be, what gives them the energy to do that?
If you withdraw life force from your body, it will collapse on the spot. Try holding your arm out in front of you. At any time you want, just let it fall by your side. Don’t move it. Simply let it go. When it is outstretched, it has just enough Qi to keep it there. When you withdraw that Qi, that energy, it falls.
Nukeru (抜ける)
Another teacher of mine used to talk about a Japanese concept that he learnt from his teacher, Master Tatsuo Suzuki. He showed me the arm exercise and described the collapsed arm as being in the state of nukeru. In this sense, nukero translates as to be omitted or missing. The arm collapses because of an absence of Qi. The Qi is withdrawn from the arm.
In the Wado style of Karate (Wado Ryu), balance between nukeru and kime is important. Kime means focus (literal translation: to decide). Nukeru allows practitioners to move quickly and fluidly. A tense limb is slow. One that is ’empty’ behaves more like a whip. Kime at the point of end of the movement delivers impact. It is usually applied at the point of contact when striking.
Talking to the Qi Body
Master McKinney told me not to focus on moving the body but to move the Qi body. This simple idea transformed my understanding of Qi.
For fast, efficient movement, the physical body needs as little tension as possible, but this is easier said than done. A Tai Chi teacher may well say you can never be soft enough. When a beginner tries kicking or punching for the first time, their body movement is stiff and clumsy. Everything moves together, their shoulders hunch up, and they lack speed and power. Poor technique. The more experienced they become, the more relaxed they are, and the better their technique.
Consider a master such as the greatest heavyweight boxer of all time, Muhammed Ali. You have to marvel at how supremely relaxed he is while opponents are trying to knock him unconscious. That doesn’t come through weight training, skipping, speedball, and the other excellent exercises boxers practise. They all play essential roles. His ability to relax and spend energy efficiently allowed him to float like a butterfly and sting like a bee.
A Real World Application of Qi
In our last session, I got him to focus his mind on his Qi body rather than his physical body. This allowed him to soften the physical body, which meant he could use more relaxed, precise movements. What he managed to achieve astonished me. A fast Karate punch with his weak arm. His arm was in a state of nukeru as it moved. By applying kime at the end of the technique, he injected a snap into it. It proves that how we talk to the body matters far more than brute force.
So, What Is Qi?
It still feels as difficult to define Qi with one word or phrase. Perhaps it is better to find the Qi inside you than to try to define it.
Many things have helped me to discover more about my Qi. Meditation, mindfulness, contemplation, and the practice of martial arts, especially Tai Chi. You may need a different route. But it is worth pursuing. Would you rather float like a butterfly and sting like a bee than muscle your way through every challenge?
Find your Qi.
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