You can experiment with feeling Qi

[Immortal4life]

I have heard many people say, "how can I know Qi exists? I want to see proof."

 

However, this is always a short sighted view. It is looking for answers outside of yourself. In fact, your body can be the best device for receiving Qi you will ever have. If you want to know something is real, the only way is personally experiencing it, and feeling it.

 

A good thing to do is to relax your body and mind and silently say "I am one with universal life energy, it is flowing though me now, I feel it." That's mostly a mental or mind method. Do this anytime. Anytime in the day just stop for a minute, relax your body, mind, and thoughts, and say the affirmation. As you make the statement, realize it's truth.

 

Another thing that is easy to do is standing meditation, with the two palms facing each other, as if you were holding an object in front of your body. As you meditate, have most of your attention on the Lao Gong acu-points in the middle of the two palms (those are also powerful energy points), and the energy between the hands. 5, 10 minutes is pretty good to start feeling energy......

 

After that you can pull the hands away from each other, and then bring them close together, and repeat many times. You may feel the energy in the hands more automatically then

 

You could also do it with the tips of the fingers of each hand facing each other an inch or two apart, instead of the palms. The palms would instead be facing the body. You could have the finger tips facing each other in front of the abdomen(dantien) or chest. Then you could pull them apart, and then bring them close together again, then back apart, back close together again. But don't actually touch them together when you bring them together. Then, try this, bring one hand up a little bit and the other hand down a bit, then reverse so that the opposite hand goes up and the one that was previously up goes down. As they pass each other, feel the energy and magnetic current between the fingers. You can also do it with one going forwards, and one coming in towards you, and reverse, as the fingers pass each other, feel the energy.

 

You can also do it in a darkened room with just a bit of light so that you can see a little bit. Then you can maybe try to look at the energy coming out the fingers and hands, and possibly see white light coming from the fingers and hands, or even auras.

Edited December 21, 2010 by Immortal4life

[orb]

I have heard many people say, "how can I know Qi exists? I want to see proof."

 

However, this is always a short sighted view. It is looking for answers outside of yourself. In fact, your body can be the best device for recieving Qi you will ever have. If you want to know something is real, the only way is personally experiencing it, and feeling it.

 

A good thing to do is to relax your body and mind and silently say "I am one with universal life energy, it is flowing though me now, I feel it." That's mostly a mental or mind method. Do this anytime. Anytime in the day just stop for a minute, relax your body, mind, and thoughts, and say the affirmation. As you make the statement, realize it's truth.

 

Another thing that is easy to do is standing meditation, with the two palms facing each other, as if you were holding an object in front of your body. As you meditate, have most of your attention on the Lao Gong acu-points in the middle of the two palms (those are also powerful energy points), and the energy between the hands. 5, 10 minutes is pretty good to start feeling energy......

 

After that you can pull the hands away from each other, and then bring them close together, and repeat many times. You may feel the energy in the hands more automatically then

 

You could also do it with the tips of the fingers of each hand facing each other an inch or two apart, instead of the palms. The palms would instead be facing the body. You could have the finger tips facing each other in front of the abdomen(dantien) or chest. Then you could pull them apart, and then bring them close together again, then back apart, back close together again. But don't actually touch them together when you bring them together. Then, try this, bring one hand up a little bit and the other hand down a bit, then reverse so that the opposite hand goes up and the one that was previously up goes down. As they pass each other, feel the energy and magnetic current between the fingers. You can also do it with one going forwards, and one coming in towards you, and reverse, as the fingers pass each other, feel the energy.

 

You can also do it in a darkened room with just a bit of light so that you can see a little bit. Then you can maybe try to look at the energy coming out the fingers and hands, and possibly see white light coming from the fingers and hands, or even auras.

 

 

Even if it's true you can't do anything practical with it. You cannot measure your level of Qi like John Chang can, simply because you don't have anything that he has! You have to get something extra - and that requires special knowledge and understanding.

2nd, you can believe anything you want to believe. There are people that believe that they can talk to Jesus and they can truly get their palms to bleed just by concentrating too much on the image of Jesus (that still has nothing to do with Christ, I do want to believe that Jesus himself is a bit more practical then just making people bleed).

Edited December 20, 2010 by orb

[Otis]

In my view, we're all experiencing Qi all the time. We just don't usually label it as such, so we don't think of it as important. Qi, as I understand/relate to it, is merely the energetic version of my body. So, all I need to do, to feel Qi, is to listen to the sensations that my body already gives me.

 

If I've been ignoring my body for a long time (as I was until a few years ago), then when I put my attention there, all I experience is chaos, random-seeming noise. But with continued practice (especially with moving meditation and stretch), I began to experience (much of) my body very clearly and fluidly (some parts are certainly more accessible than others).

 

Especially in movement, I can feel the arcs and spirals that are inherent in the structure of my body. This is a big part of why Sufi whirling and, dancing, and Yogic stretching can be such excellent avenues in to understanding Qi. I can transform my experience of my body from one of a compartmentalized structure (the conceptual body map), to just an open column/sphere of energy/sensation, without distinct parts or separation (the sensation of internal unity), even without the distinction between pleasure and pain.

 

As for getting a glimpse into that open, clear experience of Qi, I recommend exercises that involve balance. Anyone who does handstands knows that aha! feeling, when the body just finds its natural balance point. That sensation is a beautiful in, to improving my relationship to Qi throughout my body.

 

Simpler balance exercises that reveal the aha! of Qi include: balancing a book on my head, balancing while sitting on a yoga ball, standing on a balance board, etc.

[Immortal4life]

The practical part of this thread, is that you can feel Qi as something literally real.

 

Yes people can believe whatever they want to believe, but come on, some people are actually intellectually honest with themselves. They want to know, they arent going to just strongly believe it for no reason or because Jesus or Lao Tzu told them to.

[Mokona]

The practical part of this thread, is that you can feel Qi as something literally real.

 

Yes people can believe whatever they want to believe, but come on, some people are actually intellectually honest with themselves. They want to know, they arent going to just strongly believe it for no reason or because Jesus or Lao Tzu told them to.

 

Unless they have a few spontaneous orgasms rock from the navel to and out the top of the head and intake tangable love. You'd have to be a master of self trickery to think that is a physical malfunction of the body.

[Immortal4life]

Exactly.

[orb]

The practical part of this thread, is that you can feel Qi as something literally real.

 

 

 

Ok, I'll give you that one. People can feel this little tingling or little heat or little magnetism even and they really can't wait to call it Qi or Chi whatever.

 

Now in my personal and overly-humble opinion - I would call it something more like: TOMI (a tiny, insignificant, open to a million interpretations manifestation of the body at the superficial sensation level and glorified by our total lack of understanding of a phenomena that has no practical purpose for our already short and useless life).

So instead of saying politely "Hey, ssup dude?" one could ask: "Hey, man, what type of TOMI do you experience today?" and the answer could be something like " Oh brother, I am full of warm TOMI at ma beer gut level (or dantien) and a little bit of sweet tingling TOMI around my nutsac area. And to be a true TOMIist, I need to acknowledge that there's an active and a passive element within my TOMI(like Yin and Yang type...) so I think I'm gonna go ahead and perform some TOMI exchange (as prescribed by his holiness, Mantak Chia) with the dumb blonde chick who works at Blockbusters (and please God make her be 18)."

[Immortal4life]

lol

 

 

Well, excpet though that Chinese medicine practitioners, Taoist, and Buddhist masters have studied it for thousands of years.

[Prince...]

Again to quote my teacher,"I'm not saying that Qi isn't real because it is, but the sooner you forget all about feeling Qi and the rest of that shit, the farther you will go with your practice."

[exorcist_1699]

Unfortunately what we experience in daily life is qi 's "post-heavenly" form ,i.e, our breathing . To most people, up to the end of their life , never do they know the base of their breathing at background .

 

This "degenerated" status also reflects in what a trivial mind we have that accompanies it . This mind of experiencing, this mind of daily reasoning, no matter how deep or great a status sometime it can enter, for example, solving equation about space's multi-dimensional characteristics, further helps alienating us from directly contacting the essence of qi.

[Otis]

People can feel this little tingling or little heat or little magnetism even and they really can't wait to call it Qi or Chi whatever.

 

Now in my personal and overly-humble opinion - I would call it something more like: TOMI (a tiny, insignificant, open to a million interpretations manifestation of the body at the superficial sensation level and glorified by our total lack of understanding of a phenomena that has no practical purpose for our already short and useless life).

So instead of saying politely "Hey, ssup dude?" one could ask: "Hey, man, what type of TOMI do you experience today?" and the answer could be something like " Oh brother, I am full of warm TOMI at ma beer gut level (or dantien) and a little bit of sweet tingling TOMI around my nutsac area. And to be a true TOMIist, I need to acknowledge that there's an active and a passive element within my TOMI(like Yin and Yang type...) so I think I'm gonna go ahead and perform some TOMI exchange (as prescribed by his holiness, Mantak Chia) with the dumb blonde chick who works at Blockbusters (and please God make her be 18)."

This is very funny.

 

I'm in disagreement, however, that Qi is a TOMI experience. I think that's where tradition has done a grave mis-service, by making Qi mysterious and esoteric. IME, Qi is utterly mundane and present every moment. It is not just a part of me; it is who I am.

 

(Caveat that I am not book-smart on Qi, but) my relationship to my own Qi is at the center of my practice for the last decade. In my experience, Qi is just a different way of looking at our bodies. In a quantum physics analogy: the physical body is the particle, Qi is the wave. Wave meaning all the dynamics (respiration, circulation, digestion, skeletal-muscular movement, etc), rather than the solid mass itself that we can weigh and dissect.

 

Every step, every breath, is Qi in action. We are Qi, as long as we are alive. IME of living as Qi, I have become much less prone to injury. I have become lighter, stronger, much more balanced, and there is greater ease in my body since when I was a very small kid. When I live as energy, instead of form, then I experience the physical world as soft and welcoming, because I am no longer hard to it.

 

If indeed, we are our Qi, then it is anything but esoteric, tiny, or insignificant. Qi is no less than life itself.