Is chi hardening a thing ?

[Scholar]

3 hours ago, Nintendao said:

@Earl Grey that sounds cool asf. Especially the part about the qi fills the empty cavities. It reminds me of something Lao Tzu said about the Tao being like an empty vessel, whose use is inexhaustible. What all that means in practice is of course no more transmittable here than if you could literally reach through the screen and punch me. It’s really that big a difference I think. Just imagine that! It doesn’t even make sense. I mean, I can totally picture it happening, but if it actually happened I might freak out.
 

So now back to @Scholar - I hope your question is hypothetical. I can understand curiosity of what all’s out there. Or is it something you actually hope to try? (even though it’s already been made clear why you probably shouldn’t) In either case, are you able to elaborate a little on what it means to “direct my energy to my hand”?

Yes,my question is hypothetical, I dont want tl hurt anyone. Its just curiosity. Every anime/game that has some sort of "chi" system, chi hardening is possible, by focusing the energy in the place you want to harden . Iron Palm does not really deliver it for me because one could say that its entirely external training and does not need any chi.

What really makes me curious is the concept of that, even if you never trained punching, you could develop hard hands by just focusing your chi there. 

I cant really explain what directing my energy to my hand, it just what is it, I try to increase the amount of chi that is on my hand. Thing is: I dont know much about the theory about what happens, but when I try to "direct energy" to my hand, I feel an hot fluid traveling on my body, going to my hand. I dont really know if it stays there but that trafic makes the entire path the energy moved hot(especialy where I destined it,in this case,  my hands). But does not seem to make my hand stronger, tried to punch an tree to test it and I hurted my hand a bit haha

 

 

If its hard to understand I wll try to write it again. English is not my first language so I have my struggles.

 

And thanks everyone for helping me !

[EmeraldHead]

1 hour ago, Scholar said:

Yes,my question is hypothetical, I dont want tl hurt anyone. Its just curiosity. Every anime/game that has some sort of "chi" system, chi hardening is possible, by focusing the energy in the place you want to harden . Iron Palm does not really deliver it for me because one could say that its entirely external training and does not need any chi.

What really makes me curious is the concept of that, even if you never trained punching, you could develop hard hands by just focusing your chi there. 

I cant really explain what directing my energy to my hand, it just what is it, I try to increase the amount of chi that is on my hand. Thing is: I dont know much about the theory about what happens, but when I try to "direct energy" to my hand, I feel an hot fluid traveling on my body, going to my hand. I dont really know if it stays there but that trafic makes the entire path the energy moved hot(especialy where I destined it,in this case,  my hands). But does not seem to make my hand stronger, tried to punch an tree to test it and I hurted my hand a bit haha

 

 

If its hard to understand I wll try to write it again. English is not my first language so I have my struggles.

 

And thanks everyone for helping me !

Most anime is based on internet stuff if not real world pop stuff/people; as well as other animes which do the same. Hunter X Hunter with his flat earth, silly ant theory, giant tree stumps, etc etc. The messy dude at the end of the game of greed is togashi himself researching nonsense on the internet. Jojo has a lot of overseas cultures references

The only real sort of anime would be of course one piece. The daoist system is not focused on siddhis but obtaining immortality mostly. Look at hinduism. 5 koshas that make up the natural range of all frequencies in this universe. The body strength is annamaya kosha. It's also related to their working out and ability to digest food quickly. King of lighting, the fat youtuber, had a video on it 'luffys kungfu'.  Look at chopper and the cp9 he fought. But post-natal chi which you refer to is different, it is a frequency part of pranamaya kosha. Yuan chi is manomaya kosha and yuan shen is vijnamaya kosha. The final kosha is essential because it is beyond space time. Anadamaya kosha, a fitting name for haki / DAO. It's what allows them to do things like seeing 360 with all senses including the mind sense which can perceive information aka Raileigh counting 500~ beasts beyond luffy. As well as the hardening haki that can surpass devil fruits / elemental siddhis, it's because they are hitting the real body, the karana sharira. So it goes past all the information bits/mindstream of this manifested reality. Notice in the manga most people getting hit by conquerers basically spasm uncontrollably, marcos on the ship said, the weak ones stay back. He's not so misogynist arrogant to call people weak because of a weak body/chi/etc. He's reffering to them. Their spirit. Karana sharira is your true body in this incarnate universe but it's truly a spiritual body... He says you won't be able to hold your senses before this man. That is what he means. It's similar to how people can sort of hypnotise you if they have a stronger post-natal energy bank, or any other energy sheath ....

So the haki hardening is different from annamaya kosha. The mopie electricity is crystalizing the pranamaya kosha into the highest levels of annamaya kosha where it has qualities of both pranamaya kosha and annamaya kosha. It's the same as yuan jing. It has qualities of both manomaya kosha and pranamaya kosha. This is why it can make others more sociable and even slightly psychic while giving massively strong support to the physical longevity. See, qualities of both mano and prana.

To strengthen annamaya you want to eat a lot and work out a lot. Sleep plenty too. The strongmen have a slightly better than normal annamaya kosha. They are fat, yes, but they actually eat 10k calories per day and digest all that. So stronger power assimilation, stronger such kosha. Similar to all pancha koshas, you can digest more of that specific frequency band. You can also store it around/concentrate it and flex it. It also gives you more power of mentation from that specific range.

[Nintendao]

4 hours ago, Scholar said:

I cant really explain what directing my energy to my hand, it just what is it, I try to increase the amount of chi that is on my hand. Thing is: I dont know much about the theory about what happens, but when I try to "direct energy" to my hand, I feel an hot fluid traveling on my body, going to my hand. I dont really know if it stays there but that trafic makes the entire path the energy moved hot(especialy where I destined it,in this case,  my hands).

 

Nice! What might be happening is you're moving awareness more than anything else. Have you read any of what @freeform has been sharing on the topic? 

It seems at first, the actual energy is still staying more in the head, and being used to perceive in greater detail the different flows of blood, metabolites, and electricity that is pulsing around in the hand at all times already.

[Rocky Lionmouth]

Iron palm isn’t necessarily only external, as tai chi or the internal styles arent exclusively done with an untrained amd inexperienced body.

 

Training Iron skills starts out external, especially hand techniques, because your body needs to understand what hitting, slapping and punching is and how you can do it.

Directing your energy can have many meanings as has been said already and the physical action of directing kinetic energy is fundamental, if you want to have an iron palm its paramount to study slapping and hitting, how to do it, what it feels like, what the different sorts of sensations say, what separates the feeling of injury from experiencing discomfort.

 

Directing your qi to your hand and then hard-punching a tree WILL HURT. Thats basic mechanical physics: Deliver a force to an object and that object will, to its best ability, respond with an equal force.

 

The way i’ve worked with this sort of practice, very gently, under supervision from my first Sifu (now my elder brother) and later by Sifu who is GM of our style went roughly like this: 

Learning the proper relaxation, timing and power is step 1 (involved certain materials, a lot of burning sensations after slapping stuff and very little hard focused training), later comes step 2 which is honing the power and developing sung and cultivating empty focus, then applying breathing further and there you start to see energetic practice surface a little. Thus far its been years and the qi stuff is still just something periferal in this type of practice.

 

Qi isnt suddenly having unnatural bodily abilities through breathing and sensation. And cultivating qi etc doesn’t suspend the laws of physics.

I can slap a lightpost with a fairly short travel strike at chest level with enough power to make the top shake vigorously. I dont feel discomfort, sure my palm fizzes enough to make a grown man cry and hiss and if someone tries to high five me with a haymaker slap they do double over while i giggle, and im at amateur level.

 

But nobody has taught me to fill my palm with qi. Qi must circulate, if it doesnt you get sick or hurt.

 

Edit:

i did three years bussing tables and sorting scalding hot dishes in a diner-pub, and i’ve kept the heat conditioning up  a little and to this day my hands dont get any visible marks if i accidentally pour hot liquid on them. It stings yes but passes shortly.

My fave thing about iron palm thus far is slapping lightposts to make them go ”pliinggg” with clear tone.

Its a ridiculus skill, Iron Palm, butits fun.

 

Re-edit:

I sincerely DO NOT RECOMMEND training your hands with hot water or other scalding techniques. I’ve always had a tendency to suffer less from burns since i was 3, and there was no intention to condition or numb my hands, i just needed to deal quickly with impossbly hot glasses and plates, and after a while i noticed it sort of complemented iron palm.

Dont hurt yourselves, i still worry about rheumatic troubles down the road. 

Edited March 1, 2020 by Rocky Lionmouth