Ki, Chi or Qi – what is it?

Recently whilst looking at other blogs and magazine articles, I noticed that there were quite a few looking at Ki and trying to define or get a clear understanding of what it really means and whether stating that it was ‘energy’ went far enough.

I like Tony (http://www.shiatsublogger.co.uk/) and other students initially struggled to understand or feel Ki when I first started my Shiatsu course, but as the course progressed so my sensitivity to Ki improved.  

“In ancient China, people had very little knowledge of electricity. They only knew from acupuncture that when a needle was inserted into the acupuncture cavities, some kind of energy other than heat was produced which often caused a shocking or a tickling sensation. It was not until the last few decades, when the Chinese people were more acquainted with electromagnetic science, that they began to recognize that this energy circulating in the body, which they called Qi, might be the same thing as what today’s science calls “bioelectricity”.”http://taijiyang.wordpress.com/2007/09/28/a-modern-definition-of-qi/#more-54

“Ki is an elegant theory that the Chinese evolved to explain the Universe, the world and the body. This theory described the circulation of blood around the body long before William Harvey in 1628 or even Ibn al-Nafis in 1242. It explained the function of the lungs and their link to blood while the scientific West was still under the impression we breathed simply to cool the body. But this is not a competition it is just one approach requires proof to build a precise understanding. The other observes to paint a picture.

Shiatsu, acupuncture any the other Qi based therapies simply see the body in a different way to the scientific doctor. That the body is a reflection of what it eats, breathes, thinks and does over the course of its life is one benefit of explaining that body as a construct of Ki. Seeing Ki sees the person as a continuous flow of energy interacting with its environment. By understanding Ki we understand the whole person; mind and body.” http://www.shiatsublogger.co.uk/2007/09/07/what-is-energy-medicine/

I’ve just started to read an article in ‘Qi’ - The journal of Traditional Eastern Health & Fitness (Summer 2007), written by Ken Rose on this very subject. He believes that calling Qi energy does not go far enough to fully explain it. Ken puts forward that the words connectivity, communication, change and movement give a clearer picture of Qi and goes on to say that ” this suggests that Qi is not primarily a concrete thing but an abstract quality of concrete things. Qi is a consequence of the ever-changing dance of yin and yang” (p.21).  Ken goes on to explain that “the only universal constant is chage, and change takes place as a result of and through the most fundamental medium of yin and yang. The force and fact of this pattern in qi”.   

Ken concludes with, ” Qi is that which ..it is the fact that ..all things, events, phenomena interconnect, intercommunicate, interchange and move. It is the medium of change from the most fundamental, proto-typical aspects of the universe to the whole throbbing mass of universal emptiness.

There is much more to the article and well worth submerging yourself in, given the opportunity. It and the other descriptions given above have helped me to refocus on what it is I am doing as a Shiatsu practitioner which is to help and support individuals through their own changes in what ever shape or form that may present or take.

I agree with Tony that when people ask me what Shiatsu is, I tend to go off on a tangent about TCM, Ki etc when maybe all I need to do is explain that it is an holistic therapy that supports change, be that on a physical, mental, emotional or spiritual level.

I’ve just discovered a great Martial Art Forum which has a really interesting thread on this very subject:

http://www.martialtalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=54338

There’s also a connected post that I did earlier this month:

http://tfootitt.wordpress.com/2007/09/11/life-energy-and-healing/

In addition Dragon Pheonix has an amazing video posted on his blog in relation to Ki:

http://dragonphoenix.wordpress.com/2007/04/28/qi-gong-master/#comment-347