effect of directing the qi

[zachsan]

conventional wisdom would hold that it's generally a bad idea to hit yourself in the head with a metal bar. i don't know how hard you can hit before it causes brain damage, and i don't know if hitting a bone actually makes the bone stronger. i know calcium and exercise do.

if you've got the leverage you can move just about anything, including a tai chi master. they're masters because they can deprive you of the proper leverage, but that involves moving themselves. demonstrations of immovability generally involve someone applying force in a very inefficient way (lifting from under the arms, for instance), and the master simply sinking his weight or making one or two similar adjustments to create the shocking effect of not being moved.

if you're ever involved in one of these demonstrations, ask the master if you may now try moving him by, say, a hip throw. chances are he won't allow you. also, half of the time when these things are demonstrated, they're demonstrated by the master's own students, and generally, the more "obedient" ones. this is a reason why controlled tests are better than MA demonstrations, when trying to figure out what someone can and can't really do.

oh, and your hands move air, which blows out candles. it does take real skill to be able to strike in such a way that you can move the air suddenly enough to do that. but it's still just air.

[dogchow108]

Interesting thread.. indeed

Just curious would repeated hitting something such as a metal bar across your head, make the bones stronger? Would it damage the brain any?

One thing that's interesting is the that a Tai Chi master can be immovable. How they do that? Is that just focus? Or how about blowing out candles by striking near them?

Well, i'm no expert but i do know a bit about the human skeleton, ao maybe i can make some sense of is:

When you are young, your skeleton tends to be more malliable and flexible in terms of how it ossifies. Osseus tissue is there from the very beginning- it is a tissue that eventually replaces a previously existing one. before this happens, the soon-to-be-ossified regions are made of cartilagenous tissue. People have not lways been aware of the morphology or physiology behind this, but they have been aware that children have more flexible skeletons than adults. If i'm not mistaken, i think it was the Aztecs or some other South American tribe that used to grow their children with a board on their forehead so that when they grow up their face will resemble eagles more (they also used to place a stoe in between the child's eyes to get their eyes centered- they would still be able to see straight but the location of their irises were different than normal).

As you grow up, though, your skeleton becomes harder, and loss of flexibility means that your skeleton becomes more brittle. There are, however, adaptations of the skeleton to accomodate for its loss of flexibiity. For example, as non-marrow areas are concerned, the bone is hollow and its structure allows for efficient transfer of shock. Though it has never really been a wonder for resisting twisting and pulling pressure, it tends to do well with impacts and both side and up/down pressure. Also, the bone cells themselves have a secretion trigger. Bone is a vell-vascularized, cellular tissue. It is composed of cells that secrete an extracellular matrix (which is why bone is considered a connective tissue). This extracellular material is the hard part of the bone that we see when we look at one. Osseus cells can be ttriggered to secrete more of this extracellular matrix when stimulated by shock. I forget the word for it, there was a specific word to describe this process, but either way this is a pretty well-known phenomenon, and occurs to varying degrees amongst individuals. Generally, people who are more active- walk, jump, run around and excersize more- are more likely to have stronger bones than perhaps people who post of forums all day long . So, i think the idea of hitting things against exposed bony surfaces on the body works largely as a result (mind you i did not say based) of this physiological mechanism. Your bones, all of them, are organs which are just as alive and systemized as your heart or lungs.

You must keep in mind, however, that your body has a bone-depositing prime. at some point, as you age, your cells start to give up on you. In fact, not only do your cells stop secreting the material, they secrete chemicals that break down the bone. To compound this, your body has long ago stopped making cartilage. It was all replaced by stronger, harder bone tissue. So what you have is that your bones are falling apart and there is no more flexible tissue.

You need to understand something, though. Your bones should not be your primary concern. Internal organs such as the brain are extremely close to the bones that protect them. Your lungs, brain, geart- all places that you still dont have to hit too hard to cause some kind of resonation within them. You hit your head hard enough, you can get a concussion. Of course, you can hit someone's head hard enough to kill them, and it dosent take the bone breaking for the hit to be hard enough to damage your brain. The heart is exposed- almost literally- by the solar plexus. Everyone knows how bad it sucks to get hit there- and for good reason. Hit someone in the ribs hard enough- it hurts, but they are also gasping for air. Also, your circulatory system is composed of organs. Arteries, veins, capillary beds- organs. and those ones are seldom covered by bone. your muscles do somewhat of a job protecting arteries, but when someone takes a thick branch and breaks it on your arm, how good is that for you?

This is one of my problems with the obsession over Qi. I think that many times people use it as an excuse to try and convince themselves that it is okay to do potentially hazardous and dangerous things to their body. In my opinion, most of the "iron body" **** we see today is just parlor tricks. You really have to be careful with who you trust with this stuff.

I, personally, wont mind doing a bit of conditioning for things like my forearms and a bit on my hands. Those are things that seem to have evolved to just take a beating. but then, having said that: everything in moderation.


As far as "immoveable Taiji masters- i don't believe i've ever met any such a person. In fact, the very idea is contrary to Taiji practice- EVERYTHING in taiji should come from eternal movement, so to speak. It is movement, if nothing else, that should make a Taiji master immoveable.


And yes, the punch the candle out is most certainly wind.

[Greenknight2]

Okay, I was talking to my instructor, he had some interesting thoughts. He said, you know you can do it but how would you make a living? Do they use cast iron? I still think it's interesting they can hit it over there heads though. The reason is cast iron is more brittle than regular iron.

So basically, only practice condition with supervision of a reputable instructor?

Anyway, there are ways to guard against hip throws. I don't know if it would work but I would think going with it would be better then resisting the throw because they using there hip as a fulcrum.

[zachsan]

So basically, only practice condition with supervision of a reputable instructor?

that's a very good idea. but also, use your head (no pun intended). if an instructor, no matter how reputable, tells you to sit still while he beats you over the head with a metal bar, it's OK to exercise your own better judgement.

there are ways to guard against everything, including hip throws, but they require movement. i was referring to the trick that i've seen by some oriental MA masters in which someone just stands completely still and appears to be "immovable" by one or two of his students. i thought that was what you were talking about in your previous post.

[Greenknight2]

I'm still curious, as to what hte difference between Dit Jow powder and tiger balm are.

[arhat]

red pepper and vaseline = tiger balm.

Dit Da Jow has a lot more stuff in it, and if your cat smells you cooking it they will immediately hurl upon sniffing the pot.

we recently had a repeat of the noxious stumuli experiment, this time the dr also measured brainwave activity in both a control and Yan Ming.

The results should be interesting.

[Greenknight2]

hmmm, isn't that interesting.... thank you I will have to remember that one

[zachsan]

arhat, what is this experiment? it sounds like fun.

[andrewr47]

if you want scientific proof of qigong on various aspects of healing or whatever, just search for qigong on http://scholar.google.com. most, if not all the articles, are from journals recognized by the NIH.

[dogchow108]

\while you're at it i'm sure you can find proof of god on a google search.





Andrew- is there a particular article you could direct us to for starters?

[zachsan]

qigong, tai chi and the like have shown to have some health benefits. that's a far cry from some of the claims that have been made in this thread, and there's no evidence to back up those claims.

[andrewr47]

dogchow: making a sarcastic remark about me finding a proof of God's existence on google is akin to me asking you to find on google a proof God's non-existence or the existence of Buddha, or whomever u worship. Why did you ever go there.

zach: i totally agree with what you're saying since i believe in the scientific method also. What i'm saying is that there's no way anything like qigong's effects on martial arts will ever appear in a scientifically published journal. For claims to be made plausible, the data also has to be statistically significant, and that requires a large sample population, which, in our claims, would be hard to gather. Therefore, it WILL be hard for anyone to prove or to show scientifically, qigong's effects on martial arts. However, the inability to prove it does NOT abolish the possibility of such claims. I am neither for nor against such claims precisely because no one has ever proved nor disproved such claims. You might say that the person making such claims has the burden of proof, and frankly, that's true. But we should also note that in the scientific world, the only means of rejecting a hypothesis is by finding just a single piece of evidence against the claim, which should be MUCH easier to do than proving something.

Therefore, I'm just keeping an open mind.

[andrewr47]

dogchow: here are some articles i found interesting. Maybe someday I'll find an article publishing the hard sciences of God's existence.

article 1

article 2

article 3

article 4

[zachsan]

i more or less agree with what you're saying, but i (obviously) am i suppose more adamant about the 'burden of proof' thing. if there were no harm in believing such things, that would be one thing. but there are many ways such beliefs could be harmful. for instance, some people can end up throwing away vast sums of money to train with certain masters to acquire supernatural abilities that they will never have. and that's harmless when compared to the possibility of someone making a decision in a real-life self-defense situation based on the misplaced belief that they are capable of more than they are.

also, i believe in applying the same standards of reasoning to the practice of martial arts that one would apply to writing a history paper, or deciding who to vote for in an election. i shouldn't vote for a guy because he says he will make everyone rich; i should vote for him because he has given me a reason to believe that he will. there's no way for me to know what this guy will do if he's elected, so i keep an open mind, but i can at least use what i do know to make an educated guess.

given the fact that his claim is so fantastic - he can make everyone rich - it's safe to assume that if he has no experience, or a less-than-stellar track record, this is not going to happen. that's keeping an open mind, but using it, too.

[andrewr47]

just out of curiosity zach, do you believe in the concept of Qi?

I ask because on the one hand, you seem to not believe it since you've asked people to prove to you what exactly is qi, whether heat, electrical energy, or watever. You've also asked people to show what happens when one directs his qi to a particular area: whether the skin/bone/watever turns hard or not.

however you also claim that you believe in qigong's apparent health benefits. this automatically implies you believe in the practice of qigong, to say the least.

can you explain the rather contradictory nature? (or at least it seems contradictory to me)