Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.
The Most Powerful Chinese Medicine "Chi/Qi"
Shoshin1
Sentient BeingOceania Veteran
Some may find this short "how to open up & go with the flow of Chi/Qi energy" video helpful.... ššš
1
Comments
Definitely something I'd like to learn a little more about - thanks for posting.
You're welcome @Fosdick ...
I have had an interest in the Chinese approach to health and wellbeing for quite awhile, mind you it's been just dabbling interest...
In Buddhism prana is kin to qi ā¦ or is that key to chi ā¦
https://www.lionsroar.com/breathing-lessons/
I'll have to read the article more carefully, tomorrow, maybe. Do you think there is a real distinction between the two, or is it perhaps two ways of looking at the same thing?
Watched the video, and while it was interesting i am not that keen on having another set of so-called professionals fiddling with my body.
You fiddle with your own body @Jeroen ...Press your own buttons so to speak...
There's so many things I could say........
@Jeroen didn't seem too keen hiring 'professional' fiddlers so I was just trying to put his mind at rest, by telling him he could fiddle with himself
š
Thanks for the advice, will fiddle to my hearts content!
Hand me my coat and knickers, this party's getting rude...
What are you all fiddling with? I think this is getting a bit off hand and should be moved to "Members-Only"
PD: Hahaha!
PD2: I tried Qi Gong a few times and it was really relaxing and energising. Quite good if you make it a daily routine.
OP, I think he's talking about acupuncture points. They can be stimulated manually (there's a medical practice called "acupressure"), or with needles. But you needles aren't necessary to stimulate those points.
On a serious note, I have known and used Chi/Qi for nigh on 20 years, if not more, so am very familiar with its beneficial and positive effects.
Convincing those with a "western" brain, is sometimes difficult. Because our knowledge of the body is based entirely on our own PoV of anatomy physiology, biology and pathology, anything coming from the East is classified as some truth interspersed with an awful lot of mumbo-jumbo.
I can understand the scepticism, but when you consider that Western medicine - as we know it - has been developed and taught for only the past 200 years or so - and TCM, acupressure and acupuncture were documented as far back as 4000 years ago - and are still practised today - it begs the question, "Which form of medicine is REALLY 'the Alternative'...?"
@federica Older techniques are not necessarily better, otherwise there would be no progress. Iām not saying Chinese medicine has no merit, but those who were inventing these techniques were not doing so from an evidence-based approach, and so what has developed is a system where people operated more from hope than from proof of function. I would love to see an objective statistical study of its efficacy.
I really started to take an interest in Chinese medicines like acupressure when I was attending a work family day around thirty years ago ...
One of the staff fell off a flying fox and dislocated his shoulder, he was rolling around in agony, then a young boy (must have been around 17/18) knelt down beside him and asked where it hurt, then he applied acupressure to the part of the body which related to where the staff member was feeling the pain and you could see the instant relief on the staff member's face, the young boy stayed with him till the ambulance arrived....
Over the years I had read about it and was a bit sceptical, but when actually seeing it in action, my scepticism faded...
Pranayama is part of my yoga
https://tricycle.org/magazine/is-yoga-buddhist/
Qi-ong is less straining of the body/breath
I tend to combine. Using chi-kung (different spelling) for initial joint warm up
examples of Buddhist qi-ong
https://buddhaweekly.com/tsa-lung-trul-khor-yantra-yoga-and-qigong-supercharging-buddhist-meditation-8-videos/
Wait until something happens to you (heaven forbid), some form of trauma, say, that throws of your nervous system, so that it's in chronic stress mode. At that point, all the Western medical system can offer you is tranquilizers, which are highly addictive (Valium, etc.) Some people are on those their entire lives, due to unresolved childhood PTSD. Would you prefer that remedy, vs. someone spending a session with you, pushing the right buttons, so your system completely normalizes?
It's easy to brush effective but non-mainstream treatments aside, when we're healthy and happy. We can even ignore doctors altogether. But when suddenly you find yourself in serious straits, you may discover, that Western medicine can't help you. That's when you start considering trying alternative methods.
I'm not saying they're necessarily better. I'm pointing out that They're still here, even after 4000 years-odd.
you are mistaken if you think that they haven't progressed, or that nothing has changed. Knowledge about anatomy and how the body works, and why, has advanced enormously since Acupuncture was first used, and there is the benefit of up-to-date knowledge, coupled comfortably with a system that works.
I saw with my own eyes, an acupuncturist primarily alleviate, and finally accelerate the recovery of my mother's debilitating shingles attack.
I have had acupuncture myself for severe back problems, which affected my ability to sit and stand. It worked better for me than anything Western medicine could throw at it.
Remember: Western medicine primarily addresses symptoms, with drugs and pharmaceuticals. A good friend I once had, who was HIV positive, took 17 different drugs three times a day. The majority of which were to combat the severe, serious and debilitating side-effects of the remedial drugs he was taking. That's just bloody ridiculous.
Help yourself.
When I was young I went through a several year training program for shiatsu massage and I've received positive effects from acupuncture treatments. I've also witnessed some things in my time with Tibetans that have no real place in the western physicalist POV.
At the same time placebo research shows that when someone takes a sugar pill thinking it is pain medication it causes their body to produce endorphins, our bodies natural pain killer. People benefit from sham surgeries for things like back or knee pain. They even work, though less well, when the receiver knows they are a placebo.
I'm open to the notion of things outside the physicalist perspective but my rational mind wants to know the mechanism. Many things which were strange and mysterious at one point have turned out to have a material explanation.
Qi/Chi is part of the "physicalist" world. It's the energy generated by the electrical functions of our body: the circuitry of the brain, the heart's electric ticker, and the functioning of our musculature, which requires electricity to flex and relax. (This is why we need to ingest electrolytes daily.) As electricity generates a field, all these electrical functions of the body generate an external energy field, as well as internal.
The Chinese healing systems have further identified the energy flow through our body as currents that follow set pathways, which the Chinese call "meridians". Introducing pressure on these pathways has an effect on organs and other aspects of physiology, that receive energy via these pathways. Western medicine hasn't gone that far, but it has detailed the mechanisms by which our muscles utilize electricity to function, and also has noted the electrical quality of the skeletal structure. (It's amazing what you can learn in a basic Anatomy and Physiology course!)
According to physicists, our personal energy field is further bolstered by positively-charged particles emanating from the sun, and negatively-charged particles emanating from the Earth's magnetic core. This, too, contributes to our qi/chi. The entire Earth is enveloped by a magnetosphere, that imbues all of life with subtle electro-magnetic energy.
The Chinese have worked out a system by which humans can consciously harness this very subtle energy, and especially skilled practitioners apparently can amplify it. It would be great if this phenomenon could be studied and measured. Actually, that's been done in Poland and Russia, but those findings aren't taken seriously in 'the West", though no one's bothered to actually debunk it, because that would involve taking the claims seriously enough to try to duplicate the findings.