Healing is the art of building / moving and balancing the body=s QI while Martial Arts is the art of stagnating, depleting and scattering the body's QI.
If you are going to learn to destroy then also learn to build.
Transferring and Issuing Qi
Qi is electricity in one form or another. We are affected by electricity every day of our lives. Even when we did not rely upon electricity for our daily needs, we still lived in a constant and natural electrical environment of around 40,000 volts so I am told by the experts. I know this to be true from experience. I once worked in a large building in London, one of my many jobs that I had to do to survive. Whenever I entered this building, I noticed that my heart rate increased dramatically as did my blood pressure. I could not understand why this was so. Therefore, I began investigating as discovered that this particular building was built with much iron reinforcement around each building compartment. Apparently because of the damage done in the war. Having received some electrical training as part of one of my occupations, I knew that this iron shielding would shield people from our natural electrical environment. I had to leave this particular job because my health was suffering, as was the health of many of those also working in the building.
We all work on electricity, we communicate using it, we affect the way others perceive us using electricity and we are affected by other’s electrical forces. This is qi in daily life. We naturally issue qi to others as part of our daily lives; we transfer our own qi to other people every second that we live. However, this is a sub-conscious event, something that we have no control over, as our heart beat or digestion or other internal workings. We in the martial arts and healing arts would like to have some control over the transference of qi in order to heal or to defend ourselves using something other than purely physical force. And we can.
You cannot knock anyone down using qi from a distance but you can affect the way someone else’s qi works, so much so that you can cause them to fall down or become well etc. However, you must actually touch the person in order for this to happen. The electrical system of our body is a very low voltage, something that we need very sensitive instruments even to pick up. Things like heart measuring devices actually measure electrical activity in the heart; it is the same for the brain etc. So when we are issuing qi, we are issuing minute amounts of electricity (qi) and we need to be either touching the person’s skin or so very close to it so that this small electrical current is able to work. Anyone who knows anything about electricity knows that if you place another voltage or current near or on top of a current or voltage, you will affect that electricity in some way. Moreover, this is what we do when we issue and transfer qi. We are able to either issue qi that is sympathetic to the other person’s qi thus helping to heal that person of some disease state, or we are able to affect that person’s qi adversely as in the case of the martial arts and self defence. It has been said that the greatest healing that one person can give to another is simply to touch that person. And this is so true, as you are not just touching; you are issuing qi every time you simply touch someone. Quite often, this is enough to heal simple illnesses without any special training or concentration of qi. In the case of a practitioner whose job it is to heal people, or a martial artist whose job it is to protect people or to teach others to protect themselves from physical attack, we must learn how to concentrate the qi and then to direct it. However, this direction and concentration must never be a physical conscious act, as all physical thought will cause blockages. So you see some so called healers placing their hands upon others, saying some chanting or some noise or quite obviously trying to physically direct their qi into the sick person. This will not work as they are trying to do it and this will only block the qi. This is where Qigong comes in.
With Qigong and taijiquan and all of the internal martial arts, we have ways to direct and concentrate the qi without actually doing anything, or more importantly, not having to think about doing this. All we have to do is the training, that is all.
The backbone gives you your first inkling as to how qi is transmitted or issued.
