COMPLETE GUIDE to CHI - QI - 氣 | Learn Chinese Now

Have you ever wondered how supernormal powers came to be, or how to become immortal? Well, the ancient Chinese might have some ideas about that, and it all starts with qi, or the life force of the body. So get ready, we're about to go otherworldly. Hello everyone, welcome to Learn Chinese Now, I'm Jared Madsen, I have a master's degree in Chinese medicine, and today we will be talking about qi. The character for qi is actually composed of two characters, one that means air, and the other means rice. So basically, we can think of qi as the life force, the energy, collected from the air we breathe, and the food we eat. Now in this episode, we're going to dive into the various types of qi, how qi is created in the body, how it operates in the body, and maybe, just maybe, we'll talk about SUPERNORMAL POWERS! There are two main types of qi that you need to understand. The first is called 先天之气, which translates to pre-heaven qi. This is the qi that we get from our parents at conception. There is nothing we can do about this. This is a finite energy that resides in our body, it's basically on a clock, and it tells our body when to grow, when to develop, all these big milestones in a human's life are determined by this pre-heavenly qi. It also is considered to determine our character, what kind of person we are, how we are. That is this qi. So us being drawn to certain things, us acting in certain ways, you can blame that on your pre-heavenly qi. Or another way, you could blame it on your parents, I suppose, even though they really don't have much control over that. The qi that we do have control over is called 后天之气, so that is the qi that comes after we are born. So basically, the air that we breathe and the food that we eat, that is actually the function of the body. So we will go into how that qi is formed, but what we have to understand, mind and matter are not two different things, they're one thing, and that's how you have to think about qi. You can think of qi as this energy, this life force, but at the same time, so that's kind of the matter aspect, but at the same time, it is the functions of the body. All the different things, breathing, digestion, everything that your body does, even thinking and moving, all of that is the function aspect of qi. The post-heaven qi, this is how it is formed. It comes from two main things, the air and food. So the lungs bring in the air, they breathe the air in, and then this is called 清气, it extracts 清气, which is the clear qi, okay? And then the lungs push that downward. The food that we eat, the spleen and pancreas and stomach, they work together, and what then they have is called 食气, or grain qi. This qi is then moved upwards. The 吐气, the 清气, the clear qi, and the 食气, the grain qi, the food qi, combine and create what is called 踪气, which is often translated as gathering qi. So the 踪气 then becomes your basic function as well as energy for everything that your body does and for the creation of other types of qi. This is the fundamental 后天之气, or post-heavenly qi. This is something that we do have control of. It is not finite like the pre-heavenly qi. If we eat good foods, and we breathe fresh air, and we do all the stuff that we're supposed to do, then we have this really good post-heavenly qi that comes and makes this gathering qi. So then the gathering qi breaks off and forms two main types of qi, 凝气, that's one. It's called nutritive qi. So this qi circulates with the blood in the vessels and helps nourish the body. It's telling the body which nutrients go where. The other one is called 卫气, or defensive qi. This flows outside the body. So we think of our body as ending at the skin, but according to qi, it does not end at the skin, it is outside your body and it is protecting you. This 卫气, this defensive qi, is protecting you from external pathogens and all that bad stuff that's trying to get into your body. Does qi exist? Do we have any proof of that? No, not scientifically really, but there is this cool thing called the phantom leaf. This is the Kirlian photography, so this is this weird photography that supposedly can take pictures of auras and things like that. Now the phantom leaf is, they've done these tests and multiple people have done it, where you take a leaf and you cut part of the leaf off and then you put it down and you take this special camera and you take a picture of this leaf and you see the whole leaf. You see the entire leaf, even the parts that have been cut off are still there. That's the phantom leaf. Some people claim that is the leaf's qi still flowing. It doesn't matter that you cut off the physical side of it, the qi is still there. Whether it's qi or not, we don't know, but that's pretty darn cool. So now that we understand qi, we understand that qi flows through the meridians. It goes inside the body, it goes outside the body, it raises up, it pushes down, it does all these different things. It's the functions of the body. Go with me on this. Pretend with me for a second. Let's not take this too seriously, but if all that is true and you're able to open your meridians, say you're a martial artist through meditation, you're able to open your meridians, you're able to control your qi, can you direct that function, that qi to make you levitate? I don't know. We don't know. That's the theory though. That's the idea that if it is function and it can move in the body and it can go up in the body, why can't you just say, hey, you want to know what? Qi of my body, I want you to go up all at once. Would you levitate? I don't know. Maybe. Right? It's worth a try. Another super normal power that we talk about is enhanced strength, right? So being able to, in the past, they would talk about how you could put your palm through and make a hole in a tree, right? Like insane, crazy strength. Well, then the idea with that is kind of the same thing. You're just taking your qi and having it go through your hand and then boom, blasting a hole in a tree or in a wall. Some crazy strength that is hard to explain. It's not a simple punch. It's this blast of energy. If it could qi do that, I don't know. Maybe. It'd be cool. If somebody has proof of that, please leave those in the comments below. That would be awesome. One thing though, that many people who have practiced martial arts, and I'm sure many people watching this have tried martial arts, when you get, and you don't even have to be super into it. I've heard many people say through martial arts, they have, they gain this heightened, these heightened senses. And it's almost like when they, when they're sparring with somebody, time seems to slow down or if somebody is going to throw a punch, but they haven't done that yet. And their body hasn't, nothing has happened yet. They still kind of sense that, Hey, this guy's trying to punch me in the face. I'm going to block. And then they do throw a punch and they do block and it, and it works. This might be, this might be qi. And how would qi do that? Well, if qi operates in a different time space than this dimension, it maybe is moving at what is, seems on our end to be a speed that is just insanely fast. But from the qi's point of view, it's just like walking along going, Hey, this guy's going to punch us in the face. I'm going to move the arm to block. And it all just kind of seems to happen automatically. This is maybe, maybe some of you out there have experienced this. Another one is telekinesis. So the ability to move things now, again, haven't seen this, but I guess the theory is if you can control your qi and you can shoot it out of your hand, you can not only punch holes in trees. You can also make a cup move around or you can move something around. There are stories of telekinesis in both the East and the West. So maybe, maybe it's not that hard to do. I don't know how to do it. If anybody knows how to do it, please leave those in the comments below. That'd be very cool to learn. Healing abilities. Right? We've heard about that, right? I don't know. Like in the karate kid where he puts his hands together and does the whole thing and, and heals. Yeah, maybe, maybe you're, you're, you're just shooting a bunch of qi at somebody. Uh, none sound like it's the best. Maybe it's a good, I don't know. That does. It seems kind of okay. Anyway, that's the idea. Maybe you can manipulate someone else's qi with your qi and make them healthy. Now the last one, the big one is immortality. Okay. So there are two sides to this. If you're simply saying through some sort of spiritual practice or some advanced martial art or something like that, that I open up my energy channels and my qi is really strong and everything's flowing and I'm super healthy and that I slowed down my pre heavenly qi so that everything happens on not, you know, maybe I can live really long. Maybe I can live hundreds of years, maybe, maybe, I mean, we're just exploring ideas right now. Maybe. Now, if you were to ask a Taoist in the mountains, deep in the mountains, you know, master to disciple to master to disciple, like so on like that. What they would probably tell you is that, Hey, you know what? We're going to make these concoctions with a bunch of heavy metals like mercury and lead that would poison and kill most people. And then we're going to do meditation. We're going to do qi gong. We're going to do martial arts. We're going to do all this. We're going to control all of our energies and everything. And then we're going to blast it open somehow. be releasing a bunch of this pre heavenly qi or having a deeper connection to something and thereby making us immortal, transforming our mortal body into that of a divine body into that of a body that does not die. Can that happen? I don't know, but it sounds really cool if it can. All right. So that is it for this week. If you enjoyed this video, please check out my other channel. It's called Ancient Life Hacks. I did a long podcast on this topic where we dive deeper into some of these. You can find that somewhere here. Don't forget to like and subscribe. I will see you next week. Zai jian!