A Tale of Two Qi's: Unlocking Tai Chi's Bodily and Spiritual Energy

And then now, see, good. So that's one kind of force, okay? Of the extracorporeal chi. So see, like that. That's real chi. So in defense, the extracorporeal chi manipulation, like it just happens so suddenly and he doesn't feel it. Punch it, see? Like this. And then we're in. And if you were to block a punch, right? You block my punch. So if you block my punch like that, when you fill your body with that force, right? Yes. Did you fly out of the frame? All right, thank you for helping me with this illustration. So before, when we were doing the qigong earlier, I was saying that we have this float and sink and we did a rotation, left and right, how our body floats on chi. So I hinted that there's a distinction between chi that is inside our body and chi that's outside our body, okay? So some activities focus on one and some activities focus on other. So we're gonna re-talk about what the difference is, okay? So do you have any questions so far? Any thoughts you wanna jump in with? No, I'm sure they'll arise. Okay, so basically, in internal arts, we work with how our chi and our body coordination interact with each other and with our practice partners or opponents. So there's two ways it could be, inside or outside. When we practice qigong, your eight-stroke bouquets and so forth, you're oftentimes working on the chi in your body, your organ meridian and stuff. In our own practice of floating, sinking, floating, sinking, these are the sense of floating and sinking inside our body. That's primarily what you feel it. So that's addressing how the chi inside our body is being experienced by ourselves. And when we do movements like that, it has a certain quality. So let me show you, okay? So go like this with your hands, okay? So here, don't let me push you. So here like this. And then now, see? So that's one kind of force, okay? So get a sense for that. So here like this, sink, and then expand out like that. So what does that pressure feel like? It's like a buoyancy. A buoyancy, yeah. And of course, I feel my own force. The more I push, I force myself back. Yeah, the more you push, the more you get forced back. And we have this basic exercise in another video where you gather and release that. You sink and expand. And I said it's like a water that drains out of your body and it fills your body up and out. So the chi inside your body works like when you have your garden hose and it's all like coiled up at first and you turn on the water and the water flows through it and then they tend to fill up and strain out. Or like a balloon animal. You blow and it goes, whoop, and the balloon inflates. Does that make sense? So it feels like a hydraulic pressure that expands through your arm or your leg, as the case may be. So it tends to feel like that, okay? And what is good about it, well, we'll come back to what's good about it. Let me show you what the chi outside of our body is like. So go ahead and go like this again. What is the classic ward off? So the chi outside your body is like this. What's that like? Not as buoyant. Not as buoyant, yeah. So what makes you move? It feels like a wave of that buoyancy coming through. A wave of some kind of buoyancy coming through, right? So if I use external, if I use just like muscle force, then I'm at a tremendous disadvantage, right? If I use chi inside my body, then from there, it inflates out. So that's what the chi inside my body feels like. Okay, come again. And the chi outside my body, how do they differ to you? I mean, to me, it feels like the internal is more powerful. Mm-hmm, yes. Is that correct? That is correct. In fact, the pressure is focused into my body, the pressure of my chi, and then expressed through the contact to you. It is, in fact, more focused and powerful. And so when it comes to offense, if I, let's go like this, your head. You know, if I want to hit and deliver a lot of force into you, then letting the chi flow through my body and into you is the most effective, most powerful way of that. So come again. And the chi outside my body. It seems faster and lighter. Faster and lighter. Than the outside. Yeah, it's a lighter feeling. I'll talk you through it. Go like this. So if I physically push into you, and then I use my leg, maybe I'll eventually move you. Okay, maybe I won't. But you can feel the compression into the pressure going to your wrist, into your elbow, into your shoulder, and into your knee and everything like that, right? And then when I relax and let the hydraulic pressure of chi flow through my body, you still kind of feel that, but it overwhelms you. Does that make sense? Does that match your experience? Yeah, you still feel the pressure, but it kind of just, it's just too much, right? And come again. When I use the chi that's outside my body, did you feel the pressure in your wrist, elbow, shoulder still? Yeah, more here. I don't know why. You feel it in your hand still? Yeah, but not so much in the other parts. I mean, if I were to really think about it, it's here, and then I could feel it slightly back here. Aha, I see, I see. And then so when we use chi on the outside, what happens is everything around us is caught up in this and creating a movement that goes through you like that. So how about that time? I did a little better that time. Yeah, so when we use the chi on the outside, then your whole body's coordination and resistance is being influenced in a way that you get moved without the compressive pressure crushing through you. So come again, hands up. So strong, so hydraulic pressure, chi inside my body. Powerful, but you can feel that build up and go through you. Come again, the chi on the outside. It's much faster, it's like right, it's like closer to you. Well, it's much faster. You know why it's faster? No. Because I don't have to spend time overcoming your resistance. So you're pretty strong, right? Go again. When I use the chi in my body and I crush through that, it still takes me like maybe like somewhere between 0.5, 0.7 seconds before that overwhelms your body and presses through you. So there's a slight moment, if we play on frame by frame on slow-mo later, maybe we might be able to see it. Come again. But the chi on the outside body, see? Right away, he goes back. As soon as I intend it, he's going back already. It may not feel like it hits as hard, but yeah, you can't stop it because you're not stopping it. So that one felt like more of a taut string or like a taut rope or something taut versus a hydraulic, more intense hydraulic system. Yeah. So we call this, the chi inside our body, corporeal chi. Corporeal is a term meaning of the body. And then the chi that's outside that we manipulate is actually called extra-corporeal chi. And it's kind of confusing, but in classical Tai Chi, in when they talk about internal force, nei jian, they say peng, li, ji, an, cai, li, zhou, ka, and so forth. These eight internal force largely work by the manipulation of the outside chi. So internal force is based on outside chi, extra-corporeal chi. So that's kind of confusing, isn't it? So people often say, how do I generate peng? What do I do in my body? So you push me. What do I have to do in here that makes peng come out? There's things you have to do inside. And then the truth, the truth, complete truth is that there's something on the outside that happens that causes the peng to lift you and float you. So we have to manipulate the extra-corporeal chi. As an example, and when I explained those eight movements, I said that ji had to do with the sense of a wall that comes when you do this. Foom, a wall that follows his hand that comes, that bounces their force back. So if you push this, if I just think about how I align my body and how I push like this, I might be able to eventually overcome it, but that's not it at all. It's here has a sense of floating on peng and a wall formed. And when the wall arrives and goes through him, that's when he starts to go back like that. So it has to do with that outside imagery of the extra-corporeal chi. So see, like that. That's real ji, okay? This is not real ji. This is good body mechanics and a bit of wrestling kind of skill, okay? That's totally different from real ji like this. What do you notice between the two? You know, one, it's like, like it feels like you're trying to use, commandeer your muscles and your structure, like in wrestling most of the time. Yeah. It just felt like there's like a force outside of you that's coming at me or it's like- That's coming at you, yeah. And so, come again. So if I use the corporeal inside chi, right? So along here, I build up the chi pressure and it goes. That works, see? That's pretty good. There's nothing bad about that. But this is what feels more like what you think tai chi is, isn't it? Feels like a wall coming at me. Yeah. So the original yang tai chi understanding of the peng yi ji yan involved the manipulation of the chi that's outside our body. Now, you can use the chi inside your body in ways besides hydraulic pressure. So he pushes me like that. I'm connected with him and I have a sense of floating. And now it's easy for him to go back. That feels a little different again, right? So you're here, you're rooted, you're solid like this. And I connect, I float, see? And then it's easy for him to go back. So I'm floating him with a yang chi in my body that goes into his body and he floats. This yang chi floats with me. Then he loses his rooting and then you go back. That's what in our curriculum we call stage three, chi mastery. Chi mastery is primarily about controlling the chi inside your body to float or to sink, yang and yan. And if someone is touching you, how they correspondingly float and sink with you to be able to be overcome. And then the next course, stage four, neijin mastery. You're learning the yang family's original peng li ji an and how that manipulates the chi that's outside your body to create these effects that are effective and soft and fluid. And like you said, fast, immediate is probably the right word. Now do you have questions? Yeah, I do. Yes. See that look on your face? Yeah. Without the foundation of the inner neijin, right? Yeah. Chi cultivation. Yeah. Without that foundation, can someone effectively harness the external, the extra chi? I'm sure every now and then there's like a genius, one in 10,000 person, one in 100,000 person that's naturally can do that, right? But by and large, I wasn't like that. You're not like that. And by and large, the training will make everybody succeed. So if it wasn't immediately obvious already to you, then you probably need the steps. So you see in each stage of our training, we are going from something that's more feelable to less. So we start with stage one fascia. It's super easy to feel something being stretched. Am I stretching you? Am I not stretching you, right? So you can feel that stretched, not stretched, stretched. And you use that to move someone. So that's fascia. And then in song, you shift from feeling the stretch of the body, the connection of the body like that, to the sense of relaxation, the release of pressure, release of tension in your body. So you go from feeling tension to feeling the absence of tension. So that's a little more subtle, but it still kind of makes sense. You go from turn the light on, turn the light off, and you can see the bright and dark, right? And then after song, we work on qi. Now we're working on a feeling in our body, the feeling of floating, the feeling of sinking. That's not as obvious as being pulled or being stretched, but you can feel when something, the experience of floating or sinking in your body. So now it's not a physical thing, but there's still a sensation. Does that make sense? So qi mastery gives you a sensation of something that is not physically present. Like you're not actually in the air, but you feel as if you're floating. Now, when we do nation mastery, you don't feel anything anymore. When you do peng li qi an, so no longer do we feel that. So if you push me again, again, like we said in qi mastery, I'm going to feel this pressure. He's, all right, he's resisting me. And then I feel floating. And then now his root severed. So let's go back. See, he has his root. He got his root. And then see, severed, so like that. So when I say sever, I float. I can feel the floating. I can feel sinking. And then I can use that to move as well too. So I can feel that, okay? And you come again, but we come to nation mastery. I don't feel any of that. I just have the sense. I have an awareness of the peng coming up and the qi going out like that, see? So I don't actually feel floating or sinking anymore. I left that awareness behind. That helped me to become aware of something even more subtle, which is the intention for these eight energies to manifest and work. Does that make sense? So we're going towards less and less feelable things, more and more invisible things. And it's really hard to go from normal life right to the invisible stuff because you'll just be like, I don't feel anything. And you start imagining it and now you're going down the wrong imaginary path. Does that make sense? Any questions right now? Yeah, more questions. Go ahead. So you hear certain practices that give rise to hypertension. Is there a correlation with hypertension, like blood pressure low to high to normal range and this kind of practice? Can that kind of physiological thing impede or enhance? Okay, yeah. So as to whether high blood pressure affects your Tai Chi practice, better health is certainly better, I'm sure. But I know that people who practice a lot of isometric tension in their martial arts or workout, because you're squeezing your muscles, your muscles squeeze the blood vessels and stuff, that does build up your blood pressure, more hypertension, right? And when you do Tai Chi and your body can relax like this, then the muscle tension doesn't add to your blood vessel tension. So it would be good for that in that regard. Right, like the vasodilation? Yeah, you get more vasodilation. You can have more qi and blood, and harness earth qi through you, right? It's true. I mean, according to my smartwatch, my VO2 max is not bad, even though I don't do a lot of cardio. So it does have a benefit to it in some way. Another question is, some people say there's external and internal. With this going from the extra qi, corporeal to internal, corporeal, can you go, is it like zero and one? Or can it be collapsed into one thing? You can be good at both. You can be skilled at both and use both of them, right? But it takes a split moment to switch gears. Want to see a demonstration of how hard it is to switch gears? Sure. Anybody want to see Mo be confused? That's what we're here for. Okay, so you put your hand like this, okay? I go like this and I put my hand on yours. I want you to stay, keep this hand touching this hand, okay? So I go up, go down. So you want to stay touching this hand. Don't separate from me, okay? So that's one intention, okay? You're aware of the feeling of this top hand, right? I put a hand under here, okay? Now, still stay with the top hand. No problem, right? No problem. He's doing good. He's sticking with me, following with me, right? Now, I want you to stay with this hand, okay? But if my bottom hand goes away, this is a new priority. You have to follow this hand. Does that make sense? So right now, if you're following my top hand, but if my bottom hand goes, you have to follow my bottom hand. Follow, follow, follow, follow. Does that make sense? Yeah. Okay, you got to follow it. So let's start over. So the top hand is going, you follow it. And if my bottom hand goes, that's a new priority. So you got to follow that. So he has to switch his gear, okay? Here it goes. So he's following my top hand. Following my top hand. See, I'm not even moving my top hand at that time. So follow my top hand. See? So it just takes a moment to change gear as to what you're paying attention to. To the top or to the bottom. That shift, right? That shift right there, if we're in a fight, that will cost you. Anyway, we can untrain that. No, it's just not possible. So it's a matter of mindfulness, a single point of mindfulness, right? And a single focus of intention is just much more effective than a split intention. So that will always take a moment of time. So you can be good at these two things, but you can't be like, I'm going to use my force inside my body. And then now the outside of my body, it'll cost you 0.25 seconds or something like that. You might have 0.25 seconds sometimes and you can do that, but you don't always have 0.25 seconds. Better to stick to one or the other. Yeah. Unless you have a moment, like let's say you fell down, you're getting up and I go, let's switch gears now. That would be fine. So I'll show you. So now we know that switching awareness takes time. What are we aware of? Well, when you're using corporeal inside qi, you're aware of the sensations in your body, the qi in your body. And it feels like a hydraulic pressure, a liquid that flows through you. When you make use of the extra corporeal, the outside qi, then my awareness is not in my body. My awareness is not even on your body. My awareness is on just space, the space where the qi is I'm interacting with. Does that make sense? Kind of like you could be listening to, you could be thinking about a song in your head or you could listen to the sound of nature you hear right now. You listen to the sound, you hear the wind, you hear some birds in the distance. Now your awareness, where is it? It's not on me, but it's like diffused and throughout. That's the type of awareness when you use the outside qi. And so if you rewind back this video and watch when, put your hands up. And when I was pushing Mo, you'll see that I kind of look away from him and I kind of look like I'm kind of spaced out. And I am spaced out. My awareness is on something aside from Mo. So that is what you're aware of. And so if I think I'm going to be aware of my body outside, my body outside, back and forth, that's a little hard. Okay, understood. So awareness feels different and how it feels to you feels different. How it feels to me feels different. These are two different type of things. So why would you do one or the other? I'm surprised you didn't ask this. You're a very pragmatic guy, typically. Right, right. So he said in the very beginning, he said when I use the qi inside my body, it felt more powerful, right? So if I want to, you know, leave a bruise on you, something like that, right? For some reason. Or if I want to push you really, really far away, perhaps, then the qi inside my body is more effective for that. The corporeal qi is for that. And then when is the qi outside our body effective? When it's like really quick. Oh yeah, that's true. That's absolutely true. Yeah, because it's affecting you even before we really make contact. But let's give you another example. So if you punch me and I block, okay, and I'm going to move you aside like this, okay? So yeah, that was really good. So you punch me. So I'm going to try and move you aside. If I use the qi in my body like this, it's powerful. And then you get a misaligned a little bit, okay? Now, so now come again. What was that like? I was expecting you to block and you weren't there again. Yeah, go ahead and punch. And you're stuck to me. So this is Lie, okay? And I use that to spin you around me. And in that case, you didn't really feel I was there. But you lost your balance more because you fell into it more. Does that make sense? So if you punch me, okay, and keep your balance, keep your balance. So you keep your balance and I do roll back, right? I use the qi inside my body, see? It's powerful, right? You go, okay? You punch me. What did you feel that time? That's a corporeal roll back. Yeah, my expectation of you being there was not. Yeah, so you punch. So you think I'm there, there's nothing. And then you're right away in this space. Versus you punch and I get a powerful pull like this, which is good too. But so in defense, the actual corporeal qi manipulation, like it just happens so suddenly and he doesn't feel it. It's hard for him to react to. He didn't know I was going to send him back that time. Come again. You don't know whether it's going to send you away, okay? Or come again or roll you back through. Come once more. Where is he? Just down like that. So and how did my touch feel on you? Very light. So you don't know from when we touch what's going to happen. And then it just happened. So the actual corporeal qi I find personally to be nice in defense. Because the offensive person doesn't know what's going on. They don't know how to respond to it. Unless they're a tai chi master, but you know. So it's like dealing with manipulation of intention from your opponent and within you, right? Because I feel like the more I try to do something, like attack you, I guess, you know, I got him. Yep. You're not there. Yeah, yeah. Or you push me back. So it's like disrupting my intention. Yeah, it interferes your intention. You can't organize what your actions and plans to be. So it has that kind of effect. There's a whole another level of intention work that we'll address another time, which is pretty fun too. But so far, you have a sense of what corporeal and extracorporeal qi is like in their usage and effect. Yes. Any more questions that have popped up as you experienced that? Not this time. Okay. You guys have any questions on this? Anyone want to ask anything? Okay. Well, thanks for listening to the discussion on this. Oh, let me tell you something. So, you know, like in tai chi, in our curriculum, we cover both. In qi mastery and nation mastery. But in different martial arts, they may specialize. So like for the extracorporeal qi, like I said, the Yang family's eight energies of Peng Li Ji An is a very good example of this. And other styles, like I studied when I was growing up, Xing Yi Quan, five element boxing. And I studied from the Guo Shu Guan's lineage, the National Martial Arts Institute's lineage. And they have a very Yang, very outward form of this. And they very much use this kind of energy in your body to generate strikes that are powerful and hard to block. So if you punch me like that, punch, punch, punch. So see, this is, you may not fall back that exaggeratedly per se, right? Punch and try and keep balance like this. But your power doesn't even enter me. There's like a hydraulic sense right here. So punch again. And so see, it's right away. And it goes right through to you. Okay, punch it, see? Like this. And then we're in. And if you were to block a punch, right? You block my, you block my punch. So if you block my punch like that, when you fill your body with that force, right? Yes. Did you fly out of the frame? So what was it like when you blocked that? I thought I was going to tear my shoulder. I wouldn't tear your shoulder. But yeah, okay, block again, see? So it just tends to, it tends to penetrate. You try to push my hand aside. You push, push, push, push it. That's what you want to do, right? But my chief feels, go and push aside. It's hard to, for your force to overcome that hydraulic-like pressure of the corporeal qi inside my body. So it's very nice for an offensive system that gets to the point of the matter. To defeat that pressure system. Can you use that same pressure system back? Yeah, if you have a stronger pressure system. But not ideal. Or you can, if you have a strong-ish pressure system, but you're more agile, you're Muhammad Ali or something like that, and you step aside, I miss, and then you go boom, boom, boom. Oh, revenge time. There's a little bit of Ali coming through. Okay, so yeah, so if you're more agile, you can deal with it. If you're more powerful, you could deal with it. So it's not like it's like bulletproof or anything. But that is a type of body mechanics, type of internal mechanics. I just thought it's interesting that even when we talk about internal styles, like xingyi and tai chi, there's differences in how they use chi, and what kind of chi they use, inside or outside, and what effect that has on how you move and how they receive it, how they deal with it. So pretty fun, right? Yeah, it's a journey. Yeah, journey. Excited to learn more? Of course. All right, thanks for helping me illustrate this. Thanks for watching.