chi power or not skeptics please advize

[brassicaman]

As a trained scientist and open minded individual i would like some input. I am currently living in Taiwan where in my spare time i study gung fu ( yes the martial art). I have never believed in chi power until perhaps now. The teacher "master" i am studying with claims to be able to use his chi power to create a kind of iron shirt and also to be able to project this chi into other people for healing or as a weapon. Now some of the things i have seen him do is just trickery although i beleive unintentional trickery. However a few of these things I would like explaining to me as I am not sure how he is doing them (incidentaly i am a good amateur boxer and grappler as well as a scientists so i hope not so gullible in these matters).
(1) How does he withstand powerful strikes to the neck region that i myself have inflicted. Although i admit out of fear of killing him accidentally i hold back some of my 205 pound body. However there is enough force in my strikes to easily take down a normal man ?
(2) Why is that when i ask him to project his alledged chi power onto my arm do i feel a warmth as if a torch was being held to my arm, but he is not touching it ?
(3) why when he projects his alledged chi onto my chest without him touching me (i think) does it feel like small but very real vibrations are moving on the inside of my chest ?

Is it easy to produce heat and transmit and focus it onto someone else through the hands or to withstand strikes to the neck ? Please enlighten me as i think this is probably a clever conjuring trick although for the first time in my life i am a little confused and shocked. I have to admit if he can do this through conjuring then i take my hat off to the guy as i can not see how he is doing it. A few of the other things he did however were obviously easily explained by the laws of physics. but generating and radiating heat through the hands enough so it is detectable as a focused heat equivalent to a hand held torch by another up to six inches away. explain please.

 

[Wudang]

As to the strikes to the neck - my style teaches this and it's just physical exercises and (I think) some self-hypnosis/confidence building. I'll try to find a link to some photos of my instructor taking side kicks in the throat - you'll find one in his book. By the way, what do you mean by the "neck region"? Front, back, sides? What kind of blows? What shape of hand?

A lot of internal stylists practise stuff like learning to turn their hands red by vaso-dilation but you can do it faster via basic bio-feedback techniques. Apart from a reduced dependence on gloves in cold weather I'm not sure I see the point.
The rest is done best by stage magicians and has damn all to do with martial arts.

 

[Stimpson J. Cat]

Not having seen or experienced what you are describing, I can only guess. But my guesses would be that (1) is a combination of excellent muscle control, along with a very good body-flinch. Plus it would not surprise me if you are holding back more than you realize. For (2) and (3), I would say that it is very likely to be your own imagination playing tricks on you. An interesting thing to try would be to have him pretend to do it, and actually do it, without you knowing which, and see if you can tell the difference. This would not be very conclusive, though, because he may still be unintentionally giving subtle cues as to whether he is doing it or not.


Dr. Stupid

 

[Locnar]

of course 2 and 3 are easy to test.

Just set up a situation so neither you nor he can see each other. The experiment would be set up so that the "teacher" randomly is allowed to project his chi to the subject, while the other trials nothing happens.

I suspect the "chi effect" would disapear under controlled conditions.

 

[voidx]

If its heat, then bring in a small thermometer or other heat registering device. Have him focus his power on that and see if the temperature changes. That completely eliminates any human subjectivity. Although he has the easy out of his Chi not working on inanimate objects, which of course would be crap. Technically of Chi is energy and it can affect a human, then it should be able to affect an inanimate object. We're all just matter after all.

 

[jmercer]

As a trained scientist and open minded individual i would like some input. I am currently living in Taiwan where in my spare time i study gung fu ( yes the martial art). I have never believed in chi power until perhaps now. The teacher "master" i am studying with claims to be able to use his chi power to create a kind of iron shirt and also to be able to project this chi into other people for healing or as a weapon. Now some of the things i have seen him do is just trickery although i beleive unintentional trickery. However a few of these things I would like explaining to me as I am not sure how he is doing them (incidentaly i am a good amateur boxer and grappler as well as a scientists so i hope not so gullible in these matters).
(1) How does he withstand powerful strikes to the neck region that i myself have inflicted. Although i admit out of fear of killing him accidentally i hold back some of my 205 pound body. However there is enough force in my strikes to easily take down a normal man ?
(2) Why is that when i ask him to project his alledged chi power onto my arm do i feel a warmth as if a torch was being held to my arm, but he is not touching it ?
(3) why when he projects his alledged chi onto my chest without him touching me (i think) does it feel like small but very real vibrations are moving on the inside of my chest ?

Is it easy to produce heat and transmit and focus it onto someone else through the hands or to withstand strikes to the neck ? Please enlighten me as i think this is probably a clever conjuring trick although for the first time in my life i am a little confused and shocked. I have to admit if he can do this through conjuring then i take my hat off to the guy as i can not see how he is doing it. A few of the other things he did however were obviously easily explained by the laws of physics. but generating and radiating heat through the hands enough so it is detectable as a focused heat equivalent to a hand held torch by another up to six inches away. explain please.

Much of what you described (issuing force as a weapon without touch) is related to something called "kong jin", or "gongjin".

1) Iron Shirt/Golden Bell is a pretty well documented regimen of conditioning, and was widely done up until the Chinese Boxer Rebellion. (It sort of died out after that when it's proponents started dying from gunshot wounds... which they claimed that "Iron Shirt" could prevent.) Throat conditioning was (and is) still practiced by people using the Iron Shirt/Golden Bell techniques, although Iron Shirt no longer exists as a discrete art, as far as I know. (Much of it has been incorporated into various other arts.)

The exercises for Iron Shirt/Golden Bell largely rely on toughing/thickening the fascia (connecting tissue) by repeatedly stretching and contracting the area over a long period of time, while doing certain visualizations and breathing exercises. Other associated conditioning techniques have to do with lightly striking the area and gradually (over months and years) increasing both the intensity of the strike and the hardness of the object used to strike the conditioned area.

There's nothing really mysterious about it, except for the rather controversial question of whether or not you can actually condition the fascia. (I believe you can, but I have no proof.)

2) The emission of heat is something I've felt and can actually reproduce for other people. I haven't taken the time to test it, but I strongly suspect that repeated and practiced visualization causes the hands/palms to have a vascular response... meaning, the blood vessels expand and the sweat glands start secreting. (This is how the body "dumps" heat in hot weather.) The combination of expanded blood vessels and moisture evaporation would permit another person to sense "heat", if they were close enough. (I've been successful at distances of up to 8 inches, but I usually have more luck at 4-5 inches.) If they can make you feel heat from 2-3 feet away, then I suspect it's mental conditioning on your part.

3) This is purely mental conditioning. Have your teacher try it on 3 or 4 people who have never trained with him or anyone else that does this stuff, and see if they experience the same thing. Just make sure that they don't know what to expect - don't tell them anything. I'll bet that they won't experience anything. )Except possibly a few placebo sensations.)

 

[crimresearch]

Jmercer seems to have identified all the salient points...Iron Shirt/Gold Bell Cover gongs have been around for a long time, and fascial conditioning/coordination seems to be one of the 'secrets'.

As far as Lin Kong Jin, the knocking down of people at a distance seems to invariably be fraud/suggestion, and the heat sesnations associated with qi 'energy' might turn out down the road to be some sort of weak effect, or some more suggestion...in either case, nothing to write home about.

 

[Beth]

Re: Re: chi power or not skeptics please advize

3) This is purely mental conditioning. Have your teacher try it on 3 or 4 people who have never trained with him or anyone else that does this stuff, and see if they experience the same thing. Just make sure that they don't know what to expect - don't tell them anything. I'll bet that they won't experience anything. (Except possibly a few placebo sensations.)

I'm interested to hear more about this. Has anyone else experienced anything similar? Or have any ideas (other than placebo effect) about what might be happening?

I have experienced something similar. In that case, there were 3 individuals who were attempting to demonstrate an effect. For two of them I could feel a slight tingling sensation, but nothing with the third. My daughter was with me and experienced the same thing, sensing something with the same 2 individuals, but not the third. It seems unlikely to be a placebo effect. If it was a placebo effect, why only sense 2 out of 3 people doing it? And why did my daughter register the same sensations?

I can't explain it , but like Brassicaman, I'd like to hear other people's ideas and possible explanations.

Beth

 

[jmercer]

Well, I don't have anything new for you, Beth, but I can expand on what I've experienced.

The problem with the tingling, shivering, etc., effects is that they truly are brought on by expectations. Even if the demonstrator doesn't tell the subject what to expect, they usually show a high degree of confidence that the subject will experience some effect or other.

Consequently, most people will indeed experience 'something' because on some level they are convinced by the practitioner's apparent sincerity. When they describe whatever "happened" to the practitioner, the sensation invariably is included in the range of possiblities that can be claimed by receiving "emitted chi".

You'll find that very few practitioners will commit to citing that a specific sensation will be experienced when undergoing this type of encounter. Instead, they often give you a gamut of possible responses, such as : heat, cold, a "gentle breeze" or "pressure", tingling, shivering/shaking, heaviness, etc.

Some of the sensations (such as heat) have reasonable physical explanations; the rest of them are manufactured by the mind of the subject due to the expectation that something will indeed be experienced.

 

[Beth]

Well, I don't have anything new for you, Beth, but I can expand on what I've experienced.


Some of the sensations (such as heat) have reasonable physical explanations; the rest of them are manufactured by the mind of the subject due to the expectation that something will indeed be experienced.

Thank you for the response. I hope you can appreciate that I don't buy the 'expectations' explanation. Now, I'm not necessarily buying the 'chi' explanation either, but it would be nice if there were some other theories to explain the sensation.

However, I am interested if you want to expand on what you've experienced. It sounds like you've done some experimentation at least with the heat focus technique.

Beth

 

[voidx]

Honestly, start with a heat registering device. If the claim is that heat can be focused, then that's a measurable effect. Now I'm sure the claim is likely not that Chi is merely focused heat. But its the non-definition of what Ki energy is that is the problem in the first place. I would imagine ruling out all the possible psyiological sources would be extremely difficult so see if he can have the effect on a thermometer, or a piece of meat, or something. This would obviously mean getting someone to submit to a process thats a tad more scientific in nature, and so its probably unlikely, but I don't think trusting our own individual perceptions here is very wise.

 

[Dragonrock]

Re: Re: Re: chi power or not skeptics please advize

I'm interested to hear more about this. Has anyone else experienced anything similar? Or have any ideas (other than placebo effect) about what might be happening?

I have experienced something similar. In that case, there were 3 individuals who were attempting to demonstrate an effect. For two of them I could feel a slight tingling sensation, but nothing with the third. My daughter was with me and experienced the same thing, sensing something with the same 2 individuals, but not the third. It seems unlikely to be a placebo effect. If it was a placebo effect, why only sense 2 out of 3 people doing it? And why did my daughter register the same sensations?

I can't explain it , but like Brassicaman, I'd like to hear other people's ideas and possible explanations.

Beth

Beth,

First off, human memory is very maliable. A person's memory of specific events will be peppered with his or her own expectations and prejudices. Anyone who has investigated crashes will see this first hand because if there are 23 different witnesses then you'll get 23 different and contradictory stories. How did your daughter let you know that she felt the same thing? Did she come to you afterwards and say "I felt tingling from Bob and Ted but nothing from Bill" or did she walk up to you and you told her what you felt and she said that was what she felt too.

As for you not accepting the "'expectations' explanation" can you tell why not? It would explain why you felt what you did, so what do you think makes it unlikely?

 

[jmercer]

Mmm... yes, I need to go to Radio Shack and see what they have in terms of a heat sensor. Someone in another thread suggested that as a testing method.

In order to practice this, it's a fairly simple meditation visualization exercise coupled with a few days (or maybe weeks, depending on the person) of practice.

You breathe in through your nose, and gently exhale via your mouth by parting the lips gently. Don't force the breath in and out, keep it natural... and don't contort the mouth, just let it open slightly by relaxing the jaw and exhale.

As you breathe in, picture the breath drawing in something (usually "white light", and pooling it in your abdomen. (Keep your attention on your abdomen as much as possible during both the inhale and exhale.) As you exhale, picture the "pooled light" being pushed out of your mouth. Closing your eyes may help you visualize this.

After you have the visualization working well, you now have to add something to it. You now have to picture that same "white light" being drawn in through your palms, along your arms, and pooling in the abdomen along with the breath from your nose.

Then - as you exhale - picture the light being pushed out of your palms, but no longer out of your mouth. (You should also be feeling rather calm and undistracted by now.)

After practicing this for a few days, you should begin to feel some sensations in your palms, usually during the in-breath - they should suddenly feel cooler, then return to "normal" as you exhale. When you reach this point, you can begin to play with the "heat" thing.

Get a friend - don't tell them what to expect or anything - have them sit in a chair with you behind them. Tell them you're going to put your hands above their head, but you won't touch them in any way.

Place your palms about 4-6 inches away from their scalps, and breathe normally for a couple of minutes - no visualizations, etc. Ask them if they noticed anything. The answer will usually be "no". (If they say yes, ask them what it is and note it.)

Tell them you're going to try again. This time, add the breathing and visualizations, keeping the palms 4-6 inches away from the scalp.

Begin the breathing exercise, do it for a few minutes... once you feel the "cool palms", really focus on pushing out the "white light" from the palms during the exhale.

Stop after a couple of minutes and ask your friend if they experienced anything. If they did, they'll either tell you that they felt heat from your palms, or some kind of breeze.

If they say no, you can try it again, but put your palms a bit closer.

Keep in mind that they should experience "surges" of warmth as you exhale, and not a "steady warmth".

The purpose of the exercise in reality is to provide meditation while standing. (Zheng Zhuan). Benefits are relaxation, meditation, abdominal breath training, stronger leg muscles and good back alignment. I do this for 20-30 minutes a day, and find it very relaxing. All the "heat" stuff is just an interesting side-effect as far as I'm concerned.

I'm going to go to Radio Shack later this week and find some kind of thermal sensor/measure and see if I can make it change. The only caveat I can think of is that the heat people feel may not be radiated from my palms, so much as carried by an increased release of moisture from them. Anyone know how this would affect this kind of measurement?

(I know that Kirlian photography could absolutely tell me if I were releasing more moisture during the exercise, but I don't know anyone who does it.)

 

[apoger]

they'll either tell you that they felt heat from your palms, or some kind of breeze.

There is a fairly big difference between these two feelings.
If I touch an ice cube it's cold. Not sometimes cold and sometimes windy.

Why would your chi produce differing results?

Keep in mind that they should experience "surges" of warmth as you exhale, and not a "steady warmth".

Pardon!

They feel a breeze as you exhale? In what way would you find that unusual? I'd bet that your exhalations are fairly warm as well.

So what you are saying is that you stand behind the person and exhale your warm breath towards them. If they don't report a breeze or heat, you get closer (I assume you get closer when you place your hands closer) and try again.

Sorry jmercer, but the odds that you are fooling yourself are staggeringly high.

 

[jmercer]

There is a fairly big difference between these two feelings.
If I touch an ice cube it's cold. Not sometimes cold and sometimes windy.

Why would your chi produce differing results?

Pardon!

They feel a breeze as you exhale? In what way would you find that unusual? I'd bet that your exhalations are fairly warm as well.

So what you are saying is that you stand behind the person and exhale your warm breath towards them. If they don't report a breeze or heat, you get closer (I assume you get closer when you place your hands closer) and try again.

Sorry jmercer, but the odds that you are fooling yourself are staggeringly high.

Hi, apoger - I think that you may have misunderstood me. I don't believe in chi, nor do I believe that there's anything going on that doesn't have a physical explanation associated with it. The question for me is "What is the correct physical explanation?"

Regarding my breath providing the breeze effect - it's possible, but unlikely, given the low level of breathing I perform and the distance between myself and the individual. (About arms length.) However, I can eliminate that easily. I'll simply pick up a surgical mask and wear it, or turn to the side so my breath is going at an angle away from the subject.

The "cool breeze" reaction, by the way, is by far the least common one. Most of the time it's a strong sensation of heat on the subject's head. As to why there would be different effects... I don't know, and I'm very curious about it. Could be perception on the part of the subject, could be something else... but one thing is for sure, it's not paranormal in any way.

FYI, I use the head simply because it's highly sensitive to warmth. You can perform the exact same exercise on any part of the body, but the scalp is highly sensitive to temperature changes - probably because most of the body's heat escapes from the head.

 

[crimresearch]

Not as high as the certainty that you are completely misrepresenting what he is saying.

 

[jmercer]

Not as high as the certainty that you are completely misrepresenting what he is saying.

 

[Beth]

Re: Re: Re: Re: chi power or not skeptics please advize

Beth,
As for you not accepting the "'expectations' explanation" can you tell why not? It would explain why you felt what you did, so what do you think makes it unlikely?

The whole thing was set up as a test for me to experience what they were claiming. Now the test was informal, not scientific and not conclusive. Thus you don't hear me proclaiming that it has been "proven". It hasn't, not to my satisfaction anyway.

The hypothesis of "expectations", "placebo effect" or other reasons to indicate that I should not believe my own subjective experience is possible, but it is also an unfalsifiable hypothesis for this instance. I can only state what I experienced, not why.

Dismissing the sensations I felt as being mere suggestion and not "real" defeats the purpose of bothering to do any sort of test. Particularly when the results I experienced were confirmed by another individual. If I'm going to run a test, I'm not going to reject any results I don't like with an unfalsifiable hypothesis, whether it be the explanation of "power of suggestion" or "power of chi. That's not kosher in my book.

I'd still like to hear other ideas about what it could have been. Any suggestions?

Beth

 

[Beth]

Mmm... yes, I need to go to Radio Shack and see what they have in terms of a heat sensor. Someone in another thread suggested that as a testing method.

Thanks for the lengthy explanation. It is appreciated.

Beth

 

[Wudang]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: chi power or not skeptics please advize

The whole thing was set up as a test for me to experience what they were claiming. Now the test was informal, not scientific and not conclusive. Thus you don't hear me proclaiming that it has been "proven". It hasn't, not to my satisfaction anyway.

The hypothesis of "expectations", "placebo effect" or other reasons to indicate that I should not believe my own subjective experience is possible, but it is also an unfalsifiable hypothesis for this instance. I can only state what I experienced, not why.

Dismissing the sensations I felt as being mere suggestion and not "real" defeats the purpose of bothering to do any sort of test. Particularly when the results I experienced were confirmed by another individual. If I'm going to run a test, I'm not going to reject any results I don't like with an unfalsifiable hypothesis, whether it be the explanation of "power of suggestion" or "power of chi. That's not kosher in my book.

It's not unfalsifiable. That's why psychology experiments should use double-blind testing etc. You are always going to have trouble discounting the human factor while humans are involved.