Reductionism vs. intangibles - it’s all about the nervous system

Another great analogy Yayama makes in his book Qi Healing is concerning reductionism in a mechanistic, scientific way vs. intangibles explained through some other mechanism of understanding.
Car - can take apart and look at all the component pieces and understand how each one works and put the system back together and understand it as the [...]

Marketing qigong based on yoga’s success

From a marketer’s point of view, the only thing that would bring any of the qigong and TCM knowledge back to the future is changing consumer demand, driven by a real or perceived need. Most likely that means demand driven by patients’ needs (because neijia hobbyists are few, but everyone needs to be concerned with [...]

Neijia losing qigong and tcm concepts

If ( a big if) the best ima folks of old achieved this kind of “autopilot” qigong mastery at the same time they achieved perfect biomechanics, techniques and “no mind” flow, no wonder people thought they were so powerful. It’s hard for me to believe one could achieve that without at least some theoretical knowledge [...]

After microcosmic orbit

I’ve been doing a lot of study on qigong lately and there seems to be a clear consensus that people (at least men) should open the downward channel first (down the front for men) because

it’s more difficult than opening the upward channel (up the spine for men),
only opening the upward puts [...]

MAF vs. MAFS

Not sure who coined this term, “MAFS” (martial arts fantasy syndrome). Probably Tabby Cat. It describes a syndrome in which the MA student has some ridiculous fantasy he (probably afflicts only males) will have to use his “devastating” skills he’s learning in some David vs. Goliath standoff one day. That is the big underlying motivation [...]

Qi hugging

I seem to have all the signs of “qi hugging”. They say not to get attached to these feelings and they are just from blockages getting released, but getting some good flow going is addictive. It makes me want to improve my posture more than before, when the motivation was based on muscle relaxation. Also, [...]