Pacific Northwest Martial Arts
Qi: Magic or Science ? I was suddenly unable to think or speak. I was only able to watch and to sit... I, who always identified myself as having an open mind and an attunement to the miraculous. I, who have traveled to many remote places and seen many bizarre things. On the surface I had no wish to discredit this experience, yet deep inside I FELT VERY DISTURBED... It was a demonstration by a Qi Gong Master Dr. Yu. As I watched, a burly, muscular black man whom I knew to be an acclaimed Martial Arts Teacher in his locale, charged at Dr. Yu from about thirty feet away. Dr. Yu is an aged man (now deceased: yes, even Qi Gong Masters are Mortal!), fairly frail looking, with gold-rim glasses, which he was wearing now as he casually stood there, appearing more like he was waiting for the Bus than like he was preparing for this direct assault. The black man, in full acceleration, was intent on reaching his goal, and as he got within about three or four feet of Dr. Yu, he thrust his fist toward Dr. Yu’s stomach! Dr. Yu, smiling, raised his hands, palms pointing toward the attacker. Somehow, this man-bullet suddenly came to a stop, was frozen for a tiny instant, only inches away from it’s target, and then went into reverse motion. I was suddenly in a movie of trick photography: as the black man went backward, he left the ground, about two feet up, then down again, then up, then down again, in a series of backwards “hops”! He appeared to be struggling to keep his balance, for a few hops, but as the “cosmic wind” died down, his hops became shorter and more controlled, until he found himself, still standing, about twelve feet away from Dr. Yu, with a look of disbelief on his face. What does this fantastic experience have to do with Chinese medicine and research? Is this kind of “true confession” story likely to shed more darkness and suspicion on the subject than objectivity and scientific credibility? Should the fact that over twenty million people in China today are practicing exercises taught as ‘Qi Gong” be relegated to cultural fadism? Apparently, the government of the People’s Republic of China thinks NO. There are numerous “Qi Gong Masters” in China today, and the Chinese government has chosen to make them one of the prime targets of their research in attempts to integrate Oriental and Western medicine. THE SCIENTIFIC APPROACH Says Mr. Hu Ximing, China’s Vice Minister of Public Health, “In June of last year, the central authorities decided to treat Traditional Medicine and Western Medicine equally and to make active efforts to promote (traditional medicine’s) development by using advanced technology and modern methods. One of the first challenges in integrating Traditional Oriental medicine with “advanced technology and modem methods”, is to relate science and technology to the pervading Oriental medical concept of Qi (pronounced “chee”, or “kee” by the Japanese). How is China going to measure this ‘Qi”, when our Western efforts with our highly sophisticated equipment has failed to prove it’s existence so far? Well, China has an idea that the west hasn’t tried yet: use Qi Gong Masters as experimental subjects. These self-proclaimed “Masters”, [and sometimes also highly acclaimed for their abilities by the local people), supposedly can build up such high concentrations of Qi that it can be emitted through the palms of their outstretched hands and used to heal illness or to actually move objects. So, the Chinese researchers feel that here may be a chance to measure in a concentrated form a power so subtle that it has eluded measurement attempts in the past. Besides the hope that they are more concentrated, these emissions outside of the body are enormously easier to measure than energy fields inside the body, which is what western tests have attempted to measure. How Ingenious! Dr. Hu’s research group has decided on several possible vibratory waves to test for, and they claim that at least one of these possibilities already shows consistent results: Infrared emissions. The other possibilities are subsonic waves, microwaves, electromagnetic waves, micro-particle waves, static electrical charges, and then there’s the possiblity of an energy form we have no concept of...
Infrared emissions documented Using a Swedish infrared instrument similar to a motion picture camera, Chinese researchers have found the following consistent results: when they tell the Qi Gong master to begin emitting chi, within seconds a yellow light (indicating a higher concentration of infrared emission) pours through the Qi Gong Master’s shoulder joint, and travels outward along his or her aim, then emits through the hand and fingers, to project outward in