"Qi" and Biofeedback mechanisms

"Qi" and Biofeedback mechanisms

Someone said something the other day about relating to the idea of biofeedback mechanisms more easily than the amorphous term "qi". It's a good discussion (as in "more people than just me offering opinions"), so I'll toss in a couple of comments.

A lot of the mystique of Asian "religions", "meditation", "gods", "possession", and so on has to do with cultivated reactions between the subconscious mind and the body. The "qi" of the body is first of all meant to be a real and substantive part of the body that involves involuntary-muscle systems (i.m.) that are controlled by the subconscious, but which we train to gradually have some control over (hence "meditation" and other exercises). If you think about it, biofeedback training is essentially a methodology for learning to affect the body areas controlled by the subconscious, too. These are the same basic processes, but using different descriptive terms.

Confusingly, the qi of the body has a number of skills or tricks that it can do and these are also often called "qi". It took me a few years to understand that when actual experts talk about "qi", they are referring to the actual and tangible systems in the body that are basically involuntary-muscle systems, fascia, and the subconscious mind. Products or actions of those qi-tissue systems, like jin, resistance to blows and lacerations, supplemented body strength, manipulation of the body's electromagnetic field, etc., are said to be "qi", but that really means that those skills are manifestations of the body's tangible "qi". Indians appear to group the same tangible phenomena under the heading of terms like "pranic sheath" and "nadis".

Some of the skills that can be seen in the East will have to do with various methods of controlling the body temperature, either in general or in specific areas of the body. That's an example of willful manipulation of involuntary-muscle systems, particularly as related to the i-m systems in the vascular walls. Some of western biofeedback attempts to do this same thing.

Another skill might be to stop bleeding, to some degree, when a person is cut or punctured. There are many examples of religious or quasi-religious rites throughout Asia that involve acolytes and penitents cutting or hooking the skin and letting the 'gods' (read 'subconscious') control the bleeding.

Bodily strength and resistance to blows can also be trained by getting these i-m systems under control or rapport with the subconscious and then wilfully training those tissues to increase their strength. Again, the mechanism, for all practical purposes, is very much the same in basic principle as what we would term "biofeedback" in the West. Biofeedback is a relatively new discovery in the West ... it is a very old and intricate study in the regions of Asia.

One comment I'd make, for clarity's sake, is that in the Chinese martial-arts, these feedback/qi skills are common and are found in arts that are called "internal arts" and in arts that are called "external arts". The actual group of arts that are called the Neijia ("internal family/style") arts, though, use the dantian for movement: not all arts that use the feedback/qi mechanisms are necessarily "internal" martial arts.