This is a continuation of the discussion I started with my review of Tim Cartmell’s Xing Yi Neigong. First off, I want to sing the praises of this book even more than I did yesterday. I thoroughly reviewed it today, and I think it’s the best book on xingyi out there. Of course, the reason I think it’s the best will likely run contrary to some people’s expectations of the book despite the title. It does say “neigong” after all.
Take a look at this quote that Bob so helpfully typed in for us. It comes from Jess O’Brien’s Nei Jia Quan in which he interviews Tim:
. . . “Do I think you have to think about your qi and all that stuff to get good at martial arts? No, as a matter of fact I think it will probably slow your training down. Using your mind is plenty mysterious enough. Were you put your intent makes a huge difference on your balance–that to me is mystery enough. I don’t need to complicate things with intangibles.”
Moving your mind in your body is another thing. I call that “intent,” which is the word yi. If every time you head the word qi you replace it with yi, it would make much more sense. They’re talking about intention mostly, and they’re calling it qi because it sounds more mysterious. So, I don’t talk about it in qi gong class. Qi gong is breathing exercises.
Qi means “air.” Qi gong is the same as Pranayama in Yoga. Breathing exercises. Are they good for you? Yeah, they’re good for you. They’ll build up your power and health. That’s my stand on it, I tend to be a little bit overboard on the negative side because I hear so much nonsense.”
As far as qi gong goes, relaxing and moving are good for you. Does it increase your qi flow? I don’t know–it depends on what you mean by qi. My teacher Luo De Xiu explained qi as the Chinese term for when all your systems are in sync, your parasympathetic nervous system is turned on, you turn off the fight or flight system, your hormonal system is flowing, you have coherent brain waves, you’re moving correctly, your circulation is going and you get this overall feeling of health. If you want to call that qi as an analogy for wellness , fine. But you could call that something else. Are you going to shoot it out of your fingertips at me? Well, maybe, but no one’s done it yet.”
Nei Jia Quan, p. 37
The interesting thing about this quote is that it runs directly counter to everything that Wang Ji Wu had to say in the Xing Yi Neigong book. Wang so very clearly said many times that cultivating qi was vital to both your xingyi and your health. He also went out of his way to clarify the concepts. So we have a bit of a contradiction here.
Also, qi is not yi. If they were the same, then the three internal harmonies would make no sense whatsoever. Yi can’t give birth to yi. That’s nonsensical. And Wang went out of his way in Xingyi Neigong to differentiate yi from qi. If all they meant was yi, then why on earth would they even use a separate term for qi? It doesn’t make any sense.
Clearly, Wang knew exactly what he was saying and he said it correctly. His statements are exactly in accord with the three internal harmonies and Xingyi Neigong gives the clearest explanation of them yet. I’m not going to type them in. If you want to see them, please buy the book.
Here’s the main thing that gets me about all of this: if the what Tim wrote about qi is true, then the set shown in Xingyi Neigong is absolutely worthless. It would be no better than any stretching routine from high school gym class. In fact, it would be far inferior.
Here’s what the first movement of the set does according to Wang:
According to the theory of xingyiquan’s internal and external methods of cultivation and training, the original “pre-birth” yang qi is the very root of that which protects the health. Therefore, in preserving and building health the cultivation of qi, strengthening the dantian and refining essence until it transforms into qi are most important. The main purpose of this first exercise lies in regulating the breath, cultivating the qi, and breathing with the dantian as the root of the breath, thus allowing the original qi to circulate freely throughout the whole body.
It just don’t get much clearer than that, folks.
So where’s the xingyi in all this qi talk? THIS IS THE REAL XINGYI. This is the real stuff. Xingyi is not Western boxing nor is it a crude art where students take certain shapes with their bodies and bang into each other. Xingyi Neigong is the only book I know that shows the way to the real stuff. That’s why this volume is so essential.
So is all this talk of qi unpractical? Of course not. When you’ve experienced the sensation of yang qi, then the information in the book becomes extremely valuable. When you have experience of qi, then working with it becomes practical and actual, not just potential.
Again, I highly recommend this book.
12 responses so far ↓
1 Jess O'Brien // Oct 25, 2007 at 1:00 am
Hi Dave, I will let Tim speak for himself. But I would throw in that the last part is kind of the main point that he’s trying to make:
“Are you going to shoot it out of your fingertips at me? Well, maybe, but no one’s done it yet.”
I think you guys may be talking apples and oranges. Tim is arguing against qi-fanaticism from the perspective of a guy who trains his students for MMA. I think his understanding and use of qi in more practical terms is much deeper, and was not discussed in my book.
In other words, please don’t take what was written in my book as the last word on this topic. In person Tim has much more to say on the matter.
-Jess O
2 Dave Chesser // Oct 25, 2007 at 1:13 am
Jess,
“I think his understanding and use of qi in more practical terms is much deeper, and was not discussed in my book…In person Tim has much more to say on the matter.”
Perhaps this is true and I’m glad that you brought it up. I just wish his students and the people that take his statements at face value showed more appreciation for such nuance.
Sorry about the typo with your name and the lack of a link to your book. Both are fixed now. It’s past 1 a.m. over here.
3 josh // Oct 25, 2007 at 2:45 am
Good review! One thing that occurred to me while reading it, I don’t think that Tim is equating yi and qi in that quote. He’s just saying that yi leads qi, which is pretty uncontroversial statement, and if you were to replace a phrase such as ‘qi flows to the baihui’ with ‘use your intent to guide the qi to the baihui,’ or simply ‘place your intent one the baihui’ it makes much more sense. At least, that’s how I read it…
4 Brennan Cleveland // Oct 25, 2007 at 2:51 am
Hello…. long time listener, first time caller. I have been studying Hsing I and Tai Chi for a little over a year now and have been doing alot of reading and reasearch on internal power cultivation since then. I have had some small experience with Qi as well. At my current experience level, what I think what Tim means in the above quote is this: Most people will have difficulty understanding what is meant by such instructions as “move the qi to your hands”. Move what to my hands? How? But, if you can accept the concept of the the Yi (intention) leading the Qi, then an instruction such as “focus your intention on your hands” is much easier to understand and should accomplish the same result, even if you don’t ever talk about Qi. So, I think he means to replace Qi with Yi in that sense.
5 GrahamB // Oct 25, 2007 at 3:50 am
On his discussion forum at Shenwu.com Tim says:
“The Nei Gong exercises are good for general fitness, coordination and control and should be of benefit to any other activity. ”
“The microcosmic orbit is an idea in Chinese Qigong practices that qi flows around inside your body in various patterns, the microcosmic orbit is one of them.
I don’t use it in my practice because I’ve never seen any evidence that it exists.”
”
In answer to your questions: “if chi is not real then what is Dai Long Bang talking about?”
I can’t answer, Dai lived a couple hundred years ago. He may have believed in some kind of energy flowing around the body. He may have been describing a visualization. I just translated what he purportedly wrote (it was part of the Chinese text).
“why bother visualising something going around the body following the microcosm orbit- what functional use is there in that?”
Exactly.”
Dan Miller’s article is also worth reading:
http://www.emptyflower.com/xingyiquan/crushing/journal/article01.html
Dai Long Bang I think says it best, in the very book we are discussing:
“If the dan tian is lacking, the qi will not be sufficient. With insufficient qi, power will be inadequate. The five elements and the twelve forms will be empty. In this state, in defense one will be as a city surrounded by a dry moat, in attack, one will be like a strong soldier with a weak horse. One must practice Xing Yi Quan diligently everyday. Sitting in meditation trying to become immortal will not cultivate the dan tian.”
6 thomas // Oct 25, 2007 at 6:08 am
Without benefit of having the book here with me as I write, I recall (it’s been several years since I read it) that Wang Ji Wu’s son wrote much of the material and commentary accompanying the neigong exercise set that his father taught. Wang Ji Wu’s son studied traditional Chinese medicine and qigong, and may actually be the source of the references to qi, rather than his father. I’m not saying that Wang Ji Wu would not have said the same sort of things about qi, only that the source for the actual remarks that Tim translated may have been his son. Wang Ji Wu was the xingyi specialist and his son the TCM and qigong expert.
7 JohnM // Oct 25, 2007 at 6:15 am
I agree with what is said above. I think Tim was referring to the impracticality of using the word ‘qi’ in instructing students. I’ve been studying Chen Style tai chi for about four years now and I still feel uncomfortable when I’m told where the qi should be at certain points in the form. I just took a silk reeling seminar with Chen Xiao Wang and when describing some of the movements he lost me a bit when he started to talk about the path of the qi. My practice is much more productive when I focus my mind on proper alignment, relaxation, and dantien movement. The qi (which I’m not a denier of) will take care of itself. Though maybe when you’ve achieved a certain amount of experience with qi after many years of practice (as dave here seems to have)it would be more productive to concentrate more on the path of it. I don’t know. I’m not there yet.
8 neijia // Oct 25, 2007 at 12:37 pm
I don’t think there is any contradiction here either. Apples and oranges. My reading was that Tim is saying this difficult concept makes things more confusing for the student. A pedagogical point, I suppose.
Tim or someone on his forum, I think, made an interesting analogy to the effect that an athlete doesn’t need to think about the cardiovascular system but does need to think about form, movements, timing, tactics, etc. - difficult enough. Ultimately aren’t we supposed to use yi and not think of qi? The yi leads the qi and so on?
That said, athletes are “cultivating” their “energy system” all the time. That cultivation of course includes what they eat - that helps the “qi” or the “energy system”, “metabolism”, or whatever terms we use from TCM or modern nutrition.
I believe in all of the above - cultivating “qi” and aerobics and mma and so on - the traditional and the modern. Just like with modern holistic health approaches - combining “Eastern” and “Western, the whole thing in our martial arts interests should be looked at and understood as holistically as possible. These seemingly divergent views will start to converge when we get more experiential and scientific understanding of both…
9 Interesting comments on qi, yi, training « Another neijia blog // Oct 25, 2007 at 12:52 pm
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10 Dave Chesser // Oct 25, 2007 at 6:36 pm
Sorry, but I’m not convinced of any of this. I think that Tim means exactly what he says. He doesn’t train qi, the microcosmic orbit, etc. Look at the quotes that Graham so helpfully provided. Those are pretty absolute statements.
I also disagree with the idea that we don’t need to pay attention to qi. Unfortunately, we aren’t cultivating all the time unless we are directly working with the qi. At least not in the way that neigong works. It’s not a totally natural thing, it requires effort of your part.
In any case, it doesn’t matter. A non-practitioner of neigong managed to translate the best book ever on the subject. That’s a minor miracle in itself.
Kudos to Tim for doing such a great translation.
11 Shefter // Oct 29, 2007 at 1:33 am
Does this mean that you don’t believe Jack Dempsey’s book “Championship Fighting” to be the best book on Hsing-I?
Come to think of it, do you think it’s a good book for Hsing-I people at all?
12 Dave Chesser // Oct 29, 2007 at 8:29 am
Shefter,
Dempsey’s book isn’t about xingyi at all. It’s definitely NOT the best book on the subject IMO. Xingyi Neigong is.
Dempsey’s book is fine for all martial artists.
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