A Sum Up of Martial Arts Chi Power!

Good morning!

and it really is.

I recently received an email asking for more info on Chi.

Here’s what I said.

Hi Jon from Missouri! Thanks for writing.

Chi is quite interesting. Think of the body as a machine, which it is, and things are easier to understand. It creates energy through biochemical actions. This energy takes on many forms, and is usually used to power the muscles.

Chi is more of ‘invisible’ (to our eyes) energy. It is also present in everything in the universe, even ‘space.’

If you follow the principle of ‘wt = work = energy’ the body will create more energy. This is the reason for lower stances. Though once one has started to manifest chi the lower stances become less necessary.

What stops chi from naturally manifesting? The fact that energy is channeled into muscles. If you can figure out how to move without using muscles, or ‘holding’ the muscles in unbendable positions.

Martial arts, especially the forms, provide different ways of channeling energy. Hard arts are relatively inefficient. Soft arts are more efficient.

Can you relax when you strike somebody? That’s crucial to manifesting chi in combat.

Relaxation requires a calmness of mind that is quite unnatural, except for babies. Babies haven’t learned to use their muscles, so they grip with energy. The grip of a baby is all out of proportion to their size and development. When they try to apply energy to the world, however, they are forced to use muscles, and there goes the chi.

To achieve the proper degree of relaxation you need to not think.

It’s this way: If you don’t use muscles you can use chi. If you don’t think you can develop the intention necessary to direct chi.

BUT, there is a kicker to all this. When chi manifests it doesn’t feel at all like the descriptions have it.

I was looking for some mystical thing, but when it manifested, though it was exactly as described, I would never have recognized chi from the description. It is much more subtle and understated, and more ‘real world natural,’ than the descriptions would have you believe. Yet the descriptions are correct.

Weird, eh?

Chi manifests when you use no effort.

Chi develops in proportion to lack of muscular effort.

People who use muscles are strong.

People who use chi (when they finally are able to use it)  will use a combination of chi and muscle. Morihei Ueshiba was known to actually pluck small trees out of the earth. He claimed it was his ability to direct chi that enabled him to do this.

When you use chi your mind starts perceiving the world differently.

When I made my breakthroughs I stopped having dreams. My mind was that calm that it no longer generated dreams. (Dreams are a low level form of static in the mind, as far as I am concerned).

People with chi will have amazing stamina. There is no way to measure this, as people and their control of chi is so totally different. 

People in my base art (Kang Duk Won) developed chi within a couple of years. I was slow; I took 3 and a 1/3.

However, they did not normally develop chi past this to any degree because KDW is a hard art. i went into Aikido and Tai Chi and learned a LOT more. Contrarily, people in Tai Chi and Aiki lacked hard art experience, and their chi was often lacking. They just didn’t understand the real world.

Chi is usually more subjective, but you will be using your body differently than other people. You will also be using your mind differently than other people.

Concluding this little rant: figure out how to do your forms using less and less muscle, less and less effort. Focus your mind on the fact that your body is a machine. Figure out how to breath down to the tan tien (a point an inch or two below the navel) and then channeling it through your body. Then do the same things for applications, no energy and no effort, and figure out how to remain calm even when the world is blowing up around you. Forms are a form of meditation and will help with that.

There is, of course, a lot more to chi than this. And a lot less. Hope you get intrigued by this description. My testimony is that chi, and the pursuit of chi, has enriched my life by orders of magnitude. I wish everybody understood this and tapped into this incredible energy source, but there is not much accurate teaching these days, and most people are not willing to do the work.

Thanks for asking, I’ll probably use this reply in a newsletter.

Have a great work out!

Al

That’s a bout as precise as I can get in a short answer.

You can read more by looking through my books, 

‘Matrixing Chi Power.’

There is also volume seven

of the biggest martial arts lesson.

‘Chi Power.’

Here’s a little clip for your entertainment,

MB 116 slap grab elbow lock

I’ve got hundreds of these clips,

many of them recalibrated to the slap grab so they’ll work better.

And,

the obligatory ad…

The Last Martial Arts Book

It’s got five hours of video links in it.

Have a great work out!

Al

And don’t forget to check out the interview

BTW

I’ve got nothing but five star reviews on 

The Science of Government.

It’s really nothing more than applying matrixing to politics.

Matrixing + Politics = Sanity

I told you matrixing works with anything.

Here’s the link…

How to Fix Karate! (volumes one and two)

volume one is at

And volume two is at…

Acquiring Sixth Sense Ability In the Martial Arts

Sixth Sense Martial Arts

Sixth Sense Ability, in martial arts like Karate, Taekwondo, Kung Fu, or whatever else, seem to have become not much more than rumors from the past. People learn how to fight like demons, but they don’t learn how to perceive the world without the use of the five physical senses. That’s the truth of the matter, you know, sixth sense ability includes all the things that don’t depend on see, hear, smell, and so on.

Simply, if it is a real world sensation, it is not a sixth sense ability. In martial arts like kung fu and aikido and so on, it is being able to ‘feel’ when an attack is coming before it is comes. It is knowing what an opponent is going to do before he does it.

The best method for gaining sixth sense abilities is to learn how to practice without the use of the five physical senses. For instance, the surest technique is simply to do your moves without the use of the eyes. Simply close your eyes, or blindfold yourself, and do your kata, and get somebody who is willing to risk a few light punches, and do your martial arts techniques.

The point here is to understand that you are not trying to see or smell, or that sort of thing, but ‘know.’ So let me pose a question: have you ever walked up to a door and placed the key exactly in the keyhole while your awareness is on a conversation, or watching what somebody is doing? Most people have, and that is the easiest example of ‘knowing’ that I can give you, you knew where to place the key without eyes.

So set up some training devices so that you can practice without using the five physical senses. Do sticky hands, out of Wing Chun, blindfolded, and learn to ‘know’ what your opponent is going to do. Or, how about closing your eyes and practicing push hands from Tai Chi Chuan, or some other similar exercise.

My favorite practice is to hang a small ring, and poke a six foot (or longer) staff through the center of it. After I’ve got the ring fairly well centered in my mind, I close my eyes and turn out the lights. Once I’m adept at that I take a few steps away from the target, move forward and thrust the staff through the ring.

The thing that you should understand is that the sixth sense depends on imagination. If you close your eyes and imagine where the hanging ring is, then you can thrust a pole through it. Or a spear or a sword or even throw a shuriken through it.

So the way you train is this: train with martial arts forms and precise martial arts techniques so that you build a structure, a frame of reference, a scientific way of imagining the world. Second, practice closing your eyes and train without using your physical senses. Last, in this matter of gaining sixth sense abilities in martial arts like karate or taekwondo, is to develop your imagination; that is your true strength, you know: the use of imagination.

You can develop loads of Chi by getting Matrixing Chi at MonsterMartialArts.com.

This has been a page about developing sixth sense martial arts.