For many of us the first time we heard about Qi (pronounced Chi) was probably on a martial arts movie or TV show. The success of the Bruce Lee films and the rise of counter culture in the 60’s did a lot to popularise Kung Fu, Tai Qi, Qi Gong, Shiatsu, Acupuncture, Buddhism and Taoism in the west.
Qi goes by other names too, in Japan it is called “Ki”, in India it is “Prana”, Willhelm Reich referred to it as Orgone, “Essence” is another word that has been used to describe it.
The word qi has mystical and exotic undertones for many, when I was a student of Chinese medicine it was a half joking short hand way for me and my fellow students of describing anything that was done just right, “He did it with qi”
In martial arts focussing qi is believed to enable the smashing of house bricks with bare hands or even over your head, without harming yourself in the process. Yogis and Tibetan monks use (and conserve) prana to achieve deep levels of meditation that can slow the body’s vital signs and metabolic rate to an extraordinary degree.
It is perhaps more useful to think of qi (or prana) as a process rather than a thing, a product and process of focused intent involving skilled and disciplined manipulation of breathing and meditation. Eastern health practices like tai qi and qi gong claim to master qi, they look easy but are very hard to do well.
Coming from a nursing background I understand why the idea of qi is not taken very seriously in medical science, TCM terminology is quite different to Western medicine lexicon. In the context of acupuncture qi (and yang) represents breath, energy, warmth and the transformative processes within the body. Blood (and yin) represents coolness, the fluids and physical mass of the body and the storage of useful substances within.
In TCM there are different types of qi, the qi of your chest is zong qi, da qi is the qi you inhale from air, gu qi is the goodness absorbed from food, zheng qi is what is found in your acupuncture points and meridians and wei qi is our protective most outer layer of qi. Placed in it’s proper context it isn’t such a vague idea.
Used in it’s proper context it describes the essence within things, used out of it’s proper context it doesn’t really tell us much at all. The most interesting things I read about qi was it’s place in Yin and Yang theory, a binary language that describes the relationship of things to one another. Writers such as Fritjof Capra, Ted Kaptchuk, Leon Hammer and Giovanni Macciocia offer some very interesting insights in what qi is and it’s place in Chinese medicine.