What Is Chi or Qi?

Category: Personal Development for Adults

Chi (prana) is often referred to as life energy, life force, ki, qi, bioenergy, as well as many other names, depending on where you live.

For thousands of years, chi, or prana, has been a familiar concept and observable phenomenon across nations and cultures around the globe. The fact that some have studied it and others have not explains why many still have no idea what it entails. Unfortunately, we in the West tend to fall into the latter group.

What I notice is that the situation described above is changing by the day, thanks to growing interest not only among laypeople but also among scientists. The advancement of scientific tools and methods, which have flourished in recent years, is one reason this concept is becoming better known. Phenomena we once ignored because science could not yet account for them are again coming under public scrutiny.

The moment when the West is finally getting to know the East has arrived, and at a most fitting time. There is greater freedom and richer cultural exchange, and the speed at which information is shared and published through the internet and other media grows year after year, if not day by day.

It does not take supernatural gifts to see the aura, that is, chi or prana, around people. There are instruments that can capture it. There are even devices that register the chi or prana of acupuncture points and meridians. Some can measure the chi or prana of other living organisms such as plants or insects, known as Kirlian photography. What makes Kirlian photography especially intriguing is that the images have shown a full energetic outline even when the entire plant was not photographed.

Alongside all this, there is growing insight into the very composition of chi or prana, and it appears to depend on its source. For example, human chi or prana differs from that of animals and plants. Moreover, variations have been observed according to whether a person has a robust or delicate constitution; whether the person is healthy or unwell; whether the person is spiritually developed or neglects that dimension of life; and whether the person regularly cultivates chi or prana, for instance through Qigong, or not.

Numerous studies conducted in China over the past thirty years, without exception, point to the presence of a mixture of electromagnetic fields, infrared and ultraviolet light, even traces of visible light, as well as alpha, beta or gamma radiation. It has also been noted that the electrical resistance of the skin at acupuncture points, namely where chi or prana interfaces with the external environment, is much lower than elsewhere on the skin.

Beyond what is already self evident, that anyone capable of reflection can see the difference between a living and a dead organism, there is ample scientific evidence for the existence of chi or prana. Yet many still refuse to revise their convictions when confronted with a wealth of facts.

While some still feel compelled to debate and theorize about the existence of chi or prana, in China, India and Tibet it has been applied in practice, and with notable success, for five thousand years. Its applications have included the treatment of various illnesses, the extension of lifespan, and the pursuit of enlightenment, which is the ultimate aim of human existence.

In fact, the concept of chi or prana is so complex and profound that the entire system of Traditional Chinese Medicine, one of the oldest and most thoroughly studied medical traditions in the world, is founded upon it. In contrast, Western medicine rests on anatomy and physiology, that is, on matter and its chemical reactions.

Even when you consider China's turbulent history, extending into recent times and marked by wars, conflicts, destruction and loss of life, hundreds of thousands of books on Chinese medicine have nevertheless been preserved from ruin.

They have endured countless uprisings, dynastic changes, periods of Mongol, Manchu and Japanese dominance, civil wars and revolutions, and have emerged stronger than before. Today that knowledge is spreading rapidly across the world.