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Author Topic:   Is there a life energy?
Modulous
Member
Posts: 7801
From: Manchester, UK
Joined: 05-01-2005


Message 46 of 87 (657835)
03-31-2012 7:42 AM
Reply to: Message 43 by dwise1
03-31-2012 2:53 AM


Then as I was about to reach the ground (asphalt surface, in case you have forgotten), I extended my Ki through my arm, blended with the ground, and went into a shoulder roll out of which I emerged without injury.
The same story could be told without any Ki extension going on and it would have the same outcome: You fell, your fall training kicked in and you instinctively rolled to avoid injury. Done it myself. Ki is just a psychological construct. It might be a useful construct for accessing muscle memory in a hurry, but it is not something exists independently of the human mind I'm afraid.
I've studied a Japanese martial art myself for a year or two, but I saw nothing that requires the existence of some essential Ki force pervading through our bodies or anything like that. That didn't stop them trying to convince me it was there though, and the presentation was very convincing.
In another situation, I was practicing an Aikido move when I accidentally brought my elbow crashing down on a bed post, right on my "funny bone". Instead of hopping around in pain, I remained centered and relaxed and calmly sat down and massaged the injury site.
So which one of his "tricks" was my sensai applying there?
One is not compelled to hop around in pain when you hit your funny bone. I seriously crushed my finger so badly the skin burst and a bunch of fat was squeezed out. I didn't hop around or even cry out: I calmly made a phone call to get medical attention. I didn't require focussing any Ki to do it or anything like that.
Similarly, decades after my Aikido training, I was being treated for shin splints with a diabolical torture device, a kind of plastic rolling pin with multiple rings on it that she would roll along the length of my shin. As she was about to start, I centered myself and relaxed and moved my weight to the underside. And as I sat there calmly (OK, I was also using a breathing exercise I had learned in Aikido), the therapist was looking at me puzzled because I wasn't screaming in pain.
Again, what was the trick that my sensei was using here, a decade or two after he had died in a car accident?
Pain is a psychological phenomenon, anyone with a modicum of training in mental techniques such as meditiation or self-hypnosis can override the instinct to cry out in all but the most terrible of situations. Why postulate Ki as a method of explaining it?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 43 by dwise1, posted 03-31-2012 2:53 AM dwise1 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 47 by Percy, posted 03-31-2012 7:45 AM Modulous has seen this message but not replied
 Message 49 by dwise1, posted 04-01-2012 5:37 AM Modulous has replied

Modulous
Member
Posts: 7801
From: Manchester, UK
Joined: 05-01-2005


(1)
Message 53 of 87 (657961)
04-01-2012 10:52 AM
Reply to: Message 49 by dwise1
04-01-2012 5:37 AM


Panda was claiming that such claims are due to trickery by the martial arts schools' teachers. That is was all nothing but fakery.
There is certainly a lot of that going around.
While, yes, some fakers have been known to pose as martial arts instructors, that is not the case with Aikido.
Spoken by someone who studied Aikido. If you had studied Ninpo Taijutsu I'm sure you'd have said that about that martial art. There is just as much fakery in Aikido as with any other martial art. Aikido does not have some intrinsic ability to avoid it.
. If the instructor were employing fakery, then only the instructor or others complicit in that fakery could ever be able to perform the tasks that they were faking.
Yes, exactly. A bit like with faith healing. They don't have to know they are being complicit in order to be complicit. The power of suggestion can do a lot.
Indeed, from the very beginning of their training, students were being taught to do the exact same things that their instructors ("sensei", whose Kanji characters mean "previous life", meaning that your teachers had gone through what you are going through now) are able to do.
And I'm not disputing that the students were doing the same things as the instructors. I'm just saying that those things don't require Ki. And indeed some of those things only work if everybody is 'in on it' in some fashion. The Ki punch where no contact is made but the person falls over springs to mind. I don't know if your Aikido instructor ever laid claim to that kind of ability, of course.
Rolling, managing pain and all that stuff is not evidence of Ki. They are all physically explainable feats. So its either fakery, or its mundane.
And each of my instances of being able to use my Ki training were intended to demonstrate that what I had learned was not mere deceptive trickery as Panda falsely misrepresented it to be, but rather that it was something that the students were taught and which works! And hence cannot at all be the product of the instructors' "trickery" as Panda would falsely have it to be.
What works works, but that doesn't mean that Ki is making it work.
I agreed with you that you can roll to avoid injury, that you can withstand pain, I'd even believe you if you said you could lower your heartrate and stuff. All of this stuff is perfectly normal techniques that do not require that one 'extends ki' or anything of the sort.
Faith healers can be sincere, and they can teach their techniques to others who learn with utmost sincerity. It does not mean they are using the power of the Lord to heal in Jesus' name. They may argue that they aren't faking it and be technically speaking the truth. But they aren't doing anything that requires magic hands, or miraculous deities.
Whether there is indeed such a thing as "Ki" or "Qi" (depending on whether your orientation is Japanese or Chinese) is an entirely separate issue.
I don't think it's a separate issue at all, not in this thread. And not when you make the claim that Ki 'surrounds us and penetrates us. Flows through us. And with a bit of training, we can harness it and redirect it, giving us power that we cannot get from muscles alone'
I'm saying that the power comes from muscles alone, and that any influence of Ki is in your head.
As I have already allowed freely, the language of Ki is what we were taught and is the way in which we visualize what we are doing; that it could be described differently is recognized and is immaterial to my response to Panda.
As I postulated, 'Ki is just a psychological construct.' It is not immaterial that it could be described differently than you did, not if you described it wrong. If you want to concede that Ki isn't a something that you can 'harvest', that 'flows through' us and that it is instead just a way of thinking about moving - then we probably don't disagree on that.
Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 49 by dwise1, posted 04-01-2012 5:37 AM dwise1 has not replied

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