Summations Only

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?

I'm not a big fan of Occam's razor, seems like we pull it out too often here, but it does seem appropriate to me in this case.

--Percy

Edited by Percy, : Typo.

Edited by Percy, : Typo.

dwise1 writes: Yeah, I've heard about that. Though my sole source is Ian Fleming's You Only Live Twice

Ah yes, Iam Fleming.
Famous for such astounding facts such as homosexuals being unable to whistle.

dwise1 writes: Now, how self-aware are you?

I am aware enough to know if my balls went up inside my body!

dwise1 writes: Because of the range of temperatures that are needed for the formation of sperm, the male body automatically regulates how far down the testicles are allowed to dangle.

Yes. How far down they dangle. But never pulled up into the body.
If they did do that, then every man (and most women) would have witnessed it.

Do you not have a pair? Have they ever gone up into your body? No. They haven't.

dwise1 writes: The sumo wrestler training that Ian Fleming mentioned appears to be a conscious control over that same physical mechanism.

Hahaha!
No, the sumo wrestler didn't have conscious control over his testicles!
BECAUSE HE DIDN'T EXIST!!
Seriously? You think that James Bond is a documentary?

Go on.
Try and find a single occurrence of testicles being intentionally pulled up into the body.

Edited by Panda, : No reason given.

You missed the point of the message.

Panda was claiming that such claims are due to trickery by the martial arts schools' teachers. That is was all nothing but fakery.

While, yes, some fakers have been known to pose as martial arts instructors, that is not the case with Aikido. 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.

What my message conveyed was that that was decidedly not the case. 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 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.

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. 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.

With all due respect, fully intended in the Woody-Allen sense, you fucking idiot!

Yes, I did identify Ian Fleming's new novel, You Only Live Twice, as the only other source of this claim. Because that was true.

Was I claiming that Ian Fleming was an authority on the matter? Uh, no. All that I was stating was that that was the only other source of such a claim. I would have to assume that he had done at least some minimal amount of research in preparation for writing that novel, which carries with it the assumption that the story of sumo wrestlers being trained to retract their balls to safety had reached him. Of course, it would require further research to verify this claim.

OK, during embryonic development, the gonads originally form within the abdomen and then later, in the males, descend down into the scrotum. The abdomenal wall does not always close up properly in that process, in which case a male will have an inguinal hernia, such as I had on my right side that had to be repaired when I was 10 years old (much later, another kid's inguinal hernias were describe as being "big enough to drive a truck through"). So in the scenario of being able to retract one's testicles into one's body would necessarily be restricted by that sealing up of the abdomenal wall.

OK what I was describing was that there are muscles present and those muscles do regulate the degree of the dangle (not to be confused with the angle of the dangle). And I can personally state, with absolutely no amount of training having been involved, that I am able to draw my own testicles up towards my body by an inch or two. I can consciously draw them up toward my body. And I do not doubt that, were you to attempt it yourself, you would also be able to do the same. The muscles are there. The muscles can be controlled by our minds. And that is all that I was actually claiming.

Of course, all you want to do is to talk through your ass. Which I would think make the ability to retract one's testicles much more important, since otherwise your own scrotum would end up muffling your voice as you talk through your ass.

dwise1 writes: Panda was claiming that such claims are due to trickery by the martial arts schools' teachers. That is was all nothing but fakery.

Your complaint that 'techniques' are not 'tricks' is simply an equivocation.
Card tricks are based on practice, technique, education, muscle memory, etc. They are techniques (as well as being tricks).

The point where a card technique becomes a card trick is when it is 'sold' as magic.
It is the point where the audience (often willingly) suspends disbelief and believes it is slightly supernatural.

This point (where technique becomes trick) is crossed by martial artists when they claim that ki exists.

That point is also crossed by martial artists who claim they can cut a brick in half with their hands; pull their balls into their body or punch through a stack of concrete slabs - claiming that they are using ki.

I have cut a brick in half with my hand; punched through a stack of concrete slabs and also made myself 'too heavy to lift' - and I can confirm that I didn't use ki.
(I'll tell you the secret....I used physics!)

Perhaps you should try applying the same critical thinking to ki as you do to religion.

dwise writes: With all due respect, fully intended in the Woody-Allen sense, you fucking idiot!

Says the man that believes in ki. LOL.

dwise1 writes: Yes, I did identify Ian Fleming's new novel, You Only Live Twice, as the only other source of this claim. Because that was true.

Just a niggle - but 'new' novel? Published in 1964?

And are also you going to claim he has "done at least some minimal amount of research" to show that homosexuals can't whistle?

dwise1 writes: OK, during embryonic development, the gonads originally form within the abdomen and then later, in the males, descend down into the scrotum. The abdomenal wall does not always close up properly in that process, in which case a male will have an inguinal hernia, such as I had on my right side that had to be repaired when I was 10 years old (much later, another kid's inguinal hernias were describe as being "big enough to drive a truck through"). So in the scenario of being able to retract one's testicles into one's body would necessarily be restricted by that sealing up of the abdomenal wall.

Good. We agree that it has nothing to do with ki at all.

dwise1 writes: OK what I was describing was that there are muscles present and those muscles do regulate the degree of the dangle (not to be confused with the angle of the dangle). And I can personally state, with absolutely no amount of training having been involved, that I am able to draw my own testicles up towards my body by an inch or two. I can consciously draw them up toward my body. And I do not doubt that, were you to attempt it yourself, you would also be able to do the same. The muscles are there. The muscles can be controlled by our minds. And that is all that I was actually claiming.

And I bet you can jump closer to the moon by a couple of feet.
With practice do you think that you can jump all the way to the moon?

You were defending to false claim that people could pull their balls up into their bodies.
It now seems you wish to retract that claim and instead claim that people can make their balls move. /golfclap

dwise1 writes: Of course, all you want to do is to talk through your ass.

I would have to be a ki master in front of a gullible student to do that trick.

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.

Just a niggle - but 'new' novel? Published in 1964?

Yes, which is when I read it. Duh?

I would have to be a ki master in front of a gullible student to do that trick.

No gullible students in our dojo. The situation that you describe would be one where the instructor demonstrates something that depends on trickery and promises the students that if they study under him for several years then they too can do it. Dance studios would to do the same thing, sending top dancers out to clubs to wow everybody and then hand out business cards for the studio, but when students signed up they would be taught something different.

But in Aikido that didn't happen. From the very start the instructor taught the students the techniques that he used in his demonstration and the students learned to use those techniques successfully as I already described in Message 43. If the instructor's demonstrations were based on trickery, then that would not be possible unless, like a magician's apprentice, they also employ trickery. That is not the case.

If you insist of continuing to speak through your ass, then do please do something about your breath!

dwise1 writes: Panda writes: Just a niggle - but 'new' novel? Published in 1964? Yes, which is when I read it. Duh?

Do you think that because it was published in 1964 and because you read it in 1964, it is therefore 'new'?
What has gone wrong with your brain?

At least you've stopped claiming that Ian Fleming is a reliable source of information.

dwise1 writes: No gullible students in our dojo.

Well, that is what your sensei told you....

dwise1 writes: The situation that you describe would be one where the instructor demonstrates something that depends on trickery and promises the students that if they study under him for several years then they too can do it.

Correct.
And it seems he did exactly that.
He called it Qi.

dwise1 writes: But in Aikido that didn't happen. From the very start the instructor taught the students the techniques that he used in his demonstration and the students learned to use those techniques successfully as I already described in Message 43. If the instructor's demonstrations were based on trickery, then that would not be possible unless, like a magician's apprentice, they also employ trickery. That is not the case.

He taught you how to fall over without hurting yourself and then convinced you that it was qi.
He taught you how to not cry out when hurt and then convinced you it was qi.

Congratulations!
It seems you have a religion.

dwise1 writes: If you insist of continuing to speak through your ass, then do please do something about your breath!

I am thinking that your continued puerile ad hominems are due to your embarrassing lack of any actual argument to support your claims.

Edited by Panda, : No reason given.

Edited by Panda, : No reason given.

Dwise did reply to my original question that he didn't know for sure ''Ki'' was supernatural of not, if I'm not mistaken. It's still somewhat vague what he actually believes.

Perhaps some modern teachers do know about the biological limits being fully used, and the physics involved, others may not. Especially when spiritual beliefs are still being held, a combination may be common, I think, I have no knowledge on the subject, so I cannot say, it's just speculation.

But Ki seems pretty handy for visualizing in your mind, and so it provides a easier way to learn things, even when not knowing the science. My gym teacher told my class once that mental visualization can really affect your performance, so it's not really trickery, as long you learn real material arts, no bogus. A dependable teacher, in my mind, would either just stick to it as a metaphor, or really hold some traditional beliefs, which may not exactly represent reality, but unlike faith healing, it's still not teaching a full lie.
However, like Panda said, mystical Ki/Qui/other master on tv pulling all sorts of miracles..have a pretty high chance of either have some unique body ability they don't fully understand(think snake people, testicle pulling hole in the muscles), or are indeed tricking people, or both.

Still, in general, is it really needed to be so tense? Perhaps Dwise can give us a rating about (super)natural Ki on the Dawkins scale, can we can all be sure of his ideas beyond any doubt. In the case of supernatural sources, I'm curious how it ever did evolve in animals, but once again, Dwise seemed to accept either possiblity.

I have, in effect, the same question I asked CD7. Can you describe the procedure for observing "ki"?

--Percy

I am thinking that your continued puerile ad hominems are due to your embarrassing lack of any actual argument to support your claims.

Boy, that is really rich coming from you! What an idiot! Take a good look in the mirror!

He taught you how to fall over without hurting yourself and then convinced you that it was qi. He taught you how to not cry out when hurt and then convinced you it was qi. Congratulations! It seems you have a religion.

OK, idiot, let's try this one more time.

Magicians do not really use magic, but rather fakery. When somebody learns to do magic, it is absolutely required that they learn the fakery behind each trick. If a magic student really thought they were doing magic and tried to perform a trick depending on the magic being real, he will fail. Are you able to understand that simple concept?

Now consider the case of a phony martial artist performing incredible feats, but by employing fakery. He takes on students promising to be able to teach them to do the same eventually, but he never passes on to any of them how to fake it, what the phony trick is. Without that knowledge, it is impossible to perform any of those incredible feats; only by knowing how to fake those phony feats could any student even hope to repeat said feats. Are you able to understand that simple concept?

In Aikido, we were never taught how to fake the feats that I had described. Nonetheless, we were all able to perform those feats. Had those feats been phony and dependent on fakery, then that would have been impossible. Therefore, those feats were not phony. Are you able to understand that simple logical deduction?

But, no, you will continue to embrace your abject ignorance and to engage in ad hominem attacks. You will continue to speak out your ass, which I understand is the proper term for what you persist in doing.

No, I cannot. Ki is at best an abstract concept. It is based on a traditional understanding of nature from Chinese and Japanese culture as that concept came to be incorporated in martial training. Its use in Aikido is in communicating how to perform the techniques and in the practitioner knowing what to do. As I have explained repeatedly.

dwise1 writes: Panda writes: I am thinking that your continued puerile ad hominems are due to your embarrassing lack of any actual argument to support your claims. Boy, that is really rich coming from you! What an idiot! Take a good look in the mirror!

dwise1 writes: OK, idiot, let's try this one more time.

dwise1 writes: But, no, you will continue to embrace your abject ignorance and to engage in ad hominem attacks. You will continue to speak out your ass, which I understand is the proper term for what you persist in doing.

The irony is strong in this one!

dwise1 writes: Now consider the case of a phony martial artist performing incredible feats, but by employing fakery. He takes on students promising to be able to teach them to do the same eventually, but he never passes on to any of them how to fake it, what the phony trick is. Without that knowledge, it is impossible to perform any of those incredible feats; only by knowing how to fake those phony feats could any student even hope to repeat said feats. Are you able to understand that simple concept?

And I can do all the tricks your sensei taught you, but without using ki.
Are you able to understand that simple fact which contradicts your claims of ki existing?

dwise1 writes: In Aikido, we were never taught how to fake the feats that I had described. Nonetheless, we were all able to perform those feats. Had those feats been phony and dependent on fakery, then that would have been impossible. Therefore, those feats were not phony. Are you able to understand that simple logical deduction?

And I can do all the tricks your sensei taught you, but without using ki.
Are you able to understand the simple logical position that if those tricks are not dependent on ki then there is no evidence of ki existing?

tbh, this has already been covered by the other posters in this thread.
But you have avoided answering them.
Instead you have thrown childish insults around.

The points debated in your posts have got fewer and fewer as you realise that you are unable to offer any kind of support for your assertions.
But rather than accept your mistakes, you have pretended they never happened.
(Are you still claiming that people can pull their balls up in to their body because Ian Fleming says so? No. You've conveniently forgotten that stupid claim.)

You really need to do better.