How's your Chi?

Everybody focuses on the physical stuff. The martial arts community is practically built on this. The RBSD guys(and gals), competition guys, the people who just do forms. With the exception of maybe a few people it's all a comparison of the physical things because these are the things that are tangible. They are also the things that are "fun" to practice and play with. I'm right there too.


I don't think we give enough credit to the non-tangible elements of martial arts. Especially those that revolve around self-defense and physical violence. I'm kind of seeing this lately as I have been asked to put together a women's self-defense course. So what do you teach them? They're not looking for martial arts they just want to know things that may save their life. If you could show them one effective technique what would it be? Now, what if you could only show them one thing, physical technique or otherwise? What do you show or explain? Hmm, a groin kick is not nearly as important as good awareness.


Anyhow, it gets me thinking. and then I was reading some stuff about Chi. The old Chinese "energy" stuff. I've never been one who puts much into the idea that I can control and use some mystical force as a weapon or shield. No-touch-knockouts and all that sort of junk. It's out there with throwing fireballs at a mugger. But this time it finally started to make a little sense.


I was reading through the Hakutsuru Kenpo manual by Tony Sandoval and I had a light bulb moment. Chi = energy (and that's a rough translation into English) and I've seen it also used interchangeably with "power". I use the term power in class all the time. As in power generation. Teaching people how to strike with power requires building and controlling that power through the body and releasing it into the target. (Now I'm starting to sound like those other guys.) Going back and re-reading the stuff about Chi I started to see something. For example, striking certain points on the body to create a disturbance in the Chi (strength or power) makes some sense now. If I can kick the back of the knee, it's not about hitting a magic point to explode the attackers joints and nerves but it weakens his balance and structure, which weakens his strength or power. Hmm.


The same for throws. If I  upset his balance or break his connection with the ground (disrupting the flow of energy) then it's pretty hard for him to hit me with anything substantial short of a taser. If I hit him properly, then try to throw him it get easier. I already know this is true but now I can put the term "chi" into that statement and use it in a way that is functional, not just conceptual.


So maybe this is yet another thing that's  been lost in translation and time. The meaning we have now is not necessarily the one that was used in the old days of martial arts training. It makes you wonder what else this applies to? Maybe all that mystical dim-mak type secret stuff really does work somewhere between the proven smash and break violence of combatives and Chi. And now we're back to the physical stuff again. Time to play with it and see.