I hear and read many people saying that there is no concept of Qi in Yiquan. Anyone saying this does not understand the concept of Qi. What Wang Xiang Zhai (Yiquan founder) was railing against all those years ago, was the superstitious and unfounded use of the concept of Qi. I don’t know Wang and don’t read Chinese, so I can only go from the translations of his ideas. The ‘Golden Age’ of martial arts brought about all sorts of fantastic tales of magical powers. These powers were described in terms of Qi…because everything is described in terms of Qi. You see, many of the people nowadays talking about Qi have no idea what is meant by the word. The word ‘Qi’ is a philosophical term that describes the fundamental ‘fabric’ of our universe. Modern scientists have the word ‘Quantum’ and ancient Chinese observers had the word Qi. The ancient Chinese observed that our world is a closed system and that nothing is really created or destroyed, only transformed. That which is transforming they called Qi. It is that simple. Now, whenever we are talking about any sort of energy, we can use the word Qi. So, naturally, when someone experiences something outside of the norm or for which they have no better way to explain it, they will talk about Qi. For the human being, our Qi is simply the activity of our body. This activity is controlled by our minds and our spirit. Our spirit includes all activity of our physical body as well as the activity of our minds. Our mind is our conscious awareness and control of this activity. All endeavors that require any physical coordination require that we expand our conscious awareness and control into vaster realms of our spirit, thereby expanding into more aspects of our physical being as well. This includes everything from learning to type or drive a car, to practicing martial arts.

So, in Yiquan we practice sensing and using that subtle interface of mind and intent (yi) with our body. That interface is literally ‘our Qi’. Ironically, no internal martial art I have ever practiced is more directly a method of Qi cultivation than Yiquan. You simply have to know what Qi is to see that. Qi is never anything outside of our experience. Qi is only what can be sensed in one way or another. Crazy people will use anything to validate what they think is real, i.e. God, Qi, magic, gnomes, aliens. However, this is in no way an indicator of whether God, Qi, magic, gnomes or aliens exist. Everything is Qi and Qi is everything. The word is simply a deferential term that allows us to describe the phenomenal world as a single field of energy perturbations of which give us distinct phenomena. This is precisely the conclusion to which many modern scientists are coming. When martial arts theories talk about Qi, they are referring to the activities of the human being – many of which are unexplainable and not understood even by modern science. When we have a ‘whole body connection’ and feel the jin connect through us to the ground, this is Qi. It is a tangible experience that can be had by anyone but doesn’t have a particular explanation other than as a sort of coordination that makes us feel rooted and powerful. We can call that good Qi. If human Qi is the interface of mind and body, and you are moving your body with your mind in a way that is good…that’s just good Qi.

What happened with Qi and Yiquan is basically that some folks who may have been a bit nutty used the word Qi to explain and validate things that only they were experiencing/imagining. Not having a clear understanding of the very rational and scientific reasoning behind the concept of Qi, later commentators threw out the baby with the bathwater. We have a lot more information about our world today that we did just fifty years ago, so we can describe things in detail. The word Qi is becoming less and less useful in common parlance, but the concept it represents has never been more important to science and spirituality alike. I am an acupuncturist. My entire field is based on the concept of Qi, but I rarely use the word with my patients. The concept guides all that I do, but the word is unnecessary because I have more detailed descriptions of what the patient is experiencing at my disposal. The same is true for modern martial arts. We know more about physiology and biomechanics as well as physics, so we can use those terms to more precisely discuss what is going on while we move around. But having a better way to talk about what is going on, doesn’t take away from the concept that the word Qi represents.