How to Develop Martial Arts Chi Power!

A Sum Up of Martial Arts Chi Power!

Good morning!

and it really is.

I recently received an email asking for more info on Chi.

Here’s what I said.

Hi Jon from Missouri! Thanks for writing.

Chi is quite interesting. Think of the body as a machine, which it is, and things are easier to understand. It creates energy through biochemical actions. This energy takes on many forms, and is usually used to power the muscles.

Chi is more of ‘invisible’ (to our eyes) energy. It is also present in everything in the universe, even ‘space.’

If you follow the principle of ‘wt = work = energy’ the body will create more energy. This is the reason for lower stances. Though once one has started to manifest chi the lower stances become less necessary.

What stops chi from naturally manifesting? The fact that energy is channeled into muscles. If you can figure out how to move without using muscles, or ‘holding’ the muscles in unbendable positions.

Martial arts, especially the forms, provide different ways of channeling energy. Hard arts are relatively inefficient. Soft arts are more efficient.

Can you relax when you strike somebody? That’s crucial to manifesting chi in combat.

Relaxation requires a calmness of mind that is quite unnatural, except for babies. Babies haven’t learned to use their muscles, so they grip with energy. The grip of a baby is all out of proportion to their size and development. When they try to apply energy to the world, however, they are forced to use muscles, and there goes the chi.

To achieve the proper degree of relaxation you need to not think.

It’s this way: If you don’t use muscles you can use chi. If you don’t think you can develop the intention necessary to direct chi.

BUT, there is a kicker to all this. When chi manifests it doesn’t feel at all like the descriptions have it.

I was looking for some mystical thing, but when it manifested, though it was exactly as described, I would never have recognized chi from the description. It is much more subtle and understated, and more ‘real world natural,’ than the descriptions would have you believe. Yet the descriptions are correct.

Weird, eh?

Chi manifests when you use no effort.

Chi develops in proportion to lack of muscular effort.

People who use muscles are strong.

People who use chi (when they finally are able to use it) will use a combination of chi and muscle. Morihei Ueshiba was known to actually pluck small trees out of the earth. He claimed it was his ability to direct chi that enabled him to do this.

When you use chi your mind starts perceiving the world differently.

When I made my breakthroughs I stopped having dreams. My mind was that calm that it no longer generated dreams. (Dreams are a low level form of static in the mind, as far as I am concerned).

People with chi will have amazing stamina. There is no way to measure this, as people and their control of chi is so totally different.

People in my base art (Kang Duk Won) developed chi within a couple of years. I was slow; I took 3 and a 1/3.

However, they did not normally develop chi past this to any degree because KDW is a hard art. i went into Aikido and Tai Chi and learned a LOT more. Contrarily, people in Tai Chi and Aiki lacked hard art experience, and their chi was often lacking. They just didn’t understand the real world.

Chi is usually more subjective, but you will be using your body differently than other people. You will also be using your mind differently than other people.

Concluding this little rant: figure out how to do your forms using less and less muscle, less and less effort. Focus your mind on the fact that your body is a machine. Figure out how to breath down to the tan tien (a point an inch or two below the navel) and then channeling it through your body. Then do the same things for applications, no energy and no effort, and figure out how to remain calm even when the world is blowing up around you. Forms are a form of meditation and will help with that.

There is, of course, a lot more to chi than this. And a lot less. Hope you get intrigued by this description. My testimony is that chi, and the pursuit of chi, has enriched my life by orders of magnitude. I wish everybody understood this and tapped into this incredible energy source, but there is not much accurate teaching these days, and most people are not willing to do the work.

Thanks for asking, I’ll probably use this reply in a newsletter.

Have a great work out!

That’s a bout as precise as I can get in a short answer.

You can read more by looking through my books,

‘Matrixing Chi Power.’

There is also volume seven

of the biggest martial arts lesson.

‘Chi Power.’

Here’s a little clip for your entertainment,

MB 116 slap grab elbow lock

I’ve got hundreds of these clips,

many of them recalibrated to the slap grab so they’ll work better.