ForumsWEPRshaolin monk - chi

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DSM
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DSM
1,303 posts
Nomad

I watched a few videos about shaolin monks, and they do things that normally isn't human possible. They claim it from the help of chi.

Here is one of the video I watched
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEOSkqGUK-M&feature=g-vrec

Is there a scientific explanation to how they do it?
And is chi real, if yes, then what is chi?

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Kevin4762
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Kevin4762
2,421 posts
Nomad

All of this is pseudoscience. There are real scientific explanations for this, I'm certain, but how they do it, I'm not sure.

EmperorPalpatine
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EmperorPalpatine
9,444 posts
Jester

For the bat part, Harry Houdini would do the same thing without the chi training. All it takes is strong, tense muscles. For the spear part, he tightened the muscles and tendons in his neck, trapezius and chest, which stretches the skin and makes it much harder on the surface.

Krill11
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Krill11
98 posts
Peasant

And maybe, to use physics, the mussel's absorb the energy transfer and transfer the energy thought the body, thus delude it enough that it doesn't cause harm in one specific area. I really do not know, but that is my guess, for what its worth.

Nice find! really cool

thepyro222
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thepyro222
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Peasant

All of this is pseudoscience.

What exactly is &quotseudoscience?" Why is it different than regular science? It seems to be one of the favorite quotes of people on here but no one really explains what they mean.

Anyways, I believe that there is an energy that we all posses, and through constant training and practice, we can harness it.
314d1
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314d1
3,817 posts
Nomad

What exactly is &quotseudoscience?" Why is it different than regular science? It seems to be one of the favorite quotes of people on here but no one really explains what they mean.


"Psudo" means fake. Pseudoscience is stuff that sounds like science, but it actually just a bunch of made up stuff.

Anyways, I believe that there is an energy that we all posses, and through constant training and practice, we can harness it.


Seriously? What do you base that on? Certainly not reality...
MageGrayWolf
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MageGrayWolf
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Farmer

What exactly is &quotseudoscience?" Why is it different than regular science? It seems to be one of the favorite quotes of people on here but no one really explains what they mean.


"Pseudoscience is a claim, belief, or practice which is presented as scientific, but does not adhere to a valid scientific method, lacks supporting evidence or plausibility, cannot be reliably tested, or otherwise lacks scientific status." -wiki

"a collection of beliefs or practices mistakenly regarded as being based on scientific method." -Oxford Dictionaries

"Pseudoscience is any belief system or methodology which tries to gain legitimacy by wearing the trappings of science, but fails to abide by the rigorous methodology and standards of evidence that demarcate true science. Although pseudoscience is designed to have the appearance of being scientific, it lacks any of the substance of science." -RationalWiki

http://www.skepdic.com/pseudosc.html

Need I go on or does that answer your question?

Anyways, I believe that there is an energy that we all posses, and through constant training and practice, we can harness it.


Like a soul chi or Qi has many varied ambiguous definitions.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Chi

The observable phenomena leading to the theory of pre/post birth qi were exactly the same phenomena seen everywhere else in the world; in Europe, it let to theories of "vapors", "humors" and so forth. These beliefs led to techniques such as bleeding, leeching and other "cures". Of course, Christianity had a major influence on the direction the theories followed in Europe as well, which is why illnesses were often attributed to sin.

In China, the same physical observations led to a different conclusion - the fundamental qi paradigm.

The Chinese observed that if you deprive someone of food, water or air for long enough, they will eventually die. This led to the belief that people died because air, food and water were major sources of some other kind of qi - eventually called &quotost-birth qi". The thinking went that depriving people of those sources of post-birth qi forced their bodies to use pre-birth qi until it was gone... resulting in death. The speed at which deprivation caused death was logically determined to be a direct indication of the concentration of post-birth qi available from the source. Ergo, air was a critical source for post-birth qi - from which came the emphasis and focus on cultivating qi through breathing techniques.

These observations resulted in a Chinese approach to longevity by cultivating post-birth qi and conserving pre-birth qi via breathing techniques, meditation, diet, herbs, acupuncture, sexual abstinence and so on. (Sexual abstinence practices came from the observation that men would "issue their essence" which supposedly contained part of their pre-birth qi. Abstinence supposedly conserved that irreplaceable supply.)

The primary goal was to conserve pre-birth qi by reducing its usage through methods of conservation, coupled with increased substitution of post-birth qi wherever possible. The belief was that while some use of pre-birth qi was unavoidable, the quantity required could be reduced - or even possibly eliminated.

Between this and the "initial" size of the store of pre-birth qi, the Chinese were able to explain why individuals had varying life-spans. When people who didn't practice qi conservation lived a long time, the Chinese rationalized that those individuals had great stores of pre-birth qi to begin with. The goal of many of the so-called Taoist Immortals was to discover a way to eliminate use of pre-birth qi entirely and to subsist on post-birth qi only - hence achieving "immortality".

All sorts of meditations and visualizations were created to "enhance" the efficiency and gathering of qi within the body; the Macrocosmic Orbit, the Microcosmic Orbit, and many forms of qigongs were developed for that purpose.

Later on, of course, the qi paradigm was used to explain illnesses (qi blockages or imbalances opening the body to harm), and so forth. Early acupuncture and herbal treatments (Traditional Chinese Medicine) all center around the idea of removing those blockages and/or imbalances so the body can naturally prevent illness and heal itself.

The idea of qi was a deeply profound and sophisticated concept developed at a time when better information was unavailable. The qi paradigm fit the then-observable phenomena perfectly because it was developed from said observable phenomena... and is therefore logical in spite of being in error.


I suppose you can think of the origin of chi as being akin to phrenology.
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