chi power or not skeptics please advize

voidx said:
If its heat, then bring in a small thermometer or other heat registering device. Have him focus his power on that and see if the temperature changes. That completely eliminates any human subjectivity. Although he has the easy out of his Chi not working on inanimate objects, which of course would be crap. Technically of Chi is energy and it can affect a human, then it should be able to affect an inanimate object. We're all just matter after all.
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Well, Radio Shack was a complete washout... all they have are some indoor-outdoor thermometer setups. Anyone have any ideas (or perhaps web sources?) that I can buy something from? Preferably cheap?

Alternatively, I live near Marist and Vassar Colleges... I don't know anyone in those institutions, but if someone else does and they have access to the kind of equipment that would make a test like this possible...
 
"The odds that you are fooling yourself are staggeringly high."

Not to criticize anybody, but shouldn't that be "staggeringly low"? If the odds of something are "staggeringly high", then that something is staggeringly unlikely, isn't it? Otherwise everybody would be betting on it... ;)

Nevermind.

I have some background in karate and aikido, myself. (Not very good at any of them, but still.) Being very much anti-woo, I found myself having to invent a layer of rationalisation between the teachings of my senseis and the real world as I understand it. It helps as a visualizing aid to think of "ki" flowing through my body in a certain way when learning to do a certain move. ("ki" is japanese for "chi", "qi" etc., btw. for the non-martial-artists out there. Same BS, slightly different wrapping).

Also, meditation and breathing techniques did seem to have some effect, like lowering heart rate and stuff, nothing supernatural.

I didn't actually have to really believe in som "energy" coming up from the earth or in from the universe to make a pretty convincing kick into thin air.

It seems to me that a buddhist 100 years ago in Asia would have a pretty consistent way of looking at the world around him. His explanations would make sense to him and be useful in real life for practical things like kicking somebody really hard. You can probably learn something about, say, kicking by thinking along similar lines.

On the other hand, I guess a kickboxer would kick just as hard without all that much "white light" or other mystical explanations. And the actual movement of her muscles, her balance and timing would be very similar for a similar type of kick.

I never really liked the attitude (read: macho image from martial arts magazines) of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, but after seeing the yellow bamboo video, they scored a few goodwill points. Seems like they are taking the obvious path of focusing less on the semireligious stuff and more on the actual fighting. And they are all for testing, which usually implies kicking insert other style butt. You miss out on some cool things from Japanese (and probably Chinese, Korean, wherever your style comes from) culture by taking this approach, though.

Hmmm... Should have some sort of conclusion... OK:

I can recommend martial arts to everybody (except violent psychos in my home town). It's fun and good exercise, just find a style that suits your personality. (Breaking tiles or going down in a split is not for everybody). But if the instructor is seemingly breaking the laws of physics, beware. He may deserve Randi's million, but the odds are staggeringly LOW that he is deluded or a fraud. And you don't want to waste your time and money on someone like that. :cool:
 
I went to a qi gong healer about my injured knee. I had heard something vague from two sources about the master radiating heat from his body. One person advised that I wear shorts and a halter top because of the warmth. He massaged me, which I hadn't expected, and I was surprised that his hands and the room were a normal temperature.

After he massaged the back of my knee while I was on my stomach and couldn't see him, I felt an intense heat in a small spot--like being touched by fire. This quickly cooled. Then the burning sensation was repeated several times in a row at slightly different spots.

When I turned onto my back, I made an effort to watch closely. He put something like a small napkin on my knee and opened and closed his hand repeatedly--four straight fingers against his straight thumb, as if projecting the shadow of, say, a barking animal on a wall--and the momentary intense heat occurred. He kept moving the napkin and repeating the gesture, always accompanied by this sensation. Sometimes I could bear the feeling easily. Other times I cried out, hoping he would control the temperature the next time, but my protests didn't have any effect. I never saw sparks.

After the treatment, I saw a red spot on my knee that I thought might be the result of the heat, though it soon went away. The receptionist told me the heat was either positive chi being sent to me or negative chi being removed.

My expectations didn't make me feel this heat, since I'd been expecting something different. How did he do it?
 
Sondra said:
When I turned onto my back, I made an effort to watch closely. He put something like a small napkin on my knee and opened and closed his hand repeatedly--four straight fingers against his straight thumb, as if projecting the shadow of, say, a barking animal on a wall--and the momentary intense heat occurred. He kept moving the napkin and repeating the gesture, always accompanied by this sensation. Sometimes I could bear the feeling easily. Other times I cried out, hoping he would control the temperature the next time, but my protests didn't have any effect. I never saw sparks.

After the treatment, I saw a red spot on my knee that I thought might be the result of the heat, though it soon went away. The receptionist told me the heat was either positive chi being sent to me or negative chi being removed.

My expectations didn't make me feel this heat, since I'd been expecting something different. How did he do it?
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It sounds pretty clearly like there was something concealed in the palm of his hand, something else concealed under the napkin, and that the pumping action of the concealed palm was connected to the heating of the hidden object.

But what precisely was going on, I can't guess. I'll only note that from a physics standpoint, the energy of the pumping motion you describe would be more than enough to heat a small bit of metal, given a suitable energy transfer mechanism.
 
Hi, Sondra, and welcome to the forums.

How he may have generated a feeling of heat is exactly the topic of this thread... and of course, right now, we only have speculation. Although if I can ever get a decent instrument to test with we might be able to get some kind of objective information one way or the other about this.

Regarding your experience, the mind is a powerful thing, indeed - and you were prepped to expect something of the sort before being "treated". That might easily have exaggerated any sensations you might have felt during the process. :)
 
Since the sharp burning sensation was so different from the room or the healer's body being warm, as I had expected, and since the feeling was so strong and unpleasant, I can't believe I exaggerated it in my mind. I'm just wondering how it's done. If it's fake, I'm thinking they're using this rather than something that would feel more like healing only because it's easy to do.
 
Sondra said:
Since the sharp burning sensation was so different from the room or the healer's body being warm, as I had expected, and since the feeling was so strong and unpleasant, I can't believe I exaggerated it in my mind. I'm just wondering how it's done. If it's fake, I'm thinking they're using this rather than something that would feel more like healing only because it's easy to do.
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When I repeat the action you described with my own hand, I can easily envision something concealed in the palm, up to about the size of a ping-pong ball, being pumped with this action.

But actually, judging from books on close-up magic I've seen, maybe I'm underestimating. Magicians can conceal entire playing cards in their palm.
 
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: chi power or not skeptics please advize

Beth Clarkson said:
Because I wish to know with more certainty than I currently have whether any of this stuff is "real" in an objective sense. I don't trust the psychics and I don't trust the skeptics - both sides have their biases. Hence, I run my own experiments to the best of my abilities.
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What's not to trust about the skeptics? They're not taking a position, only asking that proof be provided. There's no bias in that. The psychics are the ones making positive claims without any proof.
 
rppa said:
When I repeat the action you described with my own hand, I can easily envision something concealed in the palm, up to about the size of a ping-pong ball, being pumped with this action.

But actually, judging from books on close-up magic I've seen, maybe I'm underestimating. Magicians can conceal entire playing cards in their palm.
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Good point. I always look to the psych 'n physics answers... don't know much about conjuring, etc. One reason I love these forums is because there are people who DO know that stuff. :)
 
Sondra said:
I went to a qi gong healer about my injured knee. I had heard something vague from two sources about the master radiating heat from his body. One person advised that I wear shorts and a halter top because of the warmth. He massaged me, which I hadn't expected, and I was surprised that his hands and the room were a normal temperature.

After he massaged the back of my knee while I was on my stomach and couldn't see him, I felt an intense heat in a small spot--like being touched by fire. This quickly cooled. Then the burning sensation was repeated several times in a row at slightly different spots.
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I don't think he'd need to have anything concealed in his hand to produce a sensation you would describe as "burning". People are very open to suggestion, and after being warned to wear shorts and a halter top "because of the warmth" it wouldn't take much for you to believe thay him poking you with his fingernail was perceived as heat.

You can try it yourself. Get someone to face away from you with some exposed skin on their back. Make sure they can't see what you're about to do. Say to them "This is going to feel hot", then press your fingernail against their back and twist. Nine times out of ten they will interpret your fingernail, especially if it is sharp, as being hot.
 
Why does it always hurt a lot when the doctor says "well, this is gonna hurt a bit"?

Let me try to offer an alternate physical explanation.

My guess is that using our thoughts in meditative or visualization techniques, we are able to have physical effects in our bodies--just like we do when we decide to walk or perform some other physical activity. Now the thing is that these activities are unnatural or unusual to the functioning of the body. So they create disturbances similar to panic or anxiety attacks, to put it in psychological terms. These attacks may result in all sorts of hallucinations or delusions or visions.

If you want to feel heat in your legs, stay out in the freezing cold without shoes for a long time. First you feel cold—and no, this is not a suggestion. If this does not help, your nervous system adapts signaling you that it is hot. Eventually, you stop feeling your feet and frost byte settles in certain areas. So this may all be part of a survival mechanism controlled by the nervous system.

It is similar with hunger. After a couple of days without eating, the hunger goes away and you can last 60 days. Later on, the nervous system may again send signals, such as muscle spasms or twitching, and eventually hallucinations, sometimes of food like in the cartoons where you may see a person with a body of a roasted chicken (or a mirage in the case of water deprivation in desert situations). For some individuals involved in religious worship, they may even have mystical experiences. But this is again the nervous system telling them “You’re gonna die mother”.

Yet another example is sleep. If you stay horizonal for a long time like I've done watching TV, you may experience a distancing from the set and a trance-like sensation. Does this mean you are having an out-of-body experience? What may be happening is that the fact that you are in a sleeping position may be sending a signal to sleep. However, your desire to continue watching the set has the nervous system confused. So to satisfy both, it adapts by keeping you in a sleep-awake state, similar to those cases where you dream and in your dream you dream that you wake up but you're still dreaming. Waking up to a dream is possible because the dream may be so good that you really don't want to wake up; but it may be time to wake up because you may have had enough sleep or the alarm is about to ring. So the nervous system adapts by giving you both.

The ability of the body to radiate heat should not be so mysterious. Simply think of a fever. Isn’t that also a survival mechanism meant to fight threats to the body? We don’t find that to be so impressive!

One final note. Many of the sensations we experience may also be conditioned since birth. Meaning that we’ve basically learned what hot, cold, hunger, thirst is. Of course, there are physical requirements of the body. But the sensations themselves may be experiences we’re learned in time. They’ve become wired into our neurons and this may be how in times of danger, the nervous system will attempt many possibilities to keep us safe.
 
Figure this one out.

A true believer would believe he has passed a double-blind test [my thanks to Telos for this one], therefore winning the JREF challenge.
 
"People are very open to suggestion, and after being warned to wear shorts and a halter top "because of the warmth" it wouldn't take much for you to believe thay him poking you with his fingernail was perceived as heat."

I still say it was really hot. If I'd felt heat because of the suggestion that I would, it would have happened when he massaged me. In fact, during the massage, I wondered why I DIDN'T feel heat. I had no reason to conjure up a burning sensation, first, when I couldn't see where his hands were or later, when I saw that they were in the air, gesturing.
 
Wing Lam is good traditional kung fu/tai chi teacher out of Sunnyvale, CA. He also does a skippy imports business and sells books/video which may endorse what I call "woo chi".

Once when he came through Memphis I was there when someone asked him about chi being used to strike and such. Disclaimer: I knew from a student of his that he used to teach the parlor tricks like throwing nails into wood or bending staves with your neck. The thing is he regarded them as such. On people using chi to hit other people, he simply said it was hogwash. He basically related demonstrations as a play where person receiving the blow "plays their part". He said "you see some man hit his student and knock him down from across room, then you say "oh yeah, try that on me!", then he say, "no, your chi isnt flowing with mine."

Chi is kind of like "smurf" in plain kung fu. At one moment it might mean "the focus of your momentum" and at another it might mean the "air in your lungs".
 
brassicaman is back

Ok you guys pay the expenses for the master and mysef. Both masters of wing chun chi energy to come to the states and proove our chi power, under scientific conditions You guys just sort out two air faires from Taiwan to the USA a place to stay and we will come and proove to you that it exists. Or you guys come here pay your expenses with your equipment. The whole process can be filmed.

Lets stop the natter and get on with it. We say it exists you say it doesn't. so i challenge you.

Your choice !

Douglas Link
Brassicaman@yahoo.com
 
Lets stop the natter and get on with it. We say it exists you say it doesn't. so i challenge you.
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No, James Randi has challenged you (and all others with paranormal and pseudo-scientific claims).

Read up on the Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge, and fill out an application if you're interested.

And no, the foundation will not pay for you to travel to the USA.

By the way, it has been less than two years since your original post here, where you were doubting this guy's abilities.

Now you're a "master"? In less than two years?
 
brassicaman said:
Ok you guys pay the expenses for the master and mysef. Both masters of wing chun chi energy to come to the states and proove our chi power, under scientific conditions You guys just sort out two air faires from Taiwan to the USA a place to stay and we will come and proove to you that it exists. Or you guys come here pay your expenses with your equipment. The whole process can be filmed.

Lets stop the natter and get on with it. We say it exists you say it doesn't. so i challenge you.

Your choice !

Douglas Link
Brassicaman@yahoo.com
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Apply, and you can be tested by a local group.

Or I challenge you, to fly here using super chi power.

Your choice!
 
If you are genuine, Douglas, I am happy to help. You apply to be tested in Australia and I pay for your air fare (economy!) to get here.

ETA: if the "chi" you claim is the alleged "life force", not the "focus in yourself" of my karate days.
 
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Jmercer: how did your experiments go?
There are very sensitive thermometers available that you stick in your ear and give an immediate reading of your temperature. Should be good for the purpose, if you have not found anything better.
 
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