A prospective student/curiosity seeker walked in our school this afternoon with many questions for John about the internal martial arts.  They got into a detailed discussion about methods of generating chi and delivering jing.  The prospective student had studied martial arts on and off for about eleven years and tried to project the image of the ultimate taoist.  John explained to him the difference between generating chi in the lower dantien and delivering the earth's energy through proper physical structure and firing the ligaments and tendons.  This line of conversation seemed disturbing to the student who insisted that he was only interested in the peaceful aspects of energy development.  He also insisted that energy can be generated only through years of practice breathing.  This man was big on theory and less on practiced experience.

John then introduced to this gentleman the concept of a a piece of the pie or the whole pie.  To just learn the health building aspects of energy development is to just sample one piece of the pie.  To fully understand chi and its applications requires learning about all pieces of the pie - the meditative, the healing, the martial aspects.  Once you learn to generate, develop, control, store, and deliver this energy, you can use it to heal yourself or someone else or you can deliver this energy to an opponent.  To just learn about and participate in the martial aspects leads to an overabudance of yang energy and the potential to develop deviant chi.  To limit the learning and participation in the healing aspects brings a limited understanding of how to apply this energy. 

A full and balanced education allows to student to heal those they

hurt or heal those that have become hurt from a life of unbalanced emotion.  I'm sure the gentleman will return.  He had not finished his challenge and inquisition of John when a student arrived for a private lesson.  John will be only too happy to answer all his questions and demonstrate the internal energy deliver if the challenge becomes physical.

I received a comment about this chi or energy generation being achieved through meditation.  Practicing meditation or QiGong refines the energy; make it cleaner.  When you generate chi, you can use this chi for your own health benefit or the benefit of others. 

There is a difference between chi and jing.  Chi is like gasoline.  It is a fuel, but to use this fuel, you need an engine.  Jing is the engine that burns and directs the fuel.  Emanating chi is called an jing.  It is unfocused and undirected.  When you learn the martial applications of this energy, it is called ming jing.  You open the channels that allow this energy to flow in a directed, focused, explosive manner from the earth, through your body, and out the arms or hands.  This is what allows some masters to move objects with their energy without physical contact with the object. 

So, when you generate chi through meditation, you can emanate this chi from your body to someone else in a general manner.  They may or may not accept the chi.  If you have not learned to open the channels to transmit ming jing, you have not learned to focus and direct your energy, so you cannot focus and direct that energy for healing.  Learning the martial aspect of the energy flow teaches you to generate a more intense, directed and focus energy.  This allows you to open another person's energy channels to take pain away or bring healing energy into their body.