Qi
In traditional Chinese culture, qì (also chi or ch'i) is an active principle forming part of any living thing.[1][2][3] Qi is frequently translated as life energy, lifeforce, or energy flow.
Qi is the central underlying principle in traditional Chinese medicine and martial arts.
The literal translation of "qi" is breath, air, or gas.
Concepts similar to qi can be found in many cultures, for example, Prana in Vedantic philosophy,mana in Hawaiian culture, Lüng in Tibetan Buddhism, and Vital energy in Western philosophy.
Some elements of qi can be understood in the term energy when used by writers and practitioners of various esoteric forms of spirituality and alternative medicine.
Elements of the qi concept can also be found in popular culture, for example The Force in Star Wars.[4] Notions in the west of energeia, élan vital, or vitalism are purported to be similar.[5]
Etymology
The etymological explanation for the form of the qi logogram in the traditional form 氣 is “steam (气) rising from rice (米) as it cooks”. The earliest way of writing qi consisted of three wavy lines, used to represent one's breath seen on a cold day. A later version, 气, identical to the present-day simplified character, is a stylized version of those same three lines. For some reason, early writers of Chinese found it desirable to substitute for 气 a cognate character that originally meant to feed other people in a social context such as providing food for guests.[citation needed]Appropriately, that character combined the three-line qi character with the character for rice. So 气 plus 米 formed 氣, and that is the traditional character still used today (the oracle bone character, the seal script character and the modern "school standard" or Kǎi shū characters in the box at the right show three stages of the evolution of this character).[6]
Traditional Chinesecharacter qì, also used in Korean hanja. In Japanese kanji, this character was used until 1946, when it was changed to 気.
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Definition
References to concepts analogous to the qi taken to be the life-process or flow of energy that sustains living beings are found in many belief systems, especially in Asia. Philosophical conceptions of qi from the earliest records ofChinese philosophy (5th century BC) correspond to Western notions of humours and the ancient Hindu yogic concept of prana, meaning "life force" in Sanskrit. The earliest description of "force" in the current sense of vital energy is found in the Vedas of ancient India (circa 1500-1000BC),[7] and from the writings of the Chinese philosopher Mencius (4th century BC). Historically, it is the Huangdi Neijing translated as, The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Medicine (circa 2nd century BC) that is credited with first establishing the pathways through which qi circulates in the human body.[8][9]
| “ | Within the framework of Chinese thought, no notion may attain such a degree of abstraction from empirical data as to correspond perfectly to one of our modern universal concepts. Nevertheless, the term qi comes as close as possible to constituting a generic designation equivalent to our word "energy". When Chinese thinkers are unwilling or unable to fix the quality of an energetic phenomenon, the character qi (氣) inevitably flows from their brushes. | ” |
|---|---|---|
| —Manfred Porkert, [10] | —Manfred Porkert, [10] | —Manfred Porkert, [10] |
The ancient Chinese described it as "life-force". They believed qi permeated everything and linked their surroundings together. They likened it to the flow of energy around and through the body, forming a cohesive and functioning unit. By understanding its rhythm and flow they believed they could guide exercises and treatments to provide stability and longevity.
Although the concept of qi has been important within many Chinese philosophies, over the centuries the descriptions of qi have varied and have sometimes been in conflict. Until China came into contact with Western scientific and philosophical ideas, they had not categorized all things in terms of matter and energy. Qi and li (理, li, pattern) were 'fundamental' categories similar to matter and energy.
Hand written calligraphic Qi.
Fairly early on, some Chinese thinkers began to believe that there were different fractions of qi and that the coarsest and heaviest fractions of qi formed solids, lighter fractions formed liquids, and the most ethereal fractions were the "lifebreath" that animates living beings.[11]
Yuán qì is a notion of innate or pre-natal qi to distinguish it from acquired qi that a person may develop over the course of their lifetime.
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Pronunciation
Other spellings include in simplified Chinese: 气; traditional Chinese: 氣; Mandarin Pinyin: qì; Wade–Giles: ch'i; Jyutping: hei. Qi is pronounced /ˈtʃiː/ in English and [tɕʰî] in Standard Chinese; Korean: gi;Japanese: ki; Vietnamese: khí, pronounced [xǐ]) The approximate English pronunciation of qi, similar to "chee" in cheese, should also be distinguished from the pronunciation of the Greek letter chi, which has a hard c sound, like "c" in car, and a long i, similar to other Greek letters phi, psi, xi.