Mike Sigman Admin · August 19

Another Example of the Qi "Suit"

A lot of westerners don't understand how the talk about "qi" leads to demonstrations like the below
where someone is supported by spear points, but once you understand that the default discussion
about "qi" has to do with mind-manipulable tissues that can be conditioned/strengthened, it makes a lot
more sense.

Mike Sigman Some of the old South Asian religious displays with hooks through the skin were also
related to the mind-controlled qi.
Mike Sigman Here's a good article about some of the mind-body qi-related demos that were done in
Danzan Ryu:

http://www.danzan.com/HTML/ESSAYS/HSO%20Mind%20Body.pdf

Mike Sigman I was thinking about the hard-qi demos like the skin ones and most of those can be found
in most places in China ... where karate got its genesis. We see some karate styles doing hardened-body
demonstrations, etc., but it suddenly dawned on me that these fairly prevalent demonstrations aren't
seen that much in the western versions of southern-Chinese styles.

Anyone got any idea why you don't see these hard-qi demonstrations in, say, Southern Mantis, Wing
Chun, and so on? Now that I think about it, it seems to be a mysterious gap. I suspect that part of it has
to do with "you don't teach outsiders how to do the secret qigongs", but there could be other
reasons. Elias? Gerard? David? Others?

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David Blackley Austin Goh used to do this with some other Lee Shing Students

David Blackley Imagine this level of racism today!!

https://youtu.be/HyzQ2i9CnVs

YOUTUBE.COM

Just Amazing: Austin Goh 1980 Qi Gong Demonstration

Mike Sigman Ah, good. I feel better, to some extent, but I would have expected the western exponents
of WC to be doing more ... that's what caught my attention in both WC and Southern Mantis.

Watching Chu Shong Tin's demonstrations, I see indications that he supplemented his training with
qigongs, but I don't see that type of supplemental training in the westerners in his group. Usually, the
Chinese experts, IME, don't give over qigongs/neigongs easily.

Mike Loconti when I was young the Korean masters would push a bicycle wheel spoke through the
forearm and suspend a pail of water or rocks from it. no pain, no blood (looked for a vid with no results).
I used to do simple tricks like bending rebar or pushing a student back with a steel pipe between his
body and my throat- never had courage to do the spear. these things are based on breathing and
pressure. some used brine mixtures to thicken and toughen the skin
other tricks are based on skin surface integrity (guy on spears above) and bed of nails trick and are
maybe more physics than training, or a combo of both. people spent many years learning these things
and most aren't going to put in the time. plus modern magicians can duplicate all of them without MA
training. and we no longer have the travelling herb hawker who needed these tricks to gather a crowd

Mike Sigman David Blackley Yeah, the YouTube video is exactly what I meant. Some of what they're
doing can be explained with the word "conditioning" and it's difficult to say where "conditioning" leaves
off and qi-suit development starts. But at least I'm seeing some HK'ers doing the usual hard-qi demos.
What I was curious about is why we don't see more westerners showing indications of the breath-
related conditioning.

David Blackley My guess is that it went out of fashion in the 90s.

I’ve done a little but nothing significant.

Mike Sigman Generally speaking, most qigongs and neigongs are usually aimed at producing
elastic/tendon strength, supplementing movement strength and power, etc. The side-issue of hard-
qigong tough-body skills tends to be more of a southern Shaolin focus.

Mike Loconti Austin Goh vid isn't impressive except for the throat demos. those take real training and
skill. the rest are parlor tricks that are proper application of physics and the properties of the
equipment. the one where the guy sat on the platform on his throat was excellent. in 70's everyone
broke slabs of concrete with hammers, including my teacher. I did it with head and feet suspended
across 2 chairs

Vivek Ramakrishnan Mike Sigman, here is Ryan Parker doing hard style Kiko. Japanese translation of
Qigong I think. I think Tom Valesky kicked him in one of the videos as well. He might offer his thoughts.
Pity Ryan did not do so well in UFC otherwise Kiko would have caught on!

https://youtu.be/b1gj1GShMo0

YOUTUBE.COM

Okinawan Iron-Body Demonstration (Ryukyu Kiko…

Gerard Smith Mike this is likely a trick. Look at how the material doesn’t lay naturally on his calf. His
lower legs are weighted so his cog is close (slightly above) to the points touching his legs. Those points
sit in tough cups to protect his legs. The point touching his chest then does little more than keep him
from tilting forward. That why the point on his chest doesn’t appear to indent his chest as much as you
expect.

Mike Sigman Gerard, I've always thought that a lot of the hard-qi demonstrations were questionable
about whether they are honestly unusual indications of specialized tissue development/abilities or
whether they are the results of just plain conditioning. Even when watching what I know are legitimate
hard-qi demonstrations, the skeptic part of me wants to argue conditioning, physics, etc.

However, I've been around long enough now and seen enough real stuff up close that I see what they're
getting at and it's a viable supplement/augmentation to normal strength. The tissue development is the
basis of 6H movement and body-connection, also.

If we offhandedly grabbed a bunch of examples from YouTube, I guarantee that there will be some not-
true examples in there, but it becomes an argument of "supplement", not "replacement for normal
conditioning".

One of my teachers had these abilities, but I never saw him demonstrate them until one day at lunch a
couple of the guys were laughing at the spear-point demonstrations and my teacher said that yes, of
course some of them are fake, but not all of them are fake. He reached over and took one of my
chopsticks (I was using a fork); it was a stout bamboo, rounded chopstick with something of a milled
point to it. He turned around and faced the brick wall behind him and placed the chopstick butt against
the wall and put the point to his throat. The point was about halfway between the Adam's Apple and the
hollow of the throat and the chopstick itself was more or less horizontal to the ground.

He took a couple of breaths, pre-tensioned the chopstick into his throat and then with a grunt he
suddenly pulsed into the chopstick. The chopstick's center compressively failed into a mass of fibrous
tissues and folded. All of us watching were stunned. There was only a tiny reddish mark on my teacher's
throat and he stroked that away.

One of the guys asked him how he had done it and he said, basically, "Some people call it qi, but really it
is just that the body can be conditioned in ways most people don't understand". If I had attempted that
trick, I know that there would have been a chopstick protruding from the back of my neck.

While the trick was surprising in that it didn't puncture his skin, it was more surprising in another regard,
IMO. He was pressed up against the chopstick point tightly and not very far from the wall. Yet, he was
able to generate a sudden impulse force that made the chopstick fail compressively ... with no drawback
or windup. I was about 3 feet from him and I was watching closely and analytically. I know theoretically
how he was able to generate that amount of power, but I can't replicate it (nor would I want to; I dislike
"tricks for show").

I also understand the qi-tissues, which is the point of the thread. I take your meaning and I don't
disagree particularly, but I'd note that the tissue phenomenon is real and is something that anyone in
the CMA's should consider.

Gerard Smith Mike Sigman interesting.

Tin Tran On the other hand, without the tricks for show we wouldn’t have as many conversations, some
meaningful, on this forum and others :)

Mike Sigman Here's a brief excerpt of one of the Chen Village qigongs. Their qigongs are focused more
on building the suit for power, pressure, strength support, etc., than showing hard-qigong exhibitions.
Notice the dantian and also kidney-area swelling under pressure during reverse-breathing. The
dantian/kidneys is the center of the suit and main nexus of control, so the "pulling" of the qi-suit goes
out from there. In other words, just like in the very old texts, "the qi starts at the kidneys".

https://vimeo.com/285718925

CV qigong excerpt

VIMEO.COM

Daniel Poon I’d call that “normal” diaphragmatic breathing. “Normal” being the usual translation of
“shun”, and not normal in the colloquial sense at all 🙂.

Just like silk reeling, I’ve heard people divide diaphragmatic breathing into shun/ni, usually translated as
normal/reverse, but a more literal translation would be with/against. Since this is so confusing, maybe
sticking to the Chinese terms might be easier - shun huxi/ni huxi.

Mike Sigman Daniel Poon I'm not sure that I follow what you're saying, Daniel. He would increase the
pressure in the dantian/kidney area with reverse-breath, normally, but particularly the kidney area
breath. Which term are you applying to that type of breathing?

Daniel Poon This topic is cluttered up by lots of definitions of breathing and probably lots of poor
information and poor translations, so it would be good to get a baseline. This is how I understand it as a
non tai chi specific set of Chinese martial arts/qigong jargon terms (I welcome any other chinese
speakers to double check this) -

normal "shun" breathing - breath in & belly goes out. breath out & belly goes in.

reverse "ni" breathing - breath in & belly goes in. breath out & belly goes out.

Both techniques can be done well or badly. Hopefully that is the baseline.

Now, applied to tai chi, using tai chi specific muscle so , both type of breathing can be used to pressure
the dantien/kidney area. We can't see at what point this guy is breathing out, so its difficult to see
whether he is doing "shun" or "ni".

At this point, we depart into hypothesis based on my understanding, but if he was doing "ni", we'd see a
significantly different pattern in pressure.

Mike Sigman Thanks, Daniel. There is an element of the breathing that involves the "pulling in" of the
tissues and there is an element of the same breath that involves a concurrent pressure build-up, all so
that there is a generalized pressure storage in the area. It is important that the perineum area be a part
of that pressure storage and slightly tensile storage, but a neophyte can feel and understand that facet
of development for a while ... he gradually reaches it over a period of practice/development time.

In other words, some of the comments about the qi leaking out of the Hui Yin and similar remarks don't
make any sense at first, but they do later. If someone goes off the mark by neglecting the idea of
"reverse breathing", it's a time waster.

Daniel Poon Regardless of what specific breathing technique the guy is using, it is dantien driven. What
is illustrated well by this clip is that the posture of the spine, the coccyx, the kua, the chest etc is being
driven by the breathing. I.e. when done right, song kua, hang xiong, ba bei, etc are CAUSED by correct
breathing.

Devlin Glen Horinekhttps://www.facebook.com/MiamiWingChun/videos/241034846627879/

01:46

Miami Wing ChunLike Page

Mike Loconti seen him before. impressive

Jeffrey Smoley I have always wondered how you work up to being able to take those groin kicks. Having
been hit there a few times, it is not something I want to practice.

Mike Loconti I backed away from throat and groin strikes like this because I was always worried about
'30 yrs later'. I almost never wore a groin protector for sparring and comps and have been struck
probably 1000s of times but could never try just taking them like these vids.
our system didn't train to do this

Jeffrey Smoley Mike Loconti I still wear a groin protector. I'm married to a younger woman. :-)
Mike Sigman It's not that hard to raise the testicles into the groin. As a matter of fact, every time a male
does a reverse breath, it will pull the testicles upward. It's only a slight extension of the process to hide
the testicles up in the pubic area.

Jeffrey Smoley There is a difference between cover & concealment.

Mike Loconti it used to be a fairly common practice but never interested me. so many other useful
things to learn

Jeffrey Smoley Mike Loconti The self testing turned me off.

Mike Sigman Lifting that much weight was difficult for me.;)

Mike Loconti yeah Mike, that is a problem when you really sink your qi🤔

Daniel Poon Always struck me that the throat/spear thing was based on the fact that the throat is a
major nexus for muscle tendon power, and hence was a target for developed. The spear breaking demo
is a perversion of this, and a bit dumb.

Jeffrey Smoley Also, most real spears I have had in my hands have a much less flexible shaft. I also have
doubts as to the sharpness of the points.

Mike Loconti the magic is always in the setup. but you still need the development to do the trick

Daniel Poon “Perversion” was a bit strong. “Distraction” is more accurate.

Mike Loconti these tricks bring students into the schools. not good for much else

Yicheng Li The spear to the neck is mainly about bending the spear so the point is pointing sideways into
the throat rather than straight in. The trick is the setup and in taking the spear off. IMO a lot of it is just
straight flexing the muscles of the neck, and 99% of people who exercise regularly can probably do it
with maybe 2 hours of training. Most weight lifters can probably do it right off the bat.

Mike Sigman Daniel, I was taught how to train the throat (and the rest of the body) and that's the sort of
data that has allowed me to extrapolate how the qi-tissues are generally trained, whether "internal" or
"external". Two comments come to mind:

First, the skin can be conditioned using the breathing methods we talk about here and, over time, the
skin and superficial fascia can become quite strong. It just takes a while, once you know how.

Secondly, the skin and qi-tissues involve the underlying musculature, as well. I was taught, for instance,
that I couldn't really "harden" the areas of the body very well if there was no muscle directly below. For
instance, the skin over the sternum can't be "hardened" in the iron-shirt sense because there's no
muscle above the sternum (not much, anyway).

Mike Loconti you can train the tissues with most of the breathing vids on youtube- qigongs or neigongs.
I usually only did 2 exercises. takes a couple of years to develop. agree with the statement about
needing underlying muscle to develop a body part

Daniel Poon Once apon a time, I could do the spear trick. The real benefit of the training is that you
condition the deep muscles that flex the head forward. It’s easy for these to get weak, resulting in a
compensation of the sternocleidomastoids end up taking all the load, contributing a shear stress,
resulting in neck pain.

Yicheng Li Also helps if the guy is 90 lbs and the spears aren't sharp.

Mike Sigman BTW, generally speaking, the qi-tissue topics in this thread are, of course, about the
functional qi, the tissues through which the ancient Chinese assume "qi" flowed. A lot of the other
threads are about pushing, grounding forces, and so on using "jin". Jin is putatively ascribed with being
the palpable effect of a qi-path that is arranged by the qi-tissues and the "mind".

So this thread is about Qi. The other threads are about Jin. One big question in my mind is whether it is
really these same qi-tissues that do the force-manipulating that results in Jin. It's an interesting
question.

Mike Loconti my initial thought is that 'basic' jin can work without building the tissues or even
understanding connections. skills that intercept, change angles or apply torque need tissue
development and 'functional qi' which include mind direction