Ask any question about Qigong or Yoga.

[Mind_Bender]

If I move an object with psychokinesis, you just see the object move; however, you don't observe qi doing it, so, from this, you can only observe it moving in correlation with my intention and its physical state and information changing.

Seeing energy is an ability to specific people, and the most experienced of them I have worked with even mention that what it is to 'see' energy is usually just a projection of ones own mind to understand the feeling they are getting from their healing or other energetic work. Some books and instructors claim they can see qi, but once again, that is for that specific person and they are usually very clear about its specificity among individuals and mention it is not at all an important aspect to qigong.

I know this is just a sentence out of the last few pages of the argument, but it is a major point. Qi is not something you see, it is something you experience, a sensation, a visceral feeling. Qi is the essence, the motivation, and the transmutation of states of matter or emotion into something better or at least different in a metaphysical sense. To a Daoist Wizard, psi, magic, divination, health, and vitality all stem from qi, because there are very many different types of qi, types non-native speakers will never know, at least not in words.

Colors that are associated with the emotions and spirits of the organs are simply tools to use for visualization and not at all meant to be taken literally in the way that you are describing. Those that believe qi is in and around all things make it very clear that it is experienced different for different people. What you are referring to as psychokinesis and the manipulation of information the qigong theorists and practitioners call Shen Gong, or Mind Work, and it is due to Yin Yang theory - yin pulls an object toward you, yang pushes an object away, but you do not see yin or yang, they are just words to describe principles and actions.

Certain qigong (especially magically oriented-) sects believe the spirits they call upon are not actually seen in the way that is presented in myth and scripture, but pictorial concepts to understand spiritual ideals (especially among Buddhist Sects); they are simply metaphors to understand what they are conjuring. Same with the organs as mentioned earlier - the heart is red and red is associated with anger or passion; notice how people that are angry turn red because their heart is pounding. White is associated with the lungs; notice how people that have a hard time breathing are pale or whitish. Yellow is the color of the spleen and stomach; notice how people that are nauseous have a yellow complexion. These colors are not associated with qi in the psychic sense but associated with the change of color to the skin due to certain organs being out of balance.

[Mind_Bender]

You may not be using the terminology I subscribe to, but that is how it may be defined by qigong practitioners that perform psychokinetc feats. What you are describing is in terms of your understanding, education, and experience - you use scientific lingo where qigong practitioners, such as myself, understand the same process in different terms.

Psychokinesis is the moving of objects without physical interaction in its simplest definition, and you use words such as 'entropy' and 'information' and although they are not the same, a qigong practitioner would say one is disrupting the qi of the object and utilizing yi (intention, a form of information) to move said object.

You are, by the very action of your psychokinetic feat utilizing the principles of yin and yang in a qigong perspective even though you may not be intending push, pull, up, down, or static levitation, the object responds to such an intention by the principles of yin, yang, and even dao (creating form out of formlessness). A 'psion' may say they are using future selection by pulling from the future a levitating object that is before grounded. All good and well. A Daoist may say they are reaching into the Dao, and by the principles of yin and yang, they are using a yin energy to dissipate the yang energy by creating a levitating effect. That is not the best example because qigong doesn't have a term, as far as I know, for future selection, but they do understand the mechanics of telepathic and psychokinetic feats through qigong terms, where you and other scientifically based 'psions' utilize scientific terms. Whatever terms you use you are still doing the same thing - moving an object without physically touching it.

[Mind_Bender]

I get what you are saying, but you do not have to emanate anything in qigong, although that is a popular idea among practitioners, you are simply using the qi of the object by the awareness of the greater aspect of qi and not emanating any force at all. It is like a communication between two aspects of qi and not a projection of energy as is popular.

To be frank, I think telling me qi moves an object when I use psychokinesis is like telling me spirits in a person's body are making them sick and that when they get better due to medicine, you are really casting out the evil spirits. You could say evil spirits are like germs, so when you get antibiotics, they are being exorcised; however, that is literally and not mechanically happening. In order to treat people, you can't literally use those models interchangeably even though they tackle the same issue. Some people could even get better for some reason or another when people go with the evil spirits model; however, the point is that more people get better faster if we go with the germ theory.

The problem with this argument is germ theory is a tried and true practice of medicine; 90% of the time if you have the right medicine you have a cure or aid for the illness, and the spirit model has been proven to be ineffective, and even dangerous, more so than not (mind over medicine seems to be legitimate, but nowhere near on the same level as antibiotics). On the part of psychokinesis and this debate of terms neither your or my definition of psychokinesis is a tried and true practice, merely opinions based upon our own experience of said phenomena.

[Steve]

In my experience, people who use paradigms for psychokinesis grounded in the idea that it manipulates statistical properties can do more.

mind over medicine seems to be legitimate, but nowhere near on the same level as antibiotics

It's not about which can do more. It's about which can do anything at all. We don't discount Karate just because Shaolin Kung Fu is supposed to be better.

For example, there is an idea, within Qiqong, that qi somehow dissipates and/or diffuses.

I get what you are saying, but you do not have to emanate anything in qigong
...
and not emanating any force at all.

Did you even read his reply? In fact, where did this idea of emanating force come from between you and Mind_Bender? Oh yeah, you:

No, metaphorically, what you are describing is more like emanating a force

Mind_Bender, on the other hand, has been trying to distance himself from this viewpoint the whole time, where he starts off with this:

Seeing energy is an ability to specific people, and the most experienced of them I have worked with even mention that what it is to 'see' energy is usually just a projection of ones own mind to understand the feeling they are getting from their healing or other energetic work. Some books and instructors claim they can see qi, but once again, that is for that specific person and they are usually very clear about its specificity among individuals and mention it is not at all an important aspect to qigong.

----------------------

From here, I'm talking for myself: My arguments are distinctly different from Mind_Bender's and I'm pulling back to the qi emanation methodology.

Dissipation is the result of entropic forces(conceptually), and in manipulating statistical properties like it does, it seems that the inverse is true with psychokinesis. In other words, a person operating under the assumption qi dissipates where qi does whatever has a limitation that a person utilizing a model like what I proposed does not; therefore, they can do more.

Maybe. Then again that brings to mind a very similarily stupid statement that someone once told me. "The mind always gives out before the body does."

Background on that quote: It was given to me by a guy who used to do cage fighting, and was about 350 lbs of pure fucking muscle, and he was talking about physical exercise. I witnessed some of his feats of strength first-hand and the one time that he took hold of my arm to show me something, I could feel that his muscles were properly developed for martial arts (and fighting in general) and not merely for show.

So *for him*, that statement might actually be true. For *me* and my *experiences* (not "model", not "paradigm"), I learned how to push past the mental limit and go entirely until the physical limit where the body just could not continue exercising anymore. I know for a fact that the body can give out before the mind does, in contradiction to his statement. I also know for a fact, having watched a lot of other people exercise, that they only push until they give up mentally, just as the guy intended to say.

Take that back to metaphysics: I can tell you from *experiences*, not "model", not "paradigm", that qi can dissipate. "This has been my experience" so don't even try to tell me I'm wrong. I say "can" rather than "does" very specifically because it doesn't always (and one goal of qi gong is to develop one's self enough that they can reduce it to the point where it depletes so little that a person could say that it practically does not deplete); particularly if I'm doing internal work, there is no dissipation, for example. In addition to energy practices, I also practice psychic mental practices that go outside my body and others that stay inside my body; when I push outside my body/mind then I fatigue and deplete energy, but if I work entirely within my own body/mind then I do neither. It's very interesting to see the different ways that different sets of mechanics work.

(On the flip side, qigong also has a set of practices for drawing in energy, so the dissipation is part of a complete model that includes both intake and exhaust, and thus the theoretical limitation imposed purely by the possibility of dissipation can be mitigated to some degree.)

[EDIT]
Oh right, forgot to add this part. So the meat wall that I mentioned before, he can do a FUCK LOAD more exercise than I can. That's a given. We, as a race of humans, acknowledge that there are differences between people's current states and situations that define their personal limits of exercise. For some reason, however, we get stupid when we start talking about magical psychic stuff and start acting like it's all about the paradigm, and that "everyone should be equally capable of everything so long as they follow the methodologies of the paradigm properly", and that "the major differences between what I can do versus what Joe-Blow over there can do is because of the paradigms that we use, and not because of our own personal current state and situation". That's stupid. Just wanted to make sure that gets mentioned, as it tends to be assumed quite a lot.
[/EDIT]

The problem with Qiqong is that it kind of takes for granted intuitive things. Vapor dissipates, rivers flow, so on and so forth, so a lot of the dynamics are based on metaphors with nature, but, in actuality, psychokinesis does not fit those metaphors which is why you can bend those rules and play around with nature in all sorts of exotic ways. Via psychokinesis, for example, vapor need not dissipate in that the very statistics which say it will are bent per my will where what allows me to do that won't dissipate, either. In this, there is really no concrete idea of flow, either. I'm not limited to those ideas.

No, the problem being that advanced qigong does not limit itself so much either. Advanced qi gong can hold in the vapour as well as your statistically model. Largely, you're arguing unskilled beginner qigong versus advanced psychic statistical models (I can gaurantee, having talked to quite a few beginners in psionics, that they cannot stop vapour from dissipating, regardless of whether they think about it statistically or using some other paradigm) and that's an unfair comparison.

I do; however, perform yoga

The thing analogous to qi, in this sense, would be my experience where the breath merely aids awareness of my experience.

Um, you are aware the qigong and yoga are not the same thing, right? There's similarities, but you're aware they're distinctly different sets of practices, right?

I don't think qi is in the air when I focus on my breathing in yoga

GOOD! You shouldn't. You should be breathing in pranayama.

rather, I focus on my breathing because it is something easy to follow rhythmically - like a metronome it sets a pace. I combine it with my metaphysical practices just because it gets me used to practicing doing it while moving where I can focus on what I am doing

And a lot of people do it that way. It's one of the major camps regarding the theories of whether energy work is real or whether it's metaphorical; if you treat it as metaphorical, then the breathing techniques are for the benefit of the regulation of your mind and body, rather than having anything to do with your energy work.


Going back a couple of posts, I have to comment on this:

It sounds similar to you because the end result is the same where you are assuming that it moves due to something being emanated, because that is what is intuitive to you. We don't observe this, and because we don't observe this, I am not taking it for granted. What we do observe, on the other hand, is changes in the amount of information ones has in terms of the statistical nature of kinematical interactions.

So once again, between you and Mind_Bender, you, Rayn, were the one who proposed the emanating force and then decided to argue against it. But from my point of view, I can emanate it as a force. As for your comment of "We don't observe this", that's incorrect. There are a number of people who have observed it as being something akin to an emanating force. A number of people who actually use it as such to affect other people in very plainly obvious ways, I need add, so not merely arm-chair qigongers or new-age fluffers. To be crystal clear on this: I. Observe. The. Energy. Being. Emanated. And. It's. Affects. On. Other. People.

On the other hand, nobody can actually observe a statistical manipulation of anything. Statistics are the post-experiment mathematical analysis of a series of events; statistics cannot be observed during the experiments themselves. And this needs to be said as well: Statistics is not psychic/magical type of metaphysical (it is the philosophical type of metaphysical, where concepts are non-physical) and therefore cannot be observed psychically. Thus, you cannot compare the theoretical mechanics of qigong/energy-emanation to a mathematical analysis of the aftermath of a series of dice throws and say that one is psychically valid and the other not. In other words, you are taking your "psychic statistics" for granted, even though you don't observe it.

I do; however, perform yoga, which is what this thread is about, so I will attempt to bring it back on topic.

Yoga isn't quite what this thread is about: it's asking any questions about yoga or qi gong. So, if you want to bring it back on topic: do you have any questions about qi gong or yoga for Koujiryuu to answer?

~Steve

[Steve]

Thanks for once again specifying the very specific and narrow words you are using. That's very helpful in communications.

I am stating that information is manipulated, and that can be observed.

So... how do you observe it? If I say I can observe my qi leaving my body and affecting people and objects, people ask how I observe it and expect an answer that's a little more detailed than "well, the person/object moves in response to my intentions", because that kind of vague answer doesn't actually satisfy the condition for observation of the mechanics involved. So, I'm really curious as to how you directly observe an informational or statistical manipulation, in much the same way that I can feel (observation through a sense of feel, though not to be confused with the sense of physical touch) the qi interacting with things outside myself and get feedback from it (which is often then also confirmed via my normal physical senses).

If we have a Random Event Generator(REG) or Random Number Generator, this means that there is low certainty in the events or the numbers. That is called shannon entropy/von neumann entropy. If I have a person attempt to get say a pattern of 6's consistently, that is increasing the certainty of that event which decreases the entropy, because if they successful create a pattern of consistent things per their intention, they are increasing the amount of information. That is called micropsychokinesis, and the average person can do this, so that bit about it being an unfair comparison due to beginner's not doing this is unwarranted.

Uh, no, see you specifically compared qigong and statistical manipulation in terms of holding in a cloud of vapour. That's quite different than a low-level statistical manipulation of an RNG (and I say low level because the average person pulled off the street makes so little of an impact that the numbers have to be run through the mathematical analysis in order to determine whether there was a deviation from random change. The change is so minute that it cannot be observed easily, like manipulating a vapour of gas could be).

It is so unwarranted in that a beginner exercise on this site is manipulating a candle flame. That operates on what I said, for fire is simply heated gas and in playing around with it, one is doing the same thing that goes into manipulation of diffusion of gas.

Well, if we're going to go with that, then you're in luck! Qi Gong beginners can manipulate a candle flame too, after a bit of practice of course. I personally can't cause I suck shit at manipulating a flame for some reason; the only time I've ever been able to pull it off was after my friend "prepped" a candle for me by first manipulating it himself (which leads me to believe, though I could be wrong as I have only a single event to base this on, there's some sort of threshold to beat in order to manipulate the flame).

Although... technically, being able to bend, enlongate, or shrink a candle flame doesn't necessitate that one hold in the vapours to prevent them from dissipating. Assuming that the vapours continue their flow from the candle to the environment, the manipulation would be upon the moving stream rather than the exact particles that make up the gases at any specific instant.

Entropy is what causes things to dissipate, and the ordering of the random states is done without increasing entropy, so this means we can observe it not being impacted by entropy in that information is added to the system instead of being lost.

So you're observing ... the outcome, or the indirect effects of your manipulations?

So, if qi dissipates and what does psychokinesis does not, this means that proposing qi as a causal mechanic with an entropic property is not sufficient to fit what we see.

Well, that would be true. Assuming 1) that qi inherently dissipates when a qi gong practitioner manipulates the candle flame (as opposed to the possibility that I, and others like me, just suck at retaining my qi, for instance), and 2) that your method doesn't dissipate any energy (but since you don't believe in the energy model, and you purposefully don't even bother to look for it, as you've told me before, then your best guess as to it theoretically not dissipating is that you don't notice that you get tired as you practice?), and 3) that we ignore the fact that the candle continues it's own entropic state of dissipation even as it's being manipulated by either a qigonger or a psionic practitioner (I mean, after all, there's a guy who goes up and down the road every time it lightly snows and uses a snow blower to clean the side walks. Pretty sure that his machine is very dissipative, and yet it moves the snow anyway! Wonderful thing, technology, even when it's not very efficient).

In other words, even if I can blast a whole bunch of qi at something, with that qi dissipating at extreme rates, and yet it allows me to move the object, then that's a fit for telekinesis even if it's a very inefficient methodology. So, are you complaining that qi dissipation model doesn't work at all, or that the qi dissipation model is just really inefficient?

The problem people have is applying that to macropsychokinesis; however, what makes it so that gas diffuses in a room or dye in a liquid, for example, are entropic properties, so these properties are analogous to what we have with micropsychokinesis.

Nnnnno.

The "entropic properties" of gases and liquids are such that their molecular bonds aren't enough to hold them together against the repulsive forces that cause them to spread out. Psychokinesis is not even on the same page as that kind of physical model, as psychokinesis is presenting an external force to what would otherwise be the normal natural forces, in an attempt at manipulating how the various forces affect one another in order to establish an outcome in accordance with the will/intention of the person adding that new force. Even if you want to claim it's informational or statistical, the pure physics of the matter would require an additional force to start manipulating the forces currently present; to be more clear, even if you try and say that you're only affecting the forces already present by manipulating the information of them, that has to be done by adding a new force that edits the information. This isn't a question: even if you were to use a model similar to the concept of entanglement, whereby there is (so far) no direct link between the object being manipulated (the molecules) and the object doing the manipulations (you) and that you are simply editing information in your own mind and then psychically linking it to the molecules such that they then change their behaviour, you are still adding a new force by means of your psychic influence.

EVEN THEN. The dumb forces of attraction versus repulsion of the various molecules are quite different from the seemingly intelligent (or at least, intelligently controlled, or complexly manipulated) forces acting to modify the way things normally play out; the intelligently controlled force that you add to the mix is on a-whole-nother level from the dumb forces of nature. Much like how a cup sitting on a counter-top would normally continue doing exactly that until you add another force by picking it up.

Now, the force you're adding may not be dissipative, so if that's the only distinction you want to make, then I'll agree to that flat out.

I am not taking this for granted; rather, this is something you are observing when you look at micropsychokinesis done on REG's.

So, back to this observation. You're talking about after the fact, right? When you've run the experiment and now you're looking at the numbers and comparing them to what was expected through pure randomness, and noting the differences, and so assuming your experiment worked the way you thought it did, right?

Information is pretty much an ensemble of probable states where you can very much so observe whether or not information is added to the system in terms of shannon/von neumann entropy entropy due to the frequency of entities that show up.

I'll take that as a yes to my previous question.

In this, we can conclude that qi is not a causal mechanic for psi, if what you said about it dissipating holds true; however, there is not really any testable way we can know qi exists, so I am apt to say it does not exists, entirely.

Do you mean to say that we don't have any sensors that can detect the presence of qi, as a causal mechanic that is distinct from pure intention alone? In that case, I'd agree, except for all the people who can perceive the existence of qi as a distinct thing. Hell, 5000 years of Chinese History does it so well that they even have other terms and forces that they deal with too, and have methods for converting one thing to another. And if I recall correctly, Yoga has somewhat similar concepts with regards to pranayama and kundalini.

You know what, this looks like a job for Being On Topic! Koujiryuu: Does Yoga have beliefs set around multiple forms of "energy", much like qi gong has qi and jing and whatnot, and also practices for changing one form of energy to another, much like converting qi into jing? (haha, funny google. "qigong jin" turns up the first two results for Qui-Gon Jinn. Had to look up which spelling jin/jing was correct, as I keep forgetting).

You'll probably raise the objection that we do not know if the net entropy is increased so entropy could be in play.

Kind of. I was going to mention that for the information to be added to a closed system, such as a RNG that's set to produce 100,000 numbers, then some other information has to be shunted to make way for the addition (though, one could say that they're not adding information and instead are just altering information already present). But then I thought better of it because it doesn't really matter anyway. In a more cosmic sense, I don't much care because the Earth is not a closed system, and we still have no verification as to whether the universe itself is a closed system. And then there's the psi theories about the possibility of actually being able to create energy out of nothing, and then there's the real world physics possibility of energy potentially being able to be created out of seemingly nothing. So I don't much care unless we're talking about a closed system, and even them I don't much care if there's no real point to be made. And I really don't see the point to the entropy discussion.

In other words, we should see disorder somewhere as a result. We don't see this with psychokinesis

If psychokinesis were to involve disorder, what would it look like, such that you'd know it when you see it?

Or, a more pertinant objection would be that disorder and entropy happen naturally according to the dumb laws of nature/physics. When you intelligently apply forces, you can (but don't have to) reduce disorder towards order. So regardless of whether you use qigong or psi, if the object moves then the object moves, and if you're unable to measure how much "qi" dissipates (because psychology tells us that involved person's reports on themselves and their own experiences are not well matched for proper scientific experiments and can thus be discounted entirely during a proper scientific experiment), then what's the practical distinction between the person who does psychokinesis by one method versus by the other method? So far, the only distinction is in the self-reporting of the people who do it, right?

All of the stuff you said you experience, I do not. I experience none of the limitations you do, period, so based on my experience, I am not likely to agree with you. Not only do I not experience, people I teach and regularly come in contact with do not, either. The people who I run into who experience this tend to fall within the same set of practices, cultural background, and paradigms, so I am likely to think it is a cultural expectation that frames the experience.

There we go. There's the proper answer. It's not that we're "wrong", it's that we follow a different set of methodologies that lead to a different set of experiences. We might be entirely limiting ourselves purely by psychology and not by actual mechanics, or we might be using a set of mechanics that are distinct from what you're using and thereby the mechanics themselves are limiting. Who knows? Oh right, I do, because I use multiple methodologies and have confirmed through plenty enough personal experiences that internal practices don't tend to dissipate "energy", and external practices do tend to dissipate "energy". (I use the terms "tend to" because it's not a perfect correlation)

For instance, if I might guess, I would assume (based on your descriptions of your experiences) that you do most of your psychic stuff within your own head: is that correct, Rayn?
_____
As an example of what I mean, when I was in post-secondary was when thoughts suddenly started popping into my head and I'd blurt them out (which was uncharacteristic of me), and various people would constantly reply to these events with "wow, I was just thinking that" or "Holy crap, that is literally, word for word, what I was just about to say" over and over again, at least 4 or 5 times a day, every day. At first I didn't realize where these thoughts were coming from, but I certainly wasn't operating outside of my own mind in order to reach out and grab the information. From there I started trying out a set of things that allowed me to start doing internal psychic stuff that was purely mentally based and which still worked without me having to reach out and touch upon the world around me. Unfortunately, bad shit happened in my life at about that time and it took several years before I started practicing again, and I've been mostly keeping my practices to lower level stuff.
_____
To give another example, of external stuff that I used to do, the first time I reached out to psychically influence someone else, mentally: I was on the school bus in high school. Plenty of kids on the bus, but one in particular was sitting two or three rows ahead of me and staring straight ahead. Perfect target. I tried mentally shouting at him; no response. I tried mentally whispering to him; no response. I tried a couple of other things like poking him and pinging him; no response.

I then used a combination of my energy and my mind to create a tunnel from me to him, connecting my mind to his (watch Donnie Darko if you want a fairly good representation of what I mean. And for anyone who might be wondering, I finished highschool before Donnie Darko came out, so I was not basing my attempt on that); with this, I tried some of the same things as before; still no responses. Then, I created another tunnel from him to outside and a little ahead of the bus, then yelled from my end to him that there's a hot chick down there where the second tunnel ended: no response. I then pushed a bit of my mind and energy through to the end of the second tunnel and yelled back to him "HOT CHICK" (with a mental concept of a hot chick) and his head *finally*, instantly, snapped over to look. Of course, there was nothing there so he moved his head back to staring straight ahead. I then did the exact same thing, no change in what I did; he looked again. I think it was the fifth or sixth time that I did the exact same thing, when I was starting to feel mentally exhausted, that he finally stopped looking each time I yelled it. It was external, it was fatiguing, it worked. I wouldn't say that I dissipated qi from this specific experiment, however, because of the way I set things up and how I mostly used mental stuff rather than what I call qi stuff.
_____
A time that I did an external qi thing and it did dissipate energy: working as a busboy at a restaurant. We had a new bartender, farm boy. He was mad one night, though I have no idea why, but I was happy enough. It was end of night and I was cleaning up and as I was walking into the back room, I looked over at him and he looked back at me, and his look caused my body to start shaking slightly; not sure if you're familiar with the concept, and I forget any of the names people tend to give it, but with that look he directed whatever you want to call it, whether intention or qi or energy or whatever, at me and disrupted my internal system a little. It was enough to make my body shake, but not my spirit/soul/center/"energy body"/whatever-you-want-to-call-that. I went into the back, calmed my nerves and then went out and continued working. He did it again; we locked eyes and he caused my body to start shaking a little. Now I was a little bit perturbed as I don't like when people do that kind of stuff to me. So the next time we locked eyes, I sent a wave of energy right back at him; he looked down, his shoulders slumped, and he relaxed a little. I continued working, and he softened the gaze in his eyes because the next time we locked eyes it didn't happen. Me sending that wave at him, depleted some of my reserves.
_____
[EDIT]
And another example of a thing I did recently that was mentally based and didn't dissipate energy: I was talking to a guy at work, he mentioned he lost his favourite pen somewhere on a specific floor. I like the guy so I wanted to help him out a little; I used a psychic ability to determine what I describe as "perceiving pure facts about reality", as opposed to telepathic thoughts from other people, and determined that his pen was in a garbage can on the floor. I casually suggested to check a few places and reinforced that he check the garbage cans. He went back to look for it, and lo and behold found it in a garbage can. I specify this example as opposed to losing something in my room/house and psychically looking for it, because a person could claim I subconsciously remembered where I placed the thing (and sometimes I do), so that wouldn't be a very strong example. Even the times when I put something somewhere, and someone else moves it, another person could claim this would be an example of telepathy rather than gaining access to pure factual knowledge, as they claim I might be tapping into the mind of the other person who moved the object.

Are there any types of examples of experiences from me that you'd rather hear about, than the random ones I spew up?
[/EDIT]

Look, I do not believe in qi, I do not believe in energy bodies, I do not believe in energy systems, I do not believe that psi has anything to do with qi, and you have not given me sufficient evidence to change it.

I haven't given you any evidence. I've given you arguments. Even the above examples that I've just included here aren't really evidence, but anecdotals stories, wherein I could be coming to an incorrect conclusion about the underlying mechanics of the events (though, I've made sure that's an unlikely situation by performing similar feats over and over and over again, and trying out slightly different things, and observing what happens as a result, and forming my views and beliefs from there, rather than making assumptions beforehand and tailoring my attempts based on assumptions)

I think this has been beaten to death, though, so that is all I will say on this. To be frank, I do not believe in the vast majority of things on this site and the mystical/religious overtones turn me off...

Well, to each their own. Quite a few people here have their own experiences which they discuss in their own terminology, when they do speak up about it. It makes for quite the open set of systems that different people can learn by, as opposed to a single dogmatic system which everyone is "expected" to learn.

...Yoga is in the title"...Ask any question about...or Yoga..."

Let's just fill that back in, shall we: "Ask any question about Qigong or Yoga."

It doesn't say: "Ask any question about Qigong, or discuss anything about Yoga." So the primary concept is asking Koujiryuu questions, which we've been failing to do so we (not just you and I, but others as well) have been off topic for a while now.

~Steve

[Kemetin]

Well, that escalated quickly.

I'm not going to try and play catch up with the debate, or pick up where I left off, since I think I've said most of what I can be bothered saying on the subject. But I would like to make two quick points.

Firstly, what I said regarding you not commenting on things you don't have experience with was specifically in reference to qi gong, not to the broader field of metaphysics in general.

Secondly, you speak a lot about manipulating probability and information, entropy etc. within your own practice, but you don't actually explain how you believe this takes place. For there to be a transfer of information taking place, wouldn't a medium of some sort be required?

[Kemetin]

Well it's an interesting perspective, but personally it feels like a rather excessive extrapolation from the extremely limited set of results and even more limited set of theories produced by parapsychology. Even though it has finally started to tighten it's standards and widen it's horizons a bit in the last two decades, I just don't think parapsychology as science says enough to be able to put forward that kind of hypothesis as confidently as you do, and it won't until the field deals with it's many and varied shortcomings internally and then forces the scientific mainstream to acknowledge it as a valid area of study.

I also think you're writing off models such as Qi prematurely, and might find yourself surprised at the ease with which you can reach an amalgamation of some sort with your current views if you took the time to study them or experiment with related practices - if nothing else, it's hardly in the spirit of the scientific method to write something off just because it doesn't fit with your preconceived notions of how things work.

I also think you might be lead down some interesting paths if you took a bit of a turn with your train of thought and applied your inductive method to the results attained by practitioners using Qi theory or similar models compared to the results attained by practitioners who choose to reject them.

But that's just my 2c.

[Steve]

As requested, new thread: http://forums.vsociety.net/index.php/topic,23641.0.html

~Steve

[Kemetin]

I know I'm resurrecting an older thread, but I came across this video which really neatly articulates a lot of what was being debated here, from a figure who generally receives a fair amount of respect and authority in the Daoist community, so I thought I'd post a link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHaeO2hl4SY

It's a decent length at 45 minutes, but most of what's relevant to the discussion which was being held is in the first half - namely the nature of Jing in traditional Daoist cosmology, how the concept influences Qi Gong practice and relates to Daoist concepts of health and lifestyle, and why it's important, when discussing these arts, to not recklessly cast off the traditional cosmological models within which these arts were developed.