“As a teacher, you won’t be able to address the specific needs of each individual. However, what you can offer is a creative way of working with posture, breath, intention and attention so that student and customize – within their own experience – a way to nudge their particular pattern, whatever it might be, towards homeostasis.” – Josh Summers
Qi
What is Qi? | Talk with Josh (republished)
“Qi produces the human body just as water becomes ice. As water freezes into ice, so Qi coagulates to form the human body. When ice melts, it becomes water. When a person dies, they become spirit again. It is called spirit, just as melted ice changes its name to water.” – Wang Chong (Taoist philosopher, AD 27-97)
Chinese Medicine: What Is Qi?
Qi is “perceived functionally, by what it does,” is critical to remember. Entities in Chinese Medicine are almost unanimously “perceived functionally,” that is, defined by what they do. We’ll see this affirmed again and again when we look at the meridian system. Meridians are defined by what they do, functionally – the organ system – organs are defined by what they do, functionally – and the Vital Substances of the body – which again are defined by what they do, functionally for the whole organism.
