The concept of chi (or “qi”) is often misunderstood. Known as “ki” and “prana” in other traditions, chi is an important underlying philosophy behind chi kung, tai chi, and Traditional Chinese Medicine.

In this short video, Master Sbarge offers more insight in answering the question “What is chi?”

See the video here: What is qi?

For years, I chose not to travel to distant cities and countries unless I had to.  While I’ve always believed in the value of broadening my horizons and experiencing new things and places, the horizons I was most interested in exploring were those within my own mind.  For that, my vehicle of choice was meditation, and my destinations were any new clear and quiet places.

I have hardly been to every clear and quiet place, and even the ones I’ve been to have occasionally been smoggy and noisy.   But at least I’ve reached a point where I better understand inner clarity and quiet when I see it.

With that said, now I do enjoy traveling in the conventional sense:   Seeing other cultures, meeting people whose habits are surprising, being surprised at both the inadequacies and superior qualities of my own culture and habits.

As one who has practiced meditation, kung fu and yoga all of my adult life I particularly enjoy visiting the countries and places where these practiced originated and evolved.  This October, I’m looking forward to training in the Wudang Mountains, where Tai Chi came from; Dharma Drum Mountain in Taipei, founded by Ch’an (Zen) Master Sheng-Yen; and other sites in Hong Kong and China.  I welcome any students and friends of The Peaceful Dragon to join me, and look forward to the comraderie.

On a daily basis we explore our thoughts and inner habits — a kind of intranotional travel if you will.  But once in a while, when the budget can be stretched, good to stretch our minds with some memorable international travel.

When most people think of tai chi, they think of the slow and meditative movements that are the signature of this art form.  And a logical question that arises for people who want to lose weight is, “How can slow-motion movement burn a lot of calories and help me lose weight?”

The answer is it comparatively doesn’t burn a lot of calories — yet it is a great art to learn to help with weight loss.  To explain this paradox we have to understand where our focus belongs for weight loss:  Less on the exercise side of the equation, and more on the eating side of the equation.

While exercise is important for our health and all forms of exercise can be good for us, the key to losing weight is making changes in our eating habits.  We gain weight because we eat the wrong foods, we eat to big a portion, we eat too frequently due to stress or boredom or emotional imbalances.

Tai chi, being a meditative artform, helps us to become more mindful and aware of what and how we eat, and gives us the tools to make real and lasting changes in our eating and other lifestyle habits.  You could play tennis all day and burn a lot of calories, but that won’t help you deal with the mental demons that make you eat poorly.  But if you practice tai chi regularly, you’ll get healthy exercise with modest calorie burning.  But more importantly, you’ll make real progress in significantly reducing calorie intake as you become more relaxed and in control of your own mind.

When’s the last time you saw a commercial for tai chi while watching American Idol or CNN news?  I’ll have to take your word for it because I don’t watch anything like that, but I’m willing to bet the answer is never.

Instead, you see commercials for drugs and medications (both prescription and over-the-counter), and for the fast foods that create the illnesses that the drugs and medications purportedly help cure.

The reason you see the commercials that you do is because those are multi-billion dollar industries and they can afford to spend a lot on marketing to get you to believe what they are saying.  And the tai chi industry?  Only a few legitimate instructors ply their trade in any given city, and most can barely scrape together the gas money to go teach their classes never mind spend millions to promote the real benefits of the art they are teaching.

But when it comes to what works for good health, the dollar amount spent on advertising has zero relationship to the effectiveness of the product or service being promoted.  Drugs and medications do not make you healthy — they simply mask the symptoms caused by an unhealthy imbalance in your mind/body (which is caused in great part by the unhealthy food — and I use that word loosely — that we are suckered into eating by the food industry) .

If you do a little bit of free on-line research you will discover the real, centuries-old benefits of tai chi that you won’t know about if you sit zombie-like with the TV remote in your hand.  You will need an authentic teacher to learn tai chi and the classes will cost you a bit, but here’s a tip to help pay for it:  Eat real food at home instead of the fast foods and pre-packaged foods promoted on TV, and cancel your cable TV subscription.  You’ll be so healthy you might not even need tai chi.