This page contains information based upon my experience with KI. It will not be well organized or formatted since I will be adding things to it at different times. I am not intending to teach others about KI since I am by no means qualified to do so, it is simply sharing with you things that I have experienced since I began receiving instruction on the use of KI. Many years ago I read the small karate book by Mr. Peter Urban titled The Karate Dojo in which he told of the experience of Japanese karate students in training. He told of the incident where senior students would conceal themselves and ambush new students and thrash them with Shinai (bamboo swords). This was a fairly painful and distressing experience for the new students. However, after a brief period of time the new students developed the ability to 'sense' when the seniors were waiting in ambush and would avoid them and spare themselves a good thrashing. What they had developed was the ability to sense the KI of the seniors as a matter of self preservation.  I wondered about this use of KI but did not know what it was or how to develop and use it. When I resumed training in Chicago with Sensei Sugiyama I attended a Instructor's Clinic where I was introduced to KI training. A few months prior to that he sent me a copy of his book titled Kitoh Karate in which is a wealth of introductory information on KI. In the book he defines KI as "the internal mental energy which initiates muscle movement. In Chinese, CHI is the internal mental energy and the physical energy associated with movements intiated by KI." In his training KI is used as internal and external energy as defined by the term CHI. Quoted from Kitoh Karate: "When you have a desire or intention, electrons move in your brain. This electron movement is called KI in Japanese. KI carries messages or orders everywhere inside of your body, so it is essential in martial arts to train yourself to make KI strong and smooth. As a result of this training, you can get sharp and powerful movements. In this case, it means the KI travels smoothly to the point (communication within the brain; brain to and from each part of the body). As your KI moves, the electrical fields which surround you will change. In contemporary war, the missiles are led by radar and the defender intercepts the missile movement by radar. In Karate, as your opponent attacks led by his KI, using your KI, you should feel the attacker's intention right before he moves." The above excerpts from Kitoh Karate should give you some idea of what KI is and how it can be used. First, let me make clear, I do not consider KI as a offensive weapon but instead as a defensive tool. When Sensei is teaching us to move an individual's body using KI, some students take pride in not allowing anyone to move them. In my opinion, this is a mistake. In order to use KI as a defensive tool, you must open your mind to receive KI from another individual so you can experience the feel of KI coming from an individual and, as I am working on now, perceiving the changes in the feel of the KI when their energy changes because of the movement of neurons from their brain signaling a part or all of their body to move. This is using KI as Radar. It is not surprising that the majority of individuals do not believe the reality of KI until they experience it for themselves so I will outline some experiments you can use to experience KI. If you do not experience the feel of KI, do not be surprised, just try the experiments from time to time until you do feel some sensation from KI. Sit or stand with your arms hanging loosely at your sides. Raise your hands, bending your arms at the elbow, to the front with the palms facing each other about a foot apart and the hands relaxed with the fingers slightly apart. Remaining relaxed, move the hands slowly toward each other until the fingertips are almost touching (about 1/2 to 1/4 inch apart). Slowly move the hands apart and together again and see if you feel any sensation in the fingertips. There should be slight 'tingle' in the fingertips. The tingling sensation is your KI moving between your fingertips. Once you have determined that you experience this movement of KI, stand a few feet from a wall and with your hands open and your palms facing the wall, move your hands forward and back and you should feel a pressing and/or tingling sensation on your palms and/or fingertips. Try this with walls or other large objects at varying distances. There is no maximum distance. You can extend your arms to each side with the palms facing out and send KI from one hand around the world to the other hand. Sound strange?? I agree!! But, try it. Once you are successful with these experiments, do them each day for a few minutes to increase your sensitivity to KI. The next experiment is to move KI through your body to improve your health. Stand with your hands in front of your body, palms facing your body, with the right hand directly in front of the left hand in the center of your body about chest high. Slowly rotating your hands around each other in a loop of about 1 foot in diameter. You should feel the KI with your body, the face in particular. After a few rotations, change the direction of the rotation. This next experiment is called 'showering with KI'. Using the same motion as you would if you were standing waist deep in water and scooping up a handfull of water on each side and raising the hands up on each side and pouring the water on your head, repeating the action 10 or more times. Again, you should feel the KI as your hands go over your head and move down in front of your body. Once you have experienced the physical sensation of KI and can accept it's reality, continue the exercises daily to increase the power of your KI. The next step for you is to use your KI to move physical objects. A very basic experiment is to place a small nail or tack over the top of a inside door frame. Next get a large darning needle and some reasonably heavy sewing thread and thread the needle, making a loop long enough to hang from the top of the door frame to about chest high. Do the exercises to move KI through your body and then in a relaxed posture (no body tension) move either hand with the fingers slightly apart, from the side slowly toward the needle as close as possible without touching it. Be sure that you move slowly so as to not disturb the air around the needle enough for it to cause the needle to move. Also, be sure that there is no draft in that area of the house. There is no way to predict how long it will be before you have any success but try it every chance you get and in time you will cause the needle to move. Then you can move up to larger objects like a tennis ball or lead fishing weights.  For moving an individual with KI, it is best to have someone who has experienced their own KI and will be open to receiving KI as a subject. You use the same technique to move an individual as you use to sense KI returning from a wall. You can begin at a distance of approximately two feet or slightly less and then increase the distance. Even if you do not move them at first, they should be able to feel your KI passing through their body. When you are around other people, you can practice sensing their KI and the change in it when they move. It will take a while to do this but just keep trying. It is not necessary, and not even recommended that you always make them aware of what you are attempting since they may resist and negate the experiment. The best way to learn to use KI is under the guidance of a qualified instructor. What I have passed on are things that I use to build my KI which are quite basic and can be adapted by almost anyone to help them to experience KI with the hope that the experience will cause them to want to seek out qualified instruction. |
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