What is Chi? The Mysterious Energy in Chinese Zodiac, Feng Shui and Traditional Chinese Medicine - TCM, Astrology, Decor

The word is spelled variously Qi and Chi and is pronounced ‘ki.’ It is used in China in the same way that spirit is used in the west. Only in China, it is part of the Chinese Zodiac (astrology), Feng Shui (their decorating), and Chinese Traditional Medicine (doctors and healing). That’s quite something, but if you think about it, if there is a spiritual life force, then it would involve every aspect of life. So, let me tell you what Chi is, and how it fits into the various components of the Chinese Zodiac, Feng Shui, and Chinese Traditional Medicine (TCM).

Feng Shui is about five thousand years old. It is the way that the space arranging methodology that the Chinese kings and ordinary people used when building and decorating their homes, palaces, and business. Feng Shui uses Chi – Qi – to establish the best way to arrange space in order to be prosperous or lucky. To quote Simon Brown, the author of The Feng Shui Bible, on it, “Chi is the fundamental stuff on which Feng Shui is based – a subtle charge of electromagnetic energy that connects your own emotional energy to the space around you. It is the mixing of your own chi with the chi of your home that defines how you feel there.”

Essentially, Feng Shui works on the principle that if you’re feeling good, you’ll make good decisions. It also works on the understanding that there is an energy field around you that can be used to make you feel good, and that the arrangement of space affects how this energy – chi – interacts with you.

I was first introduced to acupuncture – the method that is used in TCM – in London at the Royal Free Hospital. I had been painting the ceiling of my kitchen and had strained my shoulder badly. After three weeks of physiotherapy, the pain was no less, and to be honest, I was getting a bit irritated. Pain makes one grouchy.

The physiotherapist, noting my irritation, suggested that she use acupuncture. I wasn’t sure what it was, and she explained to me that she would be sticking pins into certain points and this would relieve the pain. Well, you know how it is. When you’re desperate, you’ll try anything!

Five minutes after leaving the Royal Free Hospital, I had no more pain. In fact, it never came back. I did keep my next appointment and the nurse did apply acupuncture again, but it wasn’t really necessary. The shoulder was completely healed.

Dr. Chen from Acumedic in Camden, London, explained to me about a decade ago that the pins that were inserted stimulated the Chi in the body to heal the body. She thought of it as a sort of life force, the essence from which we are made. Incidentally, Dr. Chen used to be a professor at Beijing University in China and was seconded by the Chinese government to go to London to teach British doctors how Traditional Chinese Medicine. The entrance requirements are strict. You need to have practiced medicine for ten years before they accept you. She says that most doctors once they have retired from medical practice. And, of course, the Royal Free Hospital introduced acupuncture because there was scientific evidence that it worked.

This is less obvious in some way. However, there is a twelve year cycle in Chinese astrology, comprising twelve different animals – rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, rooster, dog, and boar. Each of these animals represent a different type of electromagnetic energy or chi and whichever year one is born into, will be the type of chi one has. It’s not unusual for a Traditional Chinese Medicine Practitioner or a Feng Shui practitioner to ask you what year you were born in order to establish what type of energy your life force has. In addition to these twelve types of energy, there are five sub types, and these are five elements. These are metal, water, wood, fire, and earth. So someone can be a metal rabbit (me) or a wood ox. In total, there is a sixty year cycle because the first cycle of twelve years would be a metal cycle, while the next cycle would be a water cycle, and so on. Your date of birth would tell you what animal sign and what element you are.

In addition to qualifying the type of chi you have as a result of your birth year, the type of chi you have is further defined by the time of your birth. So someone born between 5 am and 7 am in the morning would have a rabbit ascendant and someone born between 7 am and 9 am would have a dragon ascendant (me). So, just to use myself as an example, I am a metal rabbit with a dragon ascendant. This would define what sort of chi I have. This would be the type of spirit I am born with.

Scientists have never been able to establish what life is. I think it was Nikola Tesla, the inventor of electricity, who said that life was some kind of electricity. Getting away from religion, that is about the closest anyone has ever got. So what is Chi and is it important for you to know about it?

Firstly, chi is not controlled by the stars. This is not what the Chinese Zodiac teaches. Instead, Chi works like the climate. It has a definite cycle and appears to be attached to the earth. If one uses western words, and substitutes electromagnetism for it, then what the Chinese are saying (or rather the ancient Chinese who discovered Chi) is that the earth produces a different type of electromagnetism every year around February. They say that this energy cycle is repeated every sixty years – in short, there are sixty different types of electromagnetic energy. As this concept has never been explored by scientists, it doesn’t mean it’s not true. The Chinese established this through long years of observation, and five thousand years of observation has, according to them, not disproved it. Western observation, however, would involve measuring instruments, and until those measuring instruments are invented, it’s unlikely whether it can be scientifically established whether there are, in fact, sixty different types of electromagnetic energy.

What the Chinese believe about the Chinese Zodiac is that your spirit takes on the same attributes as the chi of the earth. So, let’s say that you are born in the year of the dragon (this year is the year of the water dragon), then you would have all the attributes of the water dragon year. It’s not that your future is set in stone; it’s rather that your character attributes and your particular talents and abilities will direct your path. If, for instance, you were born in the year of the rabbit, it’s unlikely that you’ll be a party person because those born in the year of the rabbit are quite insular people. So, it’s unlikely that a rabbit person will enter the entertainment industry. Of course, this will be balanced by their ascendant and their element. The most highly sought after sign in the Chinese Zodiac is the dragon. It is said to be very auspicious and babies born in the year of the dragon are said to be very lucky babies, indeed! That’s because their attributes make them successful in business and all that they pursue.

Much of Feng Shui is common sense, and there are even schools of Feng Shui that don’t take personal Qi into consideration at all. In fact, optimal space arrangement is seen as a lack of clutter, lots of space for the air (and the people) to move in, clean, and pleasantly decorated. That said, direction plays an important role as it appears that Chi has some directional qualities.

Briefly, water is north, metal is West, Earth is in the center, Wood is in the east, and Fire is in the south. These directional elements are used by some schools of Feng Shui to determine whether a kitchen should be in the north (water) part of a house as it’s about cooking (fire) and water puts fire out. Other schools of Feng Shui do not consider it to be important.

Dr. Chen of Acumedic in London told me that, in China, doctors could study either western medicine or TCM. Both courses were six years (if I remember correctly). She said that each of the disciplines had to study the other discipline for a year so that they understood when the other discipline was a better option. In China, medical doctors refer patients to traditional Chinese medicine practitioners and visa versa. TCM doctors (as well as acupuncture practitioners) are taught the different pathways that the Qi – chi – travels in the human body. They ask questions, take your pulse, and check the color of the tongue in order to see where the blockages of the chi are. Then they insert needles to stimulate the flow of the chi to that area so that the blockages are removed. They believe that before any illness can develop, the chi has to be blocked. So they advocate that acupuncture is a monthly procedure in order to ensure that chi is never blocked.

Chi was discovered in China. It’s possible that the interpretation of the Chi is correct in China, but that just as the Northern Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere have different climates, so it’s possible that the particular measurement of Chi might only refer to the Chinese geographical location. So, for instance, this might be a dragon year in China, but maybe it’s a monkey year in America or an ox year in India. We don’t know. The Chinese might have had 5000 years of observation in China, but Chi is a new concept to the west and has only been around about fifty years.

What is Chi? Definition of Chi – Qi
Qi or Chi could be defined as the spiritual energy or life force that flows throughout the earth, is in everything, and infiltrates human beings when they are born.