qi what?
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I first met qi in martial arts study in Los Angeles. I had an unusual instructor. He didn’t teach one art. He taught a sort of combination of fighting arts. And he threw me into classes with black belt students when I was brand new. And I sort of wondered what those other students thought about me being there. Also I wondered what I was doing there. But I figured it out. I was the student in the room who had been in mortal combat. A fight with an opponent who meant me great bodily harm, and walked, limped, or crawled away, alive. Five times.
He said that to me when I first signed up for classes and the meaning of what he was saying to me didn’t really register. He said very few people had been in actual combat, like, fight to live. Let alone five times in one lifetime. On an intellectual, I sort of got that, but my reaction was, Yeah, so? I got it, but didn’t GET it. It was just my life. It didn’t seem significant to me.
I finally did later in his classes. Figuring out why I was in those classes. With a whole bunch of people who had black belts and I didn’t and didn’t know why I was there. Until I figured out I was the only person in there who knew the difference between “theory” and “fight to survive.”
That is another story though. This story is about qi. And. When I first leaned about what “qi” is.
Qi’s an internal energy you call up. It’s stronger than the mechanics of the human body. It’s where the one inch punch comes from. It’s why a master could extend his hands two inches outside of his physical reach when he chose to. It is a part of you, but also, something you draw into you and focus. I always thought of it as something coming from the ground. Like lightning. That was always the easiest place for me to draw from. The ground. Center, draw up, focus, strike! But you have it inside you. (If you only pull from inside you though and do it a lot you will deplete yourself. Don’t suck all your internal energy and throw it out.) You can pull it from outside from places other than the ground. I think of those stories about a parent who in an emergency lifts a car off a child. And I know that’s qi. A force stronger than the mechanics of the human body that can lift a whole car. That, when you need it, really need it, some people can just grab it. Others? Have to train. To find it. To ground in it. Though maybe not me. Maybe that’s why I’m alive after five fights to the death with people bigger and in bigger numbers then me where someone wanted to kill me and I’m still here. And maybe that’s why my first sensei put me in a class full of black belts when I was just a minnow.
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Later I studied Feng Shui.
I looked at Feng Shui as kind of stupid. Who cared about qi in a building if you were working on qi inside you? Wasn’t qi inside you all that mattered?
But another martial artist I respected a lot (she was a way better martial artist than me and also she used to jump trains as a TEN YEAR OLD KID so was pretty fucking impressive, jumping trains at ten, wtf?) was getting into Feng Shui. So I thought, Back up, if Sy is studying Feng Shui and thinks it is important, then it IS important.
So because of Sy I started studying Feng Shui.
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Feng Shui changed my life. See, as a kid, I moved a lot. And after I traipsed out of my mother’s house at 14? I kept moving. Fast and hard all over the US. And places I lived? They looked like barracks. A bed. A suitcase. A few clothes hanging on a rod in a closet.
Then I started looking at Feng Shui. Studying it. Applying it. And I stopped living in “barracks.” Stopped living “Just passing through.” I started to work at intent in where I lived, and work at making where I lived meaningful. And beautiful. Not barracks to pass through. Places of beauty to exist in. For however long I was there.
And. Mapping Feng Shui.
I lived a lot of places short term. I could map out every place. And the parts of my life that didn’t work the hardest? Those were parts of my living spaces I neglected hardest.
Intent became a thing. What is the intent of this piece of art here? What is the intent of that light there? What is the intent of where I place objects and light in my life? And —
Placing art and light and intent in my life.
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Intent had never been a part of qi before for me. Surrounding environments had never entered the equation. But Feng Shui and conscious thought about my environment became an element of intent that changed the places I lived from barracks to places I cared about and made beautiful. No matter how long I planned on being there. A week? It still counted. Make it beautiful. Make it intentual. Make it count for the moments you are there.
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I studied another art, Wing Tsun. There was not a lot of talk about qi in Wing Tsun. There was a lot of centering. That was really good for me. Also I learned about the patience of instructors. It was a funny lesson. One day I told my instructor I wanted to wrap my hands. He asked why. I said because I would like to hold a champagne flute come New Year’s eve without fighter knuckles. He said no problem. Go ahead and wrap my hands. Then every class started so fast, I had no time to wrap my hands. And also couldn’t exactly drive and steer safely with wrapped paws. So, be there, or wrap my hands. It was his patient way of saying, “Yes, you may do this. If you can.”
(There’s a lot of punching hard objects in Wing Tsun. Not as much as iron fist which is if you ask me unsane but then most times I think something is unsane in martial arts I am mostly wrong. But you do end up with really scabbed up knuckles that are not pretty holding a champagne flute in Wing Tsun, iron first or not. Oops.)
I learned something from that sensei about teaching too. Saying “no” is not always helpful. Saying “yes” and letting someone learn why what they are asking for does not work is often more helpful.
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Flash forward. I’m in Seattle. I’m not doing martial arts any more. (All the foot work in every Wing Tsun class I looked up in Seattle was bad. Also, how is all the foot work bad in Bruce Lee territory Seattle? No no no! Anyways!)
I’m very sick in Seattle. Like, sort of dying sick. Doctors don’t know why. I am just fading. And bleeding to death. And anemic as hell. I’m starting to pay other people to walk the dogs because I can’t.
I get out of Seattle and back to Los Angeles and move into this building in Hollywood and one of my neighbors, Mary, practices Chinese Medicine. And Mary spots something is sort of wrong with me and says, “I won’t charge you, just fill out this form, tagging the boxes for what’s wrong.” So I do. And Mary says, “Everything here says one thing, Spleen. That’s unusual. Usually people have symptoms spread out. Not you. You are ALL spleen.” And Mary starts making suggestions. And I am just shaking my head saying, “I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to do that.” And finally Mary says, (and she doesn’t preface this “for fuck’s sake” but she is definitely thinking it in her polite Mary way):
“DO ONE THING! Eat something every day at 10 am.”
This sounds like the dumbest thing I have ever heard. Seriously? Eat at 10 AM? Eat what?
And she says, “Anything.”
So I say, “Can it be cashews?” See, I don’t eat in the morning. It’s going to be hard to even think about food in the morning, let alone do it.
And she says, “Yes, it can be cashews. Just eat something, anything, at 10 AM.”
Doctors and nurses have been poking needles into my hands saying, “It’s in case we have to put you on a helicopter and need to do something IV fast.” And threatening to strap heart monitors onto me that make me look like Quasimodo. And sucking blood out of me for stupid reasons that don’t work because they usually say, “Oh and we forgot to check for anemia but we’ll get that next time.” Assuming there will be a “next time.” I think not, Doc. And palpitating my breasts. WTF?)
And Mary says, “Eat cashews at 10 AM.”
Yeah. That’ll work.
But I do it. It’s not going to cause a rift in the space time continuum to eat some cashews at 10 AM to find out it doesn’t do anything. So I eat cashews at 10 AM. For two days.
And I stop bleeding.
(Men cover your eyes if this is too visceral or female for you.)
See, I was bleeding for ten days at a time or more two times a month. Heavily. Like, don’t leave the house heavily. I was dying of anemia. I was ending up in emergency rooms with heart palpitations because, if you’re really anemic, there’s no oxygen in your blood to keep you alive let alone walking and talking or walking dogs. And friends, if you fall over and have a pulse that fast, freak out and haul you into an ER. And if you get really anemic, there are no markers left in your body to turn off bleeding. It just keeps going, bleeding out your life.
Western doctors want to strap you into heart monitors, or put you on the pill, or give you beta blockers. None of which work. Many of which just make things worse.
Mary said “Eat cashews at 10 AM.”
And I did it.
And I stopped bleeding. In two days.
That’s why I believe in Chinese medicine.
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I got swept up in life and started running my life by my sort of problematic habits and I got sick again. And I come from one of those families that considers any sort of physical weakness “malingering” and ignores any sign of weakness or illness until it lands you on your back too sick to function.
I recently hit that. I was sick for months. Like really sick. Fading sick. Sick enough to even with my severe pilgrim forebears who won’t even acknowledge sick notice I was actually sick. So I went back to Chinese Medicine. And what did Chinese Medicine say?
“Spleen, baby, spleen.”
So I remembered Mary and I ate cashews at 10 am for two days and was better. In. Two. Days.
Not all better. But, the sick turned off better.
That’s qi.
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What’s odd to me (problematic odd not funny ha ha odd) is I watched a lot of YouTube videos on spleen and Chinese Medicine (which now everyone tags TCM for “traditional Chinese medicine” which is weird but okay) and half the people on there with actually good info are prefacing everything with “of course I don’t think it’s actually the spleen OR actually believe in qi” and almost nobody is talking about the spleen hours. So basically they’re all telling people to scarf ginger tea and avoid cold food without saying the more important part. The part Mary told me:
Eat something at 10 AM.
The spleen hours are 7 AM to 11 AM. Sure it matters what you are eating. And drinking. But pay attention to the hours. Because all the ginger tea in the world won’t matter if you’re not paying attention to spleen hours there.
7 AM to 11 AM.
And also. All those people saying “it’s not really qi and it’s not really the spleen”?
It is totally qi.
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PS: I’m going back to martial arts. I don’t want to study a fighting art right now. I’m going to study Qi Gong Ba Duan Jin. Right now I am checking out this :::site:::
Also. Cashews! 10 AM! Do it!
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Love and Kisses,
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Your Be Nice to Your Spleen Adams Girl
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