- Joined
- Jul 3, 2023
- Messages
- 4,982
- Reaction score
- 25,098
- Awards
- 15
I've decided to start this journal because I don't want to hijack @Audiolog Edu's martial arts thread with my musings and old stories; in the beginning it will be just that but I expect I will find out more about those energies (real or imagined) as I write. In particular, I don't buy all of the chi/ki models and narratives floating out there but maybe I will be able to identify something new apart from all those chakra and meridian explanations. We'll see. I'll start with ki in Shotokan karate because that's what I know best, perhaps followed by an investigation of axé in capoeira but that's a subject even less talked about in that beautiful Brazilian fighting/dancing art.
Kiai and kime
Like I already mentioned before in that other thread, ki is not normally discussed in mainstream competition karate, and if you do bring it up, people will give you quizzical looks and then dismiss you as a NewAge crank. The main reason is probably that it's a hard, brute-force style with hardly any room for subtleties; another one may be this zen-inspired method of teaching where you let students make their own experiences instead of trying to micro-manage them, so if they sense ki, good, if not, ok, but mostly it's psychological stuff they will encounter in the course of their karate, fear, lack of motivation, any past traumas that may come up in certain situations, etc.
These psychological factors also play a big part in how karatekas perform a ('battle cry'), a word encapsulating that very mysterious ki force practitioners hardly ever talk about. Students are usually told that the purpose of this short sharp shout is to intimidate one's opponent, sometimes also that it's designed to unleash the full force of their technique, but that's about the extent of it - there's never ever any mention of occult energies. Katas ('forms') typically include two kiais, and if you omit one or both in competition, you'll lose or get disqualified. In point-fighting (jiyu kumite) matches, competitors won't be awarded points unless their scoring techniques are accompanied by a kiai.
A beginner's kiai is usually very stifled as if they were choking on their own aggression. You can almost hear their moms telling them to stop hollering and being noisy; add to this the social taboo of violence, and you get the typical kinesic inhibitions of a white belt, the cramped slow movements that are a sign of excessive tension. This is a psychological explanation, of course, but esoterically speaking, you could probably claim that they are afraid to project their ki outside their and keep it surpressed within instead. In the normal course of events, it will typically take years until fledgeling karatekas finally learn to let go and really scream from deep down their belly (hara). Another consideration is that a punch or kick to the mid-section by a countering opponent won't do much damage while you exhale (when shouting, for example) but can be devastating while you're inhaling.
I once witnessed a former coach of mine berate a highly talented young point-fighter (who was later successful at an international level) for his unconvincing kiai, so our coach said he would show him how it was done. The youngster dutifully went into kamae (informal fighting stance with hands raised in a guard), and suddenly the coach let fly, without physically attacking the guy, just roaring explosively… the younger man was literally pinned to the wall by his scream, visibly scared to death by that animal scream. Were there any occult energies involved? I doubt it BUT: Do you have any idea how many decades of diligent practice it takes to develop such a powerful fighting scream? It's not just the volume or the pitch, it's also the texture, the subjective feeling you get when you're on the receiving end of a good kiai. Perhaps wizards could profit from primal scream therapy, that would be novel idea
The takeaway for occultists here may be that energies arising within the body may be weakened by factors that aren't discussed much in books and are not so readily apparent. Maybe your LBRP doesn't do much for you because you secretly feel like a dork for painting wonky pentagrams in the air? And why do you secretly feel like a dork? Because of social inhibitions - there's nobody else in the room but you're still judging yourself according other people's standards and are embarrassed by what you do. A reasonable person doesn't paint pentagrams in the air, a good girl or boy doesn't scream her/his head off. Inhibitions may be just as harmful to a pratising occultist. Something like that.
Another expression which has ki in it is , a word that's very hard to translate; every karateka knows what kime is but will have a hard time to explain it to outsiders. Wiki has "power and/or focus" - yes and yes, but it's more than that. It's fierce determination as if the karateka was ready to kill - @IllusiveOwl mentioned ikken hissatsu ("to kill with a single blow") in the martial arts thread, and that's what kime is all about. You perform even the simplest technique as if it was your last, even after scores of repetitions when practising in the dojo.
In karate point-fighting competitions your kime shows that you really mean it and don't intend play around, no matter what funny hopping about and creative feinting goes on before you attack, despite your opponent always relying on the fact that you'll pull your kicks and punches to the head anyway as per the rules. Kime is also important in kata competitions because a kata (form) can be seen as the story of a fight, and any story will of course sound boring if it's not told sufficiently dramatically, with the kiai always marking a sort of climax in your tale.
In regular karate classes, kime is an expression of your personal fighting spirit. You may stomp in an uncomfortably low stance up and down the dojo like a spastic robot as a beginner, performing the same old punch to the mid-section over and over again but you also practice your kime when doing it. You focus on your techniques as intensely as you can even without a physical opponent being prest and strive to unequivally show the world that you aren't to be trifled with, that you will defend yourself no matter what and that you're prepared to take on one or even more stronger opponents, no matter the cost. Personally, I think passion is the keys here, raw but controlled strong emotion. No kime for cold fish, and I suspect no ki either.
I wonder if there is such a thing as 'hard' ki as opposed to 'soft' ki as in in taiji or neikung, a sort of yin/yang polarity, but I don't think so. For such a polarity to exist, two equally strong and intense forces would be required which is simply not the case here - 'hard' ki and 'soft' ki are on two seperate planes, so to speak; they're two completely differrent things. After all, videos in which a ridiculously over-confident qi gong master or a so-called 'no touch' martial arts expert is pathetically unable to withstand the aggressive onslaught of a real fighter are all over youtube. You can't become an invincible street-fighting badass by simply accumulating enough 'soft' ki through soft martial arts but you can get pretty far by filling your hara with 'hard' ki while cultivating your kime, your own personal fighting spirit.
Damn, how do I deactivate the automerge function here? I planned to make individual entries, not let my first post slowly get longer and longer!
Post automatically merged:
Kiai and kime
Like I already mentioned before in that other thread, ki is not normally discussed in mainstream competition karate, and if you do bring it up, people will give you quizzical looks and then dismiss you as a NewAge crank. The main reason is probably that it's a hard, brute-force style with hardly any room for subtleties; another one may be this zen-inspired method of teaching where you let students make their own experiences instead of trying to micro-manage them, so if they sense ki, good, if not, ok, but mostly it's psychological stuff they will encounter in the course of their karate, fear, lack of motivation, any past traumas that may come up in certain situations, etc.
These psychological factors also play a big part in how karatekas perform a ('battle cry'), a word encapsulating that very mysterious ki force practitioners hardly ever talk about. Students are usually told that the purpose of this short sharp shout is to intimidate one's opponent, sometimes also that it's designed to unleash the full force of their technique, but that's about the extent of it - there's never ever any mention of occult energies. Katas ('forms') typically include two kiais, and if you omit one or both in competition, you'll lose or get disqualified. In point-fighting (jiyu kumite) matches, competitors won't be awarded points unless their scoring techniques are accompanied by a kiai.
A beginner's kiai is usually very stifled as if they were choking on their own aggression. You can almost hear their moms telling them to stop hollering and being noisy; add to this the social taboo of violence, and you get the typical kinesic inhibitions of a white belt, the cramped slow movements that are a sign of excessive tension. This is a psychological explanation, of course, but esoterically speaking, you could probably claim that they are afraid to project their ki outside their and keep it surpressed within instead. In the normal course of events, it will typically take years until fledgeling karatekas finally learn to let go and really scream from deep down their belly (hara). Another consideration is that a punch or kick to the mid-section by a countering opponent won't do much damage while you exhale (when shouting, for example) but can be devastating while you're inhaling.
I once witnessed a former coach of mine berate a highly talented young point-fighter (who was later successful at an international level) for his unconvincing kiai, so our coach said he would show him how it was done. The youngster dutifully went into kamae (informal fighting stance with hands raised in a guard), and suddenly the coach let fly, without physically attacking the guy, just roaring explosively… the younger man was literally pinned to the wall by his scream, visibly scared to death by that animal scream. Were there any occult energies involved? I doubt it BUT: Do you have any idea how many decades of diligent practice it takes to develop such a powerful fighting scream? It's not just the volume or the pitch, it's also the texture, the subjective feeling you get when you're on the receiving end of a good kiai. Perhaps wizards could profit from primal scream therapy, that would be novel idea
The takeaway for occultists here may be that energies arising within the body may be weakened by factors that aren't discussed much in books and are not so readily apparent. Maybe your LBRP doesn't do much for you because you secretly feel like a dork for painting wonky pentagrams in the air? And why do you secretly feel like a dork? Because of social inhibitions - there's nobody else in the room but you're still judging yourself according other people's standards and are embarrassed by what you do. A reasonable person doesn't paint pentagrams in the air, a good girl or boy doesn't scream her/his head off. Inhibitions may be just as harmful to a pratising occultist. Something like that.
Post automatically merged:
Another expression which has ki in it is , a word that's very hard to translate; every karateka knows what kime is but will have a hard time to explain it to outsiders. Wiki has "power and/or focus" - yes and yes, but it's more than that. It's fierce determination as if the karateka was ready to kill - @IllusiveOwl mentioned ikken hissatsu ("to kill with a single blow") in the martial arts thread, and that's what kime is all about. You perform even the simplest technique as if it was your last, even after scores of repetitions when practising in the dojo.
In karate point-fighting competitions your kime shows that you really mean it and don't intend play around, no matter what funny hopping about and creative feinting goes on before you attack, despite your opponent always relying on the fact that you'll pull your kicks and punches to the head anyway as per the rules. Kime is also important in kata competitions because a kata (form) can be seen as the story of a fight, and any story will of course sound boring if it's not told sufficiently dramatically, with the kiai always marking a sort of climax in your tale.
In regular karate classes, kime is an expression of your personal fighting spirit. You may stomp in an uncomfortably low stance up and down the dojo like a spastic robot as a beginner, performing the same old punch to the mid-section over and over again but you also practice your kime when doing it. You focus on your techniques as intensely as you can even without a physical opponent being prest and strive to unequivally show the world that you aren't to be trifled with, that you will defend yourself no matter what and that you're prepared to take on one or even more stronger opponents, no matter the cost. Personally, I think passion is the keys here, raw but controlled strong emotion. No kime for cold fish, and I suspect no ki either.
I wonder if there is such a thing as 'hard' ki as opposed to 'soft' ki as in in taiji or neikung, a sort of yin/yang polarity, but I don't think so. For such a polarity to exist, two equally strong and intense forces would be required which is simply not the case here - 'hard' ki and 'soft' ki are on two seperate planes, so to speak; they're two completely differrent things. After all, videos in which a ridiculously over-confident qi gong master or a so-called 'no touch' martial arts expert is pathetically unable to withstand the aggressive onslaught of a real fighter are all over youtube. You can't become an invincible street-fighting badass by simply accumulating enough 'soft' ki through soft martial arts but you can get pretty far by filling your hara with 'hard' ki while cultivating your kime, your own personal fighting spirit.
Post automatically merged:
Damn, how do I deactivate the automerge function here? I planned to make individual entries, not let my first post slowly get longer and longer!
Last edited:
)
