I am well aware of the physialogical aspects of cigarette smoking, but haven’t found anything on the effect smoking has on Chi development. Anyone have any thoughts?
“The essence of life is struggle and it’s goal is domination. There are higher goals and deeper meanings, but they exist only within the minds of men. The reality of life is war.”
Smoking
How is Qi Created in the body? Through the Lungs and Digestive process. Just like a camp fire needs air to burn wood and thus give off energy, the body needs air to “burn” our food and generate qi. So therefore if you restrict the functionality of either of these two organ systems you would limit qi development.
There is no spoon. “The Matrix”
There’s a difference between knowing the path and walking the path. “The Matrix”
hmm…
if the air you breath in has things like carbon monoxide in it, that stuff will enter into not only your lungs, but bring in dirty chi, won’t it?
no
I smoked for 6 years, and quit to do internal arts. I have had a few cigarrettes since then, and I will say, once I became aware of the internal, I became aware of the vast damage done by smoking.
Your lungs are your seat of power, and smoking damages your lungs, so it damages your seat of power.
The lungs are half of your metal meridian pair, paired with the colon. If they are damaged your metal meridians will be out of balance. If your metal meridians go out of balance with each other too much, they will affect the other meridians and organs.
Physically, your lungs have a definite connection to your heart. If you have unhealthy lungs, your heart will have to work harder and will become stressed. You may even have a heart attack.
In addition to things like this are the reasons posted above for not smoking, although I actually think that you don’t necessarily bring bad qi in, but rather, unhealthy lungs coated with tar prevent you from taking in as much good qi. In the end it doesn’t really matter, though, as you will still be taking in more bad than good.
Postures from the Taiji form, Fishes in Eight and Grasp the Sparrow’s Tail, heal the lungs and colon. The Triple Heater exercise and Wave Hands Like Clouds help to balance the energy out.
I worked for almost a year with vaporized chemicals that seriously damaged my lungs, and I found that my endurance and power suffered. In addition to these things, I have personally found that I now become seriously ill with lung infections one to two days after smoking (marijuana, though), so I had to give it up. While in western medical terms that might be a damaged immune system or something like that, I think in TCM terms it is weakened Wei Qi, the aura that protects us from outside attacks like illnesses.
If smoking in fact damages the Wei Qi, then it will also affect Iron Body adversely as the Wei Qi is the Qi we build up in this practice.
The lungs are also the controller of the skin and hair. The skin is the backup organ for the liver.
In addition to this, smoking is a bad habit. Dmagae to the colon meridian means the individual wil have a hard time changing and abandoning bad habits (like smoking). It also means that the person will hang onto bad thoughts and will affect mental health. The mind and spirit are in the heart. If the heart becomes damaged, mental clarity, memory, thinking, and sleep will become affected.
The small intestine is connected energetically to the heart. The small intestine separates pure from impure. So if we smoke and take in bad qi while hampering the intake of good qi, and refuse to get rid of it or change the habit, the small intestine if damaged cannot separate the pure from impure and so we store the good and bad qi together. If the small intestine is also affected, we also cannot distinguish between useful and useless thought.
(I personally know smokers of all types whose thought processes are clouded with useless thought. It is nearly impossible to have a meaningful conversation with two of them because of this.)
The small intestine is physically connected with the stomach. The stomach is part of the earth meridian, along with the spleen, and is what keeps us grounded. Things like not being able to hold a conversation with someone are an indication of damage to this meridian. Damage to the stomach meridian can also lead to stomach disorders. Damage to the spleen can lead to things like weak muscles and a constant desire for a nap. If the spleen is weakened, it will not properly distribute qi taken from food, and will in fact cause a loss of appetite. So then not only will it not dostribute qi, we take in less and less.
Just follow the rest of the energetic and physical connections. You’ll see that smoking seriously messes you up.
“I put forth my power and he was broken.
I withdrew my power and he was ground into fine dust.”
-Aleister Crowley, The Vision and the Voice
Nicotine is also a contact poison. If you take a can of snuff and wrap it in cheese cloth (sans can)and soak it in water for a few days, then squeeze the water out of the little ball of snuff, you have a potent poison. If you drink it, you will trip your ass off, and then you will die. Supposedly, prison inmates committing suicide do something similar with cigarettes.
Anyway, I guess what I’m saying is that smoking cigarettes especially hinders your qi development and internal progress.
“I put forth my power and he was broken.
I withdrew my power and he was ground into fine dust.”
-Aleister Crowley, The Vision and the Voice
Smoking? YUCK
While I agree that smoking is a horrendous thing to do for your health…
It is very interesting to watch a lot of the older guys in Beijing and Tianjin do there full work outs WHILE SMOKING.
DingShi circle walking at an arobic pace for 45 minutes with a lit cigarette
Dr Xie PeiQi at 80 years old just stopped chain smoking about three years ago, now he just smokes a good pipe and half a pack aday.
Whew…
Imagine what they could do, and how much longer they would last if they had never started smoking in the first place.
Peace
yi beng, kan xue
Thanks
Okay, well let me admit that I recently started smoking again after a six year period where I had “quit”. I could make all kinds of excuses for it (stress, divorce etc.) but those excuses are really meaningless, since it’s me who is causing this symptom of my suffering!
One of the things I noticed when I quit the first time was that for a few days, I had this incredibly powerful feeling that my arms were “energized”. I felt as if my whole body was inflating like a balloon. At first I thought that I had made some kind of breakthrough with my Chi development, but the powerful chi sensations eventually receded until I returned to having the more sbtle phenomena that I was more used to. Any thoughts on what that might have been?
Also, does anyone know of any methods such as Chi Kung, TCM, etc. for helping with my cravings? I’d really like to quit again…
Just don’t think I’m in a strong enough position mentally and emotionally at this time.
“The essence of life is struggle and it’s goal is domination. There are higher goals and deeper meanings, but they exist only within the minds of men. The reality of life is war.”
Sin Loi - No kidding! Tobacco is the opium of the 00’s and is epidemic in China. That’s largely why people are always spitting all the time too. It’s disgusting!
Scarlet Mantis,
Whenever you learn something new, there is a new and different feeling, but it seems to fade until you no longer feel it. You are still feeling it, but you have become accustomed to it. It’s not like you have done anything wrong. If you think of the new feelings as indicators of breakthroughs, then that is like realizing exactly what it is you are supposed to be learning. When the feeling fades a bit, you have learned the lesson and are ready to move on. This kind of thing hapens over and over again. It’s kind of like figuring out the solution to a mathematical problem. When you realize what the solution is and write it down (equivalent to the new feeling and it fading), then you are ready to move onto the next problem. Just because you find the solution to one problem doesn’t mean that the solution is forever in your mind unfading. It’s still there, but it’s not at the front of your mind.
“I put forth my power and he was broken.
I withdrew my power and he was ground into fine dust.”
-Aleister Crowley, The Vision and the Voice