Shaolin Monk Hu Qiong was on season 2, episode 1 this week doing some qigong stuff. They brought a biomechanical engineer to observe.
Monk claims to use qi to protect himself from damage.
First demo:
Qiong “prepares his body by harnessing his qi” and then hits himself in the head a bunch of times with a piece of metal and bends it, then flips it over and hits the other side and bends it back.
Engineer says “impressive, but physics explains how this is happening. there’s nothing here that pushes the limits of human tolerance.”
Second demo:
Qiong lays on 3 vertical spears while a 100 pound granite block is placed on his back and is broken with a sledgehammer. He does qi warm-up exercises first.
Engineer says it was impressive, but he’s not “unbreakable”, which the monk claimed to be.
Third demo:
Qiong presses a running drill into his stomach, throat, and temple. He has scars on his body, probably from previous demonstrations.
Engineer says he doesn’t know why it’s not going thru. They used force plates or something to see if he’s actually pressing or just holding it there. They said he’s pressing with up to 200lbs of force. It bled a little but the monk was fine.
I’m sure there’s a trick to it, but I figured I’d mention it here in case anyone wanted to look it up.