Qi, Qigong and electromagnetism

Hi NB.

Other than the discussion your post has started among some of the forum's sceptics, what really caught my attention is the fact that I was unaware about any evidence for the existence of Qi. And yet, the article you posted seems to provide evidence in favor of it's existence.

Am I right on assuming this?

I think the presented data is in favor of the actual existence of such an energy as Qi. Of course it is controversial, but the article presents some apparently strong evidence for the association of known electromagnetic phenomena with (supposedly paranormal) external healing Qi. And therefore of some possibility of at least some of the characteristics of Qi energies being due to electromagnetism. Even though Qi seems on the surface from the Western scientific viewpoint to be pseudoscience.

What the article doesn't go into is to present any actual detailed evidence for the supposed healing powers of Qi.

"External Qi Healing is at the core of China's ancient healing science of qigong. Healing energy is projected from the palms and, without physically touching the client, directed into an area of imbalance, distress, or pain" (from https://www.alternatives.org.uk/event/ex...0or%20pain )."

From the article in the Op:

"This so-called external qi is of particular interest here, which is used by qigong practitioners primarily for healing and self-defense but is sometimes also applied in demonstrations of telekinesis (TK), also called psychokinesis (PK), and mind-over-matter. Such manifestations of qi are often far from subtle.

There is a considerable body of work, scholarly and non-scholarly, investigating the nature of this energy and its propagation. An informative review on external qi was published by Chen (2004), a researcher from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. Over two decades, Chen analyzed a tremendous amount of research on external qi, primarily performed in China, gathering about 100 relatively high-quality references. He showed that qi was associated with a change of readings of a variety of detectors, chemical, physical, and biological (including humans).
...........................................
Chen, K. W. (2004). An analytic review of studies on measuring effects of external Qi in China. Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine, 10(4), 38-51."

Thanks NB
So basically, there is evidence for Psi manifestations in the practice of Qigong, but not specific evidence of any healing effects?

I apologize if my questions are a bit obvious but I work a busy shift and haven't gotten any time to read the article carefully. 

Thanks NB
So basically, there is evidence for Psi manifestations in the practice of Qigong, but not specific evidence of any healing effects?

I apologize if my questions are a bit obvious but I work a busy shift and haven't gotten any time to read the article carefully. 

The article in the Op doesn't present any such evidence, but I think Chen et. al. probably accumulated quite a bit.

Chen's full paper from 2004 is at https://www.researchgate.net/publication...I_in_China .

On the effects of external qi on human bodies:

"External Qi Therapy (EQT) has been used to treat various kinds of illness and disease in human patients even though most qigong healers promote self healing or self-training to maximize the benefit of qigong therapy. The therapeutic effects of EQ have been reported extensively in literature. Among some of the frequently reported and well-documented successes are the complete remission of degenerative disc diseases such as pro-trusion of lumbar intervertabal disc; and rheumatoid arthritis. Also reported are instances of complete recovery from myoma of the uterus; cataracts; asthma; and shoulder peripheral neuritis. Also documented are reports of significant improvement for fractures; cardiovascular diseases; irregular pulse; and hemi-paralysis; and many more too numerous to list here. Although most of these publications were based on observational clinical studies, instead of double-blinded clinical trials, many studies actually had a control group. One of the common characteristics of these diseases is that they are all considered incurable by western medicine, but achieved surprising therapeutic results from qigong therapy. Therefore, the patients who used conventional therapy were the control group. Although we cannot eliminate the placebo effect, the reported remedial effectiveness of EQ has been much better than any recorded placebo effect."

Many healing effects of qi have also been demonstrated with animals, completely eliminating the placebo effect and suggestion as the cause:

"There has long been skepticism about the therapeutic effects of qigong, and the effects of qigong are often attributed to psychological suggestion.  Researchers shifted their focus of qigong study to living organisms that closely resemble the bio-characteristics of humans.  Almost all conventional animal or biological models used for research could become suitable biological sensors for detecting EQ.  In vivo study of EQ effect on tumor-bearing mice showed the significant inhibitory effect of EQ on the cells of cancer in different studies. With the same principle of life detector, Kong et al. showed the effects of EQ to prolong the lives of laboratory flies, and Zhang et al of South China Normal University reported the effects of EQ exposure on the rapid recovery of fish after being frozen for 10 minutes.  There are many recorded successes in using infected mice or laboratory animals as life sensors to detect the EQ emitted by qigong healers. In addition, there has been some significant progress, as reported in the preliminary results, in the application of qigong on “the animal model of hypertension” and on “the animal model of diabetes”"

One interesting possibility for all these research results comes to mind: the possibility that they may in part actually be the so-called "experimenter effect" long noticed in parapsychology, where often the experimenters themselves are affecting their results through some sort of psi phenomena generated by their own minds. The experimenters themselves have a lot of expectations and hopes for positive demonstrated results to crown all their efforts, and their own minds may be creating some of the demonstrated effects. It is unfortunate that this effect can cloud the results as to their source, but at least, positive results are demonstrations of the paranormal, just not necessarily the mechanism believed in by the practitioners, in this case by the qigong healers. As has long been noticed, some experimenters may tend to get positive results not because of external conditions, but because of their own expectations and hopes.

[Ninshub]

In terms of healing through self-practicing qigong (the normal practice!) (rather than external qigong therapy), this medical site has information based on relevant recent (2017-2020) studies.