The History of Ki in Asian Martial Arts: From Shamanism to Stress Management

Nowadays, large corporations include stress busting techniques derived from ancient systems as part of everyday stress management practice.

While the rattles, totems and drums of the traditional shaman may be an anachronism today, many of the characteristics and skills of the shaman are still very much in demand. From the charismatic motivational speaker at corporate events, to the Feng Shui consultant helping to construct a modern office block, ancient beliefs still influence the modern world.


What is Qigong?

Ki (Chi in Chinese), according to the Yi Jing (Book of Changes 1122 B.C.) is the life force that enables all life in the universe to function. The ‘gong’ element is simply the practical skills and knowledge developed by practitioners over time and passed from master to student down through the ages. Typically, Qigong (pronounced chee-gung) is used to gather and store Ki to promote health, to channel and direct the Ki energy for the purpose of healing, and promote spiritual growth and enlightenment for the individual practitioner.

Qigong consists of a series, or sets, of exercises emphasising posture, movement, breathing and visualisation carried out in a meditative and relaxed manner. The movements are slow and graceful and take considerable practice to perfect.

Historical Background of Ki Arts

Selling Water by the River: An Eastern Paradigm Shift

Eastern traditions have a unique way of understanding the movement of energy, which Western traditions have difficulty in accommodating within their rationalist world view.

There is a story in Zen literature of two people meeting by the banks of a river. One is a passing traveller, and the other is a Zen master. When the traveller asked what he was doing, the Zen master replied: “selling water by the river”.


Training The Vital Centre

Teaching the power of Ki is like this. Ki is everywhere and freely available. A teacher cannot give Ki to someone. One has it already, but normally one is unaware of its potential. Training in Aikido is a way to unlock this potential, and to make one more consciously aware of what it is to be fully human and alive.

Zen training and Aikido share a common purpose: the realisation of one’s ‘true nature’. Both are vehicles to attain this end; and although the forms of training may differ in some important respects, there are some common features.

The most relevant, in the context of Aikido, is the cultivation of mind body development that in the Zen tradition leads to the growth of ‘Jiriki’ (concentrative or spiritual power), and in Budo terms is simply called Ki. In Japan the colloquialism ‘training the belly’ generically refers to the martial arts, and reflects the belief that Ki is stored in an area of the lower abdomen, the seika tanden.

It is through the cultivation of ‘Jiriki’ that one can develop insight into one’s ‘true nature’. Implicit within all of the Arts of Japan is the Zen principle of ‘original mind’, or ‘true nature’. This is the belief that each one of us already has a higher nature that can be realised through the practice of mind body development. Aikido is a form of mind body development.

Definitions and Limitations

But here caution is required, definitions cannot be relied upon to provide too much in the way of explanation. In fact, over reliance on them can easily lead one astray. They can become so general, or so abstract, that they become either meaningless, or inaccessibly esoteric. The kanji, or written character for Ki, for example, is defined in Japanese dictionaries as:

Ki - Breath with rice; breathing rice; steaming rice.

Other definitions describe Ki as the generative life force of Heaven and Earth that governs reproduction. While the first definition is obviously analogous - Ki is like rice, and without it there would be no life - the second is too general.

Ki appears to be a kind of life force. A fuller account of Ki would involve going into the complexities of ancient Chinese cosmology, Taoism and Buddhism, and fascinating though this may be it will not aid practical understanding.

Founder of Aikido

The founder of Aikido peppered his training lectures with aspects of Shinto shamanism that few, if any, could really understand. Yamaoka Tesshu, the renowned Japanese Sword, Zen and Calligraphy Master said, “In order to understand if the water is hot or cold, first you must taste it”. The emphasis here is on personal experience - feeling what it is actually like. Ki can be taught and understood as a ‘feeling’, and can be experienced by anyone regardless of gender, race, age or physical disposition. Read More

What is Aikido?

When I went to Japan in 2007, I learned that one must find one’s own way in Aikido, regardless of style, affiliation, or teacher. Two teachers confirmed this, one ancient (85), and one relatively modern (53), each separately affirming what the other said without any collusion and without ever having met. I did not ask them a direct question, but they seemed to know what I was looking for.

Now it makes much more sense than it did at the time – I seem to learn the important things by a sort of slow release process, in contrast with my cultural disposition and desire for everything right now. My own few students are always (the few that I have) asking questions about things that they will not be able to understand for a while, but this seems too patronising to say to them, so I try my best to answer their questions in the full knowledge that it won’t help them. When they do understand, they will not even remember what I said.

Aikido is made up of two elements, and not three, as is commonly supposed in translation – ai-ki-do. It is ‘aiki – do’. The two elements are confusingly both separate and unified simultaneously. They are not, in the language beloved of sociologists and psychobabblists ‘interdependent’, or ‘symbiotic’, or any other pseudo- scientific or pseudo-ancient term.

In a sense, the way that the terms have been used from 1969 onwards pretty much sum up the history of Aikido. While O Sensei wasn’t much bothered about what it was called, he agreed to settle on the name Aikido - it seemed reasonable at the time.

At the time of the big schism - two guys arguing about the one thing - the agreement was to go their separate ways with their separate understanding. The ai – ki – do side, almost sounding like the tapping of a sculptor wielding a chisel, was castigated by the other ki side as being stiff and unyielding. The ki side talked about aikido as soft, smooth and flowing, and this seemed so ethereal to the other side that as realists, with the true blood connection, they had to question its authenticity. What developed subsequently was a marketing war, and as we know some you win, some you lose.

But aiki was really the thing, but only one could use the term and you had to practice for ever before anyone would reveal it to you. The ki crowd were teaching aiki too, but they called it ki, because it was different? Again you had to practice for ever to understand it, because it was claimed that no one could understand it?

(As a side note, we now know that aiki was being taught by other schools not connected to Aikido, so there’s really no foundation for treating it as exclusively the possession of anyone style within Aikido)

So there you have it, the over simplified history of Aikido: two groups of people arguing about the same thing, which neither could understand, and even if they did, were not going to tell anyone about it unless they knew them for at least a whole lifetime. And people wonder why no one takes Aikido seriously!