QUOTE(Darin Hamel @ Jul 23 2006, 06:33 PM)
In every first class I teach my beginning Taijiquan (tai chi) students to make chi balls. I think its the same thing that are being called psi balls here. All we do it for is to impresss on beginning students that chi is real and it is the power behind all Taijiquan techniques. I show it to my students, my teacher showed it to me and his teacher showed it to him. I dont know how far back it goes but we dont have any other use for it except it also brings chi to the surface of your hands and makes them more sensitive to feel other folks chi.
We even have an exercise where we blind a student and they hold their hands out and they try to feel which hand has another students hand over it.
When you feel a repulsion between your hands that means they are both yang. That is healthy. Sometime they will feel like they are attracting each other. That means one is yin and the other is yang and you are unbalanced. If your palms get hot or tingle then that means the chi is meeting resistance and you need to detox or just take a walk.
So are they the same thing?
(No, you cant throw them and blow up things like on Dragonball Z)
Psi and Chi are the same thing. Psi is a less culturally specific term, and actually somewhat inaccurate, given that the word 'psi' implies the 'mind' specifically, when not all psi is actually generated in the mind - althoug the mind is the directing factor involved.
The most common definition I have heard for Psi is that it is the 'fluid' energy which exists within and between all things in varying states or 'phases'. Thus, psi can be tapped or acquired from different sources for different purposes. I have yet to see anyone demonstrate the use of psi in a fashion that indicates a variance in nature based on where the energy originates, but perceptualy it amounts to a variance in texture, intensity, and 'mood'. That is to say, I have acquired energy from various sources and percieved a difference, but my own paradigm of Psi, energy, etc., is centered on individual consciousness so I'm inclined to believe that the 'origin' of the energy is more of a focus for accessing a particular frequency of energy, rather than inherently coloring an energy in a specific fashion.
If I use the word 'chi' i'm speaking specifically of the energy within one's being, specifically the vital force which unifies body and spirit.
This term won't have a solid definition for probably many years, until science catches up to us.
peace