"Empty Force" is a Tai Chi and martial arts myth, but people fall for it

Today someone in my Tai Chi class spoke about a Tai Chi master being able to repel people, or knock them down, without using any physical force. You know, just with their mind, their supposedly highly evolved chi power. 

(Note: in Chinese the same word can denote different things. The "Chi" in Tai Chi means boundary. Chi can also refer to vital life force, also known as qi. That's how I used it in the sentence above.)

When I heard this, I thought, that's a Tai Chi myth, because it isn't possible to project a physical force just with the mind. However, I didn't say that out loud. People believe all kinds of things that aren't true. That's the basis of every religion: fantasies that people believe in. 

They do this out of a search for meaning. It can feel good to believe in the supernatural, in God, in "empty force" chi power.

I'm not shy about making fun of those myths on this blog, and in conversations with people who agree with me about the absurdity of supernaturalism, but I don't go out of my way to dump a heaping load of reality on someone else's fantasy if the fantasy works for them.

Fortunately, when it comes to empty force in Tai Chi and other martial arts there's plenty of evidence that has debunked this myth. 

It seems clear that one foundation of this myth is the same foundation that causes followers of a guru to ascribe supernatural powers to them. I know whereof I speak, because for 35 years I was an active member of an India-based religious organization headed up by a guru who was considered to be God in Human Form.

That there wasn't any objective evidence of this didn't bother the most fervent of the guru's devotees (I was a bit more on the skeptical side) who believed the guru could know what his disciples were doing and thinking half a world away, and could intervene in their lives if he so chose.

Those devotees, like devotees of a Tai Chi master who claims to have the power of empty force, want so badly for their fantasy to be true, they participate in the manufacturing of supernatural powers which then are taken as truth by other gullible devotees.

Here's a You Tube video that, in 5 1/2 minutes, demonstrates how "Chi Power Woo Woo Fails." (Title of the video.) It's rather sad how the students of a Tai Chi or marital arts master will either consciously or unconsciously go along with his empty force B.S., which is shown to be a fantasy when someone not under the spell of devotion participates in a demonstration that invariably fails. 

If you want more amusement, check out this longer 13 1/2 minute video that shows some additional empty force staged ridiculousness. Again, I'm unsure whether those who participate in the demonstrations know that the supposed master is a fake, or have convinced themselves that he's really got empty force power, so they fall down when he gestures at them. I like the description of the video:

Qi Power, Lin Kong Jin / Empty Force Compilation of Martial Artists desperately in need of psychiatric treatment. Harness the Chi Power of confused minds! ... This kind of belief is common in Chinese and Japanese martial arts as Tai Chi and Aikido. But there are also "sects" out there as Yellow Bamboo and EFO. It seems like many of the "masters" believe themselves in what they do. Apparently some people have a very deep need of believing in magic and mysteries. - "Hey! Look at me! I am special!"

Lastly, "Myth busting in Chinese marital arts" is a good post on The Tai Chi Notebook site. Excerpt:

These more marketing-orientated myths about the prowess of practitioners – how deadly they were, how unbeatable their martial arts was, how the power of Qi was greater than physical strength all fed directly into all that nonsense about no touch knockouts and “empty force” that has marred the image of Chinese martial arts in the modern age.

And politics also gets involved. When obvious myths about the origins of martial arts are dispelled they often get replaced by more politically motivated stories about the arts origins that are equally as unprovable and unreliable yet fit a nationalist agenda. It seems like the Chinese martial arts are forever being used to support some sort of Chinese government propaganda.

In short, the Chinese martial arts world was in need of, and remains in need of, a lot of myth busting, because much of what we are being told and sold is basically not true. But Bowman’s fears, that we are in danger of spoiling the fun for everybody with this relentless search for the truth, holds true, I think. I was certainly attracted to Chinese martial arts by a steady diet of orientalist propaganda from the likes of David Carradine’s Kung Fu TV series and Marvel comics with heroes like Iron Fist. This is often what draws us to the martial arts in the first place and there has to be some way of searching for truth in the martial arts, but keeping the magic that drew us there in the first place. 

UPDATE: Here's a few links to descriptions of empty force by people who believe this myth. They sound a lot like miraculous faith healing stories in evangelical Christianity. My best attempt to be sympathetic about such unfounded beliefs is that it shows the power of the human mind: when someone really wants to believe in something that isn't true, they reshape reality to fit their belief. I just have an old-fashioned attitude that we should reshape our beliefs to fit reality, to the best of our ability.

Empty Force
Empty Force in the Buqi System
Chinese Empty Force

And here's a post that, on a quick read (it's pretty long) puts Tai Chi training in a realistic perspective. I'll share some excerpts that debunk the notion of empty force as something supernatural. By the way, if anyone is wondering, I've practiced Tai Chi for nineteen years. Before that I was into hard style martial arts for about twelve years, earning a black belt in a form of karate. 

What is Empty Force?

Possibly a year after my lifelong friend and martial arts partner, Martin Inn and I had immigrated Chu, Ch’u-fang into the United States, he announced a new and important mission for us. There was someone else, someone of great importance, that we must now turn our efforts toward immigrating. This was a special and secretive individual only known to a few advanced adepts, such as Mr. Chu, and we should be honored to have the job of bringing him to America.

He was so special because he had mastered the technique of “empty force,” the highest achievement of Taijiquan. When one’s circulation of qi becomes high enough, he reaches the point at which he can project it at others, knocking them down at a distance, or even killing them. We all have some idea of what this looks like, having seen it in countless gung-fu movies.

Marty and I were properly stunned, not expecting to be “living the dream” of becoming gung-fu supermen quite so quickly, and Mr. Chu must have noticed, asking next if we believed him, to which, after quickly glancing at one another, we both assured him that of course, teacher, you can bet on it. After nodding solemnly for a moment, he told us, sounding rather disgusted, that we were fools. No one, he emphasized in a slightly louder tone of voice, can do this, and don’t believe anyone that tells you that they can. 

I am sure that no one could righteously fault me for ending the current discussion right here, because Mr. Chu’s warning is definitely the short answer to the whole subject of empty force, given what people take the phrase to mean.

It is a worthwhile warning, because purveyors of this “power” seem to surface every few years with the persistence of some sort of biblical pestilence. It is amazing to see the number and relatively high caliber of people who can be taken in by this “emperor’s new clothes” con, in which an inability to be affected by this “qi attack” identifies an insufficiency in you, rather than in the one mounting the attack. 

...As far as any fantasies concerning what appears to be happening in supposed demonstrations of “empty force,” these should be relegated to the same mental dust bin as similar martial fantasies about making oneself heavier or lighter at will, or fighting multiple assailants while blindfolded. All of these kinds of stories have their origins in some sort of reality, but never the reality that is presumed.

The presumed reality here is that someone is emitting a force that operates at a distance and can affect completely untrained and even unaware opponents. In the words of Chu, Ch’u-fang: no one can do this, and don’t believe anyone who tells you that they can.

Comments

[Ron E.]

Just watched the film about Chi power. Quite funny if it wasn’t so sad, sad in the sense that so many are taken in by this – and many other forms of so-called mystical powers. It reminded me of the evangelical healing session where cripples walk etc. All said to be either down to an invisible force (chi) projected with the mind, or, in the case of faith healers, God working through the healer.

I wouldn’t call myself a skeptic, that would imply that there is something to be skeptical of whereas as far as I’m concerned, just like the child’s imagined (thought made) bogey man in the cupboard, it just doesn’t exist and fades away as the child matures.

It would help perhaps if the concept ‘mind’ wasn’t used in the assumed sense that it is a something. The term mind obscures the fact that it is simply thought or memory, and as such is a product of the brain’s networking and therefore, being immaterial, cannot project a physical force. The best that mind (being information) can muster, is to use such information to work out how to physically use the body or utilise some object to apply physical force.

There is then, no separate thing as a mind, just a survival support processing aid that has evolved to keep us safe – a series of thoughts and memories that arise as information derived from our particular store of experiences and knowledge.

Religions and many spiritual organisations are adept at using terms that are in reality just concepts; thought made terms that carry a lot of meaning though meanings which also harbour many words and terms that are themselves thought derived concepts with no relationship to reality.

[Appreciative Reader]

Hahaha, hilarious!

Enjoyed both vids. Most of it was Three-Stooges level slapstick comedy, but if you want (ever so slightly) more of mental slapstick as opposed to physical, then the excuses offered by that fat "instructor" towards the end of the second, longer video --- "PLUS his toes are aligned wrong, PLUS his tongue was pointing left inside of his mouth, PLUS he's an unbeliever, PLUS this PLUS that" --- that's rub-your-eyes-in-disbelief hilarious.

Who the hell ARE these guys? I don't mean those charlatans, they're no mystery. But who the hell are those unbelievably gullible dupes sitting there pop-eyed and, like dummies, swallowing this nonsense whole?

---

I remember you'd done another post on this stuff months back, Brian, years maybe. I'd then mentioned a lovely site, with a lovely name, bullshido, that I'd spent some time browsing around then, that shows and discusses specifically this stuff. ...Well not just this, I mean this qi-qu-qing stuff is easily dismissed as nonsense, as outright charlatanry-meets-gullible, not much to discuss there really; but more the Ip Man wu shu type dancing around. Not to diss those disciplines, but that kind of thing is full of a great deal of, well, bullshido. Bring those venerable invincible legendary "masters", given to beating back tens and even scores of opponents in staged fight, and put them in a ring with an MMA type --- just an ordinary MMA fighter, not a champion --- and they immediately get beaten to a pulp.

...You were asking how it is people fall for this, those opponents that keep falling like ninepins. In this qi-qing touchless nonsense it is obviously charlatanry, but in the less blatant kind of BS, it is a bit more complex. Some of it is charlatanry, sure, but sometimes it can be conditioning. I've heard professionals, now no longer deluded, speaking sheepishly of how they'd been conditioned to respond just so, when their opponent moves just so, so that the end result is like a dance, that disappears into smoke outside of those sets of rules blindly followed, aka conditioning.

(Again, not suggesting tai chi and wu shu are 100% nonsense, of course not. But a great deal of traditional martial arts are indeed nonsense, at least when it comes to actual fighting. " Masters" getting knocked out easily by ordinary MMA fighters is proof of that.)

---

Heh, lest meditators start feeling all superior to those lowly brawlers and fighters, don't forget, this kind of nonsense is far easier to pull off in meditation and spirituality than in fighting. In fights at least you need collaborators. When it comes to meditating and spirituality etc, nothing stops me from getting up one day and announcing grandly that I've seen constellations within, or that I've seen bushes self-combust and heard disembodied voices speak out, or whatever. There'll be no shortage of people who, instead of treating this as a barefaced lie or as drug-induced or maybe psychotic hallucinations, or maybe a bona fide neural phenomenon, will instead start screaming Hallelujah or Sat Sri Akal, or whatever, and falling over themselves to genuflect to this superman prophet. We really shouldn't be grandly calling ourselves Homo Sapiens; Homo Halfwittus, or Homo Gulliblus, that's more like it.

[sant64]

The wonderful TV show Kung Fu was "orientalist propaganda." Good Lord...ban Master Po along with the Easter Bunny. It's an entertainment genre, and certainly not "orientalist," as the hero/magical martial artist genre originated in the Far East. We in the West didn't concoct it.

I had a friend who was taking lessons from one of these chi masters. He was convinced that this master really had powers and was quite indignant when I told him i thought his sensei a fake.

My old karate teacher once saw Koichi Tohei throw a student in what to him looked like an impossible act of physics. "It had to have been a pure Ki throw," my teacher said. My teacher was pretty down to earth and this was the only time he ever hinted at believing in anything woo. Tohei was famous for giving Ki demonstrations, such as holding off the push of 10 people with his little fingers. But many such demonstrations have been duplicated and have mundane explanations, such as the "unbendable arm." It really is possible to make one's relaxed arm almost impossible to bend, but this is accomplished through applied kinesiology, not actual spirit force.

But to the point: Is religion the same as the fake Kung Fu master? Is the woo of fake Kung Fu the same false product as believing Jesus loves you? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. The devil's in the details. There are plenty of positive mental emotional social societal benefits that come from the practice of religion. A practice that at its core is the simple belief that life has meaning and a purpose and moral values are a good thing. Still waiting for the atheists to engineer a substitute.