How to Develop Your Chi in Martial Arts

Video Transcript

"Hi everybody, I'm John Graden from the Martial Arts Teachers Association and johngraden.com. How do you develop your Ki or Chi power through the martial arts. First let's define what Chi or Ki is. It is your inner energy. It is an energy that we all have within us, and through the martial arts and other various techniques, as you become masterful we learn to tap into that Chi, tap into that Ki and help improve our lives. To me, you're reaching a level of Chi power and Ki power when you're outer world reflects your inner world. In other words, if I have and idea, if have a concept, if I have a motto of the world that is one of resilient optimism, resilient optimism. What does resilient optimism mean? Resilient means that when you get knocked down, you get back up. As the Japanese say, fall down 7 times, get up 8. That's resilient optimism. My optimism is resilient, so when I'm faced with life's challenges, I use my inner force, I use my mind power, I use my motto of the world that I developed, not the one that was programed into me by me by my parents or society, the one that I developed through the martial arts to help me get up 8 times. So we use this inner strength in all areas of our life. For instance, I'm often asked, "have you ever used your martial arts?" people typically ask that wanting to hear a great fight story, "yeah, I knocked 8 guys out, and", no. My answer is always this; "I use my martial arts every single day"; I use my martial arts every single day. It's an expression of who I am. This level of Chi power, this level of Ki power, doesn't necessarily come initially. All beginning students have it, but through the martial arts we learn to cultivate it. How do we learn to cultivate it? Some various technique that I've enjoyed through the year to help me to really spend some time with my self. 1, is meditation; when I'm meditating I'm relaxing the body, and meditation is interesting because, I'm typically focused on one word, it's called a mantra, I'm just repeating it over and over again, typically it's like, ummm. But various meditation techniques have various different mantras that help you to relax your mind. See we want to get a quiet mind. A lot of people today, when you think about ideas of road rage, and they have a coping mechanism that goes from, kind of a day to day life, instantly to anger and violence, so they bypass all these various coping suggestions and strategies, and they go right into rage. Well martial artist have tremendous ability to cope with challenges, and martial artists have tremendous ability to have a resilient optimism. To me that's the beauty of the martial arts, that's the Ki power that I use every single day. Remember, dreams are not built on cynicism, dreams are not build on pessimism, dreams are only built on optimism. Martial arts have tremendous optimism, they have great confidence. I'm John Graden, I hope that helps you. Thank you."