Read anything about acupuncture and you'll meet the word Qi (often written "chi" and pronounced roughly "chee") within a paragraph or two. It sits at the heart of Chinese medicine, yet it's surprisingly hard to put into English. So what does Qi traditionally mean, how is it used in acupuncture, and why does no single English word do it justice?
A word with many meanings
Translators have reached for a whole string of English words: steam, breath, vital energy, vital force, material force, matter-energy, and even the ancient Greek pneuma. That list tells you a lot. Qi can mean something as ordinary as the air you breathe or the steam rising from a pot, and also something much larger.
In Chinese thought more broadly, Qi is the energies that run through the whole universe, both physical and non-physical at once. Early Daoist thinkers saw it as a vital force present in the breath and bodily fluids. Later, Neo-Confucian philosophers of the Song dynasty (960 to 1279) built a larger system in which Qi takes shape through yin and yang and through the Five Phases of Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water.
Qi in Chinese medicine
Chinese medicine took this way of thinking and applied it to the body. The Huangdi Neijing, which has been the highest Chinese authority on medical matters for over 2,000 years, frames health in terms of balance. Yin and yang are complementary forces, and imbalances arise from outside influences or from how we live.
Traditionally, Qi is described as flowing through channels, often called meridians, and acupuncture points are places along those channels where the practitioner can influence that flow. The Five Element tradition I practise works with twelve pulses at the wrists, each linked to one of the twelve "officials", the organ functions through whose channels Qi is said to flow in turn.
It helps to be clear about what kind of idea this is. Qi, meridians and the Five Elements are part of a traditional framework for understanding a person. They aren't structures you can see on a scan, and they aren't established facts of Western physiology, in the way blood vessels or nerves are. To me, the fairest way to treat Qi is as a very old and detailed language for describing how someone is, rather than as a claim about anatomy.
Where does Qi come from?
Traditionally, Qi is said to come from three places, which then combine. You inherit a fixed store from your parents at conception, held in the Kidneys: a constitutional reserve that's meant to last you a lifetime, rather than being topped up. On top of that, the Stomach and Spleen are said to extract Qi from the food and drink you take in, and the Lungs extract Qi from the air you breathe. Food-Qi and breath-Qi are said to combine in the chest, and that then joins your inherited store to become the Qi that circulates through the twelve channels.
That circulation is described as a closed loop, not a breath in and out: once made, Qi is said to keep moving round the channels, spending time in each organ in turn, rather than being used up and replaced with every breath.
This is a closed circuit, not a breath in and out: qi is traditionally described as circulating without end through the twelve channels, spending two hours in each organ before moving to the next, all the way round the clock.
For which organ is said to be active right now, try the live Chinese medicine body clock.
Why is it so hard to translate?
Several things get in the way:
- It is both thing and process. Qi can mean a substance, like breath, and also the movement or activity of something. English tends to split those into separate words.
- "Energy" is misleading. It's the most common translation, but in English "energy" has a precise scientific meaning, measured in joules. Qi isn't that, and the word can make a traditional idea sound like a physics claim.
- It spans body and mind. In Chinese thought Qi covers physical and mental or spiritual life together, whereas English usually keeps them apart.
The very fact that Qi resists a one-word translation shows how much it covers at once. Many translators now simply leave it as Qi, and so do I.
How might you notice it in a session?
You don't need to believe in Qi to have acupuncture, and I won't ask you to. You may hear me use traditional language to describe what I notice, such as the quality of your pulses or a sense that one Element needs support. Think of it as a way of paying close attention to the whole of you. Many people simply find the hour calm and restful.