Generalised Balance

The way I explain Qi as as the 'convergence phenomena' that is common to systems that have feedback.

The simplest example I can offer is that of a self-balancing scooter, for which:

1. Awareness is the readings from the accelerometer which tell it its orientation, and its orientation as determined from these readings (the readings are 'integrated', in a sense different than the mathematical operation, to provided an 'integrated' picture of the device's state);
2. Its Brain is the microcontroller, and its Mind is the software running on it, together with its internal state;
3. Its Intention is for this orientation to always be vertical;
4. Its Mind, running on its Brain, compares its orientation with its Intention, which is to remain oriented vertically, and then generates control signals, or Action, attempting to move the wheels via motors in order to return to an upright position.
5. The effect of the Action on the position of the device is to change its orientation, and this changes what the device's Awareness tells it. In this way we have a feedback control loop.

In short, the self-balancing scooter is attempting to remain balanced in an upright position, using a feedback control loop.

When we balance ourselves upright, when standing, we are doing something similar. A clown balancing on a ball would be doing something similar, though more refined. The point here, though, is that this balancing-via-feedback-control-loop mechanism need not only be used for balancing in its conventional sense. So as such, by Generalised Balance, I mean this feedback-control-loop being used to control anything. I shall use the ugly-looking hyphenated-verb, Generalised-Balancing, in lieu of a nice term for this that I can't think of. A servo motor is Generalised-Balancing in the target position its controller is telling it to be in.

Moreover, we can generalise this idea even further, to simply mean the flow of a system, such as air currents and weather. This general abstract idea of flow and convergence is what I understand the word Qi to really mean, once one digs through the myriad layers of distortion that arise naturally through word-of-mouth teachings from one spiritual aspirant to the next.

To train one's Qi, is to tune this feedback look as it exists with the brain, Mind, and its neurological input and output. Then, one can generalise further, so that we are not just aware of our body's position in space, for example, but the state of thoughts in our mind, and our Intention encompasses target thoughts along with target postures. In this way we cross over from Taiji, Qigong, and (physical) Yoga, into meditation. In Taiji, when practising a Form, in a way we are (hopefully) meditating on each posture. To move from one posture to the next, we meditate on the next posture, this tuned neurological feedback loop then slowly moving us from one posture to the next.

I hope you grasp that it is hard enough to explain this in the technical wordy way I have above, given some examples from modern mathematics and engineering to turn to. A spiritual teacher from centuries in the past has little of that, and his students even less. Without a precise efficient language to communicate abstract thought, and the underlying ideas of Taiji and Meditation are inherently abstract and general, it is impossible to precisely and efficiently communicate such abstract ideas. Without such a language, either it takes too long to explain something, or meaning gets lost. In the former case, students largely get bored and move on; in the latter case, the student's understanding is heavily removed from what their teacher intended to teach them.

So in trying to understand Taiji and Meditation in terms I do understand, I turn to things which are inspired by science and engineering, and which make sense to someone whose background is in mathematics and not in the martial arts or meditation.