To cultivate ones life must entail the ability to protect ones life. Qi-gong is what it is, but it is not self cultivation. Martial skill is what it is, but is not self cultivation. One can develop qi and develop martial skill and still not cultivate or refine ones being.

For my interest to cultivate self requires self protection, but one can protect self without cultivating it. Many people do.

I suppose that this means I should offer a definition of self cultivation. I offer that this is no more and no less than the refinement of ones character; which is composed of mind, body and action. Moreover this entails a self control that is about true power and it has nothing to do with power over others, which is an illusion that many people waste their lives chasing.

One thing I correlate with refined character: letting go of self importance.

Might one divide the self cultivation from the martial content? I do not know but my instinct warns me that they are inseparable.

Nevertheless Josh, if you abhor the desire to dominate others, then I would think the exoteric “practical” applications of martial arts should interest you least, leaving the self-cultivation (e.g. qigong) perspective to interest you more.

For every wannabe Jedi warrior that wishes they could “chi” someone to death, there must be a least one hundred who would rather shoot, stab, or pummel in the traditional manner. Who is more likely to succeed, and who is the greater worry?

As to whether chi can be developed, or only recognized, there is a simple experiment to resolve it. First build the sensitivity, then adjust one’s behavior and environment to test whether the level can be increased and decreased. This experiment is ten thousand years old and the results are in, but that is no reason not to run it one more time.

It is practice for Yi, which leads Chi, which is intent/energy/awe.

I am not sure chi can be developed, so much as recognized. That it takes time to learn, because it is so obvious that it is hidden.

Science=a method dealing in probabilities, never absolutes, so nothing is ever proven according to science, just given the most probable explaination possible according to a test of a hypothesis or theory: via falsification.

Ergo chi is not in the domain of science to affirm nor deny, much as nucleotides once were. Before the 1950′s nobody had any idea what genes were or how they worked. There was great debate over the existence of heritable traits and religious communities touted the very idea as satanic. The scientific community was also highly divided about the assertion that such traits existed. And yet a day came when the evidence, which had previously eluded us, became apparent and we could assert that genes existed. One day chi may undergo a similar transformation in terms of our understanding. Or it may not.

I do not know if chi is real. But I abhor the mentality that seeks to obtain chi or develop it so as to have power over people, be it directly or through showing off.

Perhaps more importantly, an acknowledged ability to move chi and blood around one’s own body at will, pulls other interesting skills out of the realm of impossibility, and into the theoretical or practical realms.

She is an 11 year old non-martial artist.
I asked my wife next, she replied without hesitation that not only could she, she used to spend time playing with the feeling of an energy ball between her hands. She is not a martial artist and has done no qi development exercises.

So next I had my 9 year old boy that is like me try it, I said “can you feel it?” he replied without hesitation: “not really… but sort of”
Then I asked my 7 year old boy to do it. He said he “kind of” felt it.

To take something like this feeling and then convert it into a statement of fact is absurd. To say that one has reached a level that pretty much any man child or woman is at, who has not done any martial arts training, is highly amusing to me.

Chi work like feeling a ball of energy between your hands has no place in real martial arts of a serious nature. Leave it for the would be jedi knights who are convinced of their power but who cannot use it in a martial manner.

As LRon was told by Bob, People may be pink but their money is green. There will always be a market for BS in martial arts, religion and politics.