Would You Have Heard Of Mada Pasa
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No best answer has yet been selected by lightoftruth. Once a best answer has been selected, it will be shown here.
For more on marking an answer as the "Best Answer", please visit our FAQ.A few years ago a bunch of Indian physicists did a tour of the subcontinent doing "fakir" tricks piercing their bodies walking on coals the whole shooting match.
The point was that a lot of people get bitten by snakes and instead of going to hospital where they could be helped went to the local medecine man who waved beads over them and chanted a bit. A lot of people were dying because they got prayers rather than anti-venom. Having the scientists do all the tricks gave many the confidence to go to hospitals.
My old Senseii a grumpy Scot used to do the bed of nails and have breezeblocks broken on his chest for demonstrations - I'm pretty sure he never put it down to chi!
In fact somebody was once foolish enough to question a Japanese sensii about chi (pronounced "key" in Japan) He went to a locker and grabbed the key and shoved it in the student's face and said "Key? Here's key - Now train harder!"
You could try the question in "body and soul" you'll probably get a more sympathetic audience there.
Now I must align my chakras - ah that's better
Lightoftruth
There are no detectable forces running along meridians in any living thing that have been identified by science. There are electrical impulses that pass through the nervous system and blood runs through the arterial system, these are well known and quite separate from the "life-force" described in chi. There findings - or lack of findings - have motivated some scientists to investigate why many people perceive a benefit from processes such as acupuncture and qi gong(?) which claim to tap into Chi type energies. An article explaining a small amount of this research can be found through the following link:
http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTop ics/acu.html
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http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~scdiroff/lds/NewtonianMechanics/KarateBlow/KarateBlow.html
or this one
http://howthingswork.virginia.edu/journal/Article1.1.pdf
None of them involve mystical eastern forces, lines of energy or the tooth fairy
Well not really, after all Chi or Qi is a general concept and has a Japanese version (often written Ki) as well. It's just that the Japanese tend to be a bit well "less traditional" so you won't hear much talk about Chi in Japanese martial arts these days.
The "rivalry" between Japan and China is certainly true though and Karate had to be well cleaned of all Chinese intonations and slants when it was imported from Okinawa in the 1920s.
You might be interested in Wikipedia's section of this article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qi
"Qi in the martial arts"