Notable Tai Chi teacher, Damo Mitchell, just released a new video with Adam Mizner where he addresses some of the controversy over The Power of Chi documentary that is worth watching, if you care about these sorts of things.
Damo Mitchell and Adam Mizner are a couple of the most well-known modern Tai Chi teachers on the seminar circuit, both of whom have a lot of followers on social media, and large organisations of students behind them. The Power of Chi was a movie where Adam Mziner demonstrated his chi/qi on a number of athletes from various sports. The movie has since mysteriously disappeared from the Internet, as far as I can tell, but the trailer is still on YouTube:
You can see from the start of the clip where Damo’s thinking is at (around the 4 minute mark) – the reason people criticise the movie, or himself and Adam, is because they are jealous of how well he and Adam are doing and that the people who criticise them have less followers so are below them and it’s therefore wrong to “punch down” by replying to them. These low level people also “are not in a good space mentally”’. His other point is that the movie was not made by Adam, he was just a paid performer in it, therefore everybody’s criticism is misplaced.
Well, talk about missing the point entirely!
At no point does he address the central issue I and many others had with the movie – that all this “chi” stuff is nothing to do with chi/qi!
Now, I’m not egotistical enough to think that Damo is addressing this video specifically to me, but my original post about the documentary is still there for everybody to read. As you can see, I said I thought the whole thing was a bit silly. That’s about the worst of it!
You can decide for yourself if that means I am racked with jealousy about how many students Adam and Damo have, and how great their lives are… I really am not even playing in the same league as Adam and Damo – they are professional Tai Chi teachers making a living off this, I’m not. I have a real job, and just run this blog in my spare time for fun. It’s the same with my podcast. But that doesn’t mean I’m not serious about my practice.
The other thing I did in my original post was link to my friend Rob Poyton’s video response to the trailer showing how all the supposed Chi feats in the trailer were really done – which I thought was quite cool, but seems to have really put the cat amongst the pigeons. I mean part of the attraction of seeing a stage magician is working out how the magic is really done, right?
Now that video by Rob seemed to raise the ire of many of Adam’s followers (who posted in the comments section of my blog, which are still there and you can read) who replied with such gems as this:
“I’m disappointed in your entire take on internal power, as indicated by your dismissive way of talking about those who actually do possess some genuine internal power as using “tricks”. To be blunt, you’re just ignorant–that is, you have no personal experience with real practitioners and assume everyone showing such power must be a charlatan. “
“Why do you have a website about Taiji (that’s the correct pinyin spelling btw) when you’ve never met any of the top taiji practitioners – and refuse to meet them before publishing negative theories about the limits of the art? So the best explanation to you is that the top practitioners in the world who have trained thousands of students are merely liars with fake reviews from professional athletes and professional teachers?”
“So you did not see the move, or met anyone in the movie to experience this skill/ attribute first hand. Kind of strange to have such strong opinions on something you have no experience in….”
You can see from the comments that the followers of Adam and Damo really do believe that the feats presented in the movie, The Power of Chi, are real demonstrations of chi power, (or Qi power.) Again, that’s my issue with all this stuff, not that they’re making a good living off teaching Tai Chi.
As a complete co-incidence Rob just released another clip in the last few days, this time about the subject of Empty Force, that’s also worth a watch, and will undoubtedly upset all these same people all over again, for exactly the same reasons:
There’s a long history of the Tai Chi magician. Empty Force is something that the Tai Chi Magicians of the world engage in regularly, and once again, I think it’s cool that Rob is posting a video showing how it works.
As for Damo and Adam, I hope they keep enjoying their cocktails and cigars – they seem to be having a great time, hidden away in all that smoke, being Tai Chi Gurus. I’m not jealous that we have very different lives at all. I wouldn’t trade mine for anything. Spending a month on a retreat in Thailand training Tai Chi full time, (let alone a year!), sounds like absolute hell to me. I’m sure it would send me potty! I’d rather be with my family, friends and pets, thanks.
It looks like Adam and Damo have some real skills in Tai Chi push hands – I’m not doubting that. After all, they’ve had years training full time to get good at this stuff, so they better have something by now. But as with everything in the internal arts – it pays to keep your feet firmly on the ground.
For me the latest video from Damo and Adam is just another fascinating glimpse into how the mind of a Tai Chi Guru works.
The Tai Chi Notebook 
Anyone else getting huge Andrew Tate vibes from this?
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Empty Force aka “Psychological Force”
Here are comments by Feng Zhiqiang and Chen Xiaowang about “Empty Force” or “Lin Kong Jin”, many years ago in an interview by Black Belt Magazine:
Black Belt: In the United States we have heard of persons able to
project their chi beyond their bodies and throw people to the
ground without touching them. Have you ever witnessed
such an event or ability?
FENG ZHIQIANG: I have heard stories of this too, but no one has yet
demonstrated this ability to my satisfaction or to that of the
Beijing Physical Culture Institute, which has been testing
persons who claim they have such abilities. It has been
found, though, that people are able to project weak infrared
rays from their hands, and they can use this ability in place
of acupuncture anaesthesia. My teacher, Chen Fake, was
able to hurl us 20 to 30 feet in pushing-hands exercise; but
that required real physical contact and real strength, not a
metaphysical force.
**************************************
Black Belt: What do you think of the stories that there are tai chi
boxers who can uproot a person without even touching him
physically?
CHEN XIAOWANG: Such stories are highly exaggerated and have no
place in martial arts. In order to fight an opponent you must
touch him, otherwise you can do nothing to him. But once
you touch your opponent, you use only enough strength to
overcome him, not to overpower him, just enough to get him
off his feet. This possibly to the untutored eye may seem
like magic, in ancient times it was probably Considered
such. But today we are much better educated and able to
apply a scientific understanding to martial arts.
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Well, Adam and that group of people tend to be on the fantasy side of “qi”, but it’s not quite in the way that Rob Poyton is demonstrating. Adam, and others like him, are becoming more common in the Asian martial arts because they have found and are exploring some aspects of the basic “jin” phenomenon. Rob doesn’t have jin skills or he would have made his expose’ along those lines (not that I don’t admire Rob’s attempt to put things right).
The whole “powers of qi” stuff could be quickly handled with a “how does it work?” analysis of the forces involved, but most people in the martial-arts world don’t have the training or inclination to examine things like that. When you push someone and they leap backwards or fall backwards, there has to be a certain amount of forces involved. What are those forces? Where do they come from? Did the partner jump backward helpfully? And so on. If there wasn’t a lot of simple physics involved, why did they need to touch each other? Simple, practical questions would show these magical feats to be what they really are.
When done correctly, Adam does indeed have a good skill that is found in (all) Chinese martial arts: jin force manipulation. The thing to remember, though, is that jin skills are found in all Chinese martial arts, at the better levels, so what he’s doing is not “internal” … he’s simply playing with a common denominator of the Asian arts. Adam’s just overplaying it a bit, but notice that a lot of his detractors usually don’t have that skill, so who wins in the end?
Mizner and that group play a lot toward the woo-woo side of what “qi” might be, the “magical energy” side, but they miss the more practical side of qi that has to do with training the normally involuntary/autonomic side of things. In other words, they’re forsaking the far for the near. On a personal level, though, whether what Mizner (and others) did was hokey or not, there are at least good discussions happening about what qi really is. And by bracing the topic on this forum, the conversations continue. As they should. It’s good for everyone to lay it out there and discuss things openly.
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Should read “classic passive-aggressive behaviour.”
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Spot on, Graham. Seems to me the POC film became a bit of a train wreck and now Mizner is trying to distance himself from it. I also noted the condescending tone towards any critics, class passive-aggressive behaviour.
And yes, not one refutation of any of the concrete criticisms that I and others put forward. To my mind, this just makes them look worse.
Interesting, isn’t it, to see their tone mirrored in some of the more vituperative comments on my Youtube (from anonymous posters lol.) I gather another chap in the UK has been in touch with the London AM school requesting a meet up but they have not responded – would need to check that, but it is the impression I had. Speaks volumes.
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