ruach hakodesh pt 3- inner vs outer qi

16 adar II 5782

i am excited that my relationship to qi continues to evolve (past posts on qi). just with any practice or activity, the more i relate to chaqi, the more i gain. this does not hold to the isolated activity of ‘gong fu cha.’ the more we experience life, the more we can relate the world we are encountering and it’s generative lessons to any practice and vice versa. the more i consciously interact with chaqi, the more i learn to interact with qi in my other encounters. qi is not a one way street. yes, a tea has qi, but we as the tea drinkers can change how the qi interacts with us. one aspect of this is the classic example of how your mood can alter your experience. if i am having a grumpy day and feeling rushed and stressed out, i may interpret the tea as ‘energizing.’ but if i am calm, relaxed, and intentional when drinking my tea, i might feel the tea as more calming and not energizing at all. but here’s where the kicker comes in ‘hey, teakkurim, if one’s mood is what affects how we experience chaqi, does the tea even have qi to begin with, or is it all in our heads?’

that’s a great question devoted reader of my blog. i respect your line of inquiry and your taste in tea blogs. as i’ve discussed in previous ‘ruach hakodesh’ posts, there is the classic debate about whether qi is inherent in all teas or if only certain teas have qi. im a woowoo anti-hierarchical millennial, and i like to say that all teas (and other things) have qi. but chaqi presents itself in different ways all determined by the leaf’s life, the weather, the aging process, etc. but as i drink more tea, and as i drink teas that ‘definitively have qi’ (said in over dramatic stuffy self mocking tone), i understand where the ‘only certain teas have qi’ point comes from.

before i dive into that, i want to go back to the thought of qi not being a ‘one way’ interaction. we interact with qi, we can alter qi and qi can alter us. if im stressed out and feeling frantic and i decide to take some big breaths to try and calm down, that is me interacting with and changing qi. the practice of tai qi and qi gong are all about directing and channeling qi. our mood, our thoughts, our presuppositions, our posture; all this can and does influence chaqi. we can enhance chaqi and we can negate it. even teas that have ‘definitive qi’ can have the qi altered by us. this is a good and a bad thing. 

this brings me to a current theory i have about ‘outer qi’ versus ‘inner qi’ for a tea. this comes from me reinterpreting things ive encountered from my readings about TCM and yin yang (regular disclaimer that i did not formally study TCM but rather read a good deal of books translated into English while experimenting with herbs and my own body. i aint no professional). the ‘outer qi’ is the feeling produced from the aging of the tea whether it be microbes that have beneficial reactions with our gut, how the caffeine and other photochemicals evolve over time, or whatever other differences the tea undergoes while aging. the ‘inner qi’ is the qi contained/generated by the leaves themselves. the leaves can have a good quality ‘inner qi’ which can also be refined by the ‘outer qi’ of the aging process.

i think this relates to the discussions/debates that i see online about the differences between ‘being tea drunk,’ a tea having ‘body feels,’ and ‘chaqi.’ from what i know (add another disclaimer here ___), in Chinese tea drinking circles, the literal phrase ‘tea drunk’ refers to negative ill effects one gets from a not good tea (headaches, jitters, etc). in the west ‘tea drunk’ means ‘we got totally wasted on that tea last night,’ which usually (but not always) relates to a caffeine high. when people talk about getting ‘body feels’ from a tea, i believe that relates to ‘outer qi’ and when people say a tea has ‘definitive chaqi’ i think that relates to ‘inner qi.’

and that’s all i have to say about that…for now…

xoxo,

atzei besamim