What is External Qi in Qigong Therapy? A Hypothesis Based on Bioelectricity and Its Verification Experiments

Traditional Oriental medicine includes a manual treatment called external qigong therapy. It is desirable to mechanize this manual treatment, that is, to develop a reliable scientific apparatus having ability higher than that of the manual treatment. This development would also relate to solving the emission mechanism of external qi, which is only a proposition in Oriental qi-ideology. The author proposed a qi-emission mechanism by considering bioelectricity, and made some apparatuses based on this proposal. Biomedical influences of multiple electromagnetic fields (including interference fields) emitted from the apparatuses were determined. Although the biomedical influences were different for different kind, intensity, frequency, etc. of the components of the fields, all of the apparatuses produced biomedical influences including cure effects. It was experimentally confirmed that NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) spectra, viscosity coefficient, and optical absorption of non-living material such as mineral waters, etc. were changed by irradiation with the fields emitted from some of the apparatuses. These effects for living bodies and non-living material were similar to those induced by qigong therapy. Therefore, the experiment results suggested that multiple electromagnetic fields functioned like external qi.