Nishino Breathing Method

[Judah Maccabee]

I came across this in my previous martial arts research and I was looking at it in a little more detail for a psych paper.

Basically, a med student/aikidoka/dance choreographer came up with his own practice akin to yoga or qigong that involves breathing exercises and gentle physical movements....


....followed by ki training.

There ARE some scientific studies on the practice with existing students, but nothing incredibly rigorous. What's interesting, though, is that the scientists take "ki" as a matter of fact in the studies:

In this paper, we studied whether or not the Nishino
Breathing Method could augment the NK cell activity
through daily exercise. The method was developed in the
1970s by Kozo Nishino, a former ballet choreographer and
a martial arts master, as a means of developing internal life
energy (regarded as Ki in Japanese or qi in Chinese).

He developed the method based on his research into the
mysteries of the human body, first as a medical student, then
as a ballet choreographer, and finally as an instructor of the
Japanese martial art Ai-Ki-Do, which emphasizes the Ki energy.
He developed his method independently of the Chinese
medical practice called qigong (Chen et al., 2002; Li
et al., 1991; Sancier, 1999; Xin et al., 2001; Xin et al., 2002).
However, there are certain similarities. Both employ slow
body movements and visualization of energy flow in the
body. The unique aspect of the Nishino school is that half
of the practice time in the class is dedicated to the development
of Ki energy through Taiki practice (paired Ki practice)
with instructors. During this segment of the class, each
student tries to emit Ki to an instructor, and then the student
receives Ki from the instructor.

Quotes from:

Beneficial Effects of the Nishino Breathing Method on Immune Activity and Stress Level. HIROKO KIMURA, M.D.,1 FUMIKO NAGAO, M.D., Ph.D.,2* YUKIO TANAKA,3
SHIZU SAKAI, M.D.,4 S. TSUYOSHI OHNISHI, Ph.D.,5 and KO OKUMURA, M.D.2

THE JOURNAL OF ALTERNATIVE AND COMPLEMENTARY MEDICINE
Volume 11, Number 2, 2005, pp. 285–291


The guy's home website is: http://www.nishinojuku.com/english/e.../e_nishi_.html

Another article on the practice: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/art...?artid=1475930

Can His Students Emit Ki?
One of the important criteria required to accept the Nishino Breathing Method as science is its universality. It is critical to prove that his students can also emit Ki. If only Nishino can display all these interesting phenomena but his students cannot, then the method would still remain in the realm of the paranormal and para-psychological phenomena. In order to test this, one of the authors (STO; practising this method on-and-off from 1997) examined his own ability to inhibit cancer cell growth in 2004 while we were collaborating with Tsurusaki and Yamaguchi (3). As shown in Fig. 1, STO could inhibit the growth of cultured cancer cells (HepG2) by emitting his Ki directly to the cultured cells. However, the degree of inhibition was less than Nishino's. When the culture dish was covered by the hands of another individual who did not practice the Nishino Breathing Method (see Fig 1B of the paper by Ohnishi et al. (3)), Ki from STO's fingers did not inhibit cell division. The difference from the control was not significant (as shown by NS in the figure). This may be explained as follows: (i) Since the cancer cells spread thinly on the bottom of the culture dish, STO's Ki could still reach the cells to inhibit cell division; (ii) However, if his Ki was interrupted by the hands of another person, his ability to inhibit cancer cell growth by penetrating other human tissue was limited. This is because his Ki was not as strong as Nishino's.

[Judah Maccabee]

Damn, I read through the second article a lot more:

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/art...?artid=1475930

I didn't realize what a gold-mine it was of scientific rationalizations of ki:

How Can Ki Produce Biochemical Effects?
Machi measured the intensity of infrared radiation from a Qigong healer and estimated it to be ∼10 µW(12). This leads us to a serious question as to how such a minute amount of energy could trigger tangible biochemical reactions. A possibility may be found in the mechanism of the ‘cascade reactions’ of cellular signal transduction. We have already demonstrated that Ki decreased the expression of messenger RNA for c-myc and increased that for regucalcin in cultured human carcinoma cells, HepG2. Using western blot technique, it was proven that the amount of regucalcin protein indeed increased (3). The mechanism may be explained like this: If a small amount of enzyme A is expressed by Ki, then its product B accumulates. If B happened to be another enzyme or an activator of an enzyme C, then its product D would accumulate to hundreds of thousands times greater than the amount of A. In cells, many signal transduction mechanisms, consisting of cytokines, receptors, activators and genes, form intimately linked networks to regulate biochemical and genetic reactions. Therefore, a minute change of a component could quickly be amplified millions of times to produce measurable changes in the system.

Although we do not know how infrared radiation can trigger such a change in cellular systems, we could speculate on a possibility. Most bending and stretching vibrations of many chemical bonds can be identified by absorption spectroscopy in a mid-infrared range (2.5–50 µm) (Table 1). The overtones (1st harmonics with 1/2 wavelength and 2nd harmonics with 1/3 wavelength) of these vibrations fall in the near-infrared range. Therefore, it is possible that a particular frequency of Ki may modulate the vibration of a chemical bond of an enzyme in such a way that it affects its enzymatic activity. If this happens, the microscopic change may be multiplied by the cascading nature of the signal transduction mechanism and result in an observable macroscopic change.

[Goldenmane]

That's pretty bad. You just know that this stuff is going to get referenced as being "scientific evidence" by the ki-kiddies.

[DCS]

Thread necromancy.

A more recent article:

Evid Based Complement Alternat Med. 2009 June; 6(2): 175–183.
Published online 2008 January 28. doi: 10.1093/ecam/nen005.
PMCID: PMC2686635

Philosophy, Psychology, Physics and Practice of Ki
S. Tsuyoshi Ohnishi1 and Tomoko Ohnishi2
1Philadelphia Biomedical Research Institute, King of Prussia, PA 19406 and 2Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA

(PDF)

Nishino in action:



I can has investigueishon tiem nao?