Internal “Internal energy” is a funny term. Everyone seems to mean something slightly — or wildly — different when they use it. For some people, “internal” just means inside the body . For others, it means the skeleton. For others, fascia. And for another camp altogether, if qi isn’t driving the technique, then it isn’t internal at all. I’m sure there are plenty of other definitions floating around too. For my purposes — specifically in a martial arts context — I define internal methods as...

It’s kind of wild how different people can be using the same word and mean completely different things by it. Sometimes it’s just a subtle shading of meaning. Sometimes it’s an entirely different definition altogether. And unless that difference is made explicit, it’s ridiculously easy to talk past one another.