As s often the case, it can be useful to start by considering concepts one at a time, even if they may be related.
‘Chi’ is a concept used in different cultures and different disciplines to mean slightly different things. At the more rational end of the spectrum, some people just use the word as a metaphor, or as a way of building a model. When it used in this way, the word can be useful, even if it is the case that ‘chi’ does not correspond to an actual source, type or flow of energy. A martial arts teacher can use the idea to help a student understand and visualise how to punch correctly with focused force.
There are many related concepts, in many fields of study, that help to create useful models or ways of understanding. Many electrical engineers, when asked to explain about electrical circuits, use metaphors about water flowing through pipes. Thinking about the quantity water, how quickly it passes a certain point, and the amout of pressure behind it can help the student understand things like voltage and amperage.
At the less rational end of the spectrum, there are those who refer to ‘chi’ as if it is a real force or type of energy or a channel for a type of energy, albeit one that ‘western’ science has difficulty detecting or measuring . These claims may or may not be accompanied by claims about auras, being able to punch people at a distance, having seemingly amazing control over the body’s usually autonomous systems, or being able to defy natural laws such as gravity.
All such claims are in the realm of myth and pseuso-science. If you want to believe in them, you can. That’s your right. You can begin with any hypothesis you want, and if you’re selective enough you’ll find evidence to support it. Psychic powers are as real as you want them to be, and so are witches flying through the air on broomsticks (well reported by the newspapers of the 17th century) and the merits of phrenology (well reported almost everywhere in the 1920s).
However, if you are interested in objective assessment, in the scientific approach of trying to test and break a hypothesis, then occasional reports and well-meaning eyewitness testimony are not enough. You have to wait until someone can demonstrate these ‘truths’ under well-controlled conditions, where we take precautions to guard againt observer error, mis-interpretation, selective thinking errors and fraud. When this is done, we can begin to regard these phenomena and these achievements as real, and as worthy of future study and independent corroboration. Until that day comes, there’s no good reason or good evidence to believe in these things any more than we believe in witches on broomsticks. And that day has not come yet.
Kirlian photography: if you take some photographic film and an electrical current and arrange them a certain way (details readily available all over the internet) you can end up with some messy, foggy bits of film that show nothing much, or sometimes you can get pretty images that show a corona around the outline or profile of the object photographed. Sometimes, these images are striking, beautiful and fascinating. It’s certainly easy to imagine they correspond to something like life energy or a psychic aura. You can believe this if you wish. Has anyone demonstrated in the scientific way mentioned above that this correlation has any factual basis? No. Not yet. Thelma Moss did some nice research on this and you can maybe still get her paperback books full of her findings. She felt there was something to the ‘kirlian image = life energy field’ theory. Unfortunately, there is no independent corroboration of her findings. So far as we know, these images are just an artefact of voltage and photographic film.