Mike Sigman

The "jin" we're talking about (BTW, it's often spelled "jing" when used as a modifier, e.g. "jieh-jing") means essentially a 'trained force skill', something like a 'force vector'. It's the same force that is at the heart of the "ki tests", "kokyu throws", and so on. You train the release of those forces in conjunction with training the body via breathing-techniques/conditioning (aka "qigongs").... hence saying something like "breath throw" (kokyunage) is pretty accurate. You can see how silly this has become with some of the posted understandings about how kokyu gets mangled in definitions of 'breathing'.

A lot of the terminology had practical origins back in the old days. A "kong jing" (empty-force) skill originally was a legitimate study facet in martial-arts. You make a careful feint and your opponents reacts by moving in a certain direction... i.e., you make the technique work by affecting the opponent's ki/qi. E.g., a "ki throw". With only a little misunderstanding, a "ki throw" morphs into the ridiculous very quickly.

Rather than stay in a fixed position when an opponent hits you (if you absorb his potentially damaging blow, you "absorb his ki", in a negative sense), you should simply hop or move with the blow. This is a very logical tactic, but it has morphed in some systems (particularly in southern China) to where at the slightest cue the student bounces obligingly away. Anyone who doesn't bounce to some teachers' slight cues "hasn't developed the proper sensitivity".

And so it goes. The ability to release a lot of power is related quite naturally to being able to generate a fair amount of power without much overt movement. This makes for great demonstrations, but it has to be seen for what it is... a minor facet of the broad range of body training/conditioning that is in a full-blown martial art. As soon as I see some 'teacher' and his students spending a lot of time playing too much "bounce-away", "no-touch", etc., games, I tend to write them off.

FWIW

Mike Sigman