I stumbled upon this great post about what Chi is, or at least how we can think about it.
The biggest Misunderstandings about Qi (Energy) – http://wp.me/p7lpbK-vj
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The Restless Raven 
Apr 22, 2016 @ 19:48:49
“Biggest mistake about storing Qi is to try to get Qi from your environment or from somewhere which is not in your body. According to Chinese medicine this is not possible and not within the understanding of Qi. Qi is only generated from within your own body. Good environments (forests, beach, nature..) reflect in our inside and will result in feeling better, but this has nothing to do with getting Qi from it.”
Sorry, must disagree. Leaving aside nuances (jing/qi/shen transmutation), we can and do get Qi “from outside our bodies”, for the simple reason that our bodies and our environment are actually one. Our earliest environment was our Mother, who (along with father) gave us Yuan Qi (“Original Qi”—you know, like in “Hun Yuan”?). Food, oxygen, water then continue to feed us Qi our whole lives. As we age, it’s good to supplement our declining Yuan Qi with new Qi gathered from earth, air, fire, and water, and from “nature” (the biosphere: plants and animals; ie, “The Force”) —and especially from the cosmos as a whole: “Cosmic Qi” (wild Qi, universal Qi).
Qi is not personal to humans, or even animals and plants. It does not “belong” to us. We only borrow it—or perhaps you can even say, we just make a place for it in ourselves, and it comes to live with us. It’s a thing in itself, like light (in fact it’s a form of light, but luminous, not igneous). When your body dies, the carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and etc. that you “borrowed” from the earth returns to the earth (“dust to dust”). Your Qi returns to its proper dimension too—back to the “wild”. It can be seen to leave the body by some, like fireflies, like stars rising.
In the meantime, treasure it, protect it, cultivate it, as you would a member of your own family, as you would a garden. This is the material from which dreams are made.
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