I am a beginner. Most of my understanding of Jing and Shen comes from Dr Ted Kaptchuk's "The Web That Has No Weaver". My understanding of Qi is more grounded in experience, but is still a small tree.

I like how Kaptchuk describes these phenomena as "textures". Texture feels right to me. Resonates with how Rob Burbea talks about Jhanas as textures of experience.

Qi feels like it encompasses both Attention and Awareness. Consciousness, but not just human "conscious" Consciousness, but also the consciousness of organs in the body, of cells as they live, engaged in the processes that keep them alive and that are life.

Qi can have many qualities because it manifests in different expressions. Plants have Qi. The elements of a landscape have Qi. There is movement. There is intention. There is action and reception.

Jing is specific to living beings. It is a juiciness, and unfoldingness. It is subtle and runs through a life, imperceptible movement like a wide river, splashy up close, inexorable and unstoppable at scale.

Something Kaptchuk wrote that made the idea of Jing click for me: "It is time that goes through a person"

Conception is a transmission of Jing through the generations.

(It seems to me that Microcosmic Orbit and certain sexual magics are, in part, about an alchemy between Qi and Jing -- to refresh Qi and Jing through a mutual circulation and transmutation.)

Shen feels to me about the Player.

If we were characters in a tabletop role-playing game, Shen would be our players. Our reason for incarnation into this context, the presence that manifests through us when it is engaged in our story as it unfolds.

Shen is curious and careful. It wants to be good company and a good ancestor. It means.

Shen plays to find out what will happen.