[tbone]

I think I've related this before, but: When I started gaming with D&D, my local gaming group simply wasn't familiar with "monk" in the sense of Shaolin Temple monk. We pictured the monk class as tonsured, monastic, European monks. Who, for some reason, had weird powers and weapons. We really didn't ask why; it was D&D.

But to address the OP: As others have said, there's no shortage of martial arts styles, techniques, legendary abilities, etc. all over the world. Martial Arts does a pretty great job of surveying non-East Asian fighting, complete with weird cinematic skills and crazy weapons. You can assume that advanced practitioners of some of these can tap into the universal power of chi, even if their "chi" goes by a different name, is understood through different traditions, is honed through different rituals, and yields a different set of disciplines.

The results might not be very historical, but they could be fun. (Especially a secret order of Euro monks, drawing on chi but through some philosophical lens of Gnosticism, Hermeticism, or whatever.)

(Question for all: In historical belief systems outside of Asia, what might might be the closest equivalents to the "chi" of the Far East or the "prana" of Hinduism?)