I've been a bit overwhelmed lately dealing with family affairs. I've still been writing but haven't been able to finish pieces due to pressures of phone calls, letters and logs. When one of my students offered to write about a class experience, this is what he produced.
* * * * * * * * *
A funny thing happened while sparring with Guro Jeff recently. After some warm up, we were in the midst of flow and were chatting. I am used to Guro Jeff speeding up and slowing down, playing with the timing to look for an opening. This is nothing new, but this time, he slowed down his speech at the same time that he slowed down his attack. The effect was to hypnotically make me slow down as well. It was then that my opponent went in for his attack and disabled me. The funny thing was that it was almost as if I saw what he was doing but I was trapped under his “spell”. I think fondly back to Star Wars and the concept of the “Jedi Mind Trick” in which Obi Wan used the power of suggestion to convince a pair of Storm Troopers guarding an entrance, to let him and Luke pass It seemed that Jeff had mind-tricked me in the same simple way (his exact words as he was slowing down his speech ended with “slow … down” which is exactly what I did).
Oh well, lesson learned-or was it? When we resumed, Jeff began talking again. This time I was determined not to fall for the same trick. As if sensing this, he changed his tactic, this time asking me a question, offering me the choice between two responses. In the split second that I weighed the answers, he went in for the “kill” again and achieved a successful attack.
I remember working over a year ago with Jeff. At that time we were practicing gun disarms. I stood behind Jeff, the trainer gun pointed at his head. He started talking, asking me some question and then too, used my distraction to take his opportunity to disarm me.
As Guro Jeff explained, this is why the police use simple commands, like “freeze” and “drop your weapon” rather than talk more lengthily to the perpetrator. In my opinion, people are trained to respond to authority, and simple commands spoken with authority, create more of a sense of authority. Perhaps also, the idea is to keep things simple enough not distract yourself.
All this makes sense, of course, but if the power of suggestion can be made to others, at what time can we make suggestions to ourselves to improve our fighting skills? The following time I met to practice with Guro Jeff, we got into a lengthy conversation about the power of thought. Being essentially lazy in my practice, I often use visualization in my techniques at times when I’m not physically practicing them. Thus, I imagine my instructor, or Grandmaster Cabales doing a technique and then I imagine myself copying that technique. Apparently there is some evidence that visualization alone can improve a player’s game.
Taking this a step further, Jeff recommended that I open myself to my own suggestion at bedtime, in order to see what appears out of my subconscious, in my dreams. I took this idea home with me, and that night before going to sleep, I let myself think about my escrima practice, allowing myself to wonder what I might dream about it. That night I had a dream where I was fending off a basic attack, but before I could complete my defensive technique, my opponent switched to a different attack. In the dream, I made a completely unconventional move, rushing my opponent, and taking his center. This was not a technique I had ever tried or even thought of before. The next time I worked out with a partner, I tried this technique, and while it didn’t work as ideally as I had hoped, it was novel, and opened the door to further exploration.
We often think about physical practice, setting goals to reach a new level in training. Of course practice is essential; we train to make the body automatically respond so that we don’t waste time thinking during a conflict, We want to be able to just react instead. I am beginning to see, however, the power of suggestion on my opponent, whether it is with words, my stance, or just my attitude. What I “project” may have an influence on my opponent’s confidence, just as walking through a dark alley hunched over is more of an invitation to be attacked than standing tall, and alert. I am just beginning to realize that I can also rely on all the information that is stored somewhere in my brain, if I allow myself the opportunity to synthesize it. I plan to try techniques like the “dream suggestions” more regularly.
The ultimate in laziness? Practicing in your sleep! If nothing else, I’ll have some entertaining dreams.
Showing posts with label flow. Show all posts
Showing posts with label flow. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Force vs. Flow
The best classes are those where insight is gained towards resolving blocks to improving our skills. Often we have the information all along but in pieces; insight is making the integrative connections resulting in new perspectives that deepen our understanding.
Recently I had one of those days where I felt particularly attuned in class, able to analyze vividly what both my student and I were doing in sparring. Teaching is like uncovering a mystery, peeling back layers to get to deeper truths in oneself and in others. To share insight one must find the key to another’s understanding. A good teacher has many tools, but as any mechanic knows, it’s having the right tool at the right time that makes a job go smoothly. Being in the flow leads us to our solutions by allowing the unconscious to produce insights.
During sparring I was consistently finding openings to my student’s centerline with a variety of tactics, but always with the strategy of what I call “falling in the gopher hole”. This is based on Bruce Lee’s theories of slight forward pressure to create springy energy. When the opponent creates an opening, we are already there at the threshold; the pressure is released and we automatically fill the gap without time consuming thought. Pressing the opponent’s centerline while guarding ours keeps this energy direct and balanced.
Our conscious awareness being much slower than the unconscious mind, we perceive through our senses what is already done. If we think first how to act, it is two stages, thought then action, the latter most likely inhibited by the weight of processing the former.
Awareness without thought: Our minds should be aware of the dynamics of the fight without excessive micromanagement over movement. Our strategy is our goal; tactics need be executed with instinctive reactions. We do this every day in ordinary life while walking, driving or feeding ourselves. The more stress we can handle in this ordinary manner, the greater the internal resources available for other purposes.
Sometimes we go unconscious in action, our conscious mind simply unable to keep up with the flow of action. At such times we may perform things seemingly beyond our abilities, but evidently not beyond our capacity to imagine. Our unconscious mind of course remembers every detail of the experience, and through methods such as NLP, hypnosis, meditation etc. we can later recall much of this information through accessing our multiple sensory memories. All states of awareness are constructs, hence hypnotic, since we build these on more subtle beliefs that direct our thought. What we cannot rationalize is expressed through emotion, the domain of the unconscious, and revealed in the gross and subtle actions of our physical bodies.
Here’s an example of the mind going unconscious in action. Three decades ago I knew an acquaintance of my older brother, a bear of a man with Aikido and Kendo training. This man fought his way to the kingship of the Society for Creative Anachronisms several times in their rough-and-tumble early days. In his most memorable fight, he felt he had been fouled grievously towards the end of a round and was extremely angry. During the break he centered himself and when he came out for the next and decisive round he knocked out his opponent. All he remembered was how blue the sky was that day, which he described as a Zen-like state of bliss which enabled him to bypass his judgmental conscious mind, giving him complete freedom of action.
Verbal expression is a way to hone in and clarify our thoughts; to get from theory to practice, I needed to communicate my own intuitive impressions. An axiom in hypnotherapy is that in order to create a state within a client, one must access it first within oneself so as to lead another person there. In martial arts, as in NLP, we can do this through mirroring and matching. I was using this on him; my goal was to transmit this skill too, leveling our playing field.
To begin with I could see my student’s movements were too wide and blocky, creating openings and losing timing. He was swinging from the shoulder, using muscular energy rather than finding a more natural internal rhythm. This was isolating the dynamics of his arm motion from the rest of his body, resulting in discordant footwork and poor body alignment. Correcting this one thing would unblock an entire cascade of improvements to his overall technique.
My first step was to get him to pay attention to how he was handling his weapon, changing his technique to make it tighter and smoother. A supple wrist is important to be able to control balance of the weapon. Every weapon has its balance point. We can try to impose our desired movement regardless of this, or we can let the weapon follow its natural trajectory. This lets us guide it by controlling its center of balance, a much more fluid relationship.
Identifying a physical point of resistance was the leverage to understanding its effect in our sparring dynamic, which is where we both were able to see a deeper picture. By using his arm in a muscular way he was relying on force, which by its nature, using the concept of equal and opposite reaction, creates the resistance that it encounters. Most of us have had experiences of struggling to make something happen and getting nowhere, only to stop fighting and suddenly achieve a breakthrough.
In terms of our sparring, his desire to force the action made him stiff because he was overthinking each move, which in turn telegraphed his intention. As long as he projected an attachment to a particular outcome, I could easily see what he was trying to do before he did it, a clear example of how the body responds to the conditions of the mind. Escrima is an art with a lot of deception. It takes fluidity and adaptability to hide one’s intentions.
Connecting his sense of power to the need to force an outcome exposed a rigid dynamic between thought and action. Changing his physical rhythm created a new mental pattern as well, allowing him to experience the process itself rather than the need to focus on a specific tactical goal.
Let me restate that. If force is required for a particular result, then flow is allowing the process to find its own path. This could be the path of least resistance, or it could be the path of greatest understanding, but either way it should give us what we need.
The effect on his sparring was immediate and dramatic, raising it to a level I’d never seen in him before. As soon as he began to flow, the old familiar gaps in his technique were gone. For the first time I felt him nullifying my attacks effortlessly.
I’ll finish with a brief story that illustrates a difference between force and flow. In 1189 King Richard I (Lionheart) met Saladin during the Third Crusade. To demonstrate the strength of his sword and sword arm, he hacked through a bar of iron. Saladin then demonstrated the keenness of his sword by dropping a piece of silk across the edge, slicing the fabric in half by its own weight. Both ways can achieve results, but one requires great effort and the other almost none.
Recently I had one of those days where I felt particularly attuned in class, able to analyze vividly what both my student and I were doing in sparring. Teaching is like uncovering a mystery, peeling back layers to get to deeper truths in oneself and in others. To share insight one must find the key to another’s understanding. A good teacher has many tools, but as any mechanic knows, it’s having the right tool at the right time that makes a job go smoothly. Being in the flow leads us to our solutions by allowing the unconscious to produce insights.
During sparring I was consistently finding openings to my student’s centerline with a variety of tactics, but always with the strategy of what I call “falling in the gopher hole”. This is based on Bruce Lee’s theories of slight forward pressure to create springy energy. When the opponent creates an opening, we are already there at the threshold; the pressure is released and we automatically fill the gap without time consuming thought. Pressing the opponent’s centerline while guarding ours keeps this energy direct and balanced.
Our conscious awareness being much slower than the unconscious mind, we perceive through our senses what is already done. If we think first how to act, it is two stages, thought then action, the latter most likely inhibited by the weight of processing the former.
Awareness without thought: Our minds should be aware of the dynamics of the fight without excessive micromanagement over movement. Our strategy is our goal; tactics need be executed with instinctive reactions. We do this every day in ordinary life while walking, driving or feeding ourselves. The more stress we can handle in this ordinary manner, the greater the internal resources available for other purposes.
Sometimes we go unconscious in action, our conscious mind simply unable to keep up with the flow of action. At such times we may perform things seemingly beyond our abilities, but evidently not beyond our capacity to imagine. Our unconscious mind of course remembers every detail of the experience, and through methods such as NLP, hypnosis, meditation etc. we can later recall much of this information through accessing our multiple sensory memories. All states of awareness are constructs, hence hypnotic, since we build these on more subtle beliefs that direct our thought. What we cannot rationalize is expressed through emotion, the domain of the unconscious, and revealed in the gross and subtle actions of our physical bodies.
Here’s an example of the mind going unconscious in action. Three decades ago I knew an acquaintance of my older brother, a bear of a man with Aikido and Kendo training. This man fought his way to the kingship of the Society for Creative Anachronisms several times in their rough-and-tumble early days. In his most memorable fight, he felt he had been fouled grievously towards the end of a round and was extremely angry. During the break he centered himself and when he came out for the next and decisive round he knocked out his opponent. All he remembered was how blue the sky was that day, which he described as a Zen-like state of bliss which enabled him to bypass his judgmental conscious mind, giving him complete freedom of action.
Verbal expression is a way to hone in and clarify our thoughts; to get from theory to practice, I needed to communicate my own intuitive impressions. An axiom in hypnotherapy is that in order to create a state within a client, one must access it first within oneself so as to lead another person there. In martial arts, as in NLP, we can do this through mirroring and matching. I was using this on him; my goal was to transmit this skill too, leveling our playing field.
To begin with I could see my student’s movements were too wide and blocky, creating openings and losing timing. He was swinging from the shoulder, using muscular energy rather than finding a more natural internal rhythm. This was isolating the dynamics of his arm motion from the rest of his body, resulting in discordant footwork and poor body alignment. Correcting this one thing would unblock an entire cascade of improvements to his overall technique.
My first step was to get him to pay attention to how he was handling his weapon, changing his technique to make it tighter and smoother. A supple wrist is important to be able to control balance of the weapon. Every weapon has its balance point. We can try to impose our desired movement regardless of this, or we can let the weapon follow its natural trajectory. This lets us guide it by controlling its center of balance, a much more fluid relationship.
Identifying a physical point of resistance was the leverage to understanding its effect in our sparring dynamic, which is where we both were able to see a deeper picture. By using his arm in a muscular way he was relying on force, which by its nature, using the concept of equal and opposite reaction, creates the resistance that it encounters. Most of us have had experiences of struggling to make something happen and getting nowhere, only to stop fighting and suddenly achieve a breakthrough.
In terms of our sparring, his desire to force the action made him stiff because he was overthinking each move, which in turn telegraphed his intention. As long as he projected an attachment to a particular outcome, I could easily see what he was trying to do before he did it, a clear example of how the body responds to the conditions of the mind. Escrima is an art with a lot of deception. It takes fluidity and adaptability to hide one’s intentions.
Connecting his sense of power to the need to force an outcome exposed a rigid dynamic between thought and action. Changing his physical rhythm created a new mental pattern as well, allowing him to experience the process itself rather than the need to focus on a specific tactical goal.
Let me restate that. If force is required for a particular result, then flow is allowing the process to find its own path. This could be the path of least resistance, or it could be the path of greatest understanding, but either way it should give us what we need.
The effect on his sparring was immediate and dramatic, raising it to a level I’d never seen in him before. As soon as he began to flow, the old familiar gaps in his technique were gone. For the first time I felt him nullifying my attacks effortlessly.
I’ll finish with a brief story that illustrates a difference between force and flow. In 1189 King Richard I (Lionheart) met Saladin during the Third Crusade. To demonstrate the strength of his sword and sword arm, he hacked through a bar of iron. Saladin then demonstrated the keenness of his sword by dropping a piece of silk across the edge, slicing the fabric in half by its own weight. Both ways can achieve results, but one requires great effort and the other almost none.
Sunday, April 29, 2007
MAMBA articles
Those who read this blog know I am interested in the mental and spiritual aspects of martial arts. My M.A. in holistic health education explored healing, somatic psychology and spirituality through the relational perspective of quantum physics. Hypnotherapy, in which I’m certified, has furthered my belief that the mind and body are not separate but rather different frequencies of energy expressing self-reflective qualities.
In a sense I see physical reality as the manifestation of many vortices, little energy black holes defining specific points of energy in the matrix of the universe. We record the experiences we attract through our minds, encoding the memory within the physical structures of our bodies.
Physical training in martial arts gives us skills, but how far we go in pursuit of those skills and how we choose to use them or integrate them into our lives are personal choices, which underlie the activity itself. Furthermore we make these choices constantly throughout our daily lives. We think of ourselves as single entities when in fact we are complex organisms constantly adapting to our environment through evolving physical and emotional states, of which our conscious awareness is itself a final product.
From time immemorial, warriors have strengthened themselves through rituals which strengthen beliefs, attitudes and convictions, allowing them to become role models in their societies and to deal with the consequences of their actions. There are those who argue that the FMA are only about practical and efficient methods of physical combat, ignoring the rich tradition of anting-anting and oracion.
In fact, a warrior mindset is invaluable for maximizing physical attributes. As the saying goes, “it’s the size of the fight in the dog, not the size of the dog in the fight.” Without desire and focus, what will be achieved? With it, what cannot be? Whether we acknowledge it or not, training affects us on a multiplicity of levels. If we do acknowledge it, we may gain insight faster because we align our attention consciously with deeper values.
A recent link submitted to the yahoo group “csemt-serrada_escrima” revealed a treasure trove of articles on shamanism, hypnosis and martial arts by James Overton Sr. whose website is at mamba-ryu.com. MAMBA stands for “Mastering the Art of Mind and Body in Action”. Nice acronym for a very well developed version of what I’m aiming towards through my “Self Empowerment Practice And Theory” (SEPAT) © .
SEPAT coincidentally spells “TAPES” backwards, a nice metaphor for hypnotherapy as a way to “unwind” or deprogram limiting beliefs. In Tagalog “sepat” refers to a “wild child”, another nice metaphor for letting loose our innate curiosity and sense of freedom.
As martial artists, our best attribute is to reach freedom in movement, to be responsive to the flow of energy. The paradox is we gain control by giving up control, just letting things happen. We can still be aware and making decisions, but they are natural and constrained, like a car driving along a road. We can think about what we are doing, but we needn’t think about how we are doing it.
Our bodies are responsive to our minds. The more our minds are free, the less inhibition on the resources the body can utilize. It is easy to see with beginners how their “stuckness” in movement is the same in their mind. Peeling away resistance allows one to see more possibility. Fear is a limiting factor; recognizing it is empowering if used as a way to control the energy of the emotion.
In a sense I see physical reality as the manifestation of many vortices, little energy black holes defining specific points of energy in the matrix of the universe. We record the experiences we attract through our minds, encoding the memory within the physical structures of our bodies.
Physical training in martial arts gives us skills, but how far we go in pursuit of those skills and how we choose to use them or integrate them into our lives are personal choices, which underlie the activity itself. Furthermore we make these choices constantly throughout our daily lives. We think of ourselves as single entities when in fact we are complex organisms constantly adapting to our environment through evolving physical and emotional states, of which our conscious awareness is itself a final product.
From time immemorial, warriors have strengthened themselves through rituals which strengthen beliefs, attitudes and convictions, allowing them to become role models in their societies and to deal with the consequences of their actions. There are those who argue that the FMA are only about practical and efficient methods of physical combat, ignoring the rich tradition of anting-anting and oracion.
In fact, a warrior mindset is invaluable for maximizing physical attributes. As the saying goes, “it’s the size of the fight in the dog, not the size of the dog in the fight.” Without desire and focus, what will be achieved? With it, what cannot be? Whether we acknowledge it or not, training affects us on a multiplicity of levels. If we do acknowledge it, we may gain insight faster because we align our attention consciously with deeper values.
A recent link submitted to the yahoo group “csemt-serrada_escrima” revealed a treasure trove of articles on shamanism, hypnosis and martial arts by James Overton Sr. whose website is at mamba-ryu.com. MAMBA stands for “Mastering the Art of Mind and Body in Action”. Nice acronym for a very well developed version of what I’m aiming towards through my “Self Empowerment Practice And Theory” (SEPAT) © .
SEPAT coincidentally spells “TAPES” backwards, a nice metaphor for hypnotherapy as a way to “unwind” or deprogram limiting beliefs. In Tagalog “sepat” refers to a “wild child”, another nice metaphor for letting loose our innate curiosity and sense of freedom.
As martial artists, our best attribute is to reach freedom in movement, to be responsive to the flow of energy. The paradox is we gain control by giving up control, just letting things happen. We can still be aware and making decisions, but they are natural and constrained, like a car driving along a road. We can think about what we are doing, but we needn’t think about how we are doing it.
Our bodies are responsive to our minds. The more our minds are free, the less inhibition on the resources the body can utilize. It is easy to see with beginners how their “stuckness” in movement is the same in their mind. Peeling away resistance allows one to see more possibility. Fear is a limiting factor; recognizing it is empowering if used as a way to control the energy of the emotion.
Monday, March 26, 2007
Transmutation
Yesterday I watched my dog watching a gopher push dirt from a hole.
This morning I watched my cat eat a rat he had killed.
This afternoon I had a vision …
As I was playing with my dog, I thought of her watching the gopher.
I thought of the gopher pushing out dirt, excavating tunnels and rooms.
I thought of why gophers need a lot of tunnels, and suddenly I envisioned a snake;
Not the whole snake, just the head poking through a hole underground.
Tough nose, nasal slits, hungry eyes, darting tongue; death.
I realized I had became the gopher in a moment of life or death,
Fighting against an overwhelming foe
If cornered
Or perhaps to save the young …
And then I became the snake, hungry yet patient, willing to wait to strike, willing the prey into fatigue and resignation, knowing the outcome in advance.
I became the gopher again, living through dying, surrendering into the belly of the snake and joining the life force there, just energy ever changing and permutating to take on aspects of new forms. Gopher becomes snake; snake is gopher.
Snake dies, snatched by an eagle to fly away to be eaten. Remains fall to the ground, some now digested, the eagle playing a part. The nutrients and essence enrich the soil, and now gopher/snake/eagle waves upright in the breeze as tall grass.
Cows come by, eat the grass; we humans eat the cows.
Each of these I saw in progression, time rushing forward like seconds on a clock. Each one felt real, not separate but the same, the energy rushing through each connected to all which preceded, back into infinity.
Every molecule, every atom, has a history that we do not know! There are vibrations imprinted that are part of what makes us who we are, and everything we see, feel and touch.
I always interpret, and martial arts is my metaphor, so this is how I want my martial art to be: crafty, like the gopher, who survives by creating back doors to escape; patiently relentless like the snake; swift and sure like the eagle; resilient like grass; strong and life-giving like the cow; sensitive as a human, seeking wisdom of awareness through the pinpoint of consciousness.
Imagine martial arts as not about fighting but as a way of being aware of life. Not awareness itself, which is deeper, but a way of knowing it is there. If we seek completeness in our art, it must exist in our mind. To exist in our mind, we must feel it in our spirit. To feel it in our spirit, we must be aware. To be aware is to understand there are those truths beyond our limits and trust our intuition.
Flow is not flow when we think about flowing, though it can point the way. It is flow when we have access to all, when we become aware of being more than who we are when we think of who we are. It is more because it uses things that exist where our minds do not go, except by letting go.
Anything can have flow; nothing can “have” flow.
It comes but it cannot be taken.
Flow is what takes you with it, not what you contain.
You ride it by letting it show you what it wants to reveal; if you try to force it, it will show you only what you already know.
This morning I watched my cat eat a rat he had killed.
This afternoon I had a vision …
As I was playing with my dog, I thought of her watching the gopher.
I thought of the gopher pushing out dirt, excavating tunnels and rooms.
I thought of why gophers need a lot of tunnels, and suddenly I envisioned a snake;
Not the whole snake, just the head poking through a hole underground.
Tough nose, nasal slits, hungry eyes, darting tongue; death.
I realized I had became the gopher in a moment of life or death,
Fighting against an overwhelming foe
If cornered
Or perhaps to save the young …
And then I became the snake, hungry yet patient, willing to wait to strike, willing the prey into fatigue and resignation, knowing the outcome in advance.
I became the gopher again, living through dying, surrendering into the belly of the snake and joining the life force there, just energy ever changing and permutating to take on aspects of new forms. Gopher becomes snake; snake is gopher.
Snake dies, snatched by an eagle to fly away to be eaten. Remains fall to the ground, some now digested, the eagle playing a part. The nutrients and essence enrich the soil, and now gopher/snake/eagle waves upright in the breeze as tall grass.
Cows come by, eat the grass; we humans eat the cows.
Each of these I saw in progression, time rushing forward like seconds on a clock. Each one felt real, not separate but the same, the energy rushing through each connected to all which preceded, back into infinity.
Every molecule, every atom, has a history that we do not know! There are vibrations imprinted that are part of what makes us who we are, and everything we see, feel and touch.
I always interpret, and martial arts is my metaphor, so this is how I want my martial art to be: crafty, like the gopher, who survives by creating back doors to escape; patiently relentless like the snake; swift and sure like the eagle; resilient like grass; strong and life-giving like the cow; sensitive as a human, seeking wisdom of awareness through the pinpoint of consciousness.
Imagine martial arts as not about fighting but as a way of being aware of life. Not awareness itself, which is deeper, but a way of knowing it is there. If we seek completeness in our art, it must exist in our mind. To exist in our mind, we must feel it in our spirit. To feel it in our spirit, we must be aware. To be aware is to understand there are those truths beyond our limits and trust our intuition.
Flow is not flow when we think about flowing, though it can point the way. It is flow when we have access to all, when we become aware of being more than who we are when we think of who we are. It is more because it uses things that exist where our minds do not go, except by letting go.
Anything can have flow; nothing can “have” flow.
It comes but it cannot be taken.
Flow is what takes you with it, not what you contain.
You ride it by letting it show you what it wants to reveal; if you try to force it, it will show you only what you already know.
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