“Relax!”
As I strive to punch my teacher in the face — at his insistence, mind you — I not only find myself unable, but somehow my body ends up turned away from him, unable to reach him, while he is facing me and punching me twice on the chin.
I have done it again! Greedy in my preconceived attack, my arm muscles tense and thus my Sifu, George, can control my entire body easily through the proxy of the forearm with which I am aiming to hit him with. In other words, I am not living in the now, I am clinging to my own idea of how things should play out.
When Bruce Lee said that his own teacher asked him repeatedly to ‘relax’ and this was at first incomprehensible to him, he meant a very deep lesson that has the power to change our lives. Frustrated and in agony to understand how to improve, Bruce Lee finally understood the meaning of this when he observed what happened to water when he tried unsuccessfully to hit it and control it.
Through the years of training Martial Arts, this has been one of the most delightful discoveries for me. Not trying to find ‘philosophy,’ not even speaking about anything ‘philosophical’ with my Sifu, this ‘philosophy’ found me. And it hit me like a train at high speed.
So here I am, training with my Sifu and enjoying every second of it. But as usual, the deep lessons are learned when one is ‘put in one’s place.’ Which is exactly what George — which is how he insists I call him — is doing right now. My mind’s tension is expressed in my arm’s muscle rigidness, which in turn allows him to easily deflect my body and end up beating me while I can’t even reach him. My issue is greediness, I go in with an attack in mind and find myself unable to let go. So ‘relaxation’ and ‘letting go’ suddenly go from philosophical concepts we usually associate with meditation to sheer survival.
The need for the mind to let go, so as to avoid unnecessary suffering through the trials in life, is exactly like the need for the body to yield to this redirection and to adapt in real time without clinging to the original direction. And when I say exactly, I mean it literally. I find that no matter how much I tell myself to ‘relax’ or ‘let go’, the body doesn’t actually do any of this unless the mind truly gives up its greediness.
Have you ever read one of those psychology articles that advise you to smile even if, or especially if, you are feeling sad? What this phenomenon is referring to is the same type of feedback loop. The mind feeds the body, the body feeds the mind. Like the Yin-Yang, they form an endless cycle of energy. Through lifting the body, one lifts the mind. Through relaxing the mind, I can relax in my attack.
The next time I attack I give up all fear. I step forward aggressively and with a swift attack, but this time I am not clinging to it. I have no knowledge of what is going to happen and my mind doesn’t try to anticipate it. My Sifu, without fail, catches my attack and he deflects it, but this time my arm yields to his deflection and thus he doesn’t control my body, while I immediately counter punch and reach my target.
“Good!”
He expresses his approval, which never ceases to make me smile. Yet we don’t dwell on it. The secret for us is to keep training, and training, and training…
Over the years of practice I have found that for me, the deepest lessons about how the Martial Arts enrich daily life don’t come from intellectual pondering, but through the sheer act of training relentlessly and paying close attention to how things work. Watching and not filtering. Observing without judging. All this is what living in the now implies. In fact, the lessons that have changed my life the most were, almost without exception, lessons I was never looking for. While learning to defend myself, and through the magic of silent practice, my Sifu teaches me priceless life lessons that ‘click’ in my everyday experience at home and work.
This training brings me back to the ‘now.’ To truly be able to let go, I have to be present here and now so that I react immediately to my teacher’s counterattack. To be busy thinking is to get punched in the face! This coming back to the ‘now’ of the sensory experience makes the past and the future melt away from the mind. And yes, you guessed it, this past and future in our minds are the sources of endless anxiety.
So what is happening here? Why is the physical reality of our training such a good proxy for life and the mind? My observation tells me life is built in layers, like an onion. However, if you look closely at the layers of an onion, though different in size, they share a lot about their fundamental makeup. In embodying our physical reality here and now, we balance our mind and how we deal with life. It’s not ‘like’ life, it is life. Think about the sheer act of connecting with someone. A handshake, a hug. The physical connection is part and parcel of the emotional exchange we experience.
“Again!”
My Sifu drives me back to the now and I punch again. Every minute feels new because with every attack, I am unable to predict what is going to happen. As I go into my next work meeting, or a conversation with someone, or any sort of daily interaction, I often find it’s not what I was expecting or hoping it would be. If I get frustrated and try to bring it back to what I had in mind, it usually goes sideways. Nothing gets accomplished. Each meeting at work, each conversation in life, is a new and fresh experience that we can’t predict or control, but we can go into it with honesty, expressing ourselves fully and without fear, and yielding to the magic of the moment with a new countermove that is aligned with the reality here and now.
This is exactly like chess. Play one hundred times and you would have experienced one hundred completely different outcomes. Sometimes you lose, sometimes you win, but you can go to the next one without frustration and fear, ready to express yourself in a brand new and unpredictable way.
In conclusion, in an era in which social media and technology take a big part of our day, it’s more important than ever to come back to ‘inhabit’ our bodies, relax in the ‘now’ and learn to let go and adapt to whatever it is that is coming to us. Martial Arts training, for virtually any system out there, can be one of the most natural and organic ways to walk this Path when practiced with a focus on self-awareness, due to the way in which it forces us to come back to the ‘now’ and the reality of our bodies and minds.
Like a surfer, we cannot control the wave, but we can train to gracefully ride it. And above all, to enjoy the ride.
To know more about this and other Martial Arts and Life topics, you can view my Vlog and Podcast as well as these Martial Journal related articles: our thoughts on Striking Beauty by Barry Allen and Philosophy of Fighting by Keith Vargo!
Francis can be contacted at francis.cordon@gmail.com, he is also an active Martial Arts YouTube Vlogger as well as the co-host of the Martial Arts Podcast ‘A Thousand Exits.’
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Excellent, thank you
This was extremely insightful, Francis. I think we all try to control things in this world that are not under our control. To learn to relax, ride the wave, and enjoy where it takes us… it can bring so much peace to us all. Beautifully written and quite inspirational.