The Real Thought Process Behind Matrixing in the Martial Arts
Good morning!
Another day in paradise.
Paradise being defined,
of course,
by your work out.
The journey to Martial Arts Mastery
Now,
there were a couple of things I did to figure out energy.
and these things led to all sorts of discoveries.
First,
I read the classics.
I read all the books on zen,
I read the tai chi classics,
I read every book,
magazine,
article,
scoured the library,
I could.
This was back in the late sixties early seventies,
no internet.
I had to do it old school.
And,
truth,
there just wasn’t a lot of stuff out there.
We knew about judo,
Karate was the coming thing,
and Bruce Lee hadn’t even been heard of,
let alone tai chi,
or all the esoteric Chinese arts.
Still,
I just kept reading,
over the years,
and the data accumulated,
and an interesting thing happened.
All those mystical things I was reading
began to resolve for two reasons.
One,
my experiences,
my work outs,
were accumulating.
I was gaining a real life data base
of experiences that were relevant.
Two,
I found that these experiences,
for the most part,
weren’t mystical,
they could be defined with physics.
Here’s the trick,
it took four or five years of doing forms
to discover the truth of grounding,
of sinking the weight.
Then the mystical explanations made sense.
And I could say things like ‘grounding,’
and now that it was a more accurate description
than things like
‘root like a tree.’
Mind you,
root like a tree was accurate,
but it was based on definitions
that were not physics,
and could only be described by
comparisons with nature.
The ancients knew nature,
they didn’t know physics.
The trick,
of course,
was to tie all this stuff together,
which I did with matrixing.
Now,
let’s talk about the physics.
The body is a thing.
An object.
It floats through space.
You can define it two ways.
You can define it from the inside out,
trying to make sense of the bones and veins,
the girders and hydraulics,
the nerves and muscles,
and so on.
That isn’t bad,
has to be done,
but it is only half.
And,
it is a half that gets badly abused
because people want to go whole hog,
and forget (obscure) the other half.
They get too scientific,
and start limiting their body by science.
You can only do this much weight in that manner
because the scientific testing proves it.
And there is no mention of the importance,
and overriding intention
of the human spirit.
Or,
you can go from the outside in.
Everything is space,
your body is space,
and that is the other half of the equation.
The problem is that you have to go through the body
to discover space.
It’s hard to just start with space,
unless you want to just study zen or yoga.
So you study space,
and you find that space is much bigger than the body,
and that if you get big enough in space,
you can look back at the body
and figure out the correct way of working it.
Here’s a small progression I worked out
to illustrate this:
There is ONE individual awareness running the body.
There are TWO sides to the body.
(This can be extrapolated many ways:
top and bottom
right and left
inside outside
open or close
and so on)
There are THREE points to a triangle
(the triangle must be used to brace a base
and project energy…in other words,
to strike or block.
This is how you define how the body works)
There are major FOUR directions
(up, down, right, left
the compass points
four basic blocks
and so on)
There are FIVE elements that define the universe,
and which can be used to define a body
or motion (in one sense)
These five elements can from culture to culture
And i kept going,
using numbers to define the universe,
the properties of the universe,
and of the body,
and so on.
But all of this construction is worthless
unless one has first defined space.
Without space you can’t have all this.
Space is the context for things.
Space is the medium in which we have being.
Space is the truth of martial arts,
and of all life.
Of course,
there are different kinds of space,
but the main thing is that space enables us to have distance
which enables us to have perspective,
and suddenly we have life.
Anyway,
didn’t mean to go nuts there,
but thought you’d like to have the real meaning
behind the ‘empty’
in ‘Empty Hands.’
Or,
what zen is looking for.
Or what one must establish to do Yoga.
Or,
for that matter and especially,
Tai Chi Chuan.
Without an understanding of this stuff,
in some sort of structure,
your martial arts are useless.
They are fighting,
and they are not a method
for progressing to the truth of yourself.
Okay,
I’ve talked enough.
There’s a few guys out there scratching their beans,
and they can feel free to email me
if there is something that doesn’t make sense.
My purpose is not to obfuscate,
but to elevate.
So,
enjoy thinking about this stuff,
start writing it out and making diagrams if you will,
and if you want a little hands on martial arts
to back up what I’ve said here,
and in the cold, hard physics of matrixed martial arts,
try the Master Instructor course.
Have yourself a great work out!
Al
Matrix Martial Arts 