Let me make a few martial arts connections here…

The secret of the martial arts
is that it gives you the discipline
to create more awareness.

This awareness occurs when you transform your art
from obsessing on things like explosions
and finding the silence in your art.
Loose-tight.
Tightening just the fist.
Becoming aware of the space of your body
and how different moving the space of your body is
from moving your body with muscles.

How long does it take to earn a black belt?

In Tai Chi I used geometry.
I became aware of the geometry
my hands made in each motion
and I focused my awareness
on being aware of my hands
throughout each geometry.
A curve,
an arc,
a transitioning spiral from one movement to the next,
staying aware as I did so.

Now, here’s the funny thing,
it all depended on not having corners in my motion,
not jerking,
or otherwise going unaware
in my motion.

The constant awareness
through each motion
became THE biofeedback device
that drove me forward.

As I did this,
as I accomplished more awareness
strange things happened.
I became aware of the various motors
that my body was composed of.

The motor of air to energy (chi)
separated by the diaphragm.
This lead to an understanding of how the body works
that isn’t anywhere in western culture,
and which understanding is obscured
by poorly defined Chinese terminology
when it is understood at all.

The motor of potassium and salt,
which define the cells of the body.
This led to a complete understanding
of such things as nutrition and diet,
that is available nowhere else.
Did you know that you can change
the nutritional values of food
merely by understanding this factor
and doing certain things in your martial exercises?

The motor of the brain
and how it has virtually nothing to do
with real thought.

Now, to be very forthcoming,
you need to get the basic elements of the martial arts functioning.
This means a complete understanding,
not just doing…but understanding why you are doing,
of such things as breathing, relaxing, grounding your weight, and so on.
Coordinated Body Motion, not spoken of at all by other martial arts,
is key to this process.
Then,
you have to understand concepts in specific arts you practice.
In aikido you have to create the same size sphere as your partner.
In Karate yoou have to reach intuition of movement.
In Tai Chi you can travel through the door
by creating geometries of energy,
and then using those geometries to make your awareness pure,
so that it never breaks.

And, you have to do these things,
understand the tradeoff between these concepts from art to art,
and how to Coordinate all of the concepts.

That is how you forge yourself through the martial arts.
And most martial arts merely have you ‘monkey see monkey do,’
never explaining the connections here,
how every thing is related and dependent.

Never explaining that the arts aren’t different,
only separated by people who don’t understand
how they fit together.

Kenpo and Aikido,
for instance,
share the same concepts,
but they are misaligned
and so appear to be different.
And the same is true for all arts.
Wing Chun and Karate.
MMA and Tai Chi.
Krav Maga and MCMAP.
All just different and dumbed down slices
of the one big and true art
that is the properly aligned and fit together of all arts.

Anyway,
didn’t mean to rant,
I tend to get excited that way.

I’ll be signing books at the Martial Arts Museum
in Burbank on OCT 18.
Hope to see you there.

Here’s an URL if you are interested in
checking out the Tai Chi Chuan aspect of the martial arts.

http://monstermartialarts.com/martial-arts/five-army-tai-chi-chuan/

Have a great work out!
Al