Martial Arts Make People Smarter and More Aware

Ancient Disciplines to Create a New and Improved You

I was reading the Patanjali the other night, and I came across an interesting concept: Awareness.

I am a big fan of Awareness. Aware people make for good and honest friends. Unaware people don’t. Aware people get the job done; unaware people don’t. Pretty simple, eh?

If you want something done, your refrigerator fixed, your car financed, your lawn cut properly, or whatever, these things happen to the degree that you are Aware enough to do them, or to hire an Aware person to do them.

Understanding the geometry behind martial arts

Here’s the interesting thing: there are virtually no schools of thought, no institutions, no methods for increasing Awareness in the western world.

We are sent to school, and we learn tricks, but learning tricks has little to do with Awareness, except in a superficial way.

We pray, but even that is subject to a mystical moment of enlightenment that might, but might not, happen.

Rarely, and I mean almost never, is there a school for increasing Awareness.

The one thing that would actually decrease ignorance and intolerance, we don’t have it, or a method for getting it.

Now, I know there are going to be those who claim that they have Awareness, who are going to be upset with some of the things I am saying here, but that is only because they don’t understand what Awareness actually is.

Awareness is not how much memory you have, and it is not even how fast you solve a problem (though this last can be right on the edge of Awareness, and can even be used to measure Awareness…after a fashion).

Awareness is how much you see. And, it is not how much you see with your perceptions, but, rather, how much you see without your perceptions. Perceptions, interestingly enough, can get in the way of Awareness.

One of my favorite tricks, when teaching martial arts, is to write something on my hand. A word, a phrase, or something. Then I would open my hand in class and close it, and ask the student what was written on it. The thing is, I would do this fast so they didn’t stand a chance of reading my hand.

Then I would open and close the hand slightly slower, and slightly slower, and eventually the student would read, ‘Bullwinkle is a dope,’ or some other such inanity.

“Huh?” They would grunt, not understanding the lesson.

So if you can’t see a simple bit of writing, how can you see this? And I would place my fist upon their nose.

Now, having proved that my student was unaware, and in a relatively non-threatening way, their minds would be open long enough for me to do a drill which would increase their Awareness.

Not make them a better fighter, although that happened, but enabled them to actually see what was written in the world. What was the balance of a stance, what was the ‘tell’ of the shoulders, what was the thought behind their eyes. To look at the world hard enough so that they could actually see it.

I think it was this that fascinated me about the martial arts: not the institutionalized memorization of tricks, but rather the actual engagement and improvement of Awareness.

Methods for increasing Awareness through the Martial Arts at MonsterMartialArts.com.

Just pure Awareness at ChurchofMartialArts.com.

Acquiring Sixth Sense Ability In the Martial Arts

Sixth Sense Martial Arts

Sixth Sense Ability, in martial arts like Karate, Taekwondo, Kung Fu, or whatever else, seem to have become not much more than rumors from the past. People learn how to fight like demons, but they don’t learn how to perceive the world without the use of the five physical senses. That’s the truth of the matter, you know, sixth sense ability includes all the things that don’t depend on see, hear, smell, and so on.

Simply, if it is a real world sensation, it is not a sixth sense ability. In martial arts like kung fu and aikido and so on, it is being able to ‘feel’ when an attack is coming before it is comes. It is knowing what an opponent is going to do before he does it.

The best method for gaining sixth sense abilities is to learn how to practice without the use of the five physical senses. For instance, the surest technique is simply to do your moves without the use of the eyes. Simply close your eyes, or blindfold yourself, and do your kata, and get somebody who is willing to risk a few light punches, and do your martial arts techniques.

The point here is to understand that you are not trying to see or smell, or that sort of thing, but ‘know.’ So let me pose a question: have you ever walked up to a door and placed the key exactly in the keyhole while your awareness is on a conversation, or watching what somebody is doing? Most people have, and that is the easiest example of ‘knowing’ that I can give you, you knew where to place the key without eyes.

So set up some training devices so that you can practice without using the five physical senses. Do sticky hands, out of Wing Chun, blindfolded, and learn to ‘know’ what your opponent is going to do. Or, how about closing your eyes and practicing push hands from Tai Chi Chuan, or some other similar exercise.

My favorite practice is to hang a small ring, and poke a six foot (or longer) staff through the center of it. After I’ve got the ring fairly well centered in my mind, I close my eyes and turn out the lights. Once I’m adept at that I take a few steps away from the target, move forward and thrust the staff through the ring.

The thing that you should understand is that the sixth sense depends on imagination. If you close your eyes and imagine where the hanging ring is, then you can thrust a pole through it. Or a spear or a sword or even throw a shuriken through it.

So the way you train is this: train with martial arts forms and precise martial arts techniques so that you build a structure, a frame of reference, a scientific way of imagining the world. Second, practice closing your eyes and train without using your physical senses. Last, in this matter of gaining sixth sense abilities in martial arts like karate or taekwondo, is to develop your imagination; that is your true strength, you know: the use of imagination.

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This has been a page about developing sixth sense martial arts.