Find stillness within motion
Say you’re practicing with another student - your sparring with them and you miss a block. You get hit. Your natural reaction is to tense up. The body has been injured, or at least assaulted. Maybe a little fear kicks in, and your mind starts jumping around – “oh man, I missed that one. Geez, that was fast. What’s he going to throw next? Quick, hit him.” As you start to think and you start to anticipate, your body and mind becomes less and less relaxed. If you recognize that you’ve lost focus, you then start to get angry at yourself. More distracting thoughts. Each thought infuses the body with a little more tension, a little more stress. More tension equals less speed and you become a little slower and you make another error and soon, there’s no way you can function at your skill level. You’re just throwing junk, trying not to get hit.
Stilling the mind, relaxing the body, calming the spirit – this is not just for silent moments sitting quietly in a darkened room or beside a peaceful river. Yes, this is where we learn to meditate, where conditions are optimal for stillness. But, unless you plan to live in solitude, You need to bring these principles into your life in general. You need to be able to relax and remain centered during the most energetic moments in your practice, The most frenzied moments of your day to day life. When the punches and kicks are coming at you in full – out sparring, the degree of relaxation and stillness you can achieve in your mind and in your body will determine how quickly, how powerfully and how efficiently you will be able to perform.
“ A good day is not a day without chaos, but rather a day in which we remain calm within the chaos.”
