Copyright

Thorsons

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First published by Thorsons 2004

Copyright © Steve Jones 2004

Steve Jones asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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Dedication

This book is dedicated to the late Master Derek Jones

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the following for their help and support in the writing of this book: Susanna Abbot and the team at Thorsons, Michael Alcock, my mother and father, Master Sun Li, all those who have and who continue to study and train with me, Bruce Thomas, Grant Headley, The Gurdjieff Society, and a special thank you to Ria Holzerlandt and Dr Norman Jones.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Acknowledgements

INTRODUCTION

PART ONE: MEDITATION

PART TWO: CHI KUNG

PART THREE: MARTIAL SCIENCE

PART FOUR: MARTIAL ART

IN CLOSING

References

Further Reading

About the Publisher

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this book is to provide a practical guide to using Martial Art strategies in everyday life; it aims to provide you with the necessary tools to analyse and transform areas in your life where fear and its related emotions operate. Central to the book is the concept of holistic self-defence, which is founded upon the principle that the primary form of intelligence to be applied to fear is one’s sense of balance.

This book will also challenge many preconceived notions of what defines Martial Art. I examine many of the concepts and philosophies that comprise Martial Art and apply old wisdom to contemporary settings. I have personally found that the Chinese tradition (mainly derived from Taoism) is the closest in essence to true Martial Art and for this reason I have based the book primarily upon Chinese perspectives and spiritual backgrounds; however, this by no means excludes other cultural interpretations, nor is it meant to depreciate their teachings.

Having spent over 22 years studying Martial Art, I feel that its true roots and its place in our daily lives has been overlooked and, to a certain extent, forgotten. In the last 30 years, Martial Art has enjoyed an explosion of popularity and although popularity is generally a good thing, it has engendered a variety of erroneous perceptions and interpretations of what constitutes Martial Art. The need for an ego massage and the lure of easy money have led to the emergence of many an unscrupulous and misguided teacher, and the mass-media marketing of Martial Art has further confounded the problem by creating fantastic images and staging fight scenes that bear no resemblance to reality. All of this has brought the world of Martial Art to a crisis point – what was once a noble and valid path for self-evolution has become a vehicle for people seeking their own materialistic and egotistic ends. However, this is not all encompassing as I have met many good and true martial artists in my time who are distinguished from their inferior counterparts by the quality of their ‘being’ and not their chosen Martial Art style.

How to Approach This Book

This book should be used as a working manual that can be dipped into on a daily basis, acting as a reminder and general guide to those of you who are searching for the martial way. It is also a good idea to read it from cover to cover to get an overall picture of what the study of Martial Art should include.

I am using this book to present Martial Art to you as a tool and, like all tools, it will only be meaningful to you when you use it practically in your life. This does not require you to go out and start conflicts in order to fulfil your training. In fact, the truth of conflict and its associated fears is that it is a part of everyday life that we are continually affected by – we are often attacked from within by our own negative thoughts and attitudes towards ourselves; conflicts arise between people who love each other; fear exists between people who work together; people, whether consciously or unconsciously, send negative thoughts or ‘vibes’; and there is always a possibility of physical intimidation which, while relatively rare in most people's lives, is increasing in all our lives all the time. If you embrace the fact that attack in some form is integral to our lives, then you will start to see our training from a much wider perspective. By the time you have finished reading this book you should have gained an understanding of the nature and effects of fear in your life. Moreover, you will have a good understanding of the strategies that could be employed to overcome the debilitating effects of fear and aggression.

If I appear to repeat myself during the course of this book, it is because some points need to be reiterated before their significance can be realized. The process of conscious repetition is essential to Martial Art, for it is only by repeating carefully (practising) a particular move or aspect, that your body, mind and spirit can begin to embody the underlying principles. It is because of this that delving deeply into the spiritual ramifications of this kind of work is beyond the scope of this book. It can take you to that door, but it will not open it very far. This is primarily because a very thorough grounding in the physical and practical aspects is needed before we can truly experience the spiritual benefits of Martial Art.

You are reading these words now for a reason; perhaps this book caught your eye on a bookshop’s shelf, perhaps somebody gave it to you because they felt that it could help you with particular situations that you are experiencing. Whatever the reason, it is important that before you start grappling with the ideas and concepts in this book, you are clear, as much as possible, why you are interested in the martial path and what you wish to gain from studying it. The true martial path is not a particularly easy one since it will ask you to face things in yourself that you would perhaps wish to keep in the dark, and it demands that you slowly bring your ego into perspective and allow a more ‘human’ being to take control of your life. This process requires you to be open to the relationship that exists in you with the things that part of you would most like to avoid, namely areas where pain and fear operate. Because of this fact, there will be times when you meet great resistance in yourself to forging ahead and keeping the process going. Remember that you are investing your energy and attention back into yourself and by so doing strengthening yourself at the very core of your being, thereby becoming more effective, stronger and able to meet all that life demands of you. This is the real meaning and purpose of Kung Fu: to provide a tool that you can use to deal with your daily battles, whether they be against violent attacks of a criminal nature, abusive bosses, partners, strangers, or negative thoughts and attitudes within you, or perhaps just to fight for what you want out of life and to deal with the many failures it takes to make a success. Nothing that is worth anything in life comes cheaply or easily. Conflict is an inescapable part of life and always carries with it a good helping of fear and pain; it arises in our life in many different places, some suspected, some unsuspected, and awareness of the possibility of conflict is your first line of defence. If we can keep our original motivations and wishes alive, we can return to the source of our enquiry into Martial Art and strengthen once again our wish to evolve by facing our fears.

Some Preliminary Information

A Brief History of Kung Fu

As this book aims to interpret some of the original Martial Art precepts into contemporary life it would serve us well to briefly look at the roots of Kung Fu (a modern term generally describing Martial Art), for it is only by looking at its origins that we can begin to understand what its original purpose may have been. The Kung Fu tradition has a Chinese background and is inextricably linked with the spiritual teachings of Taoism. Central to the teaching of Taoism is the concept of the individual practitioner evolving a gradual harmonization with nature and the Tao (the life force that animates all things and can be found everywhere in the universe), and this is important because since its conception it has been clear that Kung Fu is about harmonization rather than domination.

The roots of Kung Fu are very difficult to trace through history, primarily because the practice dates back thousands of years, but the first writings on Chi Kung (a form of exercise that was the precursor to modern Kung Fu) date back to 3000 BC and have been subsequently added to and developed by a succession of extraordinary individuals. The Northern Shaolin Temple in China’s Honan Province existed in approximately AD 580 and was the birthplace of modern Kung Fu. Legend dictates that Bodidharma, a Buddhist monk from India, travelled to China where he had been summoned to the court at Nanking. After a brief and not very successful trip, Bodidharma started his journey home, but before reaching his destination, he came upon the Shaolin Temple. The temple at that time was being used for scholarly Buddhist studies, and the monks were engaged in translating Buddhist scriptures from Sanskrit into Chinese. On meeting Bodidharma, the head monk refused him entry because his progressive Buddhist teachings placed less emphasis on scholarly pursuits than they did on more energetic forms of teaching. Bodidharma decided to wait outside in order to try to gain entry, and he is rumoured to have spent this time in intensive meditation. (There is some speculation as to how long he stayed there – some say 40 days, others say nine years, but I have it on fairly good authority that it was, in fact, three months.) During this time, many local people came to him for guidance, and word of Bodidharma’s wisdom spread and finally found its way back to the temple. The head monk then conceded Bodidharma’s superior knowledge and allowed him to enter the monastery (more fanciful accounts will say that Bodidharma drilled a hole in the wall with his stare). What Bodidharma saw upon his entrance disturbed him greatly: the monks were lethargic and depressed and their bodies were emaciated; the prolonged mental activity of translation was an imbalance and, as with all imbalances, was beginning to destroy them. Bodidharma explained to them that as the mind and body are inextricably linked, the relationship between them must be continually rejuvenated and rebalanced otherwise disease (dis-ease) would follow. After much meditation, Bodidharma designed a set of exercises to bring about the rejuvenation of the Shaolin monks’ body–mind relationship. These exercises formed the basis of what is now Chi Kung and Kung Fu. The Chi Kung exercises presented in this book are scaled-down versions of Bodidhama’s original series and have been adapted for modern life.

During his time at the monastery, Bodidharma also wrote several classic texts, introduced the monks to Indian Martial Art and reintroduced the concept of Chi (the ancient art of extracting energy from the air via the breath) into Kung Fu. As time went by, the monks developed a deeper connection with their body movement and so began to understand the natural laws inherent in the human body and its machinations. However, this dynamic connection to their own bodies soon lent itself to meditating on nature itself and the movements contained therein, and hence they began to experience themselves as part of nature. This had a profound effect on the development of Kung Fu, as the monks allowed themselves to be ‘taught’ by nature directly. For example, by meditating upon animals they came to understand the most natural methods of adapting to their environment and defending themselves against predators; and by meditating upon water they learned how to change the shape of their body in a continuous, ‘flowing’ manner. We can see both of these examples embodied in the original animal forms (a form is a long series of movements used for practising Kung Fu techniques), which were movements based on the animals (such as the tiger, monkey, snake and white crane) that they were mimicking. As time went on and the monks got stronger, their life dictated that they develop a direct martial application to their movements, as they were being attacked and robbed on their travels to nearby markets.

This direct connection with nature went hand in hand with the spiritual teachings of Taoism, the dominant religion in China between AD 310 and AD 580. The teachings of Taoism were well documented by Confucius (born: 551 BC) and Lao Tzu (born: circa 6th century BC), both great philosophers who preached about the evolution of man to such a level that he becomes one with the Tao, again emphasizing the importance of harmonization.

This, I admit, is a condensed history lesson, but it illustrates a few fundamental points about Kung Fu:

1 Kung Fu was originally a tool to help strengthen the relationship between the mind and the body to make the practitioner stronger in life.

2 The first purpose of Kung Fu was to fight disease.

3 Kung Fu led to a much deeper understanding of the laws of nature by working through the body.

Thus, it is important right from the start to understand that the correct study of Martial Art must have both internal (your relationship with yourself) and external (your relationship with the outside world) aspects intact. Like the two halves of the Yin/Yang symbol – separate, yet containing a small representation of the other (a spot) – these aspects must be shown to relate to each other, and helping you to understand this principle is one of the primary aims of this book. When we unlock our understanding of this relationship, we increase the use of (and the number of possibilities for using) our Martial Art training in everyday life. This understanding develops a sense of balance and by using the exercises presented in this book, it is my wish that you develop this sense and become open to the possibilities of how it can accentuate your life. The extraordinary thing about authentic Martial Art is that you work through your own body and build a relationship with it in order to understand about the power of balance through your own experiences. This direct understanding will then begin, quite naturally, to find its way into the other primary areas of your being, namely your mind and your emotions. Then, slowly, a new perception of yourself will begin to emerge where the body, mind and emotions work in dynamic harmony with each other, bringing extensive integration or ‘oneness’ with yourself and your environment.

FIGURE 1

The Intelligent Warrior

The title of this book, The Intelligent Warrior, was not chosen flippantly. The etymology of the word ‘intelligence’ comes from two words: ‘inter’, which means ‘between’, and ‘legere’, which means ‘to choose’. Thus, the word ‘intelligence’ implies a sense of balance, an ability to stand between two things and then make a decision, or the intention to take action in one direction or another; indeed, the word ‘intends’ means ‘to stretch out’ or ‘to move in one direction’. On the other hand, the word ‘warrior’ means ‘bringer of chaos or war’ and this, at first sight, might seem to contradict the word ‘intelligence’. After all, why would anyone want to bring chaos into his or her life? However, we all have both conscious and unconscious fears that affect our day-to-day decisions and actions, and bring about the same situations in our lives repeatedly. This can make us feel trapped or imprisoned at times in our lives when varying degrees of intensity or stress arise, and in order to free ourselves of these fears we must become aware of them in order to ‘open’ to them or ‘throw some light upon them’. We enter a state of chaos when we sense warring factions within ourselves, but only by seeing and accepting this state of chaos can we gradually bring some balance and understanding into our lives.

The Meaning of Kung Fu

The term Kung Fu roughly translated means time spent working on something in direct relationship to yourself so that your skill and yourself simultaneously evolve. Thus, Jimi Hendrix was a Kung Fu guitarist, Claude Monet was a Kung Fu painter and Confucius was a Kung Fu philosopher. A martial artist works on himself through the medium of his or her own body; the body is their instrument rather than a guitar or paint brush.

The art of expressing the human body was one of Bruce Lee's favourite topics. He maintained that learning Martial Art should ultimately allow you to express yourself ‘honestly’ (by this he meant to free of the confines of thought, habits, and attitudes) to be able to adapt to your environment in times of stress. Therefore, Kung Fu really means time spent working on yourself; it is a reinvestment of energy in yourself. We will deal with this principle at great length in this book, for one of the first things that must happen during your training is for you to gain awareness and control of your energy so that you do not continually dissipate it with physical, mental or emotional imbalanced states of being that are elicited by fear and its related emotions. And just as a good company reinvests some of its profits back into itself in order to adapt, survive and change in response to the prevailing climate, you as a martial artist must reinvest your energy back into yourself to become stronger and more able to meet the responsibilities that your life demands. You will then be able to defend against imbalance in yourself and recognize the effect that people and external/internal conditions have on you. This is the truth of real self-defence, and any discussion about Martial Art must consider this.

Common Misunderstandings

The Public

I have had many conversations with martial artists and the public about Martial Art, and the one thing that strikes me is that everybody thinks they know what it is. Interestingly, it is a subject that seems to provoke people into expressing strong opinions. The top-five reactions of people when I am introduced as a Martial Art instructor are:

1 ‘I better stay away from you then’ or ‘I won't get on your wrong side!’ usually said in a jovial tone and followed by a little smile as if they were the first person ever to think of such a quip. It is a tedious reaction because it is immediately assumed that I have a propensity to resort to physical violence, when in fact true Martial Art is about harmonization and not the use of inappropriate force to dominate someone.

2 Holding a bottle of beer or cream cake at a party tends to elicit the response, ‘I thought you were supposed to be super fit and weren’t supposed to consume things like that!’This reaction expresses the attitude that in order to be a martial artist you must live a life of saintliness and purity, which is rubbish because a martial artist must open up to everything, including ‘temptations’, in order to adapt. It is not a question of denial but rather a question of experiencing and discarding what is useless, one of the fundamental laws of adaptability.

3 The person immediately takes a comic fighting posture, gives the customary war chant ‘Hiiiii ya!’ and follows up with a reference to the ’70s cartoon Hong Kong Fooey. Some people deal with their fear of Martial Art by turning it into a caricature.

4 They proceed to explain what Martial Art is and tell me how they were once a black belt and that their master could do amazing feats such as walk along walls and defeat multiple attackers with a single touch of his finger. This is indicative of a particularly pernicious attitude bred in people who train in martial sport; it is an overly competitive attitude that is usually based on their own feelings of impotence.

5 They immediately adopt an attitude of subservience and over-the-top reverence for my illuminating presence. This type of person tends to want somebody else to take responsibility for them and always looks for answers from the outside instead of from within themselves.

Why have I gone to the trouble of outlining these somewhat comical responses? Because it is my belief that Martial Art, largely due to the huge media attention lavished upon it, has been grossly misrepresented and misunderstood by the public. Why is this important? Because many people, both men and women, are suffering from a lack of teaching to help them cultivate their warrior spirits truly and fully.

Martial Artists

The media is not solely to blame for this. So-called martial artists themselves also perpetuate misrepresentations. Three of the most current misrepresentations are:

1 The Internal School. The main culprits here are people who do T’ai Chi in satin suits and funny slippers in the park on Sunday. They proliferate quasi-Eastern mysticism that preaches about Chi, the importance of yielding and how you can use your energy to redirect your opponent’s force and cast aside knife-wielding maniacs with the calmest of demeanours. These people are playing a very dangerous game because a real street encounter with someone who actually wants to do physical harm is a brutal business and your training must reflect this. The internal side is essential in Martial Art but is impotent unless accompanied by the external.

2 The External School. People who practise in these types of schools believe that training for martial sport is the same as for Martial Art. One of the greatest crimes that the Western world has committed towards Martial Art is imbuing it with a sense of sport. All over the West, ‘martial artists’ compete for glittering trophies, glory and adulation in Martial art competitions when in fact scoring points in a tournament has very little to do with either real self-defence or developing the finer sensitivity inherent in artistic training – a mugger is not going to recognize the fact that you have just scored three points for tapping him in the ribs. If you only train for scoring points then that is all that will ever emerge when you are in a real situation. Training in this manner also tends to engender arrogant mental and emotional habits that can spill over into your daily lives. This school of training has come about largely because the Western world’s first real introduction to Martial Art came via America and so was filtered through their powerful sense of sport. We will deal with this topic in more detail later.

3 The Street Fighter School. This is proliferated by people who see themselves as ‘hard’. Their attitude is that Martial Art has to be as aggressive as possible because street fights are so bloody and brutal that you can only win if you are ‘hard’, and think that the best way of training is either for you to beat people up or to get your fellow students to try to beat you up. From one point of view, this is probably the safest of the misrepresentations and the closest to the truth but it is two-dimensional and these people are dangerously missing the point: actual physical confrontation for most people is fairly rare, but conflict exists everywhere. It can also be a very dangerous attitude to take because it increases Yang energy (aggression, anger etc.), which increases the chances of you starting an unnecessary fight and getting hurt or seriously hurting your opponent, consequently increasing the chances of ending up in prison with plenty of time to contemplate what you have lost. I therefore reiterate my point that physical confrontation for most people is a fairly rare event, but conflict is a natural part of life and is present much of the time.

The Media

The misrepresentations proliferated by the media are too many and varied to go into here, but the most dangerous are the ridiculous types of fight scenes we see in movies today. These lengthy scenes comprise bodies flying, jumping and running along walls, and I am sorry to say that real street fights are never like this. Instead, they tend to be brutal, messy and quite short. It is important to understand that the roots of Martial Art are very far away from the acrobatics and gymnastics portrayed by the entertainment industry. Moreover, you must be clear in your mind what it is you are training for; if you want your Martial Art training to have an effect in your life then you must spend time studying the situations and scenarios that you may encounter.

The Difference Between Martial Art and Martial Sport

So, having looked at some of the more common misrepresentations of Martial Art let us now look at what it actually should be. As mentioned previously there is a great difference between Martial Art and martial sport; in fact, most things described as Martial Art are actually martial sport. Martial Art deals with the art of expressing the human body and develops man's innate sense of harmonization, adaptation and exploration. Martial sport, on the other hand, is far more concerned with domination and emphasizes winning as the primary objective; this can have a very detrimental effect on those who practise it as it breeds a very limited two-dimensional perception of the world. It does not teach the human being how to evolve or how to accept Yin and Yang with equal respect or how to accept winning and losing with the same spirit.

Nor does it teach of the presence of the third dimension: balance. The tradition of Martial Art teaches us how to respect our bodies and exercise them in a manner that will preserve them in older age. Martial sport uses the body as a vehicle for glory and utilizes high-impact exercise to get the quickest results possible. The martial sport practitioner seeks material affirmation of their worth as a martial artist, which might include building bigger muscles, acquiring as many trophies as possible, wearing the most elaborate clothing or breaking the most boards. This is a highly dangerous form of training as it tends to build a false image of oneself and bring an overestimation of one's abilities. If correct focus is not taught, the mind will learn to daydream repeatedly seeing itself always as the “star” of one's own show, but anyone who has a modicum of experience in street fighting knows how crippling this image of oneself can be. The pure barbarity of real combat wipes out this illusion mercilessly. The most common effect when faced with an actual conflict is that the practitioner will freeze and engage in negative internal conversation about how they should be doing better or what friends are thinking of them. I have seen many skilled martial sport practitioners freeze and be reduced to the most basic form of body mechanics when faced with a drunken, little delinquent who was not afraid of violence.

Another aspect of martial sport, which I personally find astounding, is that so many practitioners end up with serious injuries, which can never really heal. These include destroyed knee ligaments, broken and arthritic hands, various back injuries, detached retinas, fallen arches, and breathing problems caused by broken noses and poor posture. Such injuries usually occur in competitions or regular training that allow full-contact sparring or from trying to attain a material goal such as large muscles or the next coloured belt. By training in this way, the wish to learn how to defend oneself ended up with the practitioner being even less able (due to injury) to defend himself than when he or she first walked in the dojo’s (Japanese word for training room) door.

It is also true that training in martial sport tires the body and makes it age quicker. It takes many years to build something of quality and authenticity, and your body is no different. Remember that the term ‘Kung Fu’ means time spent working on yourself (which means body, mind, and spirit), so patience and perseverance need to be cultivated in the practitioner in order to build a quality ‘vessel’ or body that is integrated and whole.

Key Concepts in Martial Art

An intelligent warrior should begin cultivating the ability to express themselves from the inside outwards, not to seek an image of themselves from the outside in, as if looking in a mirror, or imagining yourself as if playing a role in a movie. Similarly, they must cultivate an understanding of discipline as a self-imposed (or by a teacher) set of parameters that helps attain goals, and not as an outside force beating them into shape or a bitter pill that has to be swallowed. The Chinese use the analogy of pruning a tree, for if it is pruned correctly it will bear greater fruit in the spring; so too, if we curb some of our overextended branches (such as putting a stop to engaging in negative emotion or thought) we will gradually develop more internal power. Martial Art should work to develop the body in a holistic manner in accordance with nature, which means evolving the body, mind and spirit harmoniously so they gradually can manifest as one force.

To understand this further we could represent this in a symbolic form, as symbols were originally used to bypass the intellectual functions and represent to the unconscious mind the ideas in question in an energetic format (see Figure 2). The dot in the middle of the symbol represents the centre or Tan T'ien, the point that we are first trying to stabilize so that everything else can orientate itself around it. The three circling tadpole-like shapes represent the primary energies: the body, mind and spirit. These are dynamically represented for they are continually moving in a cycle of imbalance and rebalancing. The circle that encompasses the Tan T'ien and the three energies is the outer level of your body, which includes your skin, eardrums and eyes. It is at this level that vibrations from the outside world actually enter your inner world. The energy of the body deals with our physical nature and encompasses the physiological, biomechanical and biochemical aspects of your body. The energy of the mind represents your thought processes and other functions controlled by the cerebrum. The energy of spirit deals with the emotions and a gradual refinement of emotional reaction into feeling. The Chinese character for spirit does not lend itself to direct interpretation into Western language; however, in the context of this book I will use the word spirit to represent our emotional energy rather than in any ‘spiritual’ context. Having said that, Martial Art should at some point lead us to a spiritual dimension. It is not the scope of this book to deal with this in depth, but it is common sense that our bodies are part of nature and they have been built on the same laws that this planet and universe have been built on. It therefore stands to reason that if we build a connection with our body and bring it more into accordance with the way nature intended then we should begin to resonate with life on a much larger scale. Whether you call it God, The Great Spirit, Allah, Vishnu or the Tao, the awakening to life on a much larger scale is part of the very roots of Kung Fu.

FIGURE 2

The symbol is also what is known as a paradoxicon in that it stimulates the balance between foreground/background perceptions. When looking at the symbol you may perceive the three aforementioned tadpole-like shapes or you may perceive a three-bladed Shurikan (throwing star). This stimulation of the mechanics of vision is essential in Martial Art training and is a subject we will return to.

Now that we have clarified to some degree what Martial Art is and is not, we can begin to approach the question of authentic self-defence. The following introduces some key concepts that I will refer to at various points throughout the book.

The Holistic Concept of Self-Defence

At the heart of this book lies the practice of holistic self-defence (from the Greek word ‘holos’ meaning ‘whole’, and related to the word ‘holy’), which is a viewpoint that allows us to look at self-defence from a very wide perspective and one that is in accordance with the laws of nature. The key concept in holistic self-defence is the principle of ‘homeostasis’, a term used by the medical profession to define the natural healthy state of an organism. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary definition for homeostasis is: ‘The ability or tendency of an organism or cell to maintain internal equilibrium by adjusting its physiological processes.’ We can understand from this definition that a continual process of balance is essential for the maintenance of health. Holistic self-defence looks at the concept of homeostasis not only in the body (as is the focus of Western medicine) but also in the realms of thought and emotion, and it expands to encompass the status quo or ‘outer’ conditions of our life. Another way of putting this would be that practising holistic self-defence protects you from actual physical attacks, negative thought, negative emotion, viruses, poor posture, addictions and anything that will throw the body out of balance.

We all have an internal balance that allows us to hold together an external balance that could be seen as the status quo or homeostasis of our life. During our daily life we are constantly making decisions, which are followed by actions to maintain our homeostasis. For instance, we plan ahead with money so that we do not end up homeless, we try to see friends and family to fulfil our emotional needs, and so on. This does not mean a homeless person has no balance, it simply means that the homeostasis they maintain in their life is different. However, from time to time something of a much larger magnitude may enter into one's life and throw it completely out of balance requiring some form of ‘re-action’ or rebalancing. Examples include losing a job, the death of a loved one, a partner having an affair, winning the lottery or getting a promotion. Imbalance can occur from both ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ events, and sometimes we even need to consciously disrupt the balance of our life in order to move on and grow (for instance, taking the risk of quitting your job in order to set up your own business). The essential point is that the process of rebalancing through a sense of balance is our primary tool for self-defence, and that our bodies are continually engaged in this process of homeostasis on many different levels; moreover, it is, and has been, one of the keys to our ability to adapt and survive. In this way, an extremely negative person could be viewed as a virus entering your life, which you may or may not catch a similar illness from, or somebody trying to strike you could be viewed as a disease trying to gain a hold of your body, which you repel and so keep yourself in balance. In The Science of Homeopathy George Vithoulkas writes:

…every organism possesses a defence mechanism which is constantly coping with stimuli from both internal and external sources. This defence mechanism is responsible for maintaining a state of homeostasis, which is a state of equilibrium between processes tending to disorder the organism and processes that tend to maintain order. Understanding precisely how this defence mechanism works is vital, for any significant impairment of its function rapidly leads to imbalance and finally death.

Vithoulkas (1986: 16)

To understand and strengthen this defence mechanism is very much in keeping with the philosophy of Kung Fu (time spent working on yourself). It calls one to practise proactive health, to strengthen the ground on which influences fall rather than trying to destroy and control influences that we deem threatening.

The Fight-or-Flight Repsonse

Throughout the course of this book I will refer to the fight-or-flight response. This response has been evolved over countless millennia and is triggered instinctively by the body (via the autonomic nervous system) when it perceives it is under attack. Some of the reactions that make up the response are as follows:

 Increased metabolism, heart rate and breathing (to increase energy levels).

 Surge in CO2 production (to prepare for increased intake of O2).

 Release of natural adrenalin, morphine and cortisol into the body (to increase power and control of pain).

 Stomach begins to shut down (to make more blood available for the muscles), which tends to cause nausea.

 Pupils dilate (to increase visual acuity), which has a tendency to interfere with our visual perception.

 Release of coagulants into the bloodstream (to stop bleeding if cut) – prolonged exposure can cause heart attacks in later life.

 Blood is pulled away from the skin’s surface (to stop excessive bleeding), which may cause leg tremors and cold sweats.

 Blood is routed away from the frontal reasoning part of the brain into the more instinctual parts located towards the middle (brain stem) of the brain.

One of the most significant points about this extraordinary instinctual defence mechanism is that it is fired when the body perceives it is under attack. This means that even if the threat is not remotely life-threatening (as when we watch a scary movie) the body will still fire the fight-or-flight response to some degree. This is the major cause of what is popularly known as stress and can, over a long period of time, have serious repercussions on our mental, physical and emotional health. The fight-or-flight response was designed for real danger, for sudden spurts of intense life-preserving activity; the body throws itself out of its normal homeostasis in order to protect itself better, and then returns fairly quickly afterwards to its normal state, which it can generally deal with quite well. However, what we see prevalent in today’s society is much less intense reactions spread over a longer period of time, and the body cannot cope well with this. The threats that might set the response off in this case might be an abusive boss or partner, money problems, bullying, anxiety about the future, regrets about the past, phobias or low self-esteem. An Intelligent Warrior must become extremely familiar with the fight-or-flight response (the body’s most powerful response) because it has a huge effect on our homeostasis.

Proactive Health and the Cyclical Nature of Health

The correct practice of Martial Art strengthens our ‘constitution’ by the practice of proactive health and understanding the cyclical nature of health and disease in the body. Western medicine spends a lot of time, money and effort researching and hunting down new microbes, bacteria, viruses, etc., and then developing powerful drugs that kill them. This obsession has blinded them to the fact that it is the constitutional susceptibility (the already existing weakness in the body, mind, and spirit) of the victims that creates fertile ground for disease to exist. This blindness leads to the deployment of increasingly toxic drugs, which themselves are becoming a significant public health menace and disturb even further the fine balance that nature has created in our bodies.

Proactive health means working at the maintenance of your health or homeostasis on a regular basis whilst you are in good health, so as to strengthen your immune and other self-defence systems in the body and therefore lessen your susceptibility to illness. This is a fundamentally different attitude to waiting until we get sick and then going to the doctor and asking them to heal us. Over the last 30 years people have generally become a lot more health conscious and are joining gyms, taking up jogging, modifying their diets or perhaps learning to play a new sport, but although this is a movement in the right direction, a greater depth of understanding is possible through the practice of holistic self-defence where each part, body, mind and spirit are strengthened. For instance, your body must always be exercised in relation to the Law of Gravity (see here), if you go jogging but are not aware of a misalignment in your spine or foot you will soon cause injury there; if you do not train your mind to focus correctly during exercise you will cultivate a dangerous split between your mind and body caused by daydreaming; and desiring the next material affirmation of your superiority (trophies, belts and so on) or cultivating the emotions of winning over losing will have a severe impact on the evolution of your emotional life.

Understanding the cyclical nature of health and disease is one of the keys to maintaining a steady input of energy into our homeostasis. For example, if a person walks with a slouch, they may not notice any detrimental effects to their health immediately, but because this slouch causes a slight compression of the ribcage, their breathing is always mildly impaired. If this slouch occurs only once it will not be dangerous, but if it occurs repeatedly over the cycle of years it will cause serious disease in later life. Proactive health uses the same simple understanding to strengthen homeostasis in the body – for example, if by building awareness to your spine you gradually learn the correct positioning for it and then gradually encourage a movement to the correct upright position at times during the day, over the cycle of years you will then defend yourself against ill health brought on by bad posture.

We could equally apply this concept to poor mental and emotional habits – for example, if patterns of negative thought present at a young age are left unchecked, they can cause serious mental-health problems such as depression later in life, but by learning how to focus and quieten the mind at intervals during the day, we can protect our mental health. Equally, excessive feelings of guilt can spread like cancer. Proactively rebalancing our emotional life can protect us from the hoards of doctors trying to shove antidepressants down our throats (for a nice commission).

This simple concept of cyclical health is significant because it means you can work proactively on your health at any time in your day, for example, whilst sitting at your desk or waiting in checkout queues or bus stops, and so on. The Intelligent Warrior in this way makes a decision to become involved in the maintenance of their health at various times of the day. By cultivating this attitude, we begin to bring our Martial Art training directly into our life and so return to the original precepts of Kung Fu.

Action/Reaction Cycle

In Meditation (see here) we use our awareness to practise bringing together the perceptions of our inner and outer worlds, sensing them together as one whole. Our growing sensitivity to this allows us to study the living relationship between our inner and outer worlds. In terms of self-defence, the link between the two is achieved in this order: an event occurs outside ourselves that our senses interpret; the senses turn the impression into an electrical impulse that is transmitted to the brain via the electrical conductors, the nerves; the brain then , interprets and compares this signal based on previously perceived impressions and then manifests a reaction back through the body in response to the original stimuli. In classic action/reaction fashion, the “world” reacts back to us in a particular way based upon our reaction, which then makes us react again and so the cycle perpetuates. This is the living relationship that continues whether we like it or not. For much of the time it revolves in the background where we do not notice the subtle ways in which we are pulled off balance by various influences, and thus we are unaware of the equally subtle ways that we express our imbalance. Frequently, we carry these reactions around inside us from one environment to another. For instance, when you have a bad day at work you may “carry it” with you home where you continue your negative reactions in the form of being irritable to your partner. The cycle could also just as easily originate from a negative association within oneself, such as suddenly recalling from memory a missed opportunity, which in turn makes you manifest negativity outwardly (by perhaps frowning or cursing). The process of Meditation can build sensitivity to this ‘natural’ cycle of human behaviour, and by so doing can become one of the ways that we consciously participate in the process of homeostasis. Moreover by practising Meditation we begin to understand the action/reaction cycle from a more energetic viewpoint, sensing the stimuli as just energy vibrations coming in via the senses and then in turn sensing the vibrations of our own reaction, this frees us from being caught up in the details of a particular reaction and allows sense of the flow of energy between us an the opponent (stimuli). In this way an Intelligent Warrior stands balanced between their inner and outer life in the knowledge that this is the only place where they can truly effect their life. It understand the cycle from this more energetic perspective it would be valuable here to return to the previous symbol (see Figure 3)

The intersecting arrows represent the three dimensions of the outer world: left to right, forwards and back, up and down. To fully represent this you must imagine the symbol as three-dimensional, with an arrow coming out towards you, so to speak, from the page, or moving into the page. The outer circle is the circle of your awareness where approaching influences are picked up at an early stage.

FIGURE 3

Whenever an influence (which could be an attacker, a virus or a hefty unexpected bill) enters the body it disturbs the body’s homeostasis. Sensing that it is being attacked the body will go into its instinctual defence mechanisms, the fight-or-flight response, the strength of which will depend on the intensity of the situation (see The Principle of Relativity). If the body’s centre is weak then severe and prolonged imbalance will occur, which will lead to illness and possibly, indirectly or directly, death. However, if the connection with the body’s centre has been developed then it will be strong enough to hold the circling energies of body, mind and spirit in its orbit, allowing a quick and speedy rebalancing or healing to occur.

On a lighter note, an influence could be an inspirational work of art, the focused love of somebody near you, some valuable information gleaned from a book. In such cases, the influence is ‘food’ for your higher self, which helps you to evolve a finer sense of balance and therefore increase the homeostasis between your body, mind and spirit.

Higher Health

The concept of higher health was expressed quite clearly in Chinese medicine and is where the healing process is not only seen as restoring balance after illness but also as a means of evolving the individual into a higher state of ‘being’. Moreover, the energy we use to continually heal ourselves from all kinds of disease is not available for this higher purpose. However, participation in the action/reaction cycle allows us to make different choices at critical decision points and so cultivates the Intelligent Warrior within.

The Principle of Relativity

When your body receives an impression of an attack, it will instantaneously react with the fight-or-flight response and, depending on the nature of the impression, will react with different levels of intensity. Generally speaking, the more extreme the attack the greater the reaction. So when dealing with the concept of self-defence we must understand the scale that these reactions can fall into. The attack does not necessarily have to be a physical attack against you; it could be something on a smaller scale such as verbal abuse or negative thought. As you can see from Figure 4, at one end of the scale there are life-threatening attacks, including attacks with weapons or by multiple opponents. At the other end of the scale are the ways in which we attack ourselves, including negative and depressive thoughts. Initially it may not be clear why we need to study such a wide scale but, as you will see later, we respond to many of life’s minor conflicts with our instinctual fight-or-flight response and we can gain valuable insights and experience of ourselves in such situations, which will help immeasurably to deal with the more intense reactions of extreme situations.

FIGURE 4

Principle of Resonation

The Principle of Resonation is one of the governing principles of vibration that I will refer to frequently throughout the book.

The principles of sound dictate that the vibration of any object is communicated through the atmosphere in waves. Each note of the musical scale vibrates at its own frequency, thus each sound wave is shaped uniquely according to its pitch. When two objects with similar pitches are in close proximity to each other, such as two guitars, the vibration purposely caused on one – say, the plucking of the B-string – will cause the B-string on the second guitar to also vibrate (with less intensity) because it resonates at a similar level. This principle is also known as sympathetic vibration and it relates to holistic self-defence in two basic ways:

1 Being in close proximity to someone who is in an emotionally agitated state will tend to make you resonate a similar state (this is similar to when someone has an ‘infectious’ laugh).

2 If you develop a certain quality or skill in the body (such as a sense of balance) it will tend to resonate a similar quality in the mind and emotions. The Chambers Dictionary (1994) uses this example in its definition of the word ‘resonance’: The complex of bodily responses to an emotional state, or of emotional responses to a situation.

Internal Conversation

Internal conversation is a subject broached by almost every system of Meditation that I have studied. Awareness of the continual conversation that churns inside our heads and the gradual conviction of its totally habitual nature is one of the first goals of Meditation. Internal conversation has a tendency towards negativity and being judgmental. Gaining a certain degree of freedom from internal conversation is essential for the Intelligent Warrior for internal conversation prevents us from receiving the impressions from the outside world directly. For example, something someone says triggers (action/reaction cycle) an association in your mind and you immediately start engaging in an internal conversation about it. This means that you are not only taking in the impression of the person talking directly but also listening to your own conversation, which is likely to lead you to lose track of what they are saying.

Internal conversation is also sometimes known as associative thinking because it uses associations to self-perpetuate. For instance, you are reading these words when suddenly your stomach grumbles, you tell yourself you are hungry and deserve a break, you start to think about what you are going to eat, perhaps imagine going to your favourite sandwich shop and recall bumping into an old friend the last time you were there, recall some of the things you used to do when you were younger, think ‘What a long time ago that was, is it really 10 years?’, ‘What have I done with that time? I should have taken that other job…’ and so on. At the same time, you sat in exactly the same place trying to read. If left unchecked this associating will go on relentlessly from the moment we wake up to the moment we fall asleep and rob us of many experiences and opportunities available in the present moment.

Internal conversation walks hand in hand with daydreaming and provides a running dialogue to the pictures thrown up by your mind. As mentioned previously, there is a tendency for this habitual talking to turn negative so our daydreams can end up with a picture of ourselves begging on the streets or something equally catastrophic! The Intelligent Warrior must learn to protect himself or herself against internal conversation because it burns a tremendous amount of energy, destroys self-esteem and has a tendency to increase in intensity when in a stressful situation.

Attachment, Detachment and Nonattachment

The concept of attachment, detachment and nonattachment comes directly from Taoism and is basically another expression of balance in that attachment can be seen as the Yang principle, detachment as the Yin principle and nonattachment as the balancing force between them. When a conflict or powerful event occurs in our life it makes us react. Our reaction then tends to polarize into either Yang (attachment), where we become obsessed by the occurrence, cannot stop talking or thinking about it and may even take some rash action on account of this, such as accusing someone of something before we have all the facts. The opposite reaction, Yin (detachment), is where we try to deny that the event ever occurred and pretend that the problem does not exist – for example, many people get into serious financial difficulties because they are afraid to face up to mounting debts and so avoid, for instance, opening any credit card statements. What these two reactions have in common is that they burn a lot of energy and stop you from seeing the event in an objective light, in turn stopping you from taking the appropriate action, which always involves an intelligent decision. Nonattachment allows you to sense these Yin and Yang perspectives simultaneously for in reality an Intelligent Warrior needs them both. The Yang reaction teaches us not to be blasé about events; it is the power by which we take action on something and gives us the strength to ‘grab the bull by the horns’. However, without the sensitivity from the Yin perspective, which teaches us to hold back perhaps to gather more information or to read the situation fully, we will be in danger of becoming a ‘bull in a China shop’ and making a particular situation a lot worse than it was to start out with.

The way to practise nonattachment is always to move into the present moment, for it is only here that you can pull your energy away from the imbalanced reaction. This is one of the skills developed in the practice of Meditation. By doing this we learn to become more sensitive to the Yin and Yang reactions within ourselves so that eventually any small fluctuation is sensed. A good working example would be when an experienced poker player makes himself or herself very quiet inside and enters into the present moment in order to read the tiny reactions (called ‘poker tells’) given off by the other players that give away their bluffs or inability to conceal excitement over the cards they are holding. This allows the Intelligent Warrior to know ‘when to hold them and when to fold them’ as the country singer Kenny Rogers would say!

Another helpful way of visualizing this essential concept is to look at Figure 5. Here we see our Yin and Yang reactions represented in a waveform, which tends to be how emotional reactions operate – we go up but at some point there is a corresponding low. Moreover, each situation will make you react in a slightly different way (for instance, even the most aggressive bouncer may try to avoid a confrontation with his wife when drunkenly stumbling in late after work!).

The key to nonattachment is firstly to ensure that when you are up (Yang) and taking direct action on something you remain aware of the Yin principle. For instance, be sensitive to the effect you are having on the situation. Secondly, make sure that when you are down (Yin) you to try to find the Yang energy. For instance, the classic Yin reaction is depression and, as any experienced therapist will tell you, the key to relieving depression is to take action. So, instead of getting depressed about money problems, for example, face them and take action to rectify the situation.

FIGURE 5

Nonattachment does not mean that you suppress your reactions – reactions are part of what is to be human and are necessary for life – but it does mean that you become more sensitive to them in order to sense earlier when you are being pulled off balance. This is represented by the smaller waveform that is close to the straight line (the point of balance) and is a much finer level of vibration or sensitivity. In this way, you learn not to commit so much energy to your reactions, which will in turn allow you to pay more attention to your goals.

Preparation for the Unexpected

As mentioned earlier, we must always keep in mind what it is that Martial Art is training us for. The aim of this book is to gain an insight into how Martial Art strategies and practices can help you in everyday situations. Therefore, we must learn how to prepare for this eventuality. One of the main differences between martial sport and Martial Art is the fact that in a sport conflict situation (for instance a tournament bout) you know where, you know when, you know how (what rules) and you know whom you are going to fight. A real situation, on the other hand, very often means that you do not know any of these things. Martial Art should teach you to be prepared for the unexpected and then to be able to adapt almost instantaneously to the conflict as it unfolds. I once witnessed a cyclist riding down the road in a busy city centre, quite obviously daydreaming about being somewhere else. As the cyclist rode down the road, a careless van driver (who was about 10 metres away) opened his door and the cyclist continued towards it, saw it just in time, then reacted instinctively by swerving. The cyclist missed the door but his overreaction meant that he lost his balance and came crashing heavily to the ground.

This story illustrates very well what a real conflict situation is like. The cyclist was daydreaming and not living in the present moment. This state of ‘waking sleep’ tends to be extremely common in the average human being and because of it, the cyclist was not aware of the door opening soon enough to recognize it and make a controlled evasive manoeuvre. Instead, it was left to the cyclist’s reflexes, operating at a much finer level of recognition, to perform the manoeuvre. However, he over steered due to his body’s adrenaline reaction and consequently his balance was destroyed and no further riding technique was possible. The situation happened totally out of the blue – one minute the cyclist was daydreaming of holiday beaches or winning the lottery and the next minute the cruel reality of life almost literally slapped him in the face. His inner state changed with lightning speed from one of habitual daydreaming to one of extreme fear. In that split second his whole life and state of being had changed, perhaps not forever but certainly for the near future. This is exactly what happens in any unexpected situation.

So, we must first build a robust state of awareness so that opening doors, depressive thoughts, abusive parents or bosses, or physical attacks do not surprise us and we become aware of their presence at the earliest opportunity. We must then build a presence that is strong enough to deal with the situation, as opposed to an absence (a symptom of which is the aforementioned daydreaming). Then and only then will we be able to rely on any technique that we may have learned to deal with the attack.

The Four Main Areas of Study

Having studied Martial Art now for over 25 years, it has become clear to me that there are four main areas of study that need to be addressed. These areas make up as it were the anatomy of a martial artist. They are each linked and interdependent on one another, and provide a different perspective of the same picture. A practical understanding of each area is essential if one is hoping to study Martial Art authentically. The four main studies are:

1 Meditation: This is really about the relationship you have with yourself and it opens the lines of communication between your mind and your body via sensation. This develops a state of awareness sensitive to both the inner (Yin) and outer (Yang) aspects of your life and strengthens the balance between your body, mind and spirit; I will refer to this balance as your presence. Awareness and presence form your first and second lines of defence respectively.

2 Chi Kung: The practice of Chi Kung harmonizes breath and movement. It is, if you like, a moving form of Meditation. It develops internal energy, strengthens the natural breath processes and develops freedom of movement. Chi Kung enables you to meditate whilst moving.

3 Martial Science: This is the study of body mechanics and the laws that govern human aggression. It is the study of techniques and their applications. It introduces various strategies based on common patterns of attack. By studying Martial Science, you will learn how to meditate whilst in relation to another human being.

4 Martial Art: Martial Art trains your ability to express yourself in all kinds of conflict situations. This is the culmination of the previous areas of study. It allows you to find areas in your life where you can apply your self-defence skills. Martial Art enables you to meditate whilst dealing with real situations in your life (as opposed to the artificial setting of a dojo or gym).

An Energetic Language

An Intelligent Warrior needs to develop an energetic language, a communication with his/her own body that allows them to experience their study from the perspectives of the body, mind and spirit. It is only by working from this perspective that we can make the written word come alive, and the process of embodiment can take place. Over time, Westerners have become increasingly more divorced from their own bodies; they view it from the outside, looking back at themselves as if in a mirror and asking questions such as: ‘Am I desirable?’ ‘Are they better than me?’ ‘Are they better looking than I am?’ This is a symptom of a materially based society, and in such a society, it is inevitable that we start to see our own bodies as material objects and begin to have attitudes towards them. This in turn may bring feelings of isolation, of separation from ourselves and the world around us; we are wary of people, suspicious of ulterior motives, anxious about the future or afraid of being alone. In this way we become strangers to ourselves, always commenting and judging with our internal conversation and becoming increasingly vulnerable to one of the most powerful fears in man: the fear of loneliness or from another perspective the fear of not being loved. We have lost the ability to sense our bodies from the inside, to connect, appreciate and celebrate the feeling of life itself within us. Therefore, perhaps the greatest benefit of studying Martial Art is to regain the ability to connect with one's own life and the energies that animate it.

PART ONE

MEDITATION

In terms of meaning, consciousness (mind), energy, and the body are clearly defined as three facets or cooperating functions within one indivisible system. Among these, mind is the initiator of systematic movement, so it is the directorate, or high command. Energy is the capacity of systematic movement. The body is the army. Ming and Weijia (1994: 11)

Before your opponent can strike you they must first rummage around to find an available hand to do so. Sun Li

Introduction

The word ‘Meditation’ conjures up many different images in people's minds, from shaven-headed Buddhist monks to stoned hippies to New Age dilettantes. Therefore, before beginning our study of Meditation we must clearly define what it is. The word ‘Medi-tation’ originates from the same root as the words ‘mediate’, ‘medi-um’, ‘medi-an’ and, most interestingly, ‘medi-cine’. This is significant, not as an etymological exercise, but as a clue as to why the word was first used to describe the practice. We find signposts pointing towards a sense of balance (mediate) and of being in the middle (medium, median), and a hint that somehow this has a part to play in healing (medicine). So, what exactly are we ‘mediating’ between when we engage in the practice of Meditation? Moreover, what part does it play in Martial Art?

In the practice of Meditation, we are trying, via our attention, to facilitate a connection between the mind and body, which is the foundation that holistic self-defence is built upon. It has been said, in various ways and in many different traditions and teachings, that humans have two bodies: the physical body and, for want of a better phrase, ‘the body of attention’. Our physical bodies are rooted in the present moment and, as the laws of time and space govern them, cannot be anywhere else. However, the body of attention is not rooted in the present moment but has the ability to project itself into the past, the future (through use of the memory or imagination) and/or to a different place (than the physical body). This is commonly known as daydreaming and occurs frequently, for example, how many times have you found yourself turning the page in the book that you are reading to find that, while your eyes read the words, your mind was elsewhere and did not register them? Your physical body had not moved but had remained sitting, continuing the task it had been given (reading), but your body of attention had disappeared to another place in time. The work of the meditative process is to bring the body of attention back into the physical body and to strengthen their connection so that they are less likely to separate so easily. It is only when the physical body and the body of attention are together that we can truly enter into the present moment and receive the many and varied impressions, both from inside and outside, available to us. I cannot emphasize enough the profoundness of this connection and its importance in applying Martial Art to life.

Awareness and Presence

The type of Meditation that is presented here is what I would call Dynamic Meditation and has been specifically developed for the purpose of holistic self-defence. Unlike most usual forms of Meditation, which are done in a sitting or lying position, Dynamic Meditation is done supporting your own weight in a standing position. It is broken down into two complementary halves: Inner and Outer Meditation. Inner Meditation deals with the connection to various aspects of our physicality via our attention – each aspect brings a particular quality or skill to self-defence techniques. Outer Meditation develops the devices we use to receive impressions from the outside world: the senses. Before bringing the two halves together to form one whole awareness, they should first be studied and developed separately, but together they form the basis for the first two lines of defence: awareness and presence.

1 Awareness, along with presence, is the first line of defence. If we are not aware that something is attacking us then we cannot apply any intelligence to protect ourselves from it. Awareness is twofold – we have awareness of the physical world around us, but also an awareness of what is going on inside ourselves, such as muscular tension, emotional agitation or internal conversation. By meditating we are bringing the inner and outer aspects together into what the American Indians sometimes describe as a ‘seamless web of awareness’. This web functions as an early warning system so that we are not surprised by an attack; it is like radar, or a scout listening to the ground for the sound of approaching hooves. A certain degree of awareness will always be present in the body – many of our instinctive defence mechanisms are triggered by an almost unconscious awareness but this unconscious awareness only goes so far. In terms of what we are trying to study in this book, we wish to understand the mechanics of awareness and to develop this potential.

2 Presence is really the aforementioned balance between the body, mind and spirit, for when these three aspects of our being come into harmony and we are ‘present’, a tangible force emanates. Presence starts with the ability to allow some degree of attention to return to your physical body (“come to our senses”), not daydreaming or engaging in internal conversations but feeling your body at this moment in time. This is suggested in the very word ‘presence’: to be ‘present’, or ‘presense’ (what comes before the senses). Thus, without attention in the body, in other words if the attention is not connected to the senses, you cannot ‘open’ to the present moment, which is the only place that the relationship between your body, mind and spirit can be forged and maintained.

Through the process of Meditation we aim to strengthen this heightened state of awareness and presence. We aim to bring the body, mind and spirit into a state of integration to act as a safeguard, because when we feel fearful, anxious or stressed the relationship between the body, mind and spirit has a tendency to disintegrate. An example of this occurred when I was younger and living in Oxford, England. One day I was sitting on a bus when it stopped outside Queen’s College and a then quite famous mathematician boarded. In those days it was imperative to have ready the exact price of the bus ticket, but the professor fumbled in his pocket for the change and took a little longer then the driver would have liked, and was informed of this in no uncertain terms. Immediately, the professor became visibly agitated, mumbling half apologies, turning bright red and sweating. He peered intensely into the hand that held his change and finally handed over the money to the bus driver. However, he had counted the money incorrectly, which further irritated the driver who, cursing, grabbed our poor professor's hand and counted the money out. Here was a bus driver counting for an Oxford professor of mathematics! The impression of this exchange struck me greatly and seemed to really illustrate the debilitating effects that fear can have on us. The poor professor became so disintegrated that he could not even perform the most basic of mathematical calculations. When he was verbally attacked by the bus driver he went into a mild state of shock that disturbed the balance between his body, mind and spirit and rendered his formidable intellect useless.

We all have a certain balance between these three primary energies in the body but, for the most part, the balance is very fragile and we know little to nothing about how it operates. Everyone has one of these areas that is more active than the others, some people are considered intellectual, others more emotional, while still others are more physical. If you have not already started to do so, think about some of the people in your life, including yourself, and you will begin to see what I mean. It is possible through the process of Meditation to become aware of how these forces behave within you and to participate in the process of balancing them. This is one of the reasons why in traditional Kung Fu training, emphasis was placed not only on the fighting skills but also on skills such as calligraphy, music and healing, each demanding a slightly different emphasis on the body, mind and spirit. Whenever we are attacked in any way there is a tendency for the relationship between the body, mind and spirit to disconnect; sometimes we can manage to ‘pull ourselves together’, but at other times we cannot and we ‘go to pieces’, ‘fall apart’, ‘come unstuck’ or ‘lose our head’. If through the regular practice of Meditation we can develop a movement towards integration, strengthening our attention in the body, then we will have a very useful tool that we can call upon when we need it in our lives. The point is that we can strengthen this relationship between the body, mind and spirit just as we would a muscle and by so doing we add a very real and tangible weapon to our arsenal. Therefore, I am not presenting Meditation as a vague notion or practice, but as a practical study. For this to occur you must first gain some understanding of the internal aspect of Meditation.

The Basic Stance

Before beginning the practice of Meditation it is important to define the physical stance that you are going to adopt in order to meditate. The Chinese call this stance the ‘Mar Bou’ or ‘horse-riding stance’, and a variation of it exists in every martial art that I have ever studied. As my Martial Art studies continued, I realized that there was only one correct way for this stance to be taken in order to locate the body’s centre of gravity at the Tan T'ien, channel gravity correctly through the skeleton and finely tune the physiological balancing mechanisms in the body. When you stand correctly in Mar Bou the force of gravity holding you to the planet and your bodies center of gravity are brought together. The force of gravity holds us to the planet and holds the planets in orbit to each other and is a force of incomprehensible magnitude yet we can experience it directly as it flows through us. Every physical object has a center of gravity that is a place where the force of gravity predominates or concentrates when these two aspects (the force of gravity and it’s center of gravity) are not aligned then the object will be imbalanced. This is what occurs when you lean forward or back, the force of gravity moves up and away from your center of gravity. If you stand correctly in Mar Bou the force of gravity locates down into the Tan Tien (your center of gravity). Moreover the force of gravity has a tremendous effect on our blood supply when we stand correctly with a strong foundation the upper body can relax more which allows the force of gravity to pull the blood down in your body which induces a different blood circulation which helps to stop energy rising in your body. When Bodidharma (see here) originally instructed the monks in this stance he was quite specific: the feet should be parallel, the fists held upwards at the level of the waist, the knees slightly bent and the weight evenly distributed. In the original Kung Fu schools it was not uncommon for a new student to practice nothing but the Basic Stance for a year or longer, such was the importance that was placed upon it. It is the most balanced posture that a human being can stand in and by taking this physical posture you begin to affect your balance, which through the Principle of Resonation affects other areas of your functioning such as your mind and emotions. What follows is a description of this stance starting from the feet and working upwards to the top of the head. I will go into various aspects of ‘Mar Bou’ in more detail as you progress through the Meditation exercises, but for now follow the description whilst referring to Photographs 1 and 2. There are also instructional videos available for this and other techniques throughout the course of the book. Please click on the hyperlink next to the relevant technique to view it.

An introduction to the instructional videos can be found here: http://bmsmartialart.com/iwv

Marbou or the Basic Stance:

http://bmsmartialart.com/marbou-horse-riding-stance-iwv

1 Stand with your feet slightly wider than shoulder width apart to provide a wider base and therefore more stability to your upright structure (see Align the Body). The wider you put your feet the more leverage you can get from the ground, but you lose mobility; the closer your feet are together the more mobility you can get, but you lose leverage.

2 Make sure that your feet are parallel to each other. This is crucial for correct alignment of the body – having your feet parallel is the natural placement for them, which means that the ligaments in the feet and the knees will be strengthened and balanced correctly in accordance with gravity (see The Art of Walking).

3 Bend slightly at the knees. Bending at the knees lowers the centre of gravity in the body, locating it to the Tan T'ien. Bending the knees works closely with the width of your stance to give you balance between power (from the ground) and mobility. The bend in the knees should allow you to drop your centre by approximately 6 inches, which is the optimum place for the centre of gravity to be located and also makes the body feel more grounded, which affects the mind and the emotions.

4 Make sure your spine is straight. A straight spine is the most essential ingredient in maintaining our biomechanical health. It also allows us to judge distance accurately (an indispensable self-defence skill).

5 Make sure you are not leaning forwards as in Photograph 3, or backwards as in Photograph 4.

6 Adjust the angle of your head by tucking your chin in slightly; try to feel that there is a string pulling you up from the top of your head.

7 Hold your hands in a loose fist at about the same level as the navel, gently touching the sides of the body. Tuck your thumbs outside the fist. The hands and arms are not essential for maintaining uprightness but we need to give them an exact form and place when meditating.

Take your time to learn the Basic Stance correctly. It might seem a bit boring but its effects on your health and your ability to practice holistic self-defence are far-reaching. It is this physical stance that forms the root of all other physical positions and techniques; also, by giving a precise form to our physicality we take a great step in bringing form to our thoughts and emotions.

Inner Meditiation

Centring the Body

Balance is the all-important factor in a fighter's attitude or stance. Without balance at all times, he can never be effective. Bruce Lee (1975)

Centring the body involves connecting the mind to the physical centre of gravity of the body (the Tan T'ien). This centre is approximately one and a half inches below the navel, in the centre of the pelvis. It is the place that you were first nourished from via the umbilical cord and is at the level of the sacrum, which is the first bone made in the body. Both Eastern and Western medicine define the physical centre at this point, and to build a connection with your centre is to communicate with the very core and origins of your being. From a self-defence point of view, having a strong connection with the centre increases your balance and power and reduces the risk of falling.

To start with, this connection (referring back to the quotation at the beginning of this chapter) is made by our ‘intention’ from the mind (initiator) sending our ‘attention’ (capacity) to the area of the body (army) that is its centre. From there we begin to ‘play’ with the two primary mechanisms that allow us to have a sense of where the centre is exactly: pressure sensitivity in the legs and the balancing mechanisms in the inner ear. The placement of the centre is defined in three dimensions: left and right, forwards and back, up and down. By working with these three dimensions we can pinpoint an exact place inside the body that is the centre. These directions correspond to the three semicircular canals in the inner ear, which are filled with fluid and aligned to these dimensions.

FIGURE 6

FIGURE 7

1 Left to Right If you look at the exercise to centre the body (here), you will see that the first movement oscillates between the left and right leg; this stimulates the pressure sensitivity in both legs. Pressure sensitivity in the legs is one of the main ways that we remain upright; the brain constantly uses the information from each leg to balance itself (it does this by sensing the amount of muscle tension present in each leg). If you think about walking, the pressure is passed from one foot to the other, and as you make your stride the pressure is balanced on each side to form an equal gait. If you have ever injured your foot you will have been reminded of this pressure moving from one side to the other – the moment you stand upright your body uses the pressure in the two legs to maintain its balance. As a martial artist you must develop sensitivity to this so that you become increasingly skilled at keeping a balance between the two legs.

2 Forwards and Back The next movement oscillates forwards and back (standing in the Basic Stance leaning forwards and leaning back), which stimulates the inner ear, one of the most extraordinary pieces of engineering in the body. As we lean forwards and back the fluid in the inner ear acts much like a builder's spirit level, providing vital information as to whether the head is level or not. The brain stem and the cerebellum (two of the areas of the brain that control reflex movement) are continually monitoring this information from the ear. If we lean too far forwards or back, the brain immediately makes us shift our feet and hands to ‘catch’ our balance. By evolving our sensitivity to this inner movement of energy, we protect the centre from being lost; if we lose the centre then very soon we will fall over and have to fight or defend ourselves from the ground.

3 Up and Down The last dimension is up and down (the vertical axis), arguably the most significant of them all as not only is it the most common way that we lose our centre but also the connection to this area helps to work against the body’s most powerful symptom of the fight-or-flight response: energy travelling upwards in your body. You will see in the exercise on centring the body that the vertical axis is found by relaxing and ‘sitting’ (similar to sitting down on a chair) into the Basic Stance, so it is a movement of relaxing where you instruct the muscles not necessary for standing to turn ‘off’. This is of tremendous significance because in any conflict situation our inner energy travels up and backwards simultaneously turning the muscles ‘on’ (tension). This type of reaction is the root of many popular sayings such as ‘to blow one’s lid’, or ‘to lose one's head’. Becoming in touch with the absolute truth of this statement is one of the keys to self-defence.

In any conflict situation (and we have gone to some length to describe what we mean by conflict) the first movement of self-defence must always be a relaxation and dropping towards the centre. This is not as easy as it would first appear because the aforementioned effect of fear in the body is of always moving the energy up and turning the muscles on. Therefore, by working with the exercise of centring, the body creates a deeper connection or movement towards the centre, and once we have found our centre everything else can orientate itself around it. The stronger the connection with the centre, the more of an anchor we have against this movement upwards of fear in the body.

Physical Imbalance

When we become physically imbalanced we lose our centre in a combination of the above dimensions (left, right, up, down, etc.). If you recall a time when you tripped and fell forwards, or jerked your head back away from something coming towards your head, you will already have a very real impression of physical imbalance. The Basic Stance is the most balanced position a human body can take, and relaxation is fundamental in order to adopt it correctly. When we relax, the body accepts the force of gravity through it (see Align the Body) and naturally begins to find its point of balance. We have evolved by nature an upright spine, so by relaxing and entering into this most balanced of postures we once again move closer to a natural state of being. That does not mean that we have to always walk around with a lowered centre of gravity, but in terms of applying self-defence techniques, the lowered centre is essential. When standing or moving generally in life we can still have this movement of relaxation and dropping down by connecting to our sense of the centre even if our legs are not bent and we are fully upright.

Mental Imbalance

Working with the physicality of the body is very tangible and we can feel it if we are in the present moment; by the Principle of Resonation this sense of balance then begins to teach the other areas of our being: the mind and emotions. Therefore, we begin to feel when our minds become imbalanced; the classic symptoms of this imbalance are a heightened internal conversation and projection into the future or the past with daydreams. For most of us this imbalance goes on all the time inside our heads, but when humans for one reason or another become chronically imbalanced we see this internal conversation starting to manifest itself outside ourselves. When this happens people talk aloud to themselves and actually begin to see their daydreams in the form of delusions and hallucinations. In this situation the internal imaginings take over control of the physical body and start to change its position correspondingly; this process happens in much more subtle ways with regular daydreaming. The balancing point for the mind is the present moment, which is the fulcrum between the past and future. To maintain this balance you as an Intelligent Warrior must develop the ability to quieten internal conversation and direct internal energy away from the part of the mind that generates daydreams.

Emotional Imbalance

Emotional imbalance always has a positive or negative charge so we either become overexcited, silly or ‘over the top’ or we indulge in negative emotions such as anger, self-pity, depression or self-loathing. Emotion is the quickest and most powerful energy in the body and for this reason it is the most ‘expensive’. If we become extremely enraged at something, it can take days for the body to rebalance itself. Recall a time when you became extremely emotional about something and remember how the emotional energy took over your physical body, perhaps contorting it into various positions, and how any rational thought was severely impaired. When we find the balancing point for emotions, which is always a sense of stillness, then we can begin to develop or evolve the emotions into feelings and allow them to take a more subtle form such as the composition of a piece of music, poetry or painting or the selection and execution of an appropriate self-defence technique.

The Three-Dimensional Point of Balance

The process of searching for balance can be well illustrated by the movement of a pendulum. To start with the pendulum swings in quite large movements from side to side and then gradually, as the force of gravity takes over, the movement decreases until it finds the point of balance (pointing straight down) and it comes to rest. This point of rest is a defining characteristic of your balance but it is not a complete point of rest or stagnation as it is always oscillating in tiny movements between the three dimensions. Think about a tightrope walker making very fine adjustments to stay on the tightrope or a child learning to ride a bike, wobbling from one side to the other until he or she finds a point of balance and stability. In humans the point of balance has many different expressions but the three primary characteristics are relaxation in the body, quietness in the mind and stillness in the emotions. The gradual development of balance through Meditation brings these characteristics to the surface and each can only truly be found in the present moment.

The Exercise of Centring

http://bmsmartialart.com/centring-exercise-iwv

Centring the body is an essential skill for the Intelligent Warrior for it allows you to hold two opposing forces in your awareness and find a balancing point between them. This is critical for applying intelligence to emotionally charged situations.

Left to Right

This exercise opens awareness to pressure sensitivity in the legs, a device the brain uses continuously to keep us upright, especially when walking.

1 Stand in the Basic Stance (see here) and close your eyes.

2 Direct your intention down towards the area of the Tan T'ien (an inch and a half below the navel).

3 Slowly shift your weight from the left leg to the right in quite large motions, leaning quite far out over each leg (see Photograph 5).

4 Relax and be open to the impressions of the pressure as it increases in each leg as you move over it.

5 Gradually begin to decrease the movements. Perhaps think of the pendulum swinging from side to side as it begins to move to a point of rest.

6 Continue until you are only making very small movements but can still feel the pressure changing in the legs.

7 Finally, try to come to rest at the exact balancing point between the two legs.

Forwards and Back

This movement primarily stimulates the balance-sensing mechanism of the inner ear.

1 Slowly begin to rock forwards (see Photograph 7) and back (see Photograph 8) on your feet and feel your weight travelling from the heel to the ball the foot. Try to be sensitive to the place where if you went further you would begin to fall and would have to move your foot to catch your balance.

2 Without losing the sensation of the Tan T'ien, direct your attention to the area of the inner ear.

3 Repeat the process in the previous Right to Left exercise, gradually decreasing the movements until you find the balancing point.

Up and Down

1 Open to the sensation of relaxing and sitting into the Basic Stance, as if sitting down on a chair.

2 Push up slightly from the stance and then “sit” down into stance again into it.

3 Repeat this process, focusing on the sensation of the muscles that are necessary to push you up as opposed to the ones that are used for you to ‘sit’ into the stance.

4 Try very gently to keep renewing this movement of relaxation (letting go) as you sit down in the stance.

By making large movements to small ones our brain receives, via the pressure sensitivity in the legs and the balancing mechanisms in the inner ear, a wide range of movement from which it can compare the complementary opposites inherent in each section. By working in this way we gradually increase our sensitivity to the interplay between the opposites and become very sensitive to even the slightest movement away from the point of rest in any of the dimensions. This sensitivity means that we are aware sooner that our centre is becoming unstable and then, by the process of attention or presence in the body, we can correct it accurately with less chance of over-balancing in the opposite direction.

The up-and-down movement of relaxation may take a little while to get the hang of but by relaxing just enough you will become sensitive to the sensation of your weight locating down to the Tan T'ien. This movement of relaxation needs to be accompanied by a command to the muscles to ‘let go’. Remember, when you become nervous, stressed or afraid the body has a tendency to turn the muscles ‘on’, in other words tension creeps into the body; by practising the command to let go you are in effect giving the muscles the opposite command of ‘off’. It is in the conscious repetition of this command that you develop a strong enough connection to the musculature to relax when you have to face fear in your life.

After you have worked for a while in each of the three dimensions try searching for the centre in a circular movement pressing from left to forwards to right to back, gradually decreasing the concentric circles so as to combine the various dimensions simultaneously.

Align the Body

Balance is achieved only through correct body alignment. The feet, the legs, the trunk, the head are all important in creating and maintaining a balanced position. They are the vehicles of body force. Keeping the feet in proper relation to each other, as well as to the body, helps to maintain correct body alignment. Bruce Lee (1975)

Postural muscles, structurally adapted to resist prolonged gravitational stress, generally resist fatigue. When overly stressed, however the same postural muscles become irritable, tight shortened.

Chaitow, Bradley et al. (2002)

We do not recognise to what extent the intellectual, the emotional and moving (body) functions are mutually dependent, although, at the same time, we can be aware of how much our moods and our emotional states depend on our movements and postures. If a man assumes a posture that corresponds, in him, to the feeling of grief or dejection, then within a short time he will actually feel grief or dejection. Fear, indifference, aversion and so on may be created by artificial changes of posture. Gurdjieff (1976: 156)

The second exercise for Internal Meditation develops sensitivity to our verticality and its relationship with gravity. Our verticality is something that has evolved over a long time and is a fundamentally different situation to when our spine is in the horizontal position. You need to build awareness to your verticality so that in times of stress you can remain upright and because your verticality has a huge effect on your physical, mental and emotional wellbeing. When you awoke this morning your spine was horizontal to the ground where it had been participating in restorative, healing and rejuvenating functions. Then you hauled yourself into the upright position and your spine became vertical; from then on, you have been engaged in an act of balance. From a physiological point of view there are some profound changes that occur when your spine becomes vertical, for instance, your blood pressure changes, the breath mechanism is affected, and the movement of fluids around the body occurs in a dramatically different way. Our vertical spine has also had a profound effect on the evolution of our brain, especially the development of speech, but although this is a fascinating area of study I will not deal with it in any great depth at this point. However, it does help to have an appreciation of the differences between a horizontal and vertical spine.

For the most part our uprightness feels permanent, and we take it completely for granted. However, a closer inspection reveals that our ability to stand upright is anything but permanent – if our balance is disturbed then our spine will return to the horizontal position, in other words we will fall over. All processes of homeostasis take a continual input of energy and monitoring of balance to maintain them. Again, we wish to try to be ‘open’ to the physical reality of what is – in other words, how nature has built us – and not to use our imagination to construct an image; your verticality exists, you just need to build a deeper connection to it.

FIGURE 8

At the bottom half of our body sits a triangle. The base of the triangle is along the floor between the two feet. The two sides of the triangle are the legs, coming up at an angle to meet together at the pelvis; at exactly the point where they meet, we find the centre (Tan T'ien). On top of this triangle sits the spine, which is divided into three balanced sections: the lumbar, thoracic and cervical regions. Finally, perching on top of the spine, precisely where the primary organs of balance (the inner ear) are, is the head. These three areas: the triangular base, the spine and the head make up our basic alignment to gravity. Our arms, though important, are not essential for us to be upright. If you can build an ‘inner’ sensitivity to this basic shape of your alignment then your uprightness in times of stress, fear or panic will stand a much better chance of being maintained. This inner sense of alignment also plays a huge part in the overall maintenance of your health by continually monitoring and checking that the core of your body – the musculoskeletal system, which is the framework which all the other systems relate to – is as balanced as nature intended.

The Triangular Base

The triangular base is important because unless you are standing on one leg and hopping about, this base is always present and is what you use to move about with. Whenever you stand up the triangular base allows you to do so. The brain takes information from the left and right pressure sensitivity in the legs and maintains some form of triangle. The Basic Stance forms an equilateral triangle but generally people tend to stand with an imbalanced base, distributing their weight unequally between one leg or the other.

The feet are an incredible piece of engineering – the average footstep takes a large amount of pressure (approx. 8psi) with every step – and for this reason they must be aligned in the parallel position, as in the Basic Stance, in order to function as nature intended. The vast majority of people in the Western world walk with misaligned feet; one or both of the feet are usually splayed out at uneven angles (this can be verified by looking at wear patterns on the bottom of your shoes). The foot uses a powerful system of muscles and ligaments to cope with the pressure exerted upon it; if the feet are aligned correctly then this system forms a strong arch (which is in fact another triangle between heel, arch and ball) in the foot, however, as soon as the feet start to splay this arch is weakened. If the arch begins to ‘fall’ your gait will be affected and this will lead to many other health problems. Every person is either right- or leftside dominant, usually corresponding to whether they are right- or left-handed – people who are right-side dominant will tend to splay the right foot out more; by meditating on the alignment of the body, we remove this fundamental imbalance.

Left- or Right-Side Dominant?

We take for granted the fact that everyone is either right-handed or left-handed, but how far do we see the significance of this in our life? For instance, if you are right-handed then a high percentage of every movement you make will be initiated on the right-hand side; this means that the flow of energy through the nervous system will have a propensity to move to that side more than to the left. This also affects, amongst other things, our sight, hearing, breathing and coordination. In terms of musculoskeletal alignment, right-sided dominance means you are continually putting more weight down the right side of the body than the left. When our feet hit the ground as we walk, pressure waves are sent up each side of the body; when we are right-side dominant, the pressure wave will be greater on the right-hand side.

You can demonstrate this to yourself by buying a pair of foam earplugs from your local chemist, inserting them and walking around bare foot whilst listening to the sound of your feet on the ground – you will be able to hear a louder impact on the right side. Place your hand on top of your head as you walk and you should be able to feel the vibration from the foot reaching the top of your head, and next time you are with a young child place your hand lightly on top of their head when they are walking and you will feel the pressure wave going up through them. This simple exercise demonstrates the fact that a significant amount of pressure travels through the body on every step. The feet, being at the ‘bottom’ of the body, endure most of this pressure; if we have not been taught to walk correctly (most of us do not give a second thought to how we walk) the common tendency will be for the feet to start to splay. This is further compounded by the fact that for a large amount of time we walk on a very thin hard skin that man has deemed necessary to cover the earth with: concrete. This continual contact with a very hard substance increases the shockwaves through the body and forces the feet to splay, unfortunately slowly destroying the feet. If the feet begin to work inefficiently then the force going through the skeleton increases and, particularly as we get older, causes all sorts of musculoskeletal problems such as osteoarthritis, slipped and herniated discs in the back, neck problems, cartilage and ligament problems in the knee, and so on.

Skeletal Compensation

If the feet are not aligned correctly then the upper part of the body will compensate in some way, which will eventually create misalignment and curvature of the spine. This compensation of the body is a governing principle in osteopathy, the Alexander Technique (a now famous method of body therapy which aims to bring the body back into its natural state in accordance with nature) and pretty well every form of therapeutic bodywork. It is caused by the body trying to rebalance itself at the musculoskeletal level so, for instance, if the pelvis is tilted too far forwards then the cervical region of the spine will bend to compensate, or if the right foot is splayed out then the left hip changes its position. The original Kung Fu and T’ai Chi forms were designed to align the body equally by practising identical moves on the left and right sides of the body, bringing it back into a state of harmony (a word which in its origins actually means a ‘joining or joint in proportion’ and is where we get the word ‘arm’ from).

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