Feb 13 Expanding Time in the Martial Arts…

Clocks slay time… time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.

-William Faulkner

We’ve all had that experience of something critical where the mind makes everything appear to move in slow motion.  With training, we can make this happen at will, we can stop that clock.  In the Martial Arts we exist only in the ‘now’.  The past has gone, the future hasn’t happened, only the ‘now’ exists. 

Our neigong emotion training teaches us to accept the past because it cannot be changed. In any current situation we can be hampered by past experience or strengthened if we can take the positive from it.

The future requires planning and positive input and when this is done, can be left to unfold of it’s own accord and is dealt with and adapted to intuitively as it happens.

Whilst training, we stop the clock, sharpen our senses, read the subtle signs from our body, mind and from everything and everyone around us.  When our mind is sharpened in this way, we are ‘full of mind’, or ‘mindful’ as a Buddhist would say.

This mind is wordless and reactive to any situation as it unfolds; its levels of perception are high and intuitive, we are not relying on just one sense and a structured thought-out reaction to events.  Our fears can slow us down and make the world move too quickly for us to cope with, our mindfulness stops the clock, makes the world move in slow motion and allows us to react intuitively and perceptively to it.

The neigong process of letting go of tension, softening tissue, loosening the joints, correcting the posture, breathing deeply, sharpening the mind and awareness, training sensitivity and emotional intelligence is the only place to start.  This process is then taken into exercise and situations in form and pairs work, increasing in intensity and pressure to train this skill.

Without the practice of continuous neigong I can’t see how  expanding time can be achieved at will, it’s a process that needs to be trained continuously throughout the day over a substantial period of time.

Steve Rowe

Steve Rowe is a highly successful Martial Arts instructor - an International Neigong, Qigong and Tai Chi Teacher and an 8th Dan Karate with many other senior dan grades in other martial disciplines.

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