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.

Men are born soft and supple;

Dead they are stiff and hard.

Plants are born tender and pliant;

Dead they are brittle and dry.

Thus whoever is stiff and inflexible

Is a disciple of death.

Whoever is soft and yielding

Is a disciple of life. 

The hard and stiff will be broken.

The soft and supple will prevail….

- Tao Te Ching

When your body is pressed it will want to close and contract – making it weak and unstable.  We have to train our mind, breath and body to encourage the ‘myofascial bodysuit’ and joints to soften and open enabling the spine, arms and legs to ‘bow’ properly for power transmission.

My previous blogs of ‘Continuous Neigong’, ‘The Language of the Body’, ‘The Art of Listening’ and ‘Connecting Hands and Feet’ deal with the training of these skills.

I noticed that most Martial Artists are unable to access their legs and feet properly to gain any root or stability, on many seminars I have shown long term practitioners how unstable they are and how when they think they have most of their weight in their front leg, they actually have it in the back.  This is because as they start to put their weight into the front leg and the foot presses to the floor, the muscles contract and throw the body backwards.

The skill starts in the neigong and standing exercises teaching the myofascia to soften, lengthen and open to accept the bodyweight expanding and ballooning as a result.  The joints are then disengaged and open to function effectively. Posture training starts with ‘suspending the crown of the head’ to gently open the body and joints from head to feet to allow a free flow of energy through the myofascial tissue and in and around the skeleton.

On the wall in our training centre facing the students when they train is a list of 8 words, these 8 words represent the 8 principles that we need to fully understand to make our Martial Arts work.

The first of these words is ‘Feet’.  Our feet is our contact to the ground that we stand on and the pressure of our feet to the floor is what gives us the power and energy to stand upright and move around.  Most people usually do this mindlessly not realising that the skill as a Martial Artist starts at this point.  Each part of the foot can engage a myofascial chain up the leg, which in turn engages the body core to power the torso and arms through to the hands.

To engage the feet properly we must first stop balancing the body on the skeleton and suspend most of the body weight into the ‘body suit’ of myofascia. To do this we have to soften and connect the body core from the head down to the feet and enhance this by disengaging the joints upwards. As we then gently spiral in the feet we can feel the myofascial chains connecting upwards.

When I was in the Fire Brigade and worked in the Security Industry before the advent of mobile phones we used to use ‘RT’ (Radio Transmitters) where you would talk with the ‘transmit’ button pressed down and take your finger off the button to listen to what the other side of the conversation had to say.  This procedure has great relevance to learning and training in the Martial Arts today.

Do you ever have that conversation with someone where you are acutely aware that they’re not listening to what you are saying but are only waiting to talk?  Or maybe they’re just distracted by something else or their own thoughts and emotions?

When I’m teaching, I’m highly aware of how much of what I’m saying is or isn’t going in because the ‘listener’ has their finger jammed on that ‘transmit’ button and can’t take in what I’m saying.  Even though they think that they’re giving the visual impression that they’re paying attention it’s usually patently obvious that they’re not.