Long story short, one of the most significant things I have become aware of is that we do all of our learning while we sleep.
This post is an intro to what I intend to be a relatively concise and probably long-winded look at the non-physical, intangible aspects of our training.
This stuff is a great deal more difficult to write about than it is to participate in, so do not get put off by this wordy approach.
As you all know my job in the 1980s required me to become familiar with the concepts and practices of “Lateral Thinking”, to the extent that I was sent off to a number of weekend even week-long workshops at the De Bono Institute for Creative Thinking, this in turn started my fascination for how the brain works and how the body interprets the signals.
Long story short, one of the most significant things I have become aware of is that we do all of our learning while we sleep.
Keeping this in mind, everything we learn, practice, train, or develop, be it tangible or intangible, physical or non-physical is a product of A SLEEPING MIND.
This places the whole physical or non-physical argument in a very strange place, but if nothing else shines a light n how important the INTANGIBLE aspects of the work are.
Q1. How often have you said or heard someone else say, “I was in two minds about it”?
Q2. How often have you said or heard someone else say, “ The guy was so Single-Minded”?
Q3. How many MINDS do we have?
It is widely accepted that we only have only one Mind, but I think we all have experienced situations, especially in training, where the mind instructs our body to do things we did not ask it to, in fact, it acts against our interest as if it was a separate mind.
For instance, when I do my party trick of asking you to straighten your Arms, usually standing with your arms folded as in the stance, instead of following the very simple, very clear instructions and straightening your arms, you raise them to shoulder level.
How did this happen?
Our mind double-guesses the situation and decides that what was asked for was to straighten them in front of us.
But that was not what was asked.
This may seem quite trivial, but what would happen if our mind did this in the middle of a violent situation?
OOPS!
This is the realm of what my old Judo Sensei referred to as “Mind Boxing”.
In case anyone finds it odd that a Judo Sensei would refer to ‘Mind Boxing” instead of “Mind Grappling” or whatever, we need to look at a small slice of British social history..
Between the end of W.W.2 and the explosion of Kung Fu cinema in the late 1970s in Britain all Martial Arts styles were regarded as some sort of Boxing.
Hence the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 Hong Kong.
To the rank and file in Britain this how Martial Arts were described, there was…
Roman Boxing or Pugilism which is today’s boxing.
Gentleman’s Boxing, which was the Victorian era Baritsu Fighting system.
Chinese Boxing, which of course was Kung Fu.
Japanese Boxing, which is Karate.
Styles that used their feet were and still are called “Kick Boxing” even though their names say nothing about feet.
In Europe, this was French Kickboxing or Savate.
Even today, the majority of Americans and Australians who have no active involvement in Martial Arts call everything Karate.
So when my Judo Sesei talked of “Mind Boxing” he was not talking about Boxing, in todays way of speaking he would have probably called it ‘Mind Fighting” or perhaps “Mind Martial Art”.
In the late 1960s trying to instruct young “Christian” students in what was essentially Zen Buddhism risked the wrath of angry Catholic mothers or at least an irate local priest.
So, just like my early Sensei, when I talk of “Mind Boxing “, it is simply a label that is used to differentiate between the physical and visible aspects of the work from the purely mental/emotional and intangible aspects of the work.
