We when get closer to the centre we feel more motivated, more alive and more enthusiastic about our practice. From there, everything we engage in becomes more expressive, alive, and energised. But this all depends on your attitude towards training and practice. We may not have achieved anything, and it may only be a felt sense of things, an intuitive understanding, but the centre is where vital energy is transported across the body. Its where everything starts. This means that by remaining in the centre we have everything we need in terms of energy and clarity, and if we are truly sincere this understanding will allow us to move forward one door at a time1.
The Centre intuition is perhaps the only thing we never doubt. Visibly to others we may be nothing out of the ordinary. We can doubt our skills, what we we are taught, what we see, what we hear, but never the reality of the centre that we feel and experience. When you are refusing to give in, and to continue against the odds, you are engaging in a symbolic act. This act is the act of fighting, which requires constant motion, like the flow of water which needs to keep moving moment by moment in order to reach the source. Its future depends on its constant motion now. All that is required is patience, discipline, and tenacity, tenacity to look in every direction even if all doors seem barred. So hope and balance, maintain these qualities, because there is always a way out, and this strikes at the very heart of the spirit of Martial Arts. One door after another, one at a time, because we are only promised results moment by moment, so we must remain eternally vigilant.
The conviction and thoughts behind action have a much greater impact on on progress than objective results or material conditions. That means if you feel drained, tired and fed up with training you have simply drifted from the centre into the periphery. Whereas if you stay in the centre, you will remain alert, vigilant, and attentive, whether there are external rewards or not. What do I mean by rewards? People are in the habit of thinking in terms of money, prestige, power over others, etc., but no, my definition is quite different. When I talk about reward I am referring to exchanging your energies and efforts for increased inspiration and appreciation of life, towards a high ideal1. I realise that at present this point of view is considered naïve and even despised, but the thing to remember is when you are contemplating perfection through your high ideal you are simply bringing yourself closer to the centre through your thoughts feelings and actions.
If you find it hard to picture yourself at this centre, or envisage what it is, one exercise it to imagine yourself watching down on your physical body. From there, in your minds eye, you give yourself advice, encouragement, and help, and picture yourself standing in the face of difficulty, perhaps even battling something like a dark force5. This may seem childishly simple, but it is an effective way or maintaining and developing the link between your high ideal and your current physical state. The powers of the imagination are incredible, and gradually these qualities you observe mentally begin to transform and influence you. The problem is that many people are in the habit of letting their attention wonder, and letting their imagination devour them. Instead use it to support your work in maintaining your centre, because thought makes all of the physical exercise possible and gives them intelligent direction.
At the moment this is where the majority of training takes place, with no centre, no intelligent direction. There are specialists in this and that, all with their small aspect of the truth inflating the significance of it. For example, according to the conventional wisdom you are supposed to do cardiovascular work one day, such as running, and then strength training on another, and your efforts run in all different directions. The ideal of strength training is to increase the size of the muscle, whereas the ideal of the cardio training is to increase lung capacity and endurance. And then, if there’s time, you are supposed to visualise performance and talk to yourself positively. That’s all very well, but why not do all of this at once? Or more accurately, in such a way that it all synthesises as one, rather than remaining disconnected and conflicting.
The synthesis of all the elements of practice begins with thoughts involving imagery and ideas which encompass everything else. For example, breathing. To run we have to breath, to punch we have to breath, and to do everything else we have to breath. And so a good place to start is with deep breathing. With deep breathing, the whole of the hip and abdomen are are engaged in exercise2, whether this is rapidly – as in explosive action, or softly – as in meditation. Yes there is infinite variability in breathing, ceaseless change in tempo throughout the day, but if activity changes peripherally around this one centre, then your energy and effort can be harnessed productively.
What I mean by this is, when engaging in any activity, ask yourself: Does this activity contribute in aligning yourself to the centre? If the answer is no and it just defiles you, makes you weaker or more dull, then it is just burning your reserves. In the case of breathing, the Masters of the past did not give us exercises and methods to make our lives mundane and boring, quite the opposite actually. They realised that it was a way of practicing everything else and linking all our senses together. Before you go transporting yourselves to the heights, it can be beneficial to start with simple imagery to mentally link yourself to physical breathing.
With breathing, the Yogis have developed the concept of Oceanic breath, which involves partially constricting the throat. This has the effect of making our breathing sound audible, as if you were listening to a shell in your ear by the sea. This audible breathing feels as if your entire Hara centre is connected to the throat and head6. I have already talked about the effectiveness of the Hara, and it’s impossible to go over it here without going off topic, so see the link below.
All this is to say however, is that if breathing and the Hara centre over lap and mutually reinforce one another, you are practicing something powerful and significant, even if it starts off weak and ineffectual. The imaginative quality used wisely simply amplifies this potency. There are many different types of breathing, and this one is just an example, but a good one because it reinforces the breathing with a sound. If we manage to align all of our senses to activity, it is obviously more powerful. In reality, you want one kind of breathing for everything, not several kinds, so this is a good place to start with breathing practice, the oceanic breath because it is evident in all kinds of activity.
When you are doing breathing exercises, meditating, or exercising, there is something else to consider. Humans are among the only animals to have apposable thumbs, which they use to hold things, create muscular contractions, and turn the hands, amongst other things. Even the act of punching really comes down to twisting the hands inward, towards the centre, according to certain laws of movement7. Of course, they cannot effectively scratch, or claw at people like other animals can. This has led many people to believe that the hands are not meant for fighting and are therefore weak. However, the the thumbs can act as lever to turn the hand, as in a punch, and can also be used to apply pressure to the closed hand to form a fist. They should not simply fold across the hand passively.
The thumbs actually initiate grip and turning of the hand. Each time you are applying pressure with the thumbs, whether that is in meditation to lightly press the thumbs on the finger to draw energies there, or other activity, you are transforming your actions into potent gestures. These gestures, whether you are shaking someone’s hand, or hitting a heavy bag, link you up to the grand centre, which is located in the mid section – The Hara Centre. This is how you turn seemingly insignificant actions into powerful training exercise of aligning yourself to the centre.
Now the hara centre is normally a felt sense of energy in the abdomen. But when the action of gripping with the thumb is added to this feeling, the energy is drawn also to the hands. In tai chi, they imagine a ball of energy extending out of the Hara centre between the hand8. I told you before that breathing is a key ingredient any act, and when we bring breathing to the level of consciousness it gives life to the actions we are performing. We move, in accord with breath, in order to perform meaningful inner activity. In other words, we breath life into our actions through the breath, and when activity is felt in the Hara Centre, it is as if feeling and action converge. Realising this truth, it becomes apparent how ignorant we are about what authentic practice really is.
The thumbs help us draw this energy to the hands, and from here we can manipulate matter; our own matter or that which is outside of us. In other words, the hands are the gateway for drawing upon our inner energies to manifest them outwardly2. When feeling and action become one, there is truth and meaning behind our practice, even if it is not physically apparent to anyone else. This is why a lot of the inner Martial Arts practice remains secretive and obscure, we are not in the habit of viewing things this way.
And so, I advise that you give priority to this process of breathing, feeling the energy of the Hara Centre, and transferring it though the thumbs in some way. When you make a fist, meditate, breathe, or walk and talk, you can always engage in this alignment to the centre through activity aimed at alignment and balance of forces. For example, you can see politicians using there thumbs to grip there index finger with their thumb as they assert facts to people. This is just one more example.
People often do not make this association between their actions and feelings. They assume that the two should remain in contradiction. For example, many people assume there should be a feeling of crushing an opponent and winning over them, to the neglect of harmonising their inner being. They say this is natural and simply the way it is in real life. The problem is, they then feel inwardly weak and torn, even though they are outwardly respected and dominant. Others harmonise themselves towards peace but then neglect practical demands, becoming docile and disengaged from material concern. To solve this problem I suggest a middle ground of imbuing your activity, whatever it is, with the sense of aligning yourself to the centre. Through your breathing, hands gestures, and focus on the Hara centre (Action, feeling, and will), you will have in your mind the idea that you are participating in meaningful work, even if it doesn’t amount to much.
When action and feeling correspond as one, they can create powerful movement which is both invigorating and meaningful. In other words, when the Hara Centre and Breathing are harmonised3, this becomes our master, symbolically speaking, and we have reached the centre. One of the first things you then have to do is call into question all the other models and examples which fail to aspire to this path. Ask if they give as much meaning and clarity to your practice, and if they fail to demonstrate the same capacity to inspire you to make you truly present and alive, then out they go. Often giving yourself over to an pre packaged set of solutions just diminishes you. This is why in all the philosophies or breathing and meditation they insist upon living in ‘the moment’3, because when you develop work of this kind, not only do you not wish for it to end, but it is only be remaining in motion that we feel close to truth. Otherwise we lose our impetus and drift outward to the periphery. Whereas in the centre, which is constantly in motion, we are drawn inward.
How do we stay in the Centre? Whether you think of the Hara Centre, Breathing, energy channels, perfection, it all amounts to the same thing – remaining vigilant and balanced at all times across all planes of existence. Rather than think of all these at once, it can be helpful to simply draw your attention to breathing, and then start to engage in something more complex when you have settled.
In the past I thought the only way to achieve insight was by racing ahead without caution, which is why I plunged head first into sparring and other activities which, in the end, simply undermined my health injured me. After some time I realised this was inevitable, which is why I decided to view things from a position which would prevent me from doing anything foolish. And I can personally verify the regenerative effects of these methods. So, in my experience, and that’s all this is, the way forward is to rely on your own inner work for self protection, and through your thoughts and feelings and imagination, re model yourself into what you want to be.
References
1 Facing Trial with Sincerity https://intuitivemartialarts.com/2020/12/19/facing-trials-with-sincerity/
2 The Marriage of the inner and outer forms https://intuitivemartialarts.com/2021/01/24/the-marriage-of-the-inner-and-outer-forms/
3 How do you know if your Martial Arts Work? https://intuitivemartialarts.com/2021/01/12/how-do-you-know-if-your-martial-arts-works/
4 The High Ideal https://intuitivemartialarts.com/2020/07/26/the-high-ideal/
5 The imagination https://intuitivemartialarts.com/2020/10/04/the-imagination/
6 The Hara centre https://intuitivemartialarts.com/2020/10/25/the-hara-centre/
7 The Left hand Should know what the Right is doing https://intuitivemartialarts.com/2021/01/13/the-left-hand-should-know-what-the-right-is-doing/
8 Tai Chi Ball https://intuitivemartialarts.com/2021/01/06/tai-chi-ball/
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