The word Coach, or instructor, suggests that you are taught some skills and then given some advice about what to do with them. For this, obviously some instruction and expert advice is needed. So an instructors job is often to change you or modify you in some way, according to some sort of teaching. There are good and bad ways to conduct yourself. So in many ways the coach is employed to act as a source of knowledge. This implies an end point, rather than become an architect of your own creation, or becoming something no one else has ever been in the ultimate sense.
When it comes to a Master, or a Guru, this means something far more profound than learning a set of physical and psychological skills. Through them, you are to become your own source of knowledge. One decides to follow a master because they want to transcend the duality of competence and incompetence, of theory and practice. With a Master, you can learn from them how to become free from dependance, whilst at the same time utterly dependant on their guidance in a psychological and physical way to some extent, just like you would a coach. There is no right or wrong about this, it’s just that whatever the source of you competency, you use the guidance of somebody to improve.
A coach is an example to follow. They demonstrate the skills, and then they are transmitted to you. This is done because the necessary inspiration has been demonstrated. In this way, the instructor and the instructed form a symbiotic relationship or receptivity and transmission. The blossoming of this particular flower is done in laboratory conditions, according to a step by step approach. this is the modern way, according to scientific instruction. However, in the wider nature, a flower blossoms naturally, and the tendencies of the seed can go various ways depending on the conditions of the soil, or the environment. The Coach is looking to create the flower, by digging around in the structure, as if it is somehow buried inside there. They may even look at a natural flower and then seek to artificially recreate it. The Master knows it is not possible to blossom in this way.
So the Master works outside the lab, according to what they are presented with. The bond between master and disciple is then created. It is in this particular relationship that the master is able to function. Otherwise, without the necessary inspiration and trust, the only thing they can do is show some techniques with limited success. Indeed, this is why in the past nothing was transmitted to the disciple often for years. They needed to develop a certain level of striving and longing to know more, rather than satisfying some egotistical expectations. For example, the master is never openly criticised in certain cultures. This isn’t because they are perfect, it is for the benefit of the disciple, so they learn not to blame others or become self satisfied. The level of trust from the disciple the grows because they are not suspicious or envious any longer. However the expert coach is often criticised unless they bring success upon the athlete or instructed student.
Depending on what you want to learn, the coach is needed or not. For example, you want to learn some particular set of skills. Then certainly the coach speeds up this acquisition by providing sound advice and bringing clarity. However, if you want to go further, then more is needed from you. For example, you might learn how to punch or kick from a coach. But this says nothing about the existential problem of bringing stress upon yourself by dominating others and challenging other people constantly. A Master will usually advise against fighting, because they know that one who declares themselves as an alpha specimen knows no end of up and coming challengers. This eventually leads to peoples downfall in the end. However, in terms of confronting an opponent, a coach can instruct you on this.
The Master will suggest seeking peace or enlightenment rather than fighting. It is not that they are against combat, it’s just that they are more focused on blossoming than hardiness. However, you can also blossom with sufficient hardiness and tenacity. The Martial Artist knows that this can never happen unless he is well armed. So psychologically, and physically, many are prone to disagree that peace is even possible or useful. So they give themselves to a set of martial techniques. the only difference here is that with the Master, the disciple gives him authority of what they should be eating, drinking, behaving like, and sleeping like. It all depends on whether you value the every day things, or just the spectacular in terms of who you give authority to these matters. Defending your own life or eating properly are not of any more or less importance to one another. It actually depends on how well in advance you wish to safeguard your own security. This is why expert advice is needed.
When the Martial Artists experiences martial arts psychologically or physically, it is like a a prism which has reflected light. The light of incoming information has gone in, been transformed in some way, and then expressed as an appearance of light on a spectrum. For example, energy can fuel a thought, an emotion, or stillness. It actually depends on how much light you throw into creating stillness within yourself whether or not you experience it. Equally, whether you step off a cliff or into danger is not dependant on your bodily control or mental effort, but in the trajectory of your of your ongoing efforts.
This is what is meant by being in the moment, which means not to give attention and awareness to emotions but rather to pure knowledge, or the light. When disciple decides to take in the outside information only to absorb it directly, rather than transform its form in some way, then he becomes the master of his own destiny. Then, such a person can find meaning in whatever they do, from whichever inflection of light. You then absorb more light as a consequence, to the extent that you see it more often than others or shed light on matters which would otherwise confuse you physiologically or psychologically. The threats and challenges from others then have reduced psychological and physiological relevance or intensity, and therefore seem increasingly irrelevant.
When the body, mind, and emotions are in survival modes, the martial artists experiences this as himself. The energy coming in has been reflected into various subsidiary forms, often without awareness. Just try breathing in a shallow way rapidly for some time. Your emotional and thought state become one way. When you breathe more deeply, you begin to align more of the body physiology and framework to deal with the incoming waves of breath and energy coming into the body. Wether you create these or perceive them is beyond the point, you simply experience it as you so that it and the body is one and the same. This has been the goal of internal Martial Arts for Millenia.
When you slow down the deep breathing, focusing on the Hara Centre, feeling it circulate the body, gradually you feel as though there is no external threat and there is a greater internal awareness. In fact the external threat is simply a stimulus to kick start all this. This doesn’t mean you can’t act externally, just that you are no longer experiencing the outside internally. You are creating it yourself. You are instead experiencing the internal and projecting that outward. This is known as moving with the Chi, or projecting the chi. What this means is that there is an inner unity. This Chi is interwoven with other energies systems, like a scaffolding, so that it can add to the longevity stock of the whole system. This is why in Chinese medicine they focus on Chi energy to heal the body, rather than some other component off the body. The Chi body is not just some energy, it is literally a body of energy across many levels.
Moving with the Chi, or Chi energy, is a partuicular dimension of energy which is more subtle than emotion or thought. At the same time it influences both, and is part of the same structure. This is expressed differently in Yoga, which deals with various Sheaths or Koshas. Imagine you have a scaffolding around a building you are making. You need this scaffolding so that you can continue expanding the main body of the building. In the same way, the bones, emotions, hormones, and blood, all need a strong structure to circulate through. However, they would crumble is the scaffolding where removed. You are creating and recreating this all the time. In fact, the bodies cells are said to turnover completely after seven Years. This explains why peoples can overcome adversity, regardless of their past.
So the Chi is fundamental to building the Body. This Chi is also known as Prana in the Indian Systems. The more gross bodies are not enough by themselves to keep the body going in a powerful way for long. There is simply an upsurge and then decline as the body matures physiologically speaking. This is why many martial Artists who experience prolonged states of stress and tension eventually compromise the integrity of their organism if they have not worked with other aspects. If instead the body is used as a platform for the experssion of this more subtle Chi Energy, then it both holds the body together as well as strengthens it. This is why the Masters of tradition have emphasised working on the energy body, whereas todays athletic coaches focus on the materials of the structure and exploiting those for short term gain.
When you work with the Chi body, you do not need to change anything because it is all there. For example, when you work with the Hara Centre and Deep breathing techniques, you will feel as though it is no longer you that is breathing and the breath even stops. This can be very of putting for people who count the breath or over think the breathing, because they begin to panic and the breath quickens again. However, what is actually happening is that you are tuning yourself like a fork to the cosmic breath, which isn’t actually air, because the same air follows a different universal pattern to that of the planet or the body. Obviously all of the planet contribute to what we are experiencing here on earth, but the most fundamental is the solar energy, or the sun. The sun can be intense of relaxed, but it always expands and contracts in waves, rather than cycles of high and low.
The Hara Centre is the body’s beginning, it is where you started in the womb, and it is from there that you generate and circulate the energies of the body. It is in fact the master of the bodies energies. For example, if you are deep breathing using the Hara Centre and applying sustained pressure here, your emotional states and thoughts will become altered because it is playing a more central role in the generation of cellular and bodily changes. Otherwise thoughts become less concentrated and more scattered. So you can change all the social situations of you day to day life, as well as the thoughts and emotional states you experience externally, but you cannot change this fundamental factor that this storehouse of energy is and where it all begins. Depending on how central to your experience this activity becomes, you become less acceptable to the cycles of the outside circumstances, which are outside of you control and which happen in cycles rather than waves. Internal breathing focus and work is one hundred percent within your control, even if outside conditions hamper development or help it.
