At all hours of the day and night and for many years, individuals and groups have been drawn to an old foundation slab in a neighborhood park. Warming and cooling, the cement breathes as it accepts and releases heat absorbed from the sun, air and the friction of moving feet. Feet forming patterns, patterns creating paths. Paths crossed by shadows that  leave no trace of their coming and going. Peaceful shadows, like the empty hands of karate.

Late one evening about forty years ago I was training on that slab when suddenly a voice penetrated the darkness and asked, “But why?” That was it. A singular event. It was a mature male voice, accented – possibly eastern European. I never identified or met the source but I have been thinking about the question.

Why indeed? Why make any effort? Especially when most of the reasons and future outcomes are undefined and there is only a subtle scent of  something good and worthy of exploration in the present moment.

Well, many ideas have formed and dissolved along the way, but the path remains.

Attention

A primary quality of our minds is the capacity to focus attention – mindfulness. Karate practice can be a ritual of purification around mindfulness.

Karate is practiced by centering on breathing and quieting the mind. It is strengthened by focusing attention on producing balanced fluid movement patterns. The physical and cognitive benefits are well documented.

One of the effects is to bring the mind closer to a state of calm, unclouded steadiness. Mental clarity increases awareness of the forces that flow, inform, and control our movements. The emphasis on elements such as breathing, flow, and attention rather than outward appearances such as performance leads to a sense of consolidation. Repeating the process stimulates growth such as increased skill, sensory perception, insight, and sense of continuity. The kind of continuity that helps a person to feel cohesive, balanced, at peace and hopeful in a troubled world. Nowadays, we call that a wellness practice.

Of course the training effect is not unique to karate. Many other disciplines (ways) do the same thing.  For example, due to their core similarities, there has been a long association between music and martial arts practice. The common link between such disciplines is the manner in which they integrate a diverse and yet related set of physical and cognitive resources.

By resources, I mean the way multiple sensory inputs and internal impulses are combined with imagination and then expressed along a path of skillful action whether it be a martial arts practice, musical expression, flower arranging, raising a family, on and on. Those resources, combined within ourselves, fortify and connect to brighten, enliven, and enlighten the gift of life.

Effort and Qi

Learning to regulate effort is integral to any sustained process. Effort brings us face to face with ourselves. We begin to see more clearly how concentration and motivation may be colored by variables such as emotion, level of interest, priority, health, age, and environmental influences. In order to persevere, the competing voices of discouragement and encouragement must be tamed. 

Will power, and the sources we draw from to sustain it, drives effort. Motivation is central in determining the degree to which one is willing to engage. A persistent source of stress in our lives centers on sustaining motivation and it’s nourishing pool of energy while enduring the pressure and uncertainty of constant change. Growth occurs when time and energy come together and work together. Karate activates and cultivates that type of synergistic interaction. 

One’s will or motive force, when attached to a word such as Qi, becomes a scalable commodity. Qi provides a means for giving form to something subjective such as energy level or motivation. A commodity has dimension. It may increase or decrease in quantity, fluctuate in value, and vary in quality. If I am feeling downcast in one moment and in the next someone smiles at me and I am suddenly lifted, what has increased? Has anything been transmitted?

Effort, worry, sickness, anger and doubt deplete Qi.

Sleep, food, joy and spiritual sustenance restore and strengthen Qi.

Activity circulates and sustains Qi.

Inhale, Exhale – Systole, Diastole – Contraction, Expansion – Tension, Relaxation;  Qi is active.

Karate training is an activity that restores, activates and circulates Qi. The practice seems to strengthen one’s motivation by increasing fortitude and engendering a sense of purpose.

Karate and Water

Water will take the form and reflect the contours of anything that it touches or inhabits. Karate is like water because it illuminates the true and unique form of the individual. That exposure can be inspiring and humbling.

Since karate is a practice, it must be absorbed through training. Absorption gradually exposes the interior contours – the good, the bad, and the ugly. Karate provides potent tools that can help to smooth those exposed rough areas since they are often the places that wound us and drive imbalance.

Balance and Adaptive Skill

The fact that the conditions inside and outside of a person often change unexpectedly makes it challenging to stay balanced relative to a center that is always shifting. It is like a single dancer courting multiple partners simultaneously all of whom are operating according to their own fee will. In order to whirl around the floor in relation to those partners and remain balanced, one must be sensitive to changes in the motion of the ensemble as a whole and the individual components, including one’s self. That is adaptation.

Karate practice strengthens adaptive abilities. That is why the practice is often characterized as the art of balance or art of change. The gift to the student is that by learning how to manipulate the elements of the art and keep them in balance, the skill gained in karate practice may be related and applied to the broader context of living.

In times of personal imbalance, karate has helped me to weather the ups and downs in my life. During hard times it seems to provide a reserve of fortitude while also providing a trail of breadcrumbs, a way leading back to a more balanced state. It only works when I actively engage with my practice.

That part about engaging with practice can be tricky. Especially when dealing with injury or permanent loss of function. A knowledge and sensitivity to the qualitative attributes of karate such as hard and soft and how they relate to effort and movement helps to clarify a way forward. A way that gradually defines a path of minimum resistance towards a better balance around wellness. A way that provides physical and spiritual nourishment. 

Practice patterns are like good friends and familiar routines. Techniques expose strengths and weaknesses. In that sense, they function diagnostically. The fact that techniques are revealing also gives them the power to illuminate a possible path to improvement. That is therapeutic. By returning to my practice, I find stability and am able to gradually restore function, balance, and harmony in my life.

Effort and Stress

“Out of life’s school of war: what does not destroy me, makes me stronger”

Friedrict Nietzsche, from The Twilight of the Idols

There is an intriguing and powerful equation of mind and body that operates when effort and stress are mindfully applied to ourselves.  Nietzsche’s famous quote may be extreme and subject to debate but it contains a truth. Stress causes us to grow stronger. Not just physically. All forms of training refine and strengthen our capacity to work in some way.

The benefit of a practice resides in the form and method of refinement. The critical refinement of karate practice is to introduce control. Control is built around firmness (applying stress) and yielding (releasing stress). The principle in training then becomes: if I apply a stress, with sensitivity and respect for limits, I will get stronger as a result. If an unwanted stress operates on me, I must be able to respond with the opposite – softness – in order to neutralize it.

Martial arts practice, when balanced, puts the idea to very productive use by maximizing gains while respecting limits and the need for recovery. The scalability and flexibility of martial arts training also makes it ideal for long-term practice, especially in the context of ageing.  The soft circles of tai chi chuan become welcome companions to stiff and painful joints.

In the case of karate, the art was born out of warfare but then transformed into an art of peace. In the process, the marvelous jewel of restorative vitality concealed within was slowly revealed – mind and body in balance. That is why in a seeming paradox a war veteran suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome can practice karate as an aid to healing.

Concentration

Concentration might be described as the ability to collect the mind in order to focus attention. It seems that as long as we can concentrate and are willing to turn our minds to something with full attention the choice of the object of focus does not matter. Anything will do as long as our interest is naturally attracted and held. It could be karate, cooking, music, a candle, or the bedroom wall – the possibilities are unbounded. The discipline is in sustaining whatever it is that we are trying to do in the present moment. Health and wellness, balance and movement depend upon the capacity to concentrate.

Transmission

The enduring value and potency of karate training has helped to sustain it’s transmission over time. The art has gradually found a place in the mainstream as a valuable tool for aiding the process of individual growth and development. The art helps us to transform negatives into positives by fine tuning our capacity to see clearly, accept or resist, and make better choices in the present moment that will ripple into the future.

Karate is propagated by first concentrating it in one’s self and then giving it to someone else. Cultivation and concentration occurs through engagement with tangible forms – the ideas and techniques that constitute the body of the art. The handing down is achieved by showing it directly to another person. That is, giving and receiving through direct experience – nervous system to nervous system – what the old masters called a mind to mind transmission. Oral, visual, and kinetic expressions are the original transmission tools employed prior to the advent of written language and other forms of complex graphic symbolism. They will always have great power. 

Information flows between minds when there is an openness to a shared receptive mode. The doors of every sense are wide open and fully alive to the present moment. Mind to mind transmission is learning directly from a living source without resistance. It is trust. It is not blind faith or submission to control.

While each of us remains rooted in a particular time, the spirit, information, energy, and form of the art propagates into the future like the shape of a wave rolling through an open sea. That is the manner in which the art has been transmitted for centuries.

Practice

If you are a practicing martial artist, then no doubt you have discovered your own magic spot; a little patch or slab of energy in your basement, backyard, garage, town or countryside where your training seems to concentrate and thrive. It is in such places, free of distraction, that one is in close contact with effort. Occasionally, when intuition is keen, there might be a lucky lucid moment of real insight.

Karate practice stirs the waters within and motivates transformation. Practice is not drudgery. It is a rich and fruitful experience that awakens the mind to the miraculous potential in every moment. In those moments, the thrill and curiosity of the beginner’s mind flows with enthusiasm as we draw from the deep well of restoration and refinement that forms the heart of practice.

Form and Formlessness

Like reflections in a mirror, what we see on the outside are only shadows cast by the art. There is something intrinsic and formless, a magic elixir compounded from the body of the art that constitutes the essence of the marvelous gift that it bestows when we make contact through engagement.  The mind is elevated and the body fortified. There is a spiritual brightness and call to action that moves us from within. That is the fruit of effort and my enduring answer to the question posed long ago. “But why?”

We are all students and teachers. We are the current custodians of a living history and tradition. We are guardians entrusted with maturing the child that is born out of  our first contact with our efforts to learn. By applying the disciplines, principals, and techniques that have been transmitted to us and passing them on, we each perpetuate a unique gift.