The Intelligent Warrior: Command Personal Power with Martial Arts Strategies. Steve Jones

Principle of Resonation this sense of balance then begins to teach the other areas of our being: the mind and emotions. Therefore, we begin to feel when our minds become imbalanced; the classic symptoms of this imbalance are a heightened internal conversation and projection into the future or the past with daydreams. For most of us this imbalance goes on all the time inside our heads, but when humans for one reason or another become chronically imbalanced we see this internal conversation starting to manifest itself outside ourselves. When this happens people talk aloud to themselves and actually begin to see their daydreams in the form of delusions and hallucinations. In this situation the internal imaginings take over control of the physical body and start to change its position correspondingly; this process happens in much more subtle ways with regular daydreaming. The balancing point for the mind is the present moment, which is the fulcrum between the past and future. To maintain this balance you as an Intelligent Warrior must develop the ability to quieten internal conversation and direct internal energy away from the part of the mind that generates daydreams.

      Emotional Imbalance

      Emotional imbalance always has a positive or negative charge so we either become overexcited, silly or ‘over the top’ or we indulge in negative emotions such as anger, self-pity, depression or self-loathing. Emotion is the quickest and most powerful energy in the body and for this reason it is the most ‘expensive’. If we become extremely enraged at something, it can take days for the body to rebalance itself. Recall a time when you became extremely emotional about something and remember how the emotional energy took over your physical body, perhaps contorting it into various positions, and how any rational thought was severely impaired. When we find the balancing point for emotions, which is always a sense of stillness, then we can begin to develop or evolve the emotions into feelings and allow them to take a more subtle form such as the composition of a piece of music, poetry or painting or the selection and execution of an appropriate self-defence technique.

The Three-Dimensional Point of Balance

      The process of searching for balance can be well illustrated by the movement of a pendulum. To start with the pendulum swings in quite large movements from side to side and then gradually, as the force of gravity takes over, the movement decreases until it finds the point of balance (pointing straight down) and it comes to rest. This point of rest is a defining characteristic of your balance but it is not a complete point of rest or stagnation as it is always oscillating in tiny movements between the three dimensions. Think about a tightrope walker making very fine adjustments to stay on the tightrope or a child learning to ride a bike, wobbling from one side to the other until he or she finds a point of balance and stability. In humans the point of balance has many different expressions but the three primary characteristics are relaxation in the body, quietness in the mind and stillness in the emotions. The gradual development of balance through Meditation brings these characteristics to the surface and each can only truly be found in the present moment.

      The Exercise of Centring

       http://bmsmartialart.com/centring-exercise-iwv

      Centring the body is an essential skill for the Intelligent Warrior for it allows you to hold two opposing forces in your awareness and find a balancing point between them. This is critical for applying intelligence to emotionally charged situations.

      Left to Right

      This exercise opens awareness to pressure sensitivity in the legs, a device the brain uses continuously to keep us upright, especially when walking.

      1 Stand in the Basic Stance (see here) and close your eyes.

      2 Direct your intention down towards the area of the Tan T'ien (an inch and a half below the navel).

      3 Slowly shift your weight from the left leg to the right in quite large motions, leaning quite far out over each leg (see Photograph 5).

      4 Relax and be open to the impressions of the pressure as it increases in each leg as you move over it.

      5 Gradually begin to decrease the movements. Perhaps think of the pendulum swinging from side to side as it begins to move to a point of rest.

      6 Continue until you are only making very small movements but can still feel the pressure changing in the legs.

      7 Finally, try to come to rest at the exact balancing point between the two legs.

      Forwards and Back

      This movement primarily stimulates the balance-sensing mechanism of the inner ear.

      1 Slowly begin to rock forwards (see Photograph 7) and back (see Photograph 8) on your feet and feel your weight travelling from the heel to the ball the foot. Try to be sensitive to the place where if you went further you would begin to fall and would have to move your foot to catch your balance.

      2 Without losing the sensation of the Tan T'ien, direct your attention to the area of the inner ear.

      3 Repeat the process in the previous Right to Left exercise, gradually decreasing the movements until you find the balancing point.

      Up and Down

      1 Open to the sensation of relaxing and sitting into the Basic Stance, as if sitting down on a chair.

      2 Push up slightly from the stance and then “sit” down into stance again into it.

      3 Repeat this process, focusing on the sensation of the muscles that are necessary to push you up as opposed to the ones that are used for you to ‘sit’ into the stance.

      4 Try very gently to keep renewing this movement of relaxation (letting go) as you sit down in the stance.

      By making large movements to small ones our brain receives, via the pressure sensitivity in the legs and the balancing mechanisms in the inner ear, a wide range of movement from which it can compare the complementary opposites inherent in each section. By working in this way we gradually increase our sensitivity to the interplay between the opposites and become very sensitive to even the slightest movement away from the point of rest in any of the dimensions. This sensitivity means that we are aware sooner that our centre is becoming unstable and then, by the process of attention or presence in the body, we can correct it accurately with less chance of over-balancing in the opposite direction.

      The up-and-down movement of relaxation may take a little while to get the hang of but by relaxing just enough you will become sensitive to the sensation of your weight locating down to the Tan T'ien. This movement of relaxation needs to be accompanied by a command to the muscles to ‘let go’. Remember, when you become nervous, stressed or afraid the body has a tendency to turn the muscles ‘on’, in other words tension creeps into the body; by practising the command to let go you are in effect giving the muscles the opposite command of ‘off’. It is in the conscious repetition of this command that you develop a strong enough connection to the musculature to relax when you have to face fear in your life.

      After you have worked for a while in each of the three dimensions try searching for the centre in a circular movement pressing from left to forwards to right to back, gradually decreasing the concentric circles so as to combine the various dimensions simultaneously.

Align the Body

       Balance is achieved only through correct body alignment. The feet, the legs, the trunk, the head are all important in creating and maintaining a balanced position. They are the vehicles of body force. Keeping the feet in proper relation to each other, as well as to the body, helps to maintain correct body alignment. Bruce Lee (1975)

       Postural muscles, structurally adapted to resist prolonged gravitational stress, generally