Although this is the first post in this book, I don’t see much point in discussing my background, previous experiences, or going over the depth of weird and endlessly entertaining games I’ve played with my mind and body over the last decade on a site like this — obviously, as with most things I do, this site is purely for my own entertainment and to make it easier for me to go back later in life and remember and revisit the crazy theories I’ve come up with before and where they led me. As with all words I say, the words themselves hardly matter; it’s the mind they describe that is important.
So today, I want to talk about an excellent and extremely beautiful experience I have had/rediscovered over the past few days. The monday before last, I was at my karate practice (http://web.mit.edu/shotokan) and it was only myself, two students, and Shihan Tabata. For those that don’t know me terribly well, I am at the time of writing a first degree black belt in my karate style, and I teach the MIT Shotokan Karate club twice a week. In any case, while I’ve had many great experiences learning karate, being the most advanced student in the class when Shihan Tabata (our club’s 8th degree blackbelt head instructor) usually means that I don’t get a lot of feedback because I’m either teaching the beginners while he teaches the intermediate students, or we’re all doing intermediate level practice together.
In any event, he gave me some feedback about the way I do my kicks. Now, I’ve never really liked kicks much — they’re kind of nice, but they’re usually quite slow. Beyond that, I’m entertainingly tall and have very low stances when I attack, so my upper body range is typically equal to most folk’s kicking range. I also did Kokikai Aikido for some time, and am very comfortable with throwing, so I generally prefer close quarters to long range. What Sensei told me is that I need to do what I can only describe as “crouching” in preparation for the kicks. He pointed out that when I do a kick, I “lean back” to balance, and that this slows me down, decreases power, and prevents my hips from turning over very well.
Now, this is exactly the type of feedback I love to get, because first degree black belt is a very long way from being good at karate. So, for the last two weeks I’ve been working hard and experimenting with doing kicks this way. Instead of trying to be balanced at all points, I’m letting my body lean forward more, and what I notice is that I feel like I’m collapsing forward, but when I pay very close attention, my chest is still open! I’m not actually collapsing, I just think I am. In fact, my lower back felt like it was opening up, muscles were relaxing that were needlessly tense, my upper back similarly but not as drastically relaxed, and the entire connective system centered around the hips loosened up.
This in and of itself is great, because through a simple change in posture, my kicks are now noticeably better, and I am better able to relax. My energy and focus is more directed forward and everything works better.
Then I came up with the game.
Having been paying close attention to the muscles in my lower back, feeling how they were tense and how the alignment and connection between my upper and lower body felt through that area, I noticed something odd. While sitting, my back was tense! Why would that be? What structural purpose could there be to having tense back muscles while sitting reclined in a chair? I know that it has always been this way, for as long as I can remember, but I haven’t the foggiest why that would be.
This reminded me in character now of one of my favorite Tai Chi exercises — the unbendable arm. This exercise is of great use in explaining to beginners in martial arts of any type how the muscle system works, and to try to demonstrate how being tense and being strong are very different things. I will ask them to hold out their arm, palm up, and have another student try to bend their arm at the elbow. First, I tell them to resist with all their strength, which generally translates to “use all your muscles and tense up” to a guy on the street. The other student easily bends their arm because they have better leverage.
Then, I explain the idea of opposing muscle groups — by tensing up the arm to hold it in position, you are actually tensing the muscles on both sides of the arm. My students tend to be pretty bright folks, so they immediately realize why that is perhaps non-ideal… but it’s a very difficult thing to feel. It is very frequently the first time they have had to try to feel inside their body, and often they can’t do it right away — so I have them use their other arm to feel which muscles are being used directly and from the outside. This helps them become attuned to how their body is tense and how it is relaxed. Next, I have them hold out their arm again, palm up, and relax their arm. Now, when the other student tries to bend their arm, they easily resist with almost no effort — only the muscles which are needed are active, and they no longer are wasting energy and strength fighting themselves.
This, I feel, is what is happening with my back.
So the game was to try walking, sitting, and otherwise moving throughout the day, bringing my attention to my lower back whenever I thought to do so, to see if it was tense, and to try to notice any trends in why it was tense.
I found that in one week of this practice, my lower back is tense 100% of the time I am not being aware of it. Yet, as soon as awareness touched the tension, I was able to release it with no noticeable decrease in my ability to function — so clearly the tension was unnecessary. Releasing the tension isn’t easy, and is a very enjoyable game in itself. Much like trying to settle the water in a cup, trying to directly force it to relax causes even more tension to occur — instead, releasing the tension very, very slowly and with a calm mind is necessary. No effort expended in relaxing, no attempt to judge the state, simply moving until that same sense of relaxation that you learn first in the unbendable arm exercise spreads throughout the whole of your back.
As my back relaxes, a very odd energy arises, like some combination of having too much caffeine on an empty stomach, a caress from a lover, and the mental state of waiting for the next blissful word from an amazing speaker. Mind in utter silence, no distraction while listening intently to what my back is telling me. Simultaneously, the feeling of shooting, primal energy surging up my spine, like a raw emotion reduced to its most basic form and released into my chest, almost a slight burning as it is then trapped with nowhere to go. A huge amount of energy that I can transform with a thought into outward, explosive motion, by letting it spin in rhythm with the Tao. I can feel when it’s time to release the energy, I can feel it in the tension in my arms, I can feel it flowing from my legs to my back and back out through… where? Games for another day.
Wu Wei — Action through Inaction. Not trying to be inactive, not trying to be active, simply feeling the beat and the rhythm of Tao and letting it carry me where it leads. Is this yet another place where by learning to listen, learning to be aware, and learning to smile lets me become more attuned to the natural, primal flows of existence?
What does Osho say?
I really like Osho, and in particular I love his book of meditation games he profoundly calls “The Book of Secrets”. This game I discovered reminded me of a passage where he describes the fourteenth technique from the Vigyan Bhairav Tantra — putting your awareness on your spine. To quote his translation:
“Place your whole attention in the nerve, delicate as the lotus thread, in the center of your spinal column. In such be transformed.”
Now, Osho goes on to discuss how by making the spine “straight” and becoming aware of the thread of energy within, a delicate thread, your aura develops. I don’t really understand what he means by this, but I think that the physical spine is never going to be straight, and if it were there would be so much tension that how could your energy flow?
Osho also touches on what I feel is a related topic in his explanation of the twentieth technique in “The Book of Secrets”. The twentieth meditation says:
“In a moving vehicle, by rhythmically swaying, experience. or in a still vehicle, by letting yourself swing in slowing invisible circles.”
In Osho’s explanation of this meditation he says,
“Whenever you are in a bullock cart or in any vehicle, you are resisting. The bullock cart sways to the left, but you resist it. You sway to the right in order to balance; otherwise you will fall down. So you are constantly resisting. Sitting in a bullock cart, you are fighting its movements. It moves to this side, and you have to move to that.”
I feel that this insight is the key to understanding the fourteenth meditation. By utilizing a slight movement, we can become aware of how the back is not relaxed — it doesn’t matter if this is in a “bullock cart”, or in your chair in your office, the game is the same. Use the small motions, the small tensions, to become aware of your spine. I posit that your back is straight when there is nothing pulling it away from it’s natural position. To feel this thread, you do not need to force a posture or breathe a special way, use small motions to feel whether your back becomes more tense, or less — and keep playing until in all directions lies more tension.
This is the point where the spine is “straight”, by virtue of all the muscles being in balance, and the spine being in its most natural position. No tension, nothing to stop the energy from flowing. However, there are many local tension minima I am finding while playing this game — I note the global minima as the point where suddenly my stomach starts gurgling as if it is no longer being held frozen, every breath becomes ecstasy, and simple sitting becomes a joy on par with lovemaking — every exhalation raising more and more vibrant energy.
Once you can feel this primal, raw, unfiltered and intense energy flowing, you will know that I am right. There can be no mistaking such a sensation, and you will know it with no doubt in your mind, when you succeed in touching that energy.
And that is why Shihan Tabata is such an amazing teacher. Such a flowering of experiences from three words — “You’re leaning back.”