The training of the mind is something that is often neglected amongst martial artists. It is generally accepted that the martial arts help to develop the mind, body and spirit, yet the mind and spirit are usually forgotten about as we put all our efforts into mastering the physical techniques within the martial arts.
I believe that training the mind is just as important as training the body, for were the mind goes the body follows, something many of us forget in our pursuit of physical mastery. It is almost impossible to achieve our full potential as martial artists unless we acknowledge the fact that the mind plays a significant role in our over all development. It is the key to all growth and without it we are merely puppets on a string, all physical movement and lacking in the depth and understanding that’s absolutely necessary to take us to the higher levels of mastery.
Many of us are pretty much in the dark when it comes to actually training the mind. How do you train something doesn’t exist in physical form? Training the body is easy because it exists in physical form. We therefore have something real and substantial to work with, plus we can easily see if we are making progress or not because the body lets us know by how we move and how we develop over all.
Just because the mind is ethereal however, doesn’t mean it can’t be trained. We just think of the mind as another muscle that can be worked and developed like any other muscle on our bodies and suddenly it doesn’t seem so difficult. The trick now is coming up with ways and methods to actually do this and then properly gauging the results of our efforts.
The mind is so powerful that we can train it do almost anything we want with enough hard work, patience and know-how. That’s all it takes. So in that sense we just treat it like we would any other part of our body.
But, you may be asking, why do we need to train our minds for martial arts? I can punch, I can kick, in fact I am bloody brilliant when it comes to technique, how is mind training going to make me any better?
Well, Grasshopper, you’re probably not as good as you think you are and the fact that you even had to ask that shows you’re in need of some educating as to the ways of the mind, so let’s take a quick look at it and see if we can’t discover some benefits to developing it for martial arts.
How the Mind Works
So just what is the mind? If we are going to get any use out of the mind, we need a definition that is useful. Although the word “mind” leads us to believe the mind is a thing, it is not. The mind is a label we have given to an active and dynamic process of thinking, perceiving and experiencing. The term “mind” refers to a never-ending flow of information processing. The mind is never static. It is a constant stream of sensory input, thoughts, ideas and perceptions. It’s a continuous dance of information, a ceaseless stream of awareness in which almost anything can be swept up.
Directing and guiding this awareness is the mind, which we can think of as a system that directs our information processing.
The system of information processing we call “the mind” can also be called our internal reality. We each have an external reality- the environment we live in, the circumstances of our lives – and we each have our own unique internal reality. It is this internal reality that lies behind emotions, behaviour and results. Our inner reality is far from a random mess of mental chaos. Human subjective experience has a structure. Knowing the specific elements that make up the structure of our internal reality enables us to alter the structure so that it serves us better.
In order to reprogram our minds and upgrade our mental software to produce superior results, we must begin by bringing those hidden programs to the surface. Once we know what is operating in the mind we can run some antivirus software, uninstall outdated programs and upgrade where possible. Most of us race to have the latest cell phone and the newest gadget, but why do we keep running obsolete mental software?
Don’t worry, when you begin to explore your mind you won’t find inner demons waiting to be freed or terrible things wanting to bubble up as Freud would have you believe. You will, however, very likely find some old programs that you may no longer want. Remember, they are just programs and if you installed them, you can uninstall them.
Benefits of Mind Training
So as a martial artist what kind of benefits can you expect to get from training your mind? Well first of all, training the mind in the way that we will be discussing will not only help you as a martial artist, it will also help you as a person in all areas of your life, just as martial arts training has probably helped you in many other areas of your life. By training in martial arts you have already been training your mind whether you know it or not. Training the body is training the mind, and vice versa.
What we are going to try and do in this series of articles is be a little more conscious about training our minds, which means focusing on actually doing so rather than just having our minds trained as a by product of training the body. Making a point of actually training the mind will allow you to focus on individual aspects of your training and develop those aspects as much as you like. In effect, you will be taking control of your own mind and using its powers to further develop your abilities as a martial artist.
The benefits to be gained from consciously directing your mind power are almost limitless, limited only in fact, by the amount of time and effort you put into doing so, just like regular martial arts training. The more you put into it, the more you get out of it.
To train the mind it is just a matter of learning some basic principles and techniques which you can then use to improve specific aspects of your training. The aspects you choose to improve are entirely up to you. You may choose to develop and improve your speed, your power, particular techniques or even your attitude and your way of looking at and dealing with certain situations such as street self defense situations or competitive fights. At the end of the day, as long as you know the basic principles of mind training you can be as creative as you like with their application.
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Their will be another five parts to this series of articles and each part will look at a different form of mind training, its benefits to you as a martial artist and how to apply the techniques to make them work.
The rest of the series will consist of:
Part 2: Meditation: The basic grounding for any kind of mind training.
Part 3: Visualization: How to train without going to the dojo.
Part 4: Focus: How to better focus your training.
Part 5: NLP Techniques: Using Neuro Linguistic Programming techniques.
Part 6: Fear Control: How to control and overcome your fears.
Part 7: The Inner Opponent: How to control the enemy within.
So if you’d like to learn how to train your mind to become a better martial artist then stay tuned over the next couple of weeks to find out how!
