No Mind or Unified Being?

I haven’t been as nervous as I was ten days ago for a very long time. Not anxious—like ‘What’s the result of this medical test going to be?’—but nervous, like ‘You want me to speak in front of how many people??’ kind-of-nervous.

I remember when I was an apprentice researcher at Worldwatch Institute and I started giving talks, I’d get very nervous—voice quavering, shaky, sweaty, the whole deal. But one day, before a significant presentation, I told myself: ‘Look: your goal is to persuade folks of the importance of sustainability. Showing signs of self-doubt is not going to help. So stop it!’ I was never sure why that worked but it did.

But this time, the nervousness was not about presenting information I knew deeply, or persuading folks to live healthier, more sustainable lives. This time, I had to perform karate kata in front of twelve seasoned black belts, including three from my dojo and the founder of the style, himself. All in all they represented around 600 years of karate experience combined!

Knowing how little I knew, knowing how poorly my body translates what I do know into form and movement, I had been dreading the test for weeks—ever since my teacher said to my son, Ayhan, and me that we were ready to test at headquarters.

Black belt testing only happens twice a year—coupled with the summer tournament and the first training of the year. So if I said, no thanks, we’re not ready, we might not test until July, or if we had a conflict then, not for another year.1 So we started practicing kata as often as we could.

This certainly helped. I remember teaching Ayhan and his friends a class on public speaking last year, and one of the key lessons to be effective (and avoid nervousness) was to know your material exceptionally well. That applies to one’s body as much as one’s mind. But while I practiced our belt kata, I realized there might be kata on the test that I simply hadn’t mastered yet (like the black belt kata that traditionally weren’t part of the test but had recently started to become part of the test).2 At first I tried to learn everything, but quickly enough I accepted that if I was asked to perform those (other than the one I knew well), I’d have to accept that I probably wouldn’t pass.

But here’s the thing: the nervousness didn’t let up, but rather compounded: I was so nervous I started waking up at 5am, running through kata in my head! The nervousness spread to worrying that my back wouldn’t hold out until I got to headquarters—injured either in karate practice or during the 4-hour drive up to New York.

Fortunately, there were many opportunities to perform the kata in front of black belts at our dojo in the lead up to the test. Sometimes this helped reduce nervousness as it modeled the actual test. Other times, I’d get so into my own head—thinking through the kata steps—that my mind would trip up my body—with my body no longer remembering the right combination of moves.

Then, when the day finally arrived, after our long drive, we went to Friday evening class, and after class, we were ushered into the back training rooms with eight other brown belts to wait to be tested. Ayhan and I practiced our kata some more—we were like kata machines at this point—and as he was a junior, he got to go third (after two younger juniors went). Then it was my turn.

Will we win our sought-after black belts? Or continue our quest another day? (Image from patrickbrassard0 via Pixabay)

Testing, 1, 2, 3

I walked out into the dojo—a cavernous room—with 12 black belts facing me, all seated and equipped with clipboards. I bowed and stood at attention. One black belt told me which kata to do, and my body did it. Each time my mind tried to see what was going on, I short-circuited that impulse—whether thinking about the next move, or that my hand position was off, or, when I did a block to the back and saw Ayhan watching, panic that my son might see me make a mistake! Off, off, off, blocking each like an opponent’s punches and kicks.

Ayhan and me after receiving our black belts. (Phew!)

That was the case for the second kata as well. And then I was told to do a kata of my choice. Again I had planned to do one kata, which ironically we had done about 20 times in the class right before the test. My brain said, you should do a different one, but my body said no, that’s the one I’ve been practicing. Get out of my way! And I did it.

Truthfully, I have no idea how I did with any of the kata. I was so in my body that there was no internal observer taking notes or making critiques. I’m sure my stances were not good enough, my movements not crisp enough, my fists not tight enough. I’m sure I didn’t grip the floor with my toes, or kick well, or kiai in the proper place, but I passed. And as has been said many times (including the following day when the black belts were presented), receiving one’s black belt signifies the start of training, not the end. Only then does one have enough mastery of the basics to truly start learning karate.

What’s the point I’m trying to get to, other than humble bragging that I got my black belt? Truthfully, it was that moment when my mind turned off that I got a glimpse of pure flow, of battlefield mind, where one’s training takes over and one’s body takes the lead. My mind tried to reassert control a few times but subsuming it allowed my body—which was the seat of knowledge in this case—to do what needed to be done.

Unified Being

All of this brings us back to the Gaian lesson that we are embodied beings, and reminds us that allowing the body to lead when it should—and not letting the mind get in its way—is essential.

While in this case, that feels like “no mind,” at the next day’s training (officially the first training of the year, or Hatsu Geiko), our sensei talked about “seishin itto,” or unified mind.3 That is probably more accurate. Or maybe even Unified Being—with unified being meaning not allowing the three different aspects of one’s being—Body, Mind, and Breath—to conflict.

This random karate street sign(?!) captures the essential challenge of unifying body, mind and breath. (Image from Matwor29 via Pixabay)

Breath is the often hidden/hard-to-control one. Fortunately meditation has made the relationship between breath and mental and bodily states more visible for me. So I made sure to breathe calmly, sitting in zazen before the test (when not practicing kata). My body had been trained in the movements as much as it could, but the mind wanted to flee, panic, plead, anything to retreat from this difficult moment. Instead, I turned it off. Not sure how I did that, that’s kind of the point—it just happened, and it offered a valuable lesson on how essential it is to turn off one’s mind when it gets in the way.4

It also reveals that that’s what I learned to do in my early days at Worldwatch. Again, I turned off the mind—not the full mind (in either case) but the internal critic (the superego as Freud might call it), the metamind that thinks about thinking.5 Being unified sometimes means simply turning off certain systems that mean well but have a certain time and place. Self-awareness is essential in practice, but in the moment of action, when the time to adjust and improve is over, suppressing this is key. I guess I learned that once before, when applied to mind over body, but not really applied to body over mind. And to be honest, I don’t look forward to another chance to practice it. But now that I write that, I realize I actually do, and will join more tournaments to keep honing Unified Being. Though I’m certainly glad I won’t need to retake my black belt test!6

When one’s being is unified, one’s ability to be in the moment, to respond to the moment is optimized, as in a battle, test, speech, or tournament. (Image from sharkolot via Pixabay)

Endnotes

1) Not to mention that it would have been deeply insulting to doubt my teacher—and karate at its core is all about respect.

2) Across styles, there are eight shitei (or standardized) kata that need to be learned if one wants to perform in tournaments (or at least that used to be the case and is still practiced in our dojo this way).

3) Seishin might actually translate to spirit (which is synonymous with breath in many cultures) so perhaps this too reinforces that this is really a broader unified body/mind/spirit concept.

4) Honestly, I think the best mantra on this does not come from an ancient text but from the Bene Gesserit of Frank Herbert’s Dune: “I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

5) For some reason this felt more difficult—perhaps because of the lower confidence, perhaps because it’s not mind over body (i.e. suppressing nervous physical reactions when speaking), but body over mind (which may be harder generally or harder for a cerebral guy like me). But ultimately, they’re related lessons following different channels.

6) My neighbor, also a martial artist, noted once that it is in sparring that one fully experiences mastery. That now makes even more sense, as you must allow the body to lead in that context or you’ll be too slow to land or block a strike.

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