Meditation in a Martial Art

Meditation – Learn the essence and uses of this amazing technique in the martial arts and in everyday life...

Meditation is a training method of the mind which is used for achieving many goals and attributes.

There are many ways of obtaining a meditative state of mind, but all of the methods have one thing in common which we will soon explain.

The meditative process

The human mind is a “highway” of thoughts and emotions – be it thoughts about the future; about the past or about the present; be it worries or thoughts of calmness; be it thoughts of good things or bad…

Whatever and whichever the thoughts, they drift and change and change often…

A great metaphor for the human minds situation can be clouds in the sky.

Imagine the blue sky as being our conscious... Anything which passes through the sky - we become aware of… The clouds in this metaphor take the role of the thoughts – some big, some small, some black some white….

We will return to this description soon…

The meditative process begins here.

It is the method in which we rid our mind from thoughts; It’s the method of how to clean our sky from clouds –

Every meditative process we know passes through one important stage -

1. Attaining Single mind

We need to concentrate/ release concentration/ focus on one thought/thing alone.

What is this thing or thought going to be? Here lays the biggest difference between the methods of meditation –

We can focus on:

1. Breathing in general or breathing to certain area.

2. A sensation

3. A sound

4. Something we see or vision

5. A thought

6. An emotion

7. A mantra

8. Much much more…

What ever the method it must be something simple and not complex.

2. Entering empty mind

Most practices try to enter this level, but for some the single mind is enough.

The empty mind is a state which the mind is without any thought – The sky becomes cloudless, we become conscious and awareness is full.

At this state we or our minds are not aware of space and time. This is not a situation we decide or try to be in, but rather our mind slips into it, and then comes out.

When coming back we don’t really understand where we’ve been.

However it is very hard to reach this stage from a routine, every day situation without passing through the single mind phase.

Meditation as a tool

The intention behind perfecting this tool is to give an instrument with which we can free ourselves from our minds control over us.

* Using it as a training instrument in the martial arts is "decided" upon in the martial art system

Hypnosis is another tool and training instrument we can use in our mental training.

We stop allowing it to “dictate” our mental situation by “harassing” us with thoughts.

Let’s try understanding, to some extent, the power which our mind possess over us through examining the following situation –

Our reality is our perception of it –

Imagine we have a big assignment due – either at work, or at school, this assignment will have a critical effect on our near future – It will have an effect on our present career, or our final school grade – all things, which we have worked very hard to obtain.

The assignment is due and we’re not sure we’ll be able to meet the deadline or the quality needed – Naturally we find ourselves under a lot of stress… We’ve all been under these kinds of circumstances..

Now imagine someone, who is very close to us, suddenly calls to break the terrible news - they’ve been diagnosed with severe cancer and they have only a week left to live…

Imagine what would be our reaction – All things that troubled us until that call will seem so un-important. We will only be concerned with the well being of our loved one –

We are ready to drop everything in order to be with them… and we wonder how we let ourselves spend so much time on things that were not so important…

Two hours later we get a phone call - Our loved one is on the other end, telling us that the lab made a mistake, and they are healthy, and everything is well!!!

Imagine the relief… We now get back to our routine, our duties and our assignment – exactly the same “objective situation” we were in two hours ago - but some how now we’re not so stressed, some how we’re thankful for everything we have – even the “bad”…

This is a perfect example of perception, and how changing it makes all the difference – This is the power of our thoughts and mind…

The power of our thoughts is enormous, and by understanding its effects on us in our everyday life we can solve much of our problems. Emotions are connected directly to our thoughts – and we are our thoughts and emotions.

Our emotions are triggered by our thoughts and by our perception of reality…

We have all had a bad day, when we suffered form stress, disappointment, failure and sadness be the reasons what may; Yet some how either with a good movie, or by having a good time with a friend, for that specific time, we really did have a good time, we were really happy.

Then we remembered what a bad day we had, and we sunk back into it.

What happened? How did we manage to feel better? What happened is that we were able to take our minds or thoughts from the situation

Meditation is a technique for focusing our thoughts and leading them to -Where we want and When we want…It’s also a way to understand our awareness, conscious and subconscious being.

Picture a television set (our consciousness), on the screen appear many programs (our thoughts), we are watching the shows, but we want to stop the programs(thoughts) so we can observe the set itself (consciousness), understand its curves, colors and how it works.

Meditation the real deal

We can go on and on “metaphoring” this instrument and what it does, but this will help understand things only to a certain extent. The real understanding comes from doing and from experiencing.

However, just to organize the information in a halfway summary.

Phases in the meditative process:

1. Every day mind - many thoughts

Through meditation we come to -

2. Single mind – focusing on one thing

We slip into –

3. Empty mind – no thought

* Meditation is not limited to/by a physical condition – laying, sitting, standing, running, swimming, form/kata training…; But it is harder to focus on one thing when we have distractions and stimulations…

Reasons for training this tool:

1. Controlling our thoughts (effecting our perception and emotion)

2. Knowing our consciousness and our subconscious

Martial art importance: As we examined in “mental training in a martial art" - The attributes which can be obtained by mastering meditation are critical to a warriors/fighters ability

Learn more about Mental Training in a Martial Art

We must remember that meditation is a way to develop a skill, and like any skill it must be perfected and honed.

If we think that achieving a single/empty mind is hard in everyday circumstances, think how hard it is in a fight or combat situation –

Nevertheless this is the kind of pressures which the martial arts trains us for.

For us to be able to go into auto-pilot, the mind must be free of distractions

For us to be able to make rational decision we must be free of our emotions

Meditation is a way to achieve those mental goals

Although the meditation world is endless, we will try to provide some useful information about methods within this world.

[In the future we will cover more related subject such as: The connection between chigung and meditation; Zen meditation; E-chuan; Vipassana; And more]

If you would like to undergo a great meditation experience,at the place where it all began, here's a good place to start looking: India Travel - Spiritually Energizing Holidays in India, Nepal, Bhutan & Tibet.

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