Journal Martial Arts Energies in Practice

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Heavy Breathing

In my opinion, contemporary occultism doesn't pay nearly enough attention to vigorous breathing methods. It's usually all about breathing calmly while endeavouring to still the mind – which is important, of course, but there are other pranayama techniques like

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("Bellows Breath") or

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("Skull-Shining Breath") which employ quite rapid and forceful inhalations and exhalations.

Yoga is an arduous, ascetic path very much rooted in Hinduism which the NewAge movement in the West has turned into feel-good gymnastics for relaxation and stress relief. Moreover, I would claim that this appropriation goes back even further, to the days of the British Empire. As several authors have pointed out, colonialists usually accepted literate native cultures to a certain extent but despised 'savages' without their own written language. What's more, to be regarded as 'civilised', the colonized had to show restraint and composure in their public affairs; open displays of passion and sensuality were other telltale signs of primitiveness and racial inferiority. Graceful temple dances were ok, ecstatic revelries accompanied by wild drumming definitely not. It's my theory that this attitude also rubbed off on Mme. Blavatsky and all subsequent Western currents like the NewAge. Henceforth, if you wanted to call yourself 'spiritual', you were forced to make a show of being all calm and serene as befitting your allegedly elevated stage of inner development while in actuality, it was just the old stiff upper lip displayed by Her Majesty's officers of the Raj. Under this prim and proper Victorian code, sitting still while meditating was acceptable but any whiff of rowdiness was not, and that of course includes loud breathing. This slant towards quietude in spiritual exercises prevails to this day - gentlemen don't pant and grunt (in public, that is ). Breathing katas, however, involve a lot of panting and grunting (as well as sweat if you really lean into them!).

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Goju-ryu's

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kata is admittedly a drastic example to prove my point about whole-body tension accompanied by forceful breathing. Seen from a layperson's perspective, it probably looks bizarre, and even to a shotokan karateka, it feels a bit alien and extreme. Unlike

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, goju-ryu karate makes no claims that sanchin will bestow invulnerability on its practitioners, only common-or-garden toughness - you have to tense your entire body to withstand physical impacts, whether you're dishing it out or receiving. Shotokan teaches this principle in the course of its general basic drills, goju-ryu (as well as other styles) has special katas to this end. Different starting points, same aim.

In my mind, one of the key purposes of such breathing katas is that they allow you to feel your own power, letting you observe how it unfolds in these slow forceful movements. It's a unique experience, not like the moderate tension as in the shotokan katas in my two previous posts – it ratchets up the intensity of one's kata practice up to 11. What I think sanchin does is pumping your body full of energy, whether generated by your own metabolism or drawn from the air into your lungs.

Whole-body tension and deep diaphragmatic breathing will add emphasis to any ritual gestures you might employ. You could also perform other exercises you already know in this manner to build up an energy charge inside your body before you begin your ritual, almost literally getting pumped. I think it's a simpler and possibly more reliable method of energy generation than qigong which will take some time to learn under a good instructor – all you have to do is clench all your muscles, inhale through your nose, and exhale through your mouth with every movement, and that's it.

 

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Resisting the Half-Moon

In contrast to sanchin which is a foundational kata of the goju-ryu style of karate, shotokan's

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leads a rather marginal existence. It's not very popular, seldom practiced, and never seen in tournaments but it's the closest shotokan has to a breathing kata. The reason why it's disliked is probably its screwed-up half-moon stance (hangetsu dachi). Here's a little story to illustrate my point:

One time, a taichi centre in my neighbourhood had an open day where they offered classes for free, so I went. When the taichi instructor heard I was practising karate, he immediately assigned a student of his to me who had done karate for a couple of years. Most of our time was spent on his suggesting certain modifications to regular shotokan stances in order to lend them more qi. My taichi student would then ask every time, "Can you feel the difference it makes to your qi?" I was unable to but always nodded dutifully anyway. Now am I too thick to notice all that qi, or did I subconsciously resist all of his prompts to imagine something that actually wasn't there?

With that damn hangetsu dachi, I most definitely feel something, like my qi was being messed up, constricted, or leaking from under me or something. Personally, I think that somebody tampered with that kata sometime in the past and replaced an originally shorter stance with a preposterously long one to make that kata somehow fit into shotokan's modern philosophy of long stances, and the result makes you feel like a complete dork.

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Apart from my gripes about its stance, hangetsu is a decent enough kata, and the transitions between the slow breathing sequences and the fast flurries of techniques make for very dramatic effects. If goju-ryu's sanchin in my previous post was about accumulating a single huge charge of energy, hangetsu is about alternating between acquiring energy and then expending it in short, sharp bursts. And that's it. I don't believe any venerable ancient masters hid 'subtle energy secrets' in their katas. That may have happened in kung fu which has a much longer history but not in karate which isn't all that (over-)sophisticated – what you see is what you get, and any mystification would be contrary to its spirit, in my opinion.

This Journal proceeds from the assumption that focused breathing, known as a key method of subtle energy acquisition since antiquity, can be enhanced by dynamic body movements. The other day there was a query in this Forum concerning blocked energies. If the member's energies were truly blocked and not weakened by natural causes like e.g. an iron deficiency, a system of vigorous movements could be the answer. I think you can always overcomplicate matters, insist that "It's all in the mind!" and that accordingly all such problems should be overcome by mental effort alone. No. It all hangs together. The mind affects the body, the body affects the mind. What a sequence of movements like a karate kata is capable of, in my opinion, is prying loose any energy blockage, no matter where it may be located.

Breathing katas work along the same principles as

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– tension and release. What you perceive as an energy blockage may be nothing but excessive muscular tension that can be easily get rid of by means of physical exercise; it's controlling subtle energies by unsubtle means, if you will. And why not? After all, hatha yoga, herbal infusions, massages, or cleansing baths are physical interventions as well, and any change of diet can make a huge difference to your energy balance. In general, I think that physical methods are more effective than purely mental ones. Some people have aphantasia, others have trouble with stilling their mind and concentrating, still others (including me) are prone to becoming intoxicated by grand-sounding ideas that turn out to be of little value once you try to put them into practice (looking at you, Carlos Castaneda).

Many spiritual methods rely on strong belief bordering on autosuggestion and consequently are useless for a born sceptic like me. With dynamic body movements, you know where you are. There's nothing equivocal about a punch. You don't have to visualise anything, focus on an affirmation, repeat a mantra over and over again, fend off intruding thoughts, nothing, just make a fist and extend your arm. Add all the other techniques of some martial art, practice diligently, and you have a powerful means of transforming your spiritual life which is superior to all the clever books you might care to read. That's at least what I personally think.

 

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The Power of Emotions

I'm becoming more and more convinced that martial arts energies express themselves as emotions, that they are in fact emotions, and lest anyone thinks that this is a disappointingly mundane conclusion, think again: emotions are the most powerful force known to mankind. Let's take an extreme example: the atom bomb, a weapon of unimaginable destructive power. Why was it developed and deployed? Because one nation felt a burning desire to defeat another nation that felt a burning desire not to be defeated. During the Cold War, nuclear weapons were stockpiled because two nations distrusted each other and felt constantly threatened. Goethe said "In the beginning was the deed" but I would argue that in the beginning was the emotion which caused the deed in the first place. Faith may be capable of moving mountains, but human emotions can pulverise them.

It's something of a philosophical worldview with me that we're only flattering ourselves when we think of ourselves as rational beings. We're driven by emotions all day long, and probably even in our sleep. We seek out thrills, hate this, love that, avoid what's unpleasant or boring, make decisions we may regard as 'only logical' but which are in actual fact merely motivated by our likes and dislikes. Everybody has his or her personal problem-solving style, is driven by different unconscious fears, harbours different obsessions, has different tastes, urges and drives, and boldly forwards perfectly reasoned-out opinions that will make others cringe with embarrassment. Civil liberties champion the right to live as one pleases, and it's emotions, emotions all the way. Am I right? Why, I certainly feel that way .

People don't appreciate nearly enough what a miracle emotions really are, probably because they're such an integral part of human life like oxygen and gravity. Elicit excitement from people, and you have power over them, whether as a popstar or a politician. For art to be art, it has to engage the emotions, and a martial art is no different.

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All sorts of emotions in this video, it's not just about fighting spirit or aggression…

Emotions also play in huge part in what we judge to be meaningful or not. Practitioners may see their martial art as the noblest pursuit on earth while others will be totally unable to see the point. You can rant about the self-evident need to be able to defend yourself or the health benefits of such an athletic activity all day long, you won't convince anybody who doesn't feel like you, and if you do manage to talk them into coming to your karate dojo or capoeira academia and they don't like it, you'll be powerless to do anything about it.

Genuine martial arts energies are not the vicarious emotions you might experience when watching a movie fight on a screen. It will be you yourself starring as one of the combatants, your sweaty body, your fear, your elation, your pain, your triumph, NOT somebody else's, and it will be about more than just your leisurely entertainment in the comfort of your home. Your emotions will be raging, and it will feel very different from just being mildly amused by the antics of some actors. Everything will be live as well as up close and personal, sometimes uncomfortably so. If that's not an awesomely powerful experience, then I don't know what is. Qi has got nothing on emotions - it's a nice enough cosmological construct but ultimately irrelevant for the purposes of effective fighting systems.

Emotions in the martial arts are a complex topic. In karate, they're very much under control while in capoeira, they're practically given a free reign. What I've come to realise, however, is that different karate movements or martial arts settings will almost automatically evoke certain moods, and this effect should not be underestimated. In history, entire armies have been vanquished because their soldiers lost heart and fled despite their superior numbers. Fighting spirit can help you win or at least survive against all odds. Martial arts can help you feel empowered, self-assured, and determined to prevail, and after a while you'll become a sucker for these emotions. In a way, all martial artists are adrenaline junkies, and watching the latest action movie or UFC event will not nearly give you the same powerful rush.

It would be a mistake to focus exclusively on heroics though. When you start practicing a martial art, there'll be highs and lows, feelings ranging from frustration to euphoria, and as can be easily observed in other social contexts, such emotional rollercoasters often create stronger bonds than if it was roses, roses all the way. Additionally, there'll be this feeling of dojo camaraderie (or outright clannishness, in the case of capoeira) that will help you to keep going. I don't see a gentle impersonal force like qi accomplishing all these things. Emotions help you get out of bed in the morning. Feelings are capable of literally creating new life.

My next post (and possibly most of the rest of this Journal) will be about the power of emotions in martial arts. It's a vast topic full of surprising twists and turns, I can feel that even now.

 

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Liberation

Experiencing emotions is as unavoidable as breathing. Learning how to manage and express them in a socially acceptable manner forms a huge part of our upbringing. Every problem, every challenge will carry an emotional charge as well, and any real martial arts practice simply can't do without them.

Inhibitions are typically overlooked in martial arts pedagogy; after all, instructors aren't psychotherapists. Their role is to train the body, not so much your mind, and how you feel about what you're doing at the dojo is your private business; Zen or ethics lectures would be contrary to the experiential spirit of karate. Sometimes, however, it's plain to see that there are students who suffer from emotional difficulties that impede their progress, and it's exactly where overcoming one's inhibitions by way of martial arts practice can become a path towards inner growth.

Inhibitions can express themselves physically in various ways that are inimical to athletic performance, from shallow breathing to constrained movements. You may be able get away with your frightened-mouse stoop in other social situations but not at the karate dojo where a hunched-over posture is considered bad form. It's of course ok to be shy but not in the capoeira circle where wild abandon is considered a virtue. In short, a martial art can get your body into uncomfortably hot water, and when it's prevented by your emotions from responding adequately, everything will become an even greater challenge. Even worse, any martial art will have but one solution to offer, and it won't be tailormade to fit your specific psychological makeup: practice, practice, practice.

I personally have seen several students blossom emotionally over time, and it was a real joy to watch. Mind you, at least twice as many quit, and I won't have anyone say a bad word about them – it's their decision, and nobody should be maligned for bowing out if it all gets too much. There are more important things in life than martial arts, and people shouldn't be forced to confront their demons when they don't want to. Now may not be the right time, and the karate dojo or the capoeira roda might not be the right place either, and it's not for anybody else but for the students themselves to decide.

Inhibitions are an enormous handicap when it comes to learning new motor skills. I've seen hulking guys with an embarrassingly weak punch and scrawny firebrands you really didn't want to cross. Emotions make such a huge energetic difference in the martial arts, it's ridiculous. What's more, you get all kinds of weird combinations, for example severely repressed students filled with inexhaustible enthusiasm who don't mind in the least when they're being corrected by instructors every other minute for their abysmal techniques.

In sparring and point-fighting, inhibitions have the same effect as fear or rage – they'll restrict and foreshorten your movements due to excessive body tension, making you uptight, slow, and indecisive. For example, when executing a lunge punch, inhibited students will typically fail to reach their opponents because they're afraid to commit fully, as if they were bodily held back by somebody standing behind them and preventing them from making full use of the range of their bodies. They move woodenly, are totally unable to dodge blows because they're too stiff, are too hidebound to come up with creative solutions of their own and never learn from their experiences and mistakes. They tend to do ok in kata practice as long as they can hide as part of the whole class but come grading exam time, stage fright will turn them into spastic robots; you have to have a certain exhibitionist streak for solo kata performances and additionally a modicum of charisma to win kata competitions, all of which will be inaccessible to you if you're repressed.

In many ways, it's even more difficult in capoeira. Karate has this grim, determined spirit, and most inhibited beginners can do grim determination with ease – it's all too often part of the symptoms of their problem. However, how can you pretend to be fun-loving and outgoing when you're definitely not and avoid coming on as a complete phony? Say it's your first capoeira class but tonight the mestre decides it's time for

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practice instead, a kind of sub-discipline of capoeira. Samba and inhibitions don't go well together, it'll be a traumatically embarrassing experience for the hapless newbie, and I've seen it happen even to a European-style ballroom dancing teacher once. You might be able to do crescent kicks and turn cartwheels if hard pressed, but samba's tiny frenetic steps are next to impossible to perform if you're uptight and afraid to let go. And once all capoeristas have sufficiently refreshed their samba skills, it'll be time for dancing in the circle, and then the real nightmare will begin – dancing with a partner while everybody is singing, clapping, and especially watching you.

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Not for retiring wallflowers…

Incidentally, this entire post is also about myself and the difficulties I had to face as a karate rookie. By the time I found capoeira, however, my martial arts inhibitions were as good as gone, and I never care how clumsy I look, how many times our instructors correct me, or if somebody runs rings around me or takes me down when playing in the circle. That I've lost (most of) my inhibitions may be thanks to my karate practice; mind you, it could also be due to life experiences (additionally, I also have this cocky streak in me, that helped me enormously). I'm not touting karate as a kind of behavioural therapy here but let's just say that becoming looser and more laid-back is an indispensable prerequisite for martial arts energies to emerge. Instructors of so-called internal martial arts would agree and consequently, in conformity with their own systems, advocate being as relaxed as possible while practicing but instead I'd rather argue it's alternating between maximum tension and release, between expansion and contraction, that's the real secret behind genuine martial arts energies - together with a practitioner's emotional contribution, that'll always prove crucial.

 

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The Way of the Junkyard Dog

How do you acquire fighting spirit? Let's start with the basics: your own body. As legendary boxing coach Vince Lombardi once said: "Fatigue makes cowards of us all." Mind over matter in the martial arts? In a pig's eye! When you're exhausted, all those stress hormones and all the metabolic waste sloshing around in your blood will do something to your brain, and your precious mind will become so befuddled and scared you won't even be able to think straight. First you'll start to fight defensively, then your sole aim will become protecting yourself as your reflexes become slower and response time longer, you'll develop tunnel vision and finally won't even see those punches coming. It's not what they show you in martial arts movies where both good and bad guys seem to have inexhaustible stamina. On the other hand, good cardio will give you self-confidence, tenacity, and courage. That's why I distrust self-defence systems where you don't even break a sweat in class. I mean, do they teach you how to run for ten blocks and finally face the guy chasing you, then run another fifteen to escape his friends? Or will you be leaning helplessly against a wall huffing and puffing, and where will your fighting spirit be then?

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Tank Abbott used to be a devastating striker in the early UFC days but his habitually weak cardio also lost him many fights. This is the only time I've ever seen an MMA fight stopped because of one fighter being unable to continue due to sheer exhaustion.

Gaining fighting spirit in karate basically proceeds in two stages: first you practice a sort of generically uniform one, later on you develop one that is uniquely your own. One might say here, "Reach down deep inside yourself and…". No. It just happens. Fighting spirit sort of grows on you without your own volition, and it's impossible to say how a beginner's will be like in three or ten years of practice. I always say sparring is like a truth drug, making snivelling wimps of arrogant posers and reveal shy nobodies to be veritable monsters; you'll never know until you go toe to with them.

As a result, I can only write about that generic fighting spirit that is cultivated during karate classes. A beginner's first impression of a dojos will probably one of an army bootcamp with all these drills and constant shouting of "

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!" (= Japanese for "Sir, yes sir!"). To be fair, there's a reason for falling into neat lines and rows in karate and moving exactly according to the instructor's counts – space is at a premium in Japan, and it's no different in DIY basement dojos all around the world. After all, you don't want somebody to constantly step on your heels or kick you in the back, and counting and synchronisation of a group's practice will help prevent that.

Another tool is kata practice as I've mentioned before. Once you've learnt the individual moves and revised the choreography long enough, you'll be in a position to express your own fighting spirit while safe from interference by an opponent, which might not appear very realistic but can be a way of finding your Inner Warrior (or your 'Inner Axe Murderer', if that sounds too NewAgey to you ). Again, it'll be your emotions that will help or hinder you. It's common knowledge that fear can paralyze you, and so will inhibitions. Standing alone in the centre of the dojo at grading exams and performing a kata while everybody's watching can be a daunting experience on par with public speaking.

You don't perform a kata, you fight through it. Consider the slow opening moves of sochin:

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I've written about my nocturnal adventure with sochin before. The initial slow moves are pure menace, small wonder why the gas station ruffian was so intimidated. Again, I don't care much about their practical applications (

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) – e.g. a simultaneous rising block and a hammer fist to the groin – it's the emotions they induce. If you perform them with power and fighting spirit, there's no way they'll leave you cold. The tension will build and build until it's finally released explosively with those first two punches, one of the several dramatic climaxes of that kata. Sochin is a fine example for the kind of martial arts energies I'm writing about here. Without stamina, you'll probably run out of steam in the middle of it, without physical strength it will feel flat and weak, without sufficient technical skills it will look unfocussed and sloppy.

The menace exuded by such slow kata moves forms part of the generic template of karate fighting spirit. You're still fighting 'as if' (= as if you were this fearless invincible warrior ready to crush anyone in your path). The moment of truth, however, comes as soon as it's time to spar, and that's where that generic fighting spirit will be transformed into a personal one. Some of that grim 'as if' kata attitude can be retained when confronted with weaker opponents who're easily intimidated; against stronger ones, you might just as well forget about it (in such situations, I always fight as desperately as a cornered junkyard dog ). The generic fighting spirit of karate is one of (recklessly) attacking and ever pressing forward but how your own will develop over time will be determined by your personal experiences during sparring. Some guys are consummate defenders, only waiting for a good opportunity to counter; others (including myself) are slow starters and need a few wake-up calls in order to get busy; others still like to play cat-and-mouse (unless they're the mouse themselves, of course).

What you see in countless youtube videos is generic fighting spirit at best and empty posturing at worst; it's sad to see when a martial art doesn't offer its students an opportunity to progress beyond that generic stage by exclusively employing scripted partner drills. That fake heroic façade will invariably crack under real pressure and expose the real you, and whether it'll be able to cope effectively when it gets dicey will be a journey of self-discovery potentially full of unpleasant surprises.

 

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Under Pressure

It's endearing to read

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one finds on the net about how martial arts can help children and teenager overcome peer pressure. Just dress them up in white pyjamas and gather them together in yet another group, whatever could go wrong? You could just as well claim that no jealousies or resentments whatsoever will develop in a church choir because its members regularly practice in the sacred space of a church.

I've always thought that it's easier to indoctrinate groups than individuals. With a single person, you need to be on the lookout for aberrant behaviour all the time and constantly reinforce the desired one by means of praise and admonition but with groups, it's enough to impress a given value code on them once and then let peer pressure take over. Furthermore, it's useless to distinguish between positive and negative peer pressure. Even the loftiest ideals can become oppressive and lead to undesirable behaviour and rivalries over time, and it's no different in a karate dojo. Accordingly, when looking for a new dojo, always be sure to check out the vibes there and simply walk away if the students make you feel uncomfortable. It may not even be the sensei, some groups just turn out that way – a few bad apples, many more struggling to contain those bad apples, others remaining uneasily neutral… it's never worth it to just toughen it out.

As always, it's more complicated in capoeira. It doesn't help that the overall atmosphere will be much more sensual than in karate, that instructors and mestres routinely begin relationships with students, or that capoeira grupos tend to be clannish and incestuous. For a time, I had a running feud with a guy whom I basically liked but who always insisted on playing with me in the circle even when it was not his turn, and very aggressively at that as if he wanted to duel with me; I never learned what it was about and tried to take it all in good humour. I'm moderately proud to say though that he never took me down even once .

On the plus side, practicing as part of a group will boost your own commitment no end. It's astounding how far one can push oneself at the dojo. To my shame, I have to confess that I'd never manage the same number of push-ups, crunches, etc. alone at home due to a lack of dojo peer pressure.

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What we have here is former international champion Christophe Pinna and some older overweight guy who nevertheless manages to keep up, although not fully committing to his punches, thus foreshortening them but probably saving precious energy this way. It goes without saying that being unable to keep up in such a situation with all the others (his students?) watching would have been a major loss of face and possibly would have led to some significant lifestyle changes on his part.

However, what's truly magical about practicing as part of a martial arts group is the amount of energy it generates. Storming forward together with a bunch of people all punching, kicking and yelling will give you a rush like nothing else. It's simply addictive and will make up for any reservations you might have against some of the others, make your inhibitions vanish (after all, the other guys are screaming their heads off too!), and give you a second, third, and fourth wind. As a result, the martial arts energy of a karateka or capoeirista cannot be realistically considered in isolation; to a large extent, it's the group that makes the martial artist. It's one of the factors that make tournaments so tough – the group's empowering social structure will be missing, and the competition mat with all those strangers like judges and refs will feel hostile. Capoeira street rodas are just the opposite though, playing with capoeiristas from other groups in public and in front of an audience will take the excitement up another notch or two.

Once again, it'll be your emotions that will propel you forward, not your conscious decisions. In case of peer pressure, these emotions will be likely a mixed bag, like so much in life. Eagerness to shine in front of the others, fear of embarrassing yourself, disgust at others' apparent lack of ambition combined with a certain smugness about one's own, etc. Social dynamics can build you up and they can drag you down as well despite your best intentions, and yet you can't do without the other guys, for better or worse.