Month: April 2015

Connect with your heart

We often forget how what we are and how we treat what is beneath our skin allows us to feel and act on the surface. Let us take a deeper look at our hearts and how we can be both more aware and more in control through this awareness of this center of our bodies.

The heart is a pump muscle made of special muscle type that exist only there and in politicians tongues. It is on of the few systems of the body which are both automatic and self controlled by our thoughts feelings and our tuning in.

The easiest path to connecting and affecting our heart is using our breath. It feeds the heart and mirrors it as an auto pilot with an option to navigate just like the heart.

Place your hand over your heart or where the big vessels travel in the body to note first the pulse and breath to match the pulse first with an exhale on each beat and then extend to once an exhale followed by an inhale.

Continue to extending your breath over more and more heart beats and mind if you are creating an inner pressure by minding the speed of the pulse.

Continue to hold your breath after an exhale and counting the beats before the heart begins to speed up. Note your heart pulsing and aim to feel the actual contractions in order to start your acquaintance with your most amiable muscle.

Continue to focusing on positive and negative thoughts in your head as you monitor your pulse and noting the affect it has on both breath and heart beats. The more you are spread within your body, the more solid will your own actions be in contest with the waves that try to sway you in their direction in everyday life.

Lastly on this post, Tense and relax the muscles around the heart and note with time the affect it has on the heart and your general feeling. The closer you are to yourself, the more you actually live.

A hole in the heart

We are all born with a hole in our hearts. We share our bloodstream with our mothers and it closes after birth with the first inhale.

We all live with this hole in our heart and so we do with pain and suffering and much confusion. It is a persistent paradigm that this suffering and pain destroys us and this must be addressed.

In any military unit, there will be a time of compression, lack of sleep and more in order to form new realities in the hearts and minds of the soldiers. There will be a greater knowledge of self and a lower level of fantasy regarding our end of game.

The point is simple and affective in everything we do. How we look at things including our thoughts and feelings affects how they drive and harness our actions. You can feel depressed because a certain lady turned down your courtship (I am very old school) and call her names in order to safeguard your fragile self esteem that has not legs to stand on or you can learn more about yourself and form either a better connection or a better you.

Drills:

1. See one person in your life and how they create pain or discomfort in them (A teacher, a student, a family member if you are polish 🙂 ) And see how your choose to react to his or her words and actions and how this affects you. Separate the bait from the hook and learn to act on what you really want instead of being led by a disconnect with yourself.

2. Look at one of the things about yourself that you do not like (Accent, movement, habit and so on) and see what triggers it. Do you get angry when someone chooses to be loud. Do you become quiet and distant when something does not go your way and has nothing to do with you. Avoid trying to change yourself and simply be aware of it. Use your self talk to stay aware of it and so it will dissipate into greater awareness and control.

3. Have a partner push your face or slap it. Allow it to happen without doing anything about it a few times. Repeat the drill until you are not bracing against the movement and think of ten different things to do with the frame of his movement. Executive each way of movement one after the other with no attempt to block avoid or control your partner and see how your freedom always comes from within. A person who is on his own course will not be controlled by a faint, by an emotion or a cause that is not his own.

Smile. We all already have a hole in our hearts.

Young and old eyes

In the beginning all is new and shiny. The world is ours to experience with no shame or construct and there is much joy. In the middle we plow toward targets and view through a filter lens both reality and the response to all the output within us. At the end we let go of the construct and return to see the world with open eyes and no shame or hurry. Only then do we see both the world and ourselves as we really eyes. Through honesty. Through awareness and through knowledge unmasked from short lived desires and wants.

How does this relate to my martial art practice ?

I say it is the root of what we do. You want to fight me and I want to go home and play with my son. You want to feel superior over your cronies and I want to see the sunset with my lady. This is how we live and this is how many die. Here are a few drills to shed some light on this type of focus in day to day life.

1. You are on your way to the car (red Lamborghini of course:) and someone asks you for a loan with his sharp buddy from the cutlery store. Do you try to defeat him or her and then get to the car or would you prefer to maintain a broader focus on the situation. Drill with your group in this way. Two or more partners accost you on your way to X and you need to maintain the focus on what you want to do instead of giving chase or trying to fix things.

2. You are walking in the rain and an old person falls down in front of you. do you rush to help or approach with open eyes to see if this is a trap or guile of some sort. Drill: Walk in a row or column and every so often someone turns and either asks a question or attacks as he or she speaks (connecting two usually separate modules of operation) and you must maintain both your person and your place in the formation. Soldiers may feel this relates to them more but it is in all walks of life that we are fed by our placement on some ladder.

3. You are at home at night and suddenly (usually there are signs before the break in that you ignored) a windows is shoved in or broken. You get up to run away or fight and suddenly you feel a tightness and numbness altogether in your chest. Drill: Try to get from A to B on your playground as two or more partners are pushing and shoving you away and each time you do this you have one less body part you can use. For example you start of with a hand that cannot open and continue to the elbow and then to the shoulder and then a leg becomes stiff and so on.

How we are today is just a blink in life and what is important changes very slowly. Be mindful to keep your scope broad and to be on your path instead of the path someone else wishes you do be on his or her bidding.

Follow your heart. Your heart.

the mob

You see them coming. You feel their hatred and the violence they wish to spew. You are alone when you feel this and it is sometimes the last thing you feel.

I do not like the word humility. It is a great tool in your hand when you try to have others submit and do your biding but when you replace this word with HONESTY you get all the benefits and never start thinking you are above anyone.

Can you beat two people ? My answer is sometimes and preferably without me in their line of sight.

Can you beat three people ? Again the answer is maybe

Can you beat a thousand or ten thousand ? The answer to this is a very low percent of success.

Let us take another look at honesty. There is a very good articulation for what I intend to say:

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing”

We all believe we are good. Even the bad believe there is some justification for what we do. Can we sit and do nothing when darkness spreads and later blame the powers that be for it ? No.

It is easy to drown the in day to day things. We get sucked into work, home, weekend and so on. No one expects the disaster to come and the ones who prepare for it are the ones most surprised. The first hours are mad. The next few days are a rude awakening and then there is a realization that there is little chance of ever climbing out of the hole.

The same can happen in reverse. You create the mob by placing too much emphasis on your own abilities or placing the response-ability in someone else’s hands. You shape your present by participating in it and by taking an honest look at your two hands and knowing from experience what they can achieve.

With honesty, good people can come together and do good work. With honestly we can achieve together what we cannot by ourselves. We light up the way for each other by seeing what others do not and by seeing what needs to be done.

Just one drill for today or everyday.

See what is in front of you. Do something about it with other people. Avoid the mob by undoing it’s beginnings.

For Ken Good.