Dare to Become Powerless Before New Power Comes Up
The word “art” in martial art does mean something, if you are eager to treat it seriously.
In one sense, martial art training generally aims to change the way you generate power, so that in the end you will become much more powerful. It is usually achieved by practising fixed forms, drills and combat exercises to take you up across predefined levels.
A rough differentiation within martial art is the internal/external dichotomy. Generally speaking, for external martial art, while there are diverse propositions and theories for turning you into a fighter, its primary vehicle remains the same as the muscular system – you train up muscular strength, alter the way how muscle combinations operate by inducing new muscular memory, especially true if you treat your martial art as a kind of sports.
Paradoxical Power Disruption
On the other side, internal martial art often involves new mechanisms beyond the muscular system. Take the Chu-style Wing Chun that I have been practising as an example: You have to invoke your skeletal system (bones, joints, ligaments, etc.) and train to initiate your every movement by joints and ligaments, replacing the traditional role of the muscular system, which will then step aside to follow the skeletal direction to add its muscular momentum as magnified power.
This process is not just change or alteration; it is a complete overhaul of the habitual way, a disruption to the existing paradigm; it is a transformation!
The disruption is like this: You prohibit yourself from initiating movement using muscles (by contracting and relaxing), i.e. constantly holding back the habitual intent to give out power, often becoming hesitant on how to move at all, yet the new mechanism (joints, ligaments, etc.) hasn’t come up significantly enough for filling up the gap. The divide could be enormous! – to turn the skeletal system into the mastery role, you have to first activate the mind that directly instructs the activities of joints and ligaments right from inside. How to tap into such mind power has not been a well-envisaged training process yet, though the mindfulness approach has been commonly attempted here.
In effect, trapped in the divide, you feel you have no power – you keep on querying yourself, often sceptical.
This is paradoxical: You aspire to the power of fighting, but you have to become powerless first. It feels bad, especially when you find that now you can’t handle someone whom you could beat before! You are now placed at crossroads that forces you to contemplate the next steps.
From Physical to Mental to Spiritual
Those cannot bear the negative feeling will drop out. They may not totally return to zero, but shift to routes that are more oriented to increasing muscular strength, and thus more promising in advancement.
Those choosing to head forward will have to endure the negative feeling and the associated emotions. The period of being powerless has no fixed range, largely individualistic, subject to your own physical and contextual conditions. Sometimes for years.
Endurance breeds patience; patience solidifies steadiness – you have become more ready to keep on training the internal way and let the new way come up by itself.
Internal martial “art” trains both physical and mental power in tandem. The “art” drags you beyond the physical to reach out to the mental and potentially to the spiritual.
Martial “art” is also a doorway to venturing into the spiritual world.
