Martial Arts: The Holistic Viewpoint

The martial arts began as an all encompassing (holistic) training method to help monks stay in shape and focus their minds so they can meditate better; not fall asleep during meditation. The ability to adapt the movements to combat didn’t come until later. They noticed that combining their meditative practice with fighting techniques increased their power and accuracy. That, mixed with proper diet and the right amount of sleep, all adding up to a structured lifestyle, made the monks of Shaolin Temple almost indestructible, as the story goes.

The holistic approach to training teaches that your mind, body, and spirit must be attuned to have real power. In today’s impatient and chaotic society, the idea of training something repetitively to truly understand it is foreign. I had a teenage student once profess proudly to me that he read the first chapter of a book and then didn’t bother reading anymore because he “got it”, he understood what they were saying in the introduction so why read anymore. In his mind, it would have been a waste of time. How many people today repost an article because they agree with the title, but don’t bother actually reading the content. Instant gratification has become the gold standard. “If I can’t have it now then it’s a waste of time”. The idea of “Good things come to those who wait” seems to have gone out the window.

The two extremes that we see in the martial world are either all physical or all mental. On the physical side we see people train weights, run, swim, and fight. Some take testosterone and steroids to increase their results, and this also increases aggression. I remember many years ago being at a gym with a friend of mine. There was a guy there who was a living wall. Just a massive, hulking guy. I guess something wasn’t going his way and he decided to start screaming at the weight stack on the machine he was working on. I’m not sure if he expected the inanimate object to respond or change for him. I’m sure to him, in his “roid” infused rage, that this display was perfectly acceptable and needed. To the rest of us, it was insanity. But despite all that, he was much like the Hulk. He had obviously worked hard to achieve his body, but at what cost? Obviously, his mind was damaged in the process.

On the flip side of that we have the people who train purely mentally. The ones who train in those “no touch arts” are a great example. All you have to do is look at YouTube and see that these people put too much stock in the mental training. They believe that if their mind, and energy (Qi/Chi) is strong enough that they will be safe. Now please understand. I have met a Tai Chi master who has launched me across the room with little more that a touch. I do believe that the stories of the old masters, and even some today, are capable of amazing things. Whether it is magic, or chi, or just well-timed physics, that is for you to decide. I can’t do it so I can only speculate. But I’m not talking about the one off’s who are highly skilled. The ones you usually see who train this way are often overweight and obviously use this style of training to justify their lack of physical ability. There are a few that come to mind but it would be in bad form to mention names.

The holistic way of training understands that there is a balance in all aspects of life. To be truly powerful the body, the mind and the spirit must all be trained, not necessarily in unison at first, but equally and regularly. In time, the goal is to move with full commitment in everything you do. The physical side is easy to see and understand. You practice punches and kicks, throws and techniques, but as I mentioned before, the timing of those things is vastly more important during the fight than the technique itself. To understand the timing of a movement you must be mentally focused and present. You have to understand “FLOW” and try to achieve the flow state by letting go of the concept of self, becoming so immersed in your activity that you forget about yourself, only acknowledging the activity.

To achieve this, train your techniques, the movements from your chosen style. Train them until they are physically perfect. Stay in shape, work out, lift weights, run, bike, whatever you like to do. Meditate. Focus your mind on something, if nothing else, breathing is a good place to start. Do mental exercise, which is not the same thing as meditation. Keep your mind active. Learn something new. Have a relatively healthy diet. Don’t be extreme in anything. Find the balance in all things.

Lastly, there is emotional health. Balancing and centering your emotional state is not always easy for people today. The idea that “my feelings matter” is another concept that has been taken to the extreme. Remember, all extremes are bad! Your feelings matter to you and maybe to the people that love you, but you can’t expect everyone around you to care about you. That is a very naive way of thinking. Some people will like you, some will love you, some will hate you, but most people will just simply not care about you at all, and that’s OK. Understanding yourself and others around you is important for emotional health. I like to relate emotions to a pendulum. If the pendulum is pulled or pushed in one direction it will swing back in the opposite direction. You see this in bar fights for an immediate example. Someone gets pushed and they immediately push back. When I’m teaching, I call this “unoriginal action” or “unoriginal RE-action”. You get pushed and you do the exact same thing back. It takes no thought; you just do what was done to you. This is an animal response. Monkey brain stuff. But your pendulum is swinging. A longer version of this could be a child who was bullied grows up to be a bully themselves. This pendulum swing is much slower and takes much more time, but it is still swinging. The child who was a victim learns that this is what power is and grows up to become that which they most feared so that they don’t have to be the victim ever again.

The reason I like the concept of the pendulum metaphor is because the goal of the emotional pendulum is to stop it from swinging, to find your center. There will be things that cause your pendulum to get pushed in one direction or another. Someone cutting you off on the road, a co-worker getting hostile with you, someone talking about you behind your back. There are lots of things that get our pendulums swinging. To stop the swing, try to understand where the push is coming from. It may not be directed at you personally. You cannot control the push, but you can control how you react to it. Think. Act. Never re-act. Reacting make you vulnerable to manipulation.

The holistic training found within traditional based martial arts is for more than just fighting, more than just finding your center. It is for every aspect of your life. Learn to have control of yourself. Learn to not allow outside stimuli to affect you. Learn to become physically and mentally strong. Don’t neglect any aspect of yourself. This training will make you better at everything you do!

Brad Dotten

Ronin Combatives