Body Mind Mastery, page 3
Test 2. You can also gain control of an imbalance in body, mind, or emotions by deliberately doing something out of balance, in order to see the imbalance clearly and to control it.
To illustrate: The next time you practice any game, spend a few minutes deliberately off-balance, then back on balance, then off balance, then on. You will see your game begin to improve afterward. If you’re too prone to imbalance in one direction, see if you can play too much in the opposite direction. If, for example, you’re too timid in your play, try being too aggressive. If your tennis serves veer too far to the right, make an effort to send them too far to the left.
This practice will feel awkward, like wearing a suit two sizes too small; nevertheless, it will do you a world of good, because when you can play with both sides, you can then find the middle and regain your balance. I explain this invaluable method of attaining balance more in Chapter 7.
Principle 4: Natural Order
Natural order accounts for progressive development through time. In nature, one season follows another, without haste, in the proper sequence. A tree grows from a seedling as an adult grows from an infant.
Only the human being is in a hurry. Our minds race faster than life. Ignoring the law of natural order, we set deadlines for ourselves, rushing to reach these arbitrary goals. It’s true we must make some goals; they’re essential for movement in life. Without them, we wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning. But rigid time goals are inherently unrealistic, because we cannot predict the future. The more long-range our goals, the less realistic they will be. We can foresee the direction of our progress, but we cannot foresee the pace. Life holds too many surprising twists and turns to accurately predict how much time our goals will take.
Progress is a function of both time and intensity. You can spend less time and more intensity, or more time and less intensity. If you overtrain, you may make more rapid progress and even enjoy a short period of glory, but you eventually suffer burnout.
Whatever cycles you pass through, trust in natural order. Enjoy each day, come what may, with all your energy and humor. Humor is a good sign that you have a balanced perspective. After all, no matter how magnificent our athletic aspirations or achievements, we remain tiny specks in the great universe; missing a putt or double-faulting a serve is hardly going to shake up the cosmos.
Natural Order: Psychophysical Applications
Everyone at one time or another thinks, “I should be doing better — I should be achieving faster.” Like the word “try,” the word “should” has little place in the mind of the master. “Should” implies dissatisfaction with things as they are. It is the ultimate contradiction; it’s the trembling foundation of neurosis. Our time is too valuable to spend stewing over things that are not.
One good measure of your alignment with the law of natural order is your level of enjoyment during the process of training. If you push yourself too much, for too long, you may lose sight of the excitement that drew you to training in the first place.
So balance your life between pleasure and pain. Notice the natural order of things. Make use of whatever you meet on your path. Follow a step-by-step process, and trust what comes.
Working within natural law, you will not only find self-discovery and success, but you will enjoy life more with each passing year. Training mirrors life; life mirrors training. By examining one, you come to understand the other.
Alignment with natural laws provides the first key to success in sport and life. In the following chapters you can apply these principles to transcend limiting beliefs and behaviors, hurdle emotional blocks, and develop body mind talent — all steps in your journey up the mountain path.
CHAPTER TWO
The Power of Awareness
Life is a great school, and nature is the ultimate teacher, but without awareness, or free attention, we miss life’s teachings. Awareness transforms life experience into wisdom and confusion into clarity. Awareness is the beginning of all growth.
Learning is more than knowing something new; rather, it involves doing something new. The process of learning naturally involves errors. Masters make as many mistakes as anyone; but they learn from them. To correct and learn from an error, you need to become aware of it. Awareness of a problem is the beginning of the solution.
Body mind masters are willing to make fools of themselves, to accept their feelings of embarrassment or awkwardness, to begin anew and continue practicing.
The usual measure of progress in a sport is the results: if you win the match, sink the putt, accomplish your goal, then everything seems fine, but if you lose, you know something is wrong. Awareness transforms that vague “something” into a specific action you can correct or improve. As Lily Tomlin once said, “I always wanted to be somebody, but maybe I should have been more specific.”
Most problems precisely defined are already partially solved.
— Harry Lorayne
If awareness were an intellectual capacity, then infants couldn’t learn. But awareness extends far beyond conceptual understanding to a whole-body sensitivity arrived at through direct experience. Trying to learn or improve a skill without specific awareness is like trying to apply a postage stamp without adhesive — it won’t stick.
Learn to think with the whole body.
— Taisen Deshimaru, Swordmaster
In training, as in life, errors are always with us. Learning is a process of refining errors to the point where they no longer prevent our desired goal. Errors exist even in our space program, but they have been minimized to an almost invisible level. Even the “perfect 10.0” routines of Olympic gymnasts contain errors, but they are small enough to be considered irrelevant.
Smaller errors make the master.
On our journey to mastery, become aware of weaknesses as well as strengths. Awareness of our weaknesses enables us to strengthen them and improve consistently. Awareness of our strengths breeds confidence and satisfaction.
Awareness, Disillusion, and Success
Awareness heals, but healing isn’t always pleasant. Like a heavy drinker’s first realization that “I am an alcoholic,” awareness may be painful, but it frees us from illusion and empowers growth.
During my first few months training in the martial art of Aikido, I felt frustrated. Proper execution of the Aikido movements requires relaxation even while under attack. In the face of this demand to relax, I began to notice tension in my shoulders. At first I thought the training was making me tense. In fact, it seemed I was more tense than ever. But I came to realize that I was only becoming aware of tension I had always carried.
This awareness, while troubling, allowed me to see and move beyond my tension tendencies and to learn dynamic relaxation.
As my freshmen on the Stanford gymnastics team became more aware of their errors, they would tell me in frustration how they “used to be better in high school” and were “going downhill.” This concerned me — until I saw films of them the year before, when it became obvious that they had improved radically. Now aware of their errors, they had raised their standards.
This feeling that you are “getting worse” is a sign of growing awareness. When writers are able to read their last draft and see their weaknesses, their writing progresses. Awareness in sport, in relationships, in any learning, often entails a momentary drop in self-esteem, a dent in self-image. But this willingness to clearly see and acknowledge our many mistakes — to doggedly but temporarily make a fool of ourselves — opens the door to body mind mastery. When we feel like we’re “getting worse,” we are finally ready to get much better.
Whole-Body Awareness
Most of us are willing to see our physical mistakes. The path of body mind mastery also entails the willingness to acknowledge our mental and emotional foibles — to see ourselves in a less flattering light. We all have shadow qualities, traits that are still immature or underdeveloped. These traits often remain hidden — especially from ourselves and our conscious awareness — only to surface momentarily in times of upset, pressure, or crisis.
We resist awareness of mental and emotional weaknesses because it’s easier to see physical errors — you can visually observe the results. If you swing and miss the baseball, slice the golf shot, or serve into the net, for example, it’s pretty obvious that you are making an error. Emotional and mental weaknesses are much more difficult to observe because the results of such weaknesses aren’t as obvious or immediate.
We also identify more closely with our minds and emotions than we do with our bodies. Most people are more reluctant to acknowledge mental or emotional illness than physical illness. It stings more when we’re called stupid or immature than when we’re called physically awkward. What we identify with, we tend to defend.
An ice-cream vendor, pushing his cart through a park, stopped to listen to someone sermonizing. As the speaker yelled, “Down with Fascism! … Down with Communism … Down with big government!” he ice-cream vendor nodded and smiled in agreement. But his expression suddenly soured and he walked off, muttering under his breath, when the speaker added, “Down with ice cream!”
Awareness is like sunlight over a dark well. You don’t see the creatures crawling around down there until the light of awareness shines directly on them. This leads to humility, compassion, and freedom. Many of us, when faced with a relationship crisis or difficulty, have seen parts of ourselves we’re not too crazy about. The same kind of awareness emerges in the fires of training and competition. After many years as an athlete and coach (and husband and father) I’ve had many opportunities to recognize my own foolishness. It’s never easy on my self-esteem, but these moments of insight and acceptance have been essential to the progress I’ve made as an athlete and human being.
Then the time came when the risk it took to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
— Anaïs Nin
For children, errors are natural; nearly all of what young children do is make errors — learning to walk, drink from a glass, or ride a bike. Kids wet their pants, fall over, drop things. Yet they learn with a pace beyond nearly any adult. Once you drop your defenses and become “like little children” on your journey toward mastery, your learning accelerates.
Opening to the light of awareness provides a significant leap up the mountain path toward the peaks of body mind mastery.
The Growth of Awareness
Awareness, like everything else, is subject to the law of natural order, expanding from the gross (noticing you’ve just stubbed your toe) to the subtle (noticing that your energy and attention are out of balance). The following story illustrates the respect for refined awareness common in the East, especially in the martial arts traditions:
An old samurai warrior knew his time on earth was nearing an end and wished to bequeath his sword to the brightest of his three sons. He designed a test.
He asked a friend to hide just inside his barn, above the doorway, and gave him three small bags of rice. He then invited each son inside, one at a time.
The first son, after feeling the rice bag fall on his head, drew his sword and cut the bag in half before it hit the ground.
The second son halved the bag even before it hit his head.
The third son, sensing something amiss, declined to enter the barn — and so earned his father’s sword.
I learned to speak as I learned to skate or cycle: by doggedly making a fool of myself until I got used to it.
— George Bernard Shaw
Beginners, by definition, are not yet aware of their errors in a particular skill. One sage reminds us, “We’re all ignorant; only on different subjects.” No matter what our accomplishments in certain areas of life, we’re all beginners as we enter new territory.
The Margaret Analogy
At Oberlin College, I once had the pleasure of coaching a dedicated diver named Margaret. Her progressive growth of awareness in learning a particular dive parallels the stages we all go through in training — and in daily life.
After her first attempt at a dive, she had no awareness of what she had done wrong and had to rely entirely on my feedback.
After several attempts, she could recount what she had done incorrectly after the dive was finished and the errors had been made.
Before long she was becoming aware of her errors during the dive.
Finally, in one attempt, her awareness was integrated with body, mind, and emotions before the dive, and the errors were corrected before they were made. The dive was beautiful.
This example has profound implications for daily life, because we go through the same process in all kinds of learning situations. In athletics or in everyday life, self-awareness on all levels — physical, emotional, mental — must touch the core of your being, to the point of catalyzing a change in behavior. Intellectual awareness alone isn’t enough.
Now comes a key point: Although we can indirectly influence our mind and emotions, we have little or no direct control over thoughts or feelings, which rise and pass like weather fronts. We have significantly more control over our behavior — despite what we are, or are not, thinking or feeling. In fact, our behavior (how we move our arms, legs, and mouth) is the only thing we can directly control. This is a great secret of success.
Feedback Aids to Awareness
When you know you’re doing something wrong but don’t know exactly what it is, use these awareness aids:
Other Students. The good and bad examples of those training with you can provide valuable lessons and models. Beginners remind you of your own progress. When you observe them improving as you did, you understand that you can also continue to improve. Advanced students serve as examples. Learning from example is the way infants learn — probably the most natural way to learn. Advanced athletes can inspire you by showing that high-level skills are possible.
Visual Feedback. Nothing serves the growth of awareness so instantly and so well as seeing a film or videotape of your own movements. Even a mirror can help you become realistic about your strengths and weaknesses.
The Coach. A videotape or film can show you what you look like, but only a teacher can pinpoint your specific errors in order of priority. A teacher is an intelligent feedback aid who can analyze and communicate information about errors and the ways to correct them. The coach or teacher who has journeyed farther up the mountain can show you how to avoid the pitfalls and overcome the hurdles.
Exaggeration. If you have no access to films or teachers or videotapes and want a shortcut to awareness, then deliberately exaggerate your errors. If you are slicing your golf ball or constantly falling in one direction, do it even worse — on purpose. In this way the error becomes clarified and your awareness expands. At the same time, your errors become conscious, deliberate, and controlled instead of unconscious — far easier to correct.
CHAPTER THREE
Preparation
If I had six hours to chop down a tree,
I’d spend the first four hours sharpening the axe.
— Abraham Lincoln
Preparation is to the athlete as the foundation is to a house. If you lack a solid foundation, you compromise the entire structure. Strong foundations are the first and most important step toward success in sport and life. A strong foundation is based upon complete preparation of body, mind, and emotions.
If you don’t prepare fully, you risk developing bad or compensatory habits. Bad habits are like a tall tree or comfortable bed: easy to get into but hard to get out of. In fact, nearly every difficulty you face in your chosen training can be traced to skipping steps in the past — to a weakness in your foundation.
Champions form the habit of doing what most people find boring or uncomfortable. The secret of success is no secret at all — it comes down to sound preparation, a step-by-step process, and focused effort through the hurdles, peaks, and valleys. World-class and professional athletes regularly return to basics and strengthen their foundation. The reason most of us experience so many difficulties in our own training is that we were never taught to build a foundation based on mind and emotions — we just went straight to physical skills.
Few of us learned how to learn. The way most children learn athletics in school amounts to pure Darwinian survival of the fittest. The coach or teacher runs everyone through their paces and, in the end, the survivors make varsity; the others, who may learn more slowly, but learn well, are often left behind and may never discover their own potential.
As stated in the law of natural order, all things in nature have a gestation period and must undergo the proper stages in order to develop. Body mind mastery begins with profound preparation — the most difficult and important part of any learning process.
Ninety-five percent of making a vegetable stir-fry lies in the preparation: heating the wok to just the right temperature, cleaning and slicing the vegetables, making sure they are crisp. Then the cooking is easy. In painting a car, you must first go through the arduous work of cleaning the body, sanding it, filling in nicks, pounding out dents, sanding again, cleaning again, masking, priming — then, swish! The painting is easy. What would the paint job look like if you didn’t prepare the auto properly first?
Physical skills are just the tip of the iceberg. The greater part — preparation — is invisible. Without this hidden foundation, the iceberg would topple. Creating success in sport and life is like building a house. The results are the visible part of the structure. Physical talent makes up the foundation of the house. Mental and emotional talent — internal qualities like clear focus and strong will — are the ground on which the house and foundation stand. No one drives by a house and says, “Wow! Will you look at that classy foundation!”
But without the foundation, the house will not stand.
A sage once said to me, “When in a hurry, take the long, sure way.” There are no shortcuts up the mountain path. Say two spaceships race to Mars. One takes off earlier, but fails to prepare with sufficient fuel or provisions. The other ship remains, taking on a full supply of fuel. The first has a head start, but it’s clear which will finish the journey.
