The Inside Job

Paul Crick
Sep 2, 2018 · 8 min read

There were two days in July this year when I did more strenuous physical exercise than I’ve ever done at any time in my life. Period.

Two days. Six hours a day of training. Summer School. A weekend that was a fantastic opportunity to immerse myself in learning a range of fundamental Aikido techniques (with some old school and practical variations) at a new, luxurious, level of depth not always possible in normal classes; a real treat and so worth it.

The final class of Aikido Summer School finished at 4:30pm and by 5:30pm I had collapsed on my bed at home, physically and mentally spent, full of gratitude for the whole experience and fell asleep.

It was also an opportunity to be introduced to a training experience that I realised in the days that followed was both everything and nothing to do with the actual technical content of the training itself.

When I woke up, my mind was racing to understand what I had just experienced, how I had experienced it and what the lessons were for me. For some reason I couldn’t take my mind off what had happened across the two days. I knew something important had taken place. But what was it?

On the morning of the Summer School I had posted to Facebook a quotation by Miyamoto Musashi, a renowned Samurai swordsman of the 17th Century:

By the end of Summer School it was easy to appreciate the difference between knowing this idea at a cognitive level and having a visceral experience of it.

The latter causes you to pause and turn inwards — at least in my case it did — to seek the lessons beyond learning techniques from the weekend’s training. I knew there were some important nuggets of learning to be found to be able to make better progress on and off the mat.

On day 2, my mind had fogged up early on in the afternoon and even though I thought I was concentrating on learning how to apply techniques, I was finding it challenging to follow some relatively straightforward instruction from my teachers. I started to get tetchy and frustrated and showing this outwardly.

Some of the questions that rolled through my mind included:

  1. What does focus really mean ?
  2. How does increasing the quality of intensity improve the outcomes I get from my technique?
  3. How does my current approach to learning help and/or hinder my ability to progress further along the path to mastery?
  4. How do I accept and relax into the process when under physical and mental pressure ?
  5. How do I take these lessons and apply them both on and off the mat?

The one thing I realised from the Mushashi quote quite quickly was that there was nothing outside of me that was going to produce the answers and help me change to get the results I want. This point was echoed by Pat Lafontaine on an episode of Michael Gervais’s excellent Finding Mastery podcast who said:

If you believe the problem is out there then that’s the start of your problem”

So then, the answers lie within and to learn the lessons, there’s a need to work from the inside out rather than from the outside in. So let’s start with the first question, what is focus and why does it matter?

Focus

Focus is not the same as concentration. I know — it confused me too, go figure huh? Let’s rewind a little to get at why they are different.

Essentially, Summer School was helping me train my body, my craft (the ability to move my body precisely to specific positions in time, distance and space) and my mind. The ability to move my body — head, hands, hips, torso and hands — from A to B in precise movement pattern requires both an awareness and an attention to detail. Awareness and attention to detail are mental capacities. However, to train the mind we need to train the body too.

Science continues to provide evidence that overturns René Descartes philosophical dictum “Cogito, ergo sum” (I think, therefore I am) which inadvertently created a long lasting and artificial separation of the mind from the body. This separation has, until relatively recently, guided performance science and medical research down a reductionist path of inquiry that has treated mind and body separately both in terms of how to heal specific presenting issues of dis-ease and how to develop ourselves to our full potential through training.

What we now know from science is that our bodies drive our mind and vice versa. For example, the number of messages sent to the brain from our heart is at least four times greater than the other way around (i.e. brain to heart). They are not separate but linked and thus in training the body we are, to a degree, also training the mind.

As we move our body with precision and keep our mind focused on the movements we are training our concentration. Learning where to put your point of concentration through the movement — throwing a ball, hitting a golf shot, throwing our partner — trains our focus (i.e. how to place our body at a precise point in space, at a specific moment in time relative to other physical structures and bodies). Thus focus and concentration are two very distinct but related mental tasks.

So as we improve our ability to concentrate and focus, we develop an ability to become more aware through mindful movement and take in information in the moment to be able to execute our craft (e.g. perform a specific technique that a moment reveals to us where our response is automatic rather than thought through). Besides, by the time you’ve thought what to do, it’s too late.

Intensity

It is at the point at which we are physically and mentally spent that we can simply ‘be’. The force of the mind has been quelled to a place where there is no option other than to simply perceive without thought or judgement. It is at this place of direct perception — where we are no longer aware of linear time and just taking in information — that we are in a position to begin the work of mastery.

As I sipped ice cold water, sat breathing heavily and pouring sweat, I hadn’t realised that this place of simply being was actually was where I was almost at. I wasn’t fit to be doing anything so just ‘being’ was my only option! All I could do was perceive (and admire) the rest of the class repeating precise movements of specific techniques for the remaining 10 minutes of the class.

Being In Balance

As I have reflected over the weeks since Summer School I have been listening to ex Navy Seal, Mark Divine talk about performance training and he offers a number of insightful lessons on training the mind.

The first thing he notes is that training the mind begins with training the body. Where training of the mind is separated from training the body, the mind becomes restless because we have been conditioned to associate our thinking with an outward activity of some kind. Consequently, we fail to train our whole intelligence (or whole mind) which comprises our cognitive (head), cardiac (heart) and enteric (gut) intelligences together.

Through my own research into music performance anxiety I learned about the concept of our autonomic nervous system, how it is comprised of our sympathetic nervous system and our parasympathetic nervous system and the role our breath plays in balancing these two sides of the whole system.

The two sides of our autonomic nervous system Source: Heart Math Institute

Through learning to measure coherence between our brain waves and the electrical signals of the heart (heart rate variance) science has demonstrated what Eastern practitioners of Zen and Buddhism have known for thousands of years. Our breath is the bridge between movement and stillness and consequently is a vital part of our mental training.

When we breath in we activate the sympathetic nervous system and when we breath out we activate the parasysmpathetic nervous system. By balancing the rhythm of our ‘in breath’ and our ‘out breath’ we maintain balance in our autonomic nervous system — controlling our level of nervous arousal — and from this place that we can turn our attention inwards to concentrate and focus and increase the awareness in a specific situation.

Consequently, breath work is both a physical practice because we pay attention to physical sensations (e.g. breath passing through the nostrils, the rising and falling of the diaphragm). It’s also and a training in awareness and deep concentration.

By bringing our nervous system to stillness enables us to slow down the quantity of thoughts we have which in turn makes space to have a greater awareness of the quality of our thoughts (e.g. are we anxious, are we optimistic in a given moment or are we simply focused and concentrating).

So What?

Having ‘been there’ and also learned about this particular training approach, I now know to relax more into the process rather than struggle against it. Actually, I need to commit more time and energy to work with the breath element of my training to learn to balance my autonomic nervous system; seconds to learn and a lifetime to master.

Yes, I will become physically tired during my aikido training — though hopefully — more slowly given an awareness of the purpose of the process.

Similarly, I need to work on allowing my mind to be led by my body through the process and draw me closer to the perception point when the real work of training can begin to elevate my skills, capabilities and experiences on the mat.

So taking these lessons off the mat and into the wider world of work and business, how might you answer the following questions:

  1. When specifically do you let ‘doing’ get in the way of achieving something by ‘being’?
  2. What is the trigger that causes you to choose to resist allowing a process to happen? For what purpose do you feel the need to control and not trust through relaxing into yourself? When does mind fog happen for you?
  3. How often do you lead with your body first to and then consciously lead with your mind?
  4. How often are you aware of the quality of your thoughts in any one moment? (e.g. the crucial meeting or conversation)
  5. Do you simply train your mind and end up with a mind that’s full and distracted versus ‘mushin’ a mind that’s empty

Let me know what you think.

Paul Crick

Written by

Next Level Leadership coach helping new leaders embrace the challenge of stepping up into their next leadership role and achieve remarkable results.

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