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Old 03-17-2012, 02:36 AM   #11
Lee Salzman
Join Date: Nov 2005
Posts: 406
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Re: cool blog post - Secrets of the Martial Arts Masters Revealed!

Quote:
Ashe Higgs wrote: View Post
well, the fascia will end up playing a role in the kind of "whole body" power we're looking to develop, but this is a ,more fundamental, and I think more important basic kind of exercise; one which trains you not only physical, but more importantly, MENTALLY. this is a great drill to build up awareness of the entire hara.

i use the Japanese here because i think it encompasses the whole center conceptually, which would include the dan tein, ming men, perineum / pelvic floor (hui yin) and the diaphragm, as Josh discusses in the clips. in I Liq cuan we refer to it just as the center of mass.

it's the ability to mindfully engage the hara / center, and maintain the engagement over prolonged periods that really matters. this is especially true regarding the perineum / pelvic floor.

skipping ahead to training the fascia without being able to keep the bottom from falling out is putting the cart before the horse.
When you talk of maintaining mindful engagement of this region of the body, are we talking of merely maintaining structural integrity via a holding patterns, or or actively mobilizing/moving the area to generate force from or conduct force through the area?

I rather like not interpreting it as skipping ahead, but as having your training occupy multiple levels. Keep working on an increasingly expanding whole while also continually isolating control of various parts as your understanding of how they play into the whole grows. So rather than building this foundation here, putting it behind, then moving onto that advanced thing there, it can be continually refining two different views on the system, one narrow, one wide.

I like these sorts of awareness drills because whenever I do them I always notice something I missed in doing similar seeming but different drills. I think it is something like contextual body stupidity, the body is only smart in things it has already practiced. But make a little change, and suddenly that can throw off any pattern of coordination that is not quite fully generalized yet. And then taking that understanding back to my practice of the whole, I almost always usually make a leap in progress there if I made some progress in one of the parts.

Last edited by Lee Salzman : 03-17-2012 at 02:39 AM.
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