And here I arrive at last at the phenomenon that started me into thinking on body over mind.
As some of you may already know, I tested for my yellow belt last week, and I was all sorts of excited and also anxious about it: what if I went to do whatever it was I was supposed to do, and I just froze? It wasn't about worrying about failing the test so much; our venerable teacher is not one to flunk us if we flub up. I think her policy is that she wouldn't let us test if she didn't already know from regular classroom practice that we were able to do what we needed. So if we get a case of the nerves during test, that gets chalked up as just nerves, not incompetence. Even if that's not her exactly policy, it's an interesting teaching point that I'll have to carry over if I ever manage to make it back into the classroom again....
Anyway. The anxiety was mostly self-generated; I had a standard (i.e., perfection) that I wanted to perform to, and worried I'd fall short. Lordie.
So before the test, I did a little last-minute practice. Then some sun salutations to find my calm. I like to think it worked. There were two moments in particular where the body-over-mind thing kicked in, and I'm mighty glad it did, both because it saved me from freezing up and it also just felt pretty cool, too.
For whatever belt one is at, there's a form - a connected series of movements - that you learn. You know, a white belt form, yellow belt form, red belt form, etc. And for belt testing, you perform solo the form for the belt you're currently at. So for me, that meant doing the white belt form, for which there are 6 parts. Easy enough to understand the schematics. But I am somewhere around 98% positive that I >completely< left a part out. Either that, or I started one part and finished it with the end of a different part.
What was interesting was that by the time the thought triggered in my head "you left something out!" I was already bodily past it. I was instead wrapped up in the flow of movement that, even if it wasn't exactly right, was connected and worked together to keep my body in a place that the head job that could have threatened to trip me up didn't have a place to gain traction and I slipped right past it. That was pretty awesome.
The second place that body-over-mind was pretty amazing was when I got to break my very first board. This came at the end of testing, and from what I perceived from people higher in rank than I, it is apparently one of the coolest things of all to do. I couldn't tell; I've never broken a board before so I had no clear expectations at all as to what it would be like.
Kris was so patient in getting me set up - helping me focus, helping me aim, and interestingly (to me; I wouldn't have thought of it but it makes complete sense) to not imagine my target being the board, but beyond the board. Have it be as though I'm doing a regular palm strike, like toward her chest, and a board just happens to be in the way. It was like a "there is no spoon" sort of moment. Because when it came time to do it, I didn't think about the board, I didn't think much about anything; just chi-ed up, turned and struck and - the really weird part - is that it felt and sounded to my ear like I was already completely through the palm strike before I heard the sound of the board breaking. It was as though it really was just about being in the movement, and the board being there and cracking in two was like an afterthought.
If I gave it much thought at all before, I imagined the excitement about breaking boards was just that - a weird thrill about simply breaking stuff. And maybe for some it is. But for my first experience, for where I am now at least, it meant something else. It meant being presented with a physical obstacle, and then managing to put myself in a place where I can move through it as though it isn't even there.
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