All Karate clubs will help you train your body. But, to become truly proficient, you must also train your mind and spirit. In this post, Sensei Mike explains the most effective way to train.
It was just before 8:00pm. on a Tuesday night, and the adult class at Sensei Mike’s dojo was about to begin. Elliott was on the floor wearing a new white beginner dogi (training uniform) wondering what his first class would be like. He had watched classes at other dojos but felt that somehow this one would be different.
There were about two dozen students on the floor, including both kyu (coloured belt) and dan (black belt)-ranked students. Everyone except Elliott was warming up. Because he was new, Elliott stood there awkwardly, waiting to be told what to do.
Out of the corner of his eye, Elliott saw Sensei Mike walk out of his office. As soon as his foot touched the training floor, the senior student shouted
Shugo (line up)
It was time for class to begin.
Students quickly lined up in order of rank, with junior students closest to the front waiting area. A junior kyu student guided Elliott to stand beside him at the end of the line. Elliott watched as Sensei Mike walked to the front and centre of the dojo. Elliott noticed pictures of three older men just above a shelf. On the shelf were a few books, a statue of an ancient warrior in an odd pose, and what looked like a small antique pagoda.
Once everyone was in place, the formal beginning of class ritual began with the senior student speaking the following commands in Japanese:
Ki o tsuke (stand at attention)
Seiza (sit in the formal posture)
Before the senior student could speak again, Sensei Mike said, “Please sit relaxed.”
And then, “Good evening, everyone.”
The class responded with a muted, “Good evening, Sensei.”
Sensei Mike continued. “I’d like to introduce everyone to our newest student, Elliott. Elliott, please stand.”
As Elliott stood, Sensei Mike said: “Please introduce yourself to Elliott when you get a chance. Elliott is here to train seriously. Please help him do that.”
After a short pause, Sensei Mike followed with, “Thank you, Elliott. Please have a seat.”
Sensei Mike continued. “As we have a new student, I thought now would be a good time to remind everyone about this dojo’s approach to training.”
“Training in Japanese martial arts involves developing your body, mind, and spirit. A good way to think of this is to consider your body, mind, and spirit as the three tools of your martial arts craft. Your goal is to become the best possible martial arts crafts person you can be, and to do that, you must have two things: the best possible tools and superior skill and experience in using those tools.”
“Your training will be most effective when you train your body, mind, and spirit in balance. Your training will be less effective if you just focus on one or two tools while neglecting others.”
“There are two ways to train. The first is by doing formal or explicit training, and the second is by doing informal or implicit training. Explicit training is structured. It follows clearly articulated steps and is oriented toward a specific goal. When you perform explicit training, you use repetition to improve your familiarity with a drill and mindfulness to make adjustments that improve the quality and effectiveness of your practice.”
“The second way to train is through informal or implicit training. Implicit training has no structure, follows no plan, and has no specific goals. Instead, implicit training is training for the sake of training while staying open to new insights that naturally arise as you train. You cannot anticipate what will come or when it will come. It usually appears to your mind as a sudden realization or insight on what you are training. And, your realization may or may not be related to the explicit training that you are currently doing. An open, quiet and peaceful mind is critical to success in implicit training. A mind that full of mental noise, that is unfocused, distracted, or impatient is an obstacle to effective implicit training.”
Implicit training only works on tools where you are already doing explicit training. So, if you are doing explicit body training, sooner or later you will receive insights on how you can improve your training. But, if you are not practising explicit mind or spirit training, your are less likely to receive mind and or spirit oriented insights.
“All martial arts drills are done to explicitly work one of your three tools, but they implicitly work your other tools. For example, when you start training, your focus is on training the body. But, because you are a beginner, you have to involve your mind in order to do the drill. And, as a beginner, you are not yet ready for spirit training. At this level, what you are doing is Explicit Body training, Implicit Mind training, and very little Spirit training. Your goal is to build familiarity with your drills while staying just outside of your comfort zone. In time, and with patience and persistent effort, you will remake your body and start to remake your mind.”
“Once you are familiar with the physical side of your drills, you will start to practice Explicit Mind training. One way to train your mind is by training hard when you are tired, bored, sore, discouraged, or feeling defeated. Eventually, you understand that these things were merely excuses your mind used when it wanted to quit. When you push through these thoughts and feelings and continue to train, you bend your mind to your will and eventually transform it into your obedient servant. Over time, your old thoughts and feelings, such as doubt, hesitation, and fear, will lose their power over you. In their place, you develop determination, drive, intensity, focus, and strong intention. With continued practice, you will gain mastery over your mind. Mastery over your mind is critical to gaining mastery over your body and spirit.
“You engage in Explicit Spirit training when you add intensity, feeling, and determination to your drills. A great way to do this is to use the power of correct imagination. Consider a karate student whose practice is to simply repeat their drills with no power, feeling, or intent. Could they rely on their training to protect themselves in a fight? Probably not, because they are unfamiliar with the intense emotional charge of a fight.”
“You add feeling to your training by performing solo drills and kata while imagining you are actually in a real fight. When you practice like this, you create the same state of mind, experience the same deep feelings, and feel the same sense of urgency that you would in a real fight. If you practice this way, you can face a thousand opponents, and overcome all of them, all in your mind. Should you ever need to defend yourself, familiarity with this training will help you to respond effectively because you’ve been there a thousand times before. This is just one way to develop your spirit. There are many others.”
“The key to progress is regular practice over time. It’s like learning to drive a car, but in this case, what you are learning to drive is your body, mind, and spirit. Your goal is to become so familiar with your practices that you can perform them with no conceptual thought, no hesitation, and with strong intent. This is critical because in a fight you have no time to think, and every technique must be your absolute best.”
“Most modern dojos follow an Explicit Body, Implicit Mind, Implicit Spirit approach to training. If a dojo has highly systematized physical training with many formal physical drills, but lacks or de-emphasizes formal mind and spirit training, then this is their approach. Still, if a teacher is skilled and their students are determined, this approach can yield excellent results.”
“But is there an even more effective way to train? History tells us that there is.”
Explainer
The Way of Training:
This is Elliott’s first actual Karate lesson because before you learn anything else, you need to learn how to think about your training. Here are the key points:
You are here to train more than your body. To face and subdue a larger opponent, you must use all of your tools – mind, body and spirit.
You are only as good as your weakest tool. This especially applies to your mind. If your mind is weak, no other training will matter.
Learning involves more than just doing your formal drills. All aspects of training either directly or indirectly involve your mind.
Pushing yourself when doing physical drills builds physical toughness.
Pushing yourself when you don’t want to train, when you are tired, bored or frustrated builds mental toughness.
When you learn to maintain a calm mind in all circumstances, there will be no room for doubt, hesitation, and fear.
It is not sufficient to just go through the motions. To be effective, you must practice your drills with intensity.
Then, you must practice while imagining that you are in a real self-defence situation.
Once you learn to face and overcome self-defence situations in the dojo will you be able to rely on your training in actual self-defence situations.
Until you do this, there will always be some amount of doubt, hesitation and fear in your Karate.
Patient, persistent, and skilful practice is the best way to progress.
The Origin of the Way
“There once existed a renown martial arts school that practised Explicit Mind, Explicit Spirit, Explicit Body training in balance. This school began with a very formal, highly structured practice of mind and spirit training, but no body training. Eventually, they developed their own system of Explicit Body training based on the martial arts to complement and enhance their mind and spirit training. This school was the Shaolin Temple.
“The Shaolin Temple was a Buddhist monastery located in the Henan province of China that practised Mahayana1 and Vajrayana2 Buddhism. In these Buddhist traditions, the primary spiritual objective was to attain enlightenment – the permanent release from suffering (Samsara3) through the practice of training the mind through meditation. As with other Buddhist schools, the monks at the Shaolin Temple would have practised many formal meditation techniques to help them identify and abandon the many causes of human suffering and to cultivate virtue.”
“Oral history tells us that the Shaolin Temple initially had no martial arts practice. That changed around 527CE4 when an Indian monk named Bodhidharma5 took up residence at the temple.”
“Bodhidharma is recorded as the third son of an Indian Brahman6 king from south India. As the son of a king, Bodhidharma was a member of the Kṣatriya7 (warrior) caste and would have been trained in the fighting arts. History records that his real interest was Mahayana Buddhism, so he took ordination and was eventually recognized as the 28th patriarch (lineage descendant) of the Buddha8. Bodhidharma set himself on a mission to bring pure Buddhist teachings (Dharma) to China. After years of travel, he found his way to the Shaolin Temple.”
“When he got there, Bodhidharma saw that the monks lacked the strength and stamina needed to engage in long meditation sessions. To remedy this, he taught a series of formal martial arts exercises called the Eighteen Arhat9 Hands.”
“Approximately 92 years later (in 619) Li Yuan, the first Tang emperor, faced a challenge for the throne from Sui dynasty warlord Wang Shichong and two years of conflict ensued. In 621, a critical battle occurred in the vicinity of the Shaolin temple at Hulao Pass. It was here that, at the request of prince Li Shimin, Shaolin monks surprised and defeated a detachment of Wang’s army, taking Wang Shichong’s nephew Wang Renze captive10. Li Shimin’s army ultimately defeated Wang Shichong, and in 628 Li Shimin ascended the throne as the second Tang dynasty emperor (Taizong).”
Figure 1 – The Shaolin Monastery Stele on Mount Song (皇唐嵩岳少林寺碑), also known as Stele of Li Shimin (李世民碑), which chronicles the history of Shaolin Monastery up to the stele’s erection in 728 AD11
“Taizong issued edicts praising the monks for their skill and their performance in battle. In gratitude, the emperor bestowed imperial favour and a grant of land on the temple, along with permission for the temple to continue to train in the martial arts. In 728, a stele12 which still exists today, was erected at the Shaolin Temple to officially record and commemorate these edicts. The Shaolin temple continued to enjoy imperial favour for the next thousand years.”
“To fully appreciate their martial skill, consider what the Shaolin monks accomplished in their service to Emperor Taizong. Buddhist monks, whose primary objective was training the mind and spirit and whose distant secondary goal was training the body as a pathway to enhance their mind and spirit training, defeated professional soldiers in battle and overcame Wang Renze’s personal body guard to take him captive. In doing so, the Shaolin Temple earned the gratitude of the emperor and a reputation as the preeminent martial arts school of the time.”
“In time, the temple’s martial arts reputation became so great that its influence can still be found in modern martial arts. The Korean national martial art is Tang Soo Do (Korean 당수도, Japanese 唐手道, meaning Tang Hand Way), with Tang being a direct reference to the Chinese Tang dynasty13 and an indirect reference to the Shaolin Temple. In Okinawa, it wasn’t until 1936 that the Okinawan indigenous martial art of Toudi (written 唐手 meaning Tang or Chinese Hand) was officially renamed to Karate (空手 meaning Empty Hand)141516 at the request of Imperial Japan.”
Explainer
The Origin of the Way
Where did Japanese empty hand martial arts originate? And, how is it different from just fighting?
The Shaolin Buddhist temple is generally regarded as the origin of Japanese empty hand martial arts.
Their approach was to use the martial arts as a way to develop your body.
This makes your body a more useful and effective tool in the practice of developing and training your mind.
Shaolin monks were monks first and martial artists second.
Their way of Mind, Spirit, Body training was so effective they were able to overcome professional soldiers and a personal bodyguard.
The Shaolin Temple’s legacy is can can still be found in modern Japanese and Korean martial arts.
The link by name between the Shaolin Temple and Japanese empty hand martial arts was removed by Imperial Japan.
It was removed because, at that time, Imperial Japan was engaged in a war of aggression against China.
Even though there is no longer a reference to the Shaolin temple in Karate’s name, their influence is still Karate’s teachings.
How to Practice the Way
“So what does all of this have to do with our training?” asked Sensei Mike.
“At this dojo, we practice Explicit Mind, Explicit Body, Implicit Spirit training for kyu belts and Explicit Mind, Explicit Body, Explicit Spirit training for dan ranked students.”
“Why the difference? Since all experiences start with the mind, and since your mind determines how you experience and respond to situations, it makes sense to introduce mind training first. By training your mind, you learn to respond more skilfully to whatever situation you encounter both inside and outside the dojo.”
“A kyu belt’s goal is to develop their mind and body to black belt level. Their training also includes some implicit spirit training to keep things interesting. Once a student grades to black belt, they are introduced to formal spirit training to enhance their martial arts skills and make their practice more practical and effective.”
“Martial arts training is transformative. Your skill in the use of your three tools will grow over time, and you will also grow as a person. People experience this in different ways, and it may on occasion, feel uncomfortable. This is natural. The key to success is to be patient with yourself and with your training. If you have questions or feel uncomfortable with your training, please talk to me. I am here to help.”
“It’s time to start your training. In this drill, your explicit goal is to relax and your implicit goal is to watch your mind. It sounds easy. Lets see how you do.”
Sensei Mike looked at his senior student and said, “Please continue.”
With that, the senior student spoke the next commands in the formal beginning of class ritual:
Seiza (sit in the formal posture)
Mokuso (meditate)
Zensei
Peace
Explainer
How to Practice the Way
If you are going to train in something that will help you improve, and may save your life, you should find and practice the most effective method for making this change. From a self-defence and personal development point of view, that means:
Follow the example of Shaolin Temple to mindfully train the Mind, Body and Spirit in balance.
The best approach for beginners is to emphasize explicit body training first.
Once a student has graded to black belt, they should be introduced to formal spirit training.
As you train, you abandon what doesn’t serve you, and cultivate what serves you. This is the basis for self-transformation.
A skilful instructor ensures that the pace of change is such that a student should feel only light to modest discomfort
A skilful instructor watches, guides and supports their students as they go through this transformation.
This is Elliott’s very first Karate lesson, and his first lesson in Training the Mind. This Explicit Mind drill introduces training the mind to relax. Only once a mind is relaxed can it be directed to your purpose. This meditation should be included in all Mokuso meditations.
Eastern Wisdom
Experiences are preceded by mind, led by mind, and produced by mind. If one speaks or acts with an impure mind, suffering follows even as the cart-wheel follows the hoof of the ox (drawing the cart)
Experiences are preceded by mind, led by mind, and produced by mind. If one speaks or acts with a pure mind, happiness follows like a shadow that never departs.
The purpose of this story is to illustrate the importance that Zen places on the mind, and the mind’s relevance to the martial arts. Zen holds that all experiences start with the mind. It is also believed that your mind can be trained, moulded and controlled using mental techniques just like your body can be trained using physical techniques. When trained and used skilfully, your mind will be your greatest benefactor. But, if left untrained or when used unskillfully, your mind can do more harm to you than your greatest enemy.
Q:What method of Karate training yields the best results?
A: Perform all drills with presence and mindfulness. Learn to focus exclusively on what you are doing. When you have a solid grasp of the physical side of the drill, start to add power and intensity to your practice. Once you can do the drill correctly and with intensity, add spirit training to the drill. You do this by imagining you are in a confrontation, and that the technique you are about to do is the one and only chance you have to save yourself.
This is what is Sensei Mike meant when he said that his black belts approach their training using Explicit Mind, Explicit Spirit and Explicit Body. All of your training should be done with mindfulness and presence, because your mind is always comes first. Spirit adds power and intensity to your drill.
Since your spirit arises from your mind, and your body has no choice but to do whatever your mind and spirit tells it to do, it is critically important to your martial arts training that you learn how to direct and control your mind.
Below are some additional quotes from the Buddhist canonical literature about the importance of training your mind.
Whatever foe may do to foe, or hater to hater, greater is the harm done (to oneself) by a wrongly directed mind.
Meir Shahar, “The Shaolin Monastery, History, Religion, and the Chinese Martial Arts”, University of Hawaii Press, Sept. 30 2008, Page 13. ↩︎
“Bodhidharma”, Wikipedia Foundation, last modified July 22, 2024, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodhidharma Monastery, History, Religion, and the Chinese Martial Arts”, University of Hawaii Press, Sept. 30 2008, Page 13. ↩︎
“Brahman”, Wikipedia Foundation, last modified July 18, 2024, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahman ↩︎
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