Watch the Fight
10 April 2007 -- Cheetah
Amongst the more intellectual members of KU, there seems to be a problem with understanding what I mean by total body movement. I'm talking about movement involving the head, scapula/arms, ribcage, pelvis, the legs, and most importantly the dynamic usage of the bending and extending, twisting and flexing of the spine so as to produce a dynamic equilibrium of change. When the total body is used, no part is playing a passive role. And the coordination of the magnitudes of intensity of each of the moving and stabilizing parts is accomplished at an unconscious level.
This unconscious aspect is what I mean by the wisdom of the body in action. The wisdom of the body supercedes any academic knowledge of it; science has not yet caught up with nature in this department. You cannot capture it effectively in intellectual terms. That's why I prefer to take a holistic impression of movement, one that is both visual and kinaesthetic. And that's why just 'doing it' in a purpose-driven way is more beneficial than trying to follow a detailed, prescribed instruction of 'how' to do it. What you have to do is the important thing. The conscious mind is incapable of integrating such complexity of information as to the detail of performing, say, a punch or a kick. Even if it was good information, entrusting it to the conscious mind produces a motor-oriented response. You can only concentrate on one thing at a time, consciously. So you end up moving by numbers.
But although it's misguided to get caught up in an intellectual definition of these many processes contributing to total body movement, we're seeking to understand this wisdom of the body all the same, at an instinctive, intuitive or rational level. And we can do this without getting lost in words. The trick lies in first obtaining good, relevant sensory information, and second, in learning to consciously let go and entrust the details to the unconscious mind to process. Good information into the unconscious mind=good result. By good information, I mean biomechanics that do not contradict the inherent reflex and behavioural patterns of the body that have evolved over millions of years to solve physical problems.
You can enhance the wisdom of the body, but if you try to replace it you'll get something inferior to what nature has already designed and bequeathed to you for survival. And that's what has happened in karate. It's a bad replacement for nature; a very bad replacement.
Now, how do you find representations of this natural movement process in action so that you can get a sensibility about it before starting to rationalise what it is? When it comes to combat, you have to observe fighters in situations where they are not consciously trying to fulfill a movement requirement (as of a tradition or a system) but rather acting out of necessity in a challenging situation in which you can get seriously hurt if you make a mistake. In other words, the performers must be driven to act out of necessity rather than on the basis of impressing a judge or audience. No JKA, no WWE, but a fight.
And the other obvious way to get a sensibility of movement in action (survival mode) is to look at animals. My personal favourite is the cheetah.
When you look at the following clip of the cheetah, watch the total body in action. There are no passengers, except maybe the fleas--and they're probably helping as well! Although he's limited by his endurance, the cheetah's movements are continuous irrespective of his failures. He can change direction and pace, and match his movement to his quarry. He's not thinking about this; he's responding to the need to survive. He's not stopping. The conclusion is the capture and the kill, and until he's resolved that, he'll persist until his energy system fails him. In other words, no staccato movements, no stopping and starting over after a referee's decision (was it an ippon or wasn't it?), and nothing done for show. He doesn't care what he looks like (but it happens to be beautiful, that's the economy of nature) he's just trying to get the kill.
If you want to learn from this, then you've got to look at the clip and empathise with the animal. You need to feel what he feels, at a kinesthetic level. Form a visual impression, and ask yourself the question: do I move in a total way? As a human, am I doing anything even remotely equivalent to what this animal can do? This is what the Chinese would have been on about with regards to the animal systems. But it's become very stylized and formalized--wearing the skins and feathers of an animal that has been defanged, declawed, and castrated (which is an old expression of mine which I see somebody over on KU has picked up on and started to use). Wearing the skins and feathers is only any good if it helps you to get inside the animal and take on his attributes and energies at all levels, mental and physical. This is how you touch your own primal drives, original mindset, energy systems, movement patterns, skills, tactics and strategies. Everything you need is already there in blueprint form. And it's right there in front of our eyes, but oftentimes we can't see it because we're looking at the wrong examples, or even in the case of the right examples, we're not seeing what the Chinese would term the essence, or the essentials.
Put a child in a situation never previously encountered, and he responds in these natural ways without instruction. But as adults we get caught up in this irrelevant detail, which is misguiding and often wrong.
So look at the clip and try to take in the sense of it. And then look at yourself on your camcorder, or look at your teacher, and ask yourself: where's the animal? Stop seeing what you want to see and see it as it is.
And OK, not everybody's a cheetah by body type. But even a rhino when pissed off, you watch him move. He doesn't stand there rooted like an inanimate lump. He fucking moves. And so should you.
CHEETAH
