Health

“Find a space and work on your grading kata.” Working independently was a good way of making us work harder and on what we needed most.  It also gave sensei a good method of getting around to each of us and giving individual feedback and advice on what techniques we needed concentrate. “Oh Jeeez!”   Crash!  Rosie hit the floor like a sack of spuds.  We all looked around wondering what had happened as we were working on our own it was the last thing we expected.

Welcome to Martial Anatomy 101 where we will explore how this wonderful complex mixture of intricate parts we call ‘us’ actually works.  Under our skin we have a series of different structures that hold us together and allow us move about the world.  For simplicity’s sake we shall limit our exploration to the bits that hold us up and move us around which are our muscles, bones, ligaments, tendons and fascia that also create the means for us to animate ourselves. 

There have been a lot of discussions on the MA forums about the nature of altruism that is; the ability to commit an act without any selfish gain. Altruism is the opposite of selfishness. In the real world such acts may include assisting someone who is injured, taking up charity work or putting someone else’s life before your own. Psychologists and Anthropologists have taken a keen interest in this area and through comparative and human studies argue that yes altruism does exist, but with good reason; survival of the species! This seems to defy the argument that altruism is the…

The human body is the most advanced machine ever created and housed inside it is the most powerful supercomputer in existence - the human brain.   This super computer is capable of sending and receiving messages to and from the farthest corners of the body at speeds in excess of 180mph and has over 100 billion neurons (brain cells) just waiting to fire up to compute and guide our body through all the functions it needs to carry out.  Every aspect of our existence including our martial arts, is the end result of a computation made by the ‘human super computer’.…

How often have you sat in mokuso (meditation) at the beginning and end of a training session and felt nothing but the pain of sitting in seiza (kneeling position)?“I can’t make my mind a blank…” Is a common complaint and ‘monkey mind’ (the mischievous wandering mind) seems to be the biggest problem for anyone ‘sitting’ without proper direction. Trying to make your mind ‘blank’ is a thought in itself - and therefore self defeating.

In the first part of this series we explored the phenomenon of ‘pain’ - discussing how it is the medium through which our body communicates with us.  Far from being a negative experience, discomfort and pain should actually been seen as a positive sensation by the virtue they provide us with vital information regarding the ‘state of play’ within our body.  Our troubles come from the simple fact that most of us simply do not know how to interpret this information and seek elaborate ways to ignore it.  We will continue our journey by examining how this ‘information’ manifests.