To develop this innovative “Embodied-Mind Performance” program, two experts have come together to combine their respective expertise from two very distinct disciplines—martial arts (MA) and philosophy of mind.

Famous in the world of martial arts, Rodney King, founder of Crazy Monkey Defense, has distilled the essence of many years of practice and coaching MA trainers and clients into a set of routines and skills that have proven highly effective in sparring as well as in competition fighting. Anyone familiar with Rodney’s approach will recognize his unique style and insights developed in this course and taken to a new level for optimal mental game for sparring performance.

Dr. Christian de Quincey, founder of The Wisdom Academy, has specialized in a branch of philosophy that focuses on the “mind-body connection,” and is an established teacher in the field of Consciousness Studies.

Christian has teamed up with Rodney to apply the power of philosophical insights to highlight important aspects of martial arts theory and practice—mostly overlooked in other MA programs. Philosophers focus on clarity and distinctions in language that help us communicate ideas more precisely and effectively. That’s what Christian brings to this work. By teasing apart finer distinctions in Rodney’s approach to martial arts training, the Warrior and the Philosopher have collaborated to create a unique approach to martial arts that honors equally the importance of the mind (the “mental game”) and the body (the “physical game”), and takes martial arts coaching and training to a new level of excellence.

The first licensed EMP Trainers are expected to graduate later this year.

This answers an important question that has confounded me for some time.

Why are so many reality based systems so popular, in light of the fact that so many of these systems, fail to teach unpredictability, instability and uncertainty?

Anyone with real ‘fight’ experience knows that unpredictability, instability and uncertainty are the essential ingredients to surviving a ‘fight’. Not only are these essential ingredients, they are the primary ingredients once the fight begins.

Take some time out now and go through what is passed off as self-preservation training on YouTube. What you will find is many X military based systems. Systems such as these, based on their military heritage should be well acquainted with what is required in interpersonal aggression. Yet watch carefully, and what you will see is one person attacking, who then stops attacking, stops fighting back, once the defender fires off his cool series of counter fight moves.

What’s missing here?

The realities of the fight dictate that the person you are defending yourself against will fight back. If it happens to be in a life and death situation, you can bet a million Dollars that he is going do what ever he needs to in order to survive. Training cool techniques then against an opponent who does not fight back, is not only dangerous, it is a self-preservation lie.

The peddlers of these military style systems of hand to hand self-preservation training are smart. They know that the human brain is designed to avoid unpredictability, instability and uncertainty. So they know when potential clients look for self-preservation training, they they will look for training that is stabile, clear, and consistent. And this is exactly what these reality based self-defense instructors give them. They teach clients neatly packaged scenarios that offer the participants prediction and pattern.

For example;

• sequence 1 – against a gun attack from the front,

• sequence 2 – defending a knife that is held to your throat.

All neatly packaged into a curriculum that is systematized to offer the participant stability, clarity, and consistency and the human brain just loves it. The brain immediately believes it is now learning to be safe and not to mention it sells.

But the reality is that you will immediately lose stability, clarity, and consistency when deploying your technique against an opponent who actually fights back. And contrary to popular reality based self defense propaganda, once you have disarmed your opponent, or you remove the threat of the knife to your throat, he wont just drop down and play dead. It is a guarantee he will fight back. Why anyone thinks that someone who has the balls to attack you is a complete walk over, and not very skilled at the fight game is beyond me.

Reality based self defense instructors know this too. But they don’t teach it, because people don’t want it. It is not profitable to teach real self-preservation training. The irony of self-preservation training is that people want to learn how to defend themselves, but they don’t want their training to be unpredictable, instable and uncertain — because this means not only hard physical work, making errors and looking like a fool when techniques don’t work — but it also likely means facing ones real fears and psychological breakdowns.

I believe this is one of the major reasons so many reality based, I “will just stick my fingers in his eyes” groups play down mixed martial arts. The argument is that what mixed martial artists do is sport, but they on the other hand train for the street. For the ‘street’ guys to admit that mixed martial arts is the other part of the game they are sorely missing, would be to acknowledge that you just cannot train for the realities of the fight in self-preservation from a purely stable, clear, and consistent position. The fact is mixed martial artists train for unpredictability, instability and uncertainty. The other part of the game, the other part of the self-reservation equation.

In my opinion to be truly ‘self-defense’ ready, requires both stability, clarity, and consistency through working possible scenarios that one may encounter in a self-preservation situation (such as having to deal with a firearm etc), but it must be taken further (and balanced with) incorporating unpredictability, instability and uncertainty (UIU) — which is the playing ground of real fights.

Enter the Combat Intelligent Athlete

It is for this reason I developed what I have called the Combat Intelligent Athlete (CIA) program (the civilian version of my Combat Intelligent Soldier and Combat Intelligent Officer programs).

CIA comprises of three key training ingredients,

Combat: Here I coach clients through various self-preservation scenarios, that allow them to place themselves in situations they would hopefully not typically be in. Then to embody how it feels to be in that situation, and then how to effectively respond to that situation. This is where I coach clients stability, clarity, and consistency (SCC). This is important as the first stage of training to develop confidence in their technique, strategies and tactics.

Intelligent: Intelligence speaks to bringing firstly the Combat and Athlete together, through a training process that not only makes sense, but enhances a clients ability to bring the worlds of SCC and UIU together. Secondly intelligence speaks to developing the survival psychology skills to ‘survive’ a self-preservation incident.

Here I coach clients how to A.C.T:

Achievement certainty: I teach my clients techniques, strategies and tactics that maximize their achievement certainty, through honoring their evolutionary survival instincts and how in turn those very same survival instincts affect their physiology. When my client believed he has a maximum certainty of self-preservation success, it maintains his confidence in his ability to maintain high levels of survivability.

Conservation of energy: Here I teach my clients techniques, both physical and mental, that minimize their physical and mental energy costs in a survival performance. In addition understanding that a minimal outlay of physical or mental energy, allows for skills been taught and used to be applicable in any environment.

Time expediency: All training is taught with the concept of minimizing the time used. Reaction and response time or simplicity in application of technique is imperative. In addition the quicker a person can get the ‘fight’ over with, and exit to safety is the key to successfully surviving an interpersonal attack. However, consideration that some survival situations may not be overcome quickly, I coach my clients to return to conservation of energy and to be athletes.

Athlete: Here clients are coached not to avoid unpredictability, instability and uncertainty (UIU), but to embrace it. This is the one thing that puts a lot of people off when it comes to training REAL self-preservation training. It is far easier to pretend to be a Navy SEAL, wearing camouflage to training etc, but a whole different animal to actually put your skills to test. Here mixed martial artists clearly have an upper hand on those who hide behind the deadly groin kick. The understand chaos. But that is for another article!

Warfare is one thing. It is a philosophy of deception.

Sun Tzu writes about how warfare is built off a philosophy of deception. Sparring can be understood in the same light. Deception is the name of the game, as you will see below.

When you are ready, you try to appear incapacitated.

Coming in strong in sparring, showing your hand, how hard you can hit, or how good your technique is, can lead to your downfall. This strategy only works when you are winning. But if you use it, and you do not achieve the desired outcome, the consequences may be dire.

If you show your hand, your best game, and when you best game does not work, you begin to self-doubt yourself, you become insecure in your movements, and you second guess your strategy.

If there is one thing I have learned over the many years of sparring, is that your opponent will always rise to your game (or at the very least will try too). He has to in order to survive, he really has no choice.

By taking the advice of Sun Tzu, play a sparring game that makes you look incapacitated. A game that makes you look less skilled than you really are. Allow the opponents confidence to rise up, to swell with achievement, and when the time is ready launch your best game. Then go back to playing incapacitated. Make the opponent think it was just fluke. But in the back of your mind, you know better.

When active, you pretend inactivity.

Anyone who has been coached by me will recognize the following statement,

“never move at your fastest, because if you have to suddenly go faster, there is no ‘faster’ you can go”.

Watch most guys spar and they go a hundred miles and hour. They come flying out of the corner as fast as they can. If this strategy fails, and your opponent is not impressed or unnerved by your lightning attack — he will as all opponents do, likely rise to your level of speed — and if he is faster than you, surpass you completely.

When this happens, because you were going as fast as you can, you have no where to go. There is no faster than your fastest. What started off as a seemingly great strategy begins to fold back on you, you hesitate, you question your ability, and your opponent finds opportunity in your indecisiveness.

Instead, move only as fast as you have too.

Move only as fast as you have to in order to get out of the way of his attack. Change the speed of your own attack. Seem slower than you really are until the opportune moment. This is what Sun Tzu mean’t by remaining active, while pretending to be inactive.

When you are close to the enemy, you appear distant.

This is one of my most favorite tactics in sparring. I use my jab to give the opponent the perception that I am far away.

The trick here is to shorten the jab, by keeping the elbow slightly bent.

Most opponents expect that when you jab, that you will do it with full extension. But when you bend the elbow in the jab slightly, you know that when you do extend it, the reach will be much further.

Combine this with what I call ‘zig-zag’ footwork, moving left slightly, then right slightly, then back to left, while all the time moving forward and working the jab — will bring you closer to the opponent without him ever realizing that you have. This is what Sun Tzu meant by when you are close, appear distant to him.

When far away, you pretend you are near.

This is the exact reverse of the strategy Sun Tzu talked about “when close to the enemy, appear distant”.

Here the challenge is knowing that you are to far to effectively attack, but yet at the same time not allowing the opponent to know this. In order to achieve this, you must rely heavily on the full extension of your jab, while at the same time using what boxers refer to as ‘cutting off the ring’.

You may be out of distance, but if you begin to move in on the opponent, while firing the jab, coupled with circling on him, cutting him off in the direction he is trying to move, you will seem closer than you really are.

The opponent now realizing that he has no where to escape or to control the center of the mat, will panic, pushing forward, trying to break free, right into your prepared counterattack. This is what Sun Tzu meant by when far away, you pretend you are near.

You can have an advantage and still entice an opponent.

You are controlling the match. You know you are in control. But typically the opponent knowing this too, begins to use a more defensive game. In Crazy Monkey, our defense is the cornerstone of our program. And it is really effective against aggressive, dominant opponents. It is hard to strike a decisive blow, when the opponent stops fighting back and goes to a defensive position.

This is when you need to entice him to attack back. Even though you know you are controlling the match, right now you need him to fight back so he creates openings, so he makes mistakes.

Here you can pull back a bit on your attack, or purposively create openings that ‘entices’ him to attack into. All the while, you are ready to capitalize on the openings the opponent makes as he attacks. This is evident when the opponent has been playing a defensive game then attacks. Often that attack is out of desperation, and desperation is often absent of skilled technique.

You can be disorganized and still be decisive.

No matter how good you are in your sparring game, we all have those moments on the mat when we feel completely disorganized. I had one just the other day. But through experience I know that I can turn that around, and still as Sun Tzu suggests, be decisive.

In Crazy Monkey I coach what I call the 4 Drivers. These are the four gears that drive a successful, unbreakable stand up game. When I find myself disorganized in my sparring, I always default to the 4 Drivers.

I go through them just like the checklist my wife gives me when she sends me out shopping (and you know what will happen if I come back with an item missing). In the same vein, the 4 Drivers have to be engaged, to bring some order back to the game of sparring.

So next time you are ‘disorganized’ in sparring, check Drive 1, balance. Make sure you are not out of balance and fumbling over your feet.

Secondly check Driver 2, defense. If you feeling disorganized, and you make sure your defense is working, this will be a huge help in getting you organized. Nothing ‘disorganizes’ your game more than getting punched in the face.

Next check Driver 3, tight economical structure. Keep your punches tight, no matter how disorganized you feel. This is the same for your fighting stance. This is why we adopt a semi-crouched, high guard fighting stance in Crazy Monkey called the hunchback. The way you stand and the way you move, directly affects your mental game. Keeping tight, brings on what I call psychological armor. When you feel safe in your body, you feel safe in your head.

Finally once you have done all of the above (which should take you only a few seconds with training), check the fourth and final Driver, conditioning. Here focusing on how you are breathing is huge. Outside of losing your defense, losing your breath is the second biggest sparring game ‘disorganizer’ that can happen to you. Slow and steady breathing wins the race or in this case the sparring round.

You can be ready and still be preparing.

Adaptability. There is nothing worse than an overconfident fighter. You can feel ready for the sparring match, but always be preparing, in other words, be adaptable, and be willing to change your strategy if it is not working.

I can’t tell you how many countless times I have seen guys go into sparring with a game plan that is just not working, but they keep trying the same strategy over and over. As the saying goes, the “definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over but expecting a different result”.

Being ready, while preparing starts with playing adaptable in training. I try as many different approaches in sparring training as I can come up with. Not only does this keep training fresh, it prepares me for the real sparring rounds where I realize that my strategy is not working. Because I play adaptable in training sparring, I have a large array of possible sparring strategies to draw from.

Sadly I see so many people however get stuck in one strategy, and that is all they do. They are as they say a “one trick pony”.

I am also deeply impressed by this man’s passion and commitment to using his extensive experience as a fighter and coach to train others in the code of the warrior. He knows, from personal experience, the essential difference between effectiveness and excellence. For sure, learning how to defend and/or attack is a valuable skill. However, effective technique alone is not enough for mastering many real-life challenges—whether on the street, at home, or in the boardroom. Beyond technique, excellence is also about character. As Rodney knows—and tirelessly teaches—the best way to improve effective technique is to commit to a path of excellence, integrity, and virtue. Developing the “mental game” (mastering thoughts, emotions, and attitudes) is crucial for fluid mastery of one’s physical success.

Rodney know this first hand. And he walks his talk in ways that inspire all those around him. He is a living example of what he teaches—grounding positive psychology and philosophy in embodied practice. Under his guidance, his trainers and clients at Crazy Monkey Defense train not only to win against external opponents but also, and more importantly, to learn to master their “inner opponents”—their own self-limitations, often held in place by fear, anger, or arrogance.

I have now worked with Rodney in various capacities—as a mentor, a collaborator, and as a student on the mat, and the more I have the privilege of knowing and being with him, the more I realize how exceptional he is in what he does. He has a natural leadership ability to inspire others to tap into their own capacities and to stretch beyond self-imposed limits. Truly, working with Rodney King you step into what he calls “full contact living.”

I am deeply impressed by Rodney’s passion for martial arts as a path of initiation and transformation for young men (and women). He blends intelligence and scholarship, exceptional ability and humility, with a rare passion for no-nonsense physical engagement. I am struck by his well-informed and insightful evolutionary perspective—recognizing that the males of our species evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to be protectors of their families, clans, and tribes.

Most men enter one of Rodney’s “Crazy Monkey Defense” programs with a desire to learn good fighting skills. They are motivated at a deep level to survive. However, from personal experience, Rodney knows what most of his new clients don’t yet know: learning techniques for survival is just the start. In time, after long hours of practice, young men gain the confidence they wanted. They learn to “kick ass.” They can take care of themselves. But survival is just the first in a four-stage process of transformation that Rodney identifies as “survival,” “success,” “personal mastery,” and “transcendence.”

For the past few months, Rodney and I have been working to integrate his “Four-Fold Path of the Warrior” with “The Four Ways of Knowing” developed in my work as a philosopher and consciousness coach. Together, Warrior and Philosopher, we are collaborating to offer a unique blend of martial arts and philosophy for individuals and teams who want to get the most out of life and work—whether as martial artists, corporate leaders, law-enforcement personnel, military special forces, or people who simply want to experience the self-confidence and personal power of mastering full-contact living.

I wholeheartedly endorse the important and inspiring work of coach Rodney King

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Well one good reason would be to explore how a philosophy of embodiment  could help martial artists hone their “mental game” and improve performance on the mat and in the rest of life.  Process metaphysics is just that—a philosophy of embodiment that can be applied to life, on the mat, on the street, in the home, or in the office.

Process philosophy grew out of the work of Alfred North Whitehead in the 20th century—particularly his major work Process and Reality. One of the most revolutionary ideas in Whitehead’s philosophy is that reality is made of “events” not things.  Process, not substance, is fundamental.  The science of quantum physics has discovered this, too.

Whitehead presented another revolutionary idea: Body and mind are related in the same way as past and present.  And just as you never have a present without a past, you never have a mind without a body—or vice versa. In other words, every body comes ready-made with a mind, with its own innate, natural intelligence.

While Whitehead never practiced a martial art, his philosophy is one of the most effective ways for understanding the dynamics of martial arts mastery as the cultivation and practice of embodied intelligence.

Without getting bogged down in the details of his philosophy and his unusual use of language, martial artists can benefit from a basic understanding of how Whitehead’s key insights illuminate the process of embodied mastery. So, to become a “process martial artist,” it will help to become familiar with two of Whitehead’s core ideas.

Let’s begin with “actual occasions.” The main point to get here is that according to Whitehead, reality is not made up of static little objects (whether atoms or molecules). It is made up of actions. Everthing that really exists, according to Whitehead, is an actual occasion. In other words, whatever actually exists is always a moment in an ongoing process—where each momentary “now” almost immediately becomes the past, and is replaced by a new moment of now.  This is the universal process that creates everything in the world, and it’s made up of these “actual occasions.”

The next major, and revolutionary, idea from Whitehead is that every actual occasion is a moment of experience. In other words, reality is not just a random process, it comes with consciousness or intelligence already built in, right from the start.  Think of it this way:  Every process has a purpose.

Everything that actually exists has choice. This is true whether the actual entity is you as a human being, a martial artist, or one of the cells or molecules in your body.  At every moment, every actual occasion—every sentient being—has a choice among a range of possibilities.  And every choice is always guided by some aim or purpose. Ultimately, the aim is to maximize the experience of satisfaction (joy or happiness).  That’s what every body wants.

But within that general aim, every individual has many other subordinate “strategic aims,” intended to take us step by step toward a moment of satisfaction. Even though we are not always conscious of our aims, they are always present nevertheless. Most of the time, most of our aims are unconscious, below the threshold of conscious awareness. For example, since every cell in your body has its own aims and choices, these form a major portion of your embodied unconscious.  You may not be aware of it, but your body teems with its own natural intelligence. Part of the training of an effective martial artist involves practices that help him or her become more aware of this natural embodied intelligence. Every choice we make has an impact that carries over to future moments. Every choice that you make as a human being affects other people and the world around you. Not only that, it also affects the cells of your body. Likewise, the choices made by your cells influence the choices you, as a human organism, make.

Process martial arts, then, is a way (1) to become aware of the two-way dialogue between the choices made by your body’s cells and the choices you make as a whole organism; (2) to master the “dance” between the aims and choices of your cells and your aims;  and (3) to engage in a larger “dance” or “dialogue” between you and your environment, which includes other people with their own, often competing, aims—e.g., an opponent or adversary.

Aims Shape Who We Are

Okay, so what is your aim or purpose—how does it come about? How does any actual occasion  (e.g., a human being like you) form an aim? From Whitehead’s philosophy, we can identify three kinds, or levels, of aims:

1.    Evolutionary aim—The “initial aim” comes from the universe itself. Everything we do is influenced by the overall intentions of all other sentient beings making their choices according to their own aims. Individuals and species succeed in evolution when they align their individual aims with the greater collective evolutionary aim.
2.    Social aim—Every actual occasion (e.g., you) is influenced by all of the societies to which it belongs.  As a martial artist, this means that your personal aim is influenced or conditioned by all of the groups to which you belong (family, community, country, etc.) and, in particular, by the shared aims of the group of people you practice with.  The unified aim of the group empowers each of its practitioners.
3.    Personal aim—Even though our aims and choices are greatly influenced by the larger social and evolutionary aims, each of us always has the ability to make our own choices, guided by our own personal aims.  Our choices do make a difference. Each personal choice works like a “trim-tab” (a small rudder attached to the larger rudder of a ship, which helps to fine-tune the movements of the ship). Likewise, each personal choice is small, but it can have disproportionate effects over time.  The key phrase here is “over time.”

Importance of Practice

We have little say in how the larger evolutionary and social aims are formed.  We more or less simply inherit them from the environment and our social groups through a kind of “osmosis.” Despite their all-pervasive influence, however, we are not completely at the mercy of those “external” aims.

The key to successful performance in life, as on the mat, is cultivation of our personal aim.  Yes, at every moment, we always start by inheriting all the previous aims that have shaped our personality (including the evolutionary and social aims, as well as our own past choices)—but we always have a “say” in how those aims are shaped as we pass them on.  We are always responsible for the choices we make.  And those choices affect not only the development of our own personality but also influence the aims and actions of other individuals.

Choice is guided by aim, and every aim is based on what we value.  In order for our personal aims to make a difference and to achieve what we value (whether this is to become satisfied with our skill and ability to perform effective self-defense or to grow as integrated human beings), we have to find a way to carve a channel through the surrounding social and evolutionary aims.
We do this by exercising choices—over and over—aligned with our personal aims, thereby shaping the development of our future personality. Only through repeated practice can we amplify the power of personal choice to burrow through and make a difference in the wider context of society and the wider ever-changing environment.

Elements of Mastery

Initial aim. Practice starts with an initial intention or aim (inherited from our personal, social, and evolutionary past). However (except in rare cases), a single momentary decision is not likely to make a long-term change in our personal effectiveness.

As Aristotle famously said: “One swallow does not a summer make . . . similarly one day or brief time of happiness does not make a person entirely happy.”  It takes multiple repetitions of focused choices to counteract the immense momentum or inertia of our inherited, habitual past.
Repeated practice.  Therefore, to counteract the surging tide of old habits, we need to reinforce new skills or habits by making the same choice over and over—e.g., to master a move in martial art.  Repetition and practice lead to greater and greater power and results. Often, we also have to make a choice over and over again before it changes our mental attitude.

Maintaining mastery. Even after long periods of repeated practice, and mastery has been achieved, we still need to constantly maintain our standard of mastery through continued recreation of the original intention backed up with repeated further practice.

Group Effect. When a personal aim is practiced with a group of colleagues sharing the same aim, the collective power of the “social aim” amplifies the effect of the personal aim. Practicing together, therefore, is far more effective than practicing alone.

Present choice solidifies (or changes) past habits. Every habit is the result of constantly repeated previous choices. If we want to change a habit, therefore, we need to frequently make alternative choices. Martial arts mastery involves repeatedly making conscious choices in the present moment, over and over—either to change an old habit or to reinforce a desired attitude or action. In time, with practice, intention penetrates deep into unconscious memories stored in the body and leads to the development of a new automatic skill.

Another key element of martial arts mastery is cultivating expanded awareness.  This is so important to developing an effective “mental game,” we’ll look at it in more detail.

Expanded Awareness

As we all know, things are not always what they seem. Much of philosophy is about distinguishing between “appearance” and “reality.”  Likewise, effective performance, whether in life or on the mat, also involves paying attention to the difference between how things seem and what is really happening.  The more we pay attention, the more we expand our awareness.  And expanded awareness increases options for more choices.

To get a little technical for a moment, Whitehead talked of appearance as “presentational immediacy” (whatever our senses detect in the immediate, present moment) and reality as “causal efficacy”—all past actions that cause actual effects in the present.  Appearance, then, is the immediate surface of things perceived by the senses; whereas reality involves the full history of prior actual events that have led up to (“caused”) the present moment.

By paying closer attention to how the world appears, we can penetrate beyond the surface appearances and see, or feel, deeper into the actual reality of the surrounding world—including what’s happening our own bodies.  Beyond normal conscious awareness, our bodies are constantly picking up energy and information from other bodies in our environment. Every body is causally affecting every other body.  Your body registers the effects of what’s happening in your environment—including the bodies of other people.  In other words,  you literally feel the presence and pressure of the world around you.  This universal interconnectedness-through-feeling is the fundamental nature of reality.

Of course, most of the time, most of this deep embodied feeling is unconscious.  Therefore, to penetrate beneath surface appearances involves cultivating the ability to feel, or intuit, the feelings and intentions of other beings in the environment.  Paying attention to the unconscious intelligence of your own body is an effective way to enhance expanded awareness. Doing so requires mental discipline and focus. For a martial artist—where the central aim is to either neutralize an attack or achieve victory over an opponent—mastering this “mental game” is as crucial as mastering physical skills and moves.

This “mental game” involves learning to simultaneously pay attention to what we feel in our bodies (“causal efficacy”) and to whatever presents itself to our senses in the immediate, present environment (“presentational immediacy”).  With this expanded awareness, we can choose to take actions that either align with and enhance our body’s unconscious, automatic responses or that inhibit or override them. In this way, we can choose to amplify our body’s natural intelligence or interrupt a habitual way of acting that doesn’t serve our current aim or purpose.

Expanded Embodiment

Viewing reality through the lens of process philosophy can be beneficial for all of us because it offers a radically different way of understanding and experiencing ourselves as embodied intelligent beings.  We readjust our relationships between one another as individuals and with the wider world in which we are always embodied and embedded.

However, process philosophy is particularly valuable for martial artists and others who use their bodies as vehicles for self-expression (e.g., athletes and dancers).  The most dramatic shift in awareness available for process martial artists is what we could call “expanded embodiment” or, following some indigenous traditions, “the long body.”

One of the most important new ideas in process philosophy is the realization that our bodies do not end at the surface of our skin.  As Taoist philosopher Alan Watts said: “We are not skin-encapsulated egos.”

According to process metaphysics, our bodies are formed, moment by moment, from the never-ending influx of past events (prior “actual occasions”) into the here and now.  In fact, right now as you read this, the entire history of the universe is flowing into the particular point in space and time that is your body.  The specific way the universe converges on this point creates “you” as an individual. Even though every body literally contains the entire history of the universe, each of us is unique because no two points in spacetime are ever identical.  Everybody has a unique perspective.  And this individual perspective is just that—a perspective. That’s why the world shows up differently for each of us.  Your perspective is different from mine, and everybody else’s. Each of us sees the world through our own unique window.  All we ever perceive with our bodily senses is a limited slice of reality—an appearance (Whitehead’s “presentational immediacy”).

Nevertheless, the entire universe is present in our bodies—in fact, it is each body—as past reality flows into and converges on the “here and now” that is each of us as an individual.  This is the process Whitehead calls “causal efficacy.” It’s the transmission of energy and information from the past into the present, and that’s what accounts for the phenomenon of memory and, indeed, for the fact that every moment is connected to its own past.

However, this continuity is not merely the transmission of energy through time. Every body literally feels the pressure of the past flowing into the present.  What is energy from one perspective (the objective past flowing into the present) is experience from the opposite perspective (the subjective present feeling the impact of the past, right now). We literally feel the feelings of other bodies. Indeed, that’s what energy is: It’s the transmission of experience in a process where one body feels the feelings, or experiences the experiences, of the other bodies around it. Our bodies, then, are antennas that “tune into” the experiences of others.

Because every body is composed of the entire past universe, in particular states of consciousness we can expand our body’s awareness to encompass everything around us. Of course, this requires developing a special, paradoxical, quality of focused attention and expanded awareness beyond our normal mental states. Cultivating this ability is an important aspect of effective martial arts practice.

A successful process martial artist develops an awareness that his or her body literally incorporates the other bodies around it.  By feeling the feelings of other bodies, he has access to the aims and intentions of his opponents, and knows, unconsciously in his own body, what they intend to do in the next moment.  The practitioner who more skillfully and deeply feels the embodied feelings of her opponents has a decisive advantage, and is more empowered to take charge of the situation.

Embodied Intelligence

All prior events transmit their effects (energy) into the present (“causal efficacy”).  This pressure of the past on the present is also the transmission of embodied experience (from one actual occasion to the next). Since this happens at the level of cells and molecules—which, of course are so tiny, they don’t have any sense organs, such as eyes, ears, or noses—the transmission of experience is extra-sensory or telepathic (no sensory information is involved).
Deeper awareness of the transmission of energy/experience at the cellular level is what most folks call “feeling” or “intuition,” and it gives the martial artist a greater ability to literally feel the opponent, and thus to anticipate his or her next moves. Consciousness penetrates deeper into the body, allowing the martial artist to more effectively express his/her embodied intelligence.

An alert and aware process martial artist makes use of both modes of embodied intelligence. One, by paying sharp attention to appearance (“presentational immediacy”), he is aware of the other through the windows of his senses;  and, two, by paying closer attention to his own embodied feelings, he experiences the experiences of the other (“causal efficacy”). He expands his body, and so gains direct access to the experiences, aims, and intentions of the other bodies around him (because they are now part of his extended body).  A master martial artist, then, knows what his opponents aim to do in the next moment, even before they do.

Embodied intelligence, therefore, can enter the practitioner’s conscious awareness in two ways: as perceptions (e.g., images of the opponent’s actions); or as a felt bodily sense (without sense perception) of what the opponent will do next.

By paying closer attention to subtle clues of her body (noticing how her energy and experience shift in concert with her opponent’s—as one body feels what the other feels), the process martial artist both expands her present awareness (presentational immediacy) and gains deeper access to the unconscious embodied intelligence of the “expanded body” that includes self and other (causal efficacy). In short, unconscious intuition enters more and more into conscious awareness.

This dialogue between consciousness in the present and embodied intelligence flowing in from the past gives the process martial artist a greater range of options for choice and action, accompanied by an expanded awareness of the wider circumstances, leading to appropriate choices for action.

Remember, your opponent is also doing his best to achieve his aims, too.  Whether he is aware of it or not, he is also feeling your feelings, and this influences his actions.  You are both engaged in a dance—an exchange of experiences and energy.

The Process Martial Artist

Martial arts mastery, then, depends as much on psychological qualities as on physical prowess or skill.  That’s why attitude is crucial in effective performance. From the process perspective, “attitude” depends on our aims, which incline us to view and take in the world in a particular way.  For example, if our personal aim is dominated by self protection, that can lead us to respond to the world with fear—thus distorting its appearance and making intelligent choice less possible.  Or, if our aim is dominated by aggression, we may see opponents where we could be seeing possible allies.

To aim at mastery in martial arts requires an attitude of openness to what is, which leads to a greater awareness of what is possible.  True mastery of martial arts involves overcoming fear and aggression to achieve a kind of open, flexible response to incoming experiences.  This open attitude is cultivated by aiming not at self-defense or victory, but rather at feeling the situation as deeply as possible, and responding naturally to the dynamism of what is.
If you cultivate an attitude of open flexibility, you will be less likely to inspire anger or fear in your opponent—thus opening up possibilities for the transmutation of conflict into cooperation.

Developed by myself and Dr. Christian de Quincey, the program is designed to not only coach Crazy Monkey clients on how to develop their mental game for sparring, but equally important, how to take the lessons from the mat to perform at their best in life.

In the following video Dr. de Quincey discusses what he calls the Four Ways Of Knowing, in the context of martial arts and life. The lesson to be learn’t is that ‘intelligence’ is not just in your head.

To find out more about Dr. de Quincey’s work, got to his website at: http://www.christiandequincey.com

This means that as a coach, you can gain insight into your clients’ mind by observing their postural expression and movement. In the same light, you can change the quality of your own thinking mind by the intention behind how you use and express your body.

Body and mind work as a feedback loop. They are interrelated, and not separate as the French philosopher Descartes proposed in his famous mind-body split. How you choose to move your body and express yourself can change the quality of your thinking mind. And it works the other way, too: The quality of your thinking expresses itself through your body. The way we feel is the way we think. Feeling and thinking are embodied, and will be expressed in movement or postural expression in some way.
For example, in martial art sparring, our thinking mind may label a feeling as “anger.”  That emotion may then be automatically expressed through body movement directed at one’s sparring partner. In other words, while a feeling may arise, and may be interpreted by the thinking mind as anger, it is then held, and will likely be expressed, through the expressive body.

However, this expression of anger through body action, can have unintended consequences through the feedback loop back to the thinking mind.

For instance, if the burst of physical aggression (driven by the feeling your thinking mind has defined as “anger”) does not have the desired outcome, either in neutralizing the opponent’s movement, or is not reacted to (the opponent fails to panic or pull back his attack), the feeling you initially labelled as anger may change to frustration, loss of confidence, or even fear. This, in turn, becomes a somatic state, affecting present and future movement, thereby becoming embodied, feeding back to one’s mental state, causing even more psychological conflict.

This understanding is backed up by the work of psychologists Carl Jung and Wilhelm Reich. They noted that one’s neuroses (or mental blocks) are recreated every moment through our current attitudes. However, as Sigmund Freud pointed out, our attitudes are rooted to a large degree in our past, and it is the attachment in the present to our past memories that then create the neurosis or mental block we are experiencing now.

Clearly, in martial arts one wants to perform at one’s best. Especially in sparring, where making a mistake could result in injury. Knowing that the way you are thinking will be expressed in your movement, and that your movement will in turn affect your mental state, what then is the most desirable approach to achieving peak performance?

Beyond Control

To perform at your best requires first that you give up the illusion of control.  This may seem paradoxical at first. Surely, if you are  “out of control”—mentally, emotionally, or physically—in sparring, finding a way to control your mind, emotions, or body, should result in better performance?

Yet the opposite is true.

Let’s take thoughts for example. Thoughts are not real. All thoughts are approximations of what we think is real. Our thoughts are contingent on previous thoughts we have had. In other words, our thoughts are deeply embedded in our personal embodied history.

If you are sparring, but you feel your edge slipping, you might have thoughts about why this is happening. While these thoughts might seem to be related to what is happening now against your opponent, those thoughts are in fact related to, or triggered by, a similar or approximate experience you had previously. Your current thoughts, then, may not be related at all to your current sparring experience.

For example, let’s say you were bullied as a child, and now face an opponent that approximates your image of what bullies look like. There is a very good chance that your embodied history of that image will affect the outcome of the sparring match you are now involved in. So when someone feels fear or anxiety, etc., and then interprets those feelings in their thinking mind, it is almost always related to some previous embodied history.Your thinking mind takes you out of the present moment, and in doing so, disconnects you from your body.

The more you seek to control your thinking mind, your emotions, or even your body, the more out of control you become. You begin to attach to the story line happening inside your head, which takes you further and further away from the actual experience you are engaged in now. You could attempt to change the negative thinking you are engaged in to a more positive one, but this may only further intensive the negativity. Despite your best intentions, whenever you try to turn a negative into a positive, it still reinforces the negative because by its very nature the “positive” has to be contrasted with its opposite. If you use your thinking mind to interpret what you are feeling as “fear,” and then you tell yourself  “I am not afraid,” the context of that statement reflects back to “I am afraid”—otherwise, why would you be saying to yourself, “I am not afraid” unless you are actually afraid to begin with? That’s the paradox.

I propose, therefore, that to perform at your best in sparring (or anything, for that matter) it is best to give up the illusion of control. Bruce Lee knew this all too well when he noted: “emotion can be the enemy, if you give into your emotion, you lose yourself. You must be at one with your emotion, because the body always follows the mind.”

Being at one with your feelings and your thinking requires a completely different approach to peak performance. You need to be mindful of your thoughts, emotions, and movements, without trying to control their outcome.

To be mindful, as psychospiritual teacher Jon Kabat-Zinn defines it, is “paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, as if your life depended on it, non judgmentally” (Kabat-Zinn, 2006).

What stands out for me is the phrase “as if your life depended on it.”  This is an apt metaphor when discussing sparring (and, of course, in real-life self-preservation encounters it is often more than metaphor!). When sparring is a practice aimed at performance on the mat or, in more extreme cases, as a foundation for self-preservation, mindfulness could make the difference between life and death. In less extreme, and much more common instances such as sparring in the studio, sparring can bring up intense emotional and mental responses, where second guessing oneself could lead to injury.

To approach sparring from a perspective of “as if your life depended on it” means to completely immerse oneself in the experience. It involves paying full attention to what is happening in the present moment—and not judging one’s performance as it unfolds.

Mindfullness-in-Action

This is what the Samurai meant by surrendering to death (both literally and psychologically).Togo Shigekata, a Samurai, proclaimed: “One finds life through conquering the fear of death within one’s mind. Empty the mind of all forms of attachment, make a go-for-broke charge and conquer the opponent with one decisive slash.”

Shigekata knew all too well that  attachment to thoughts, emotions, and one’s physical performance can lead to defeat. Here, Shigekata’s notion of  “empty the mind of all forms of attachment“ serves as a mindful approach to sparring. To die to the past and the future, to be present, non-judementally, being fully in the sparring experience as it unfolds now, is to accomplish the “conquering of fear of [making mistakes] in ones own mind.”

Mindfulness training, or what I call mindfullness-in-action allows you to center in the present moment. It assists you to develop the capacity to uncouple from your thoughts and emotions, to self-regulate your attention, and to expand your personal awareness.

Mindfulness-in-action, the act of being present, non-judgementally in sparring,  opens you to self-awareness, making you aware of your automatic behaviors. As you learn a new way of relating to your thoughts and emotions, the practice of mindfulness-in-action will lead to changes in behavior—from automatic to mindful—that will lead to more functional performance in sparring.

The purpose of mindfulness-in-action is to develop your ability  to notice your internal processes (thoughts/emotions/sensations/feelings) non-judgmentally, and then have the ability to re-focus on purpose to the task at hand. By giving up control, you find the stability of peak performance in the present moment.

Mindfulness-in-action allows you to remain focused in the present. One of the important benefits of learning to be mindful in action is that it will allow you to recognize distractions when they occur and then use your mindful attention to re-focus  on performance cues that bring you back to the task at hand—which means to be fully present in the moment while you spar with the person in front of you.

Mindfulness-in-action is not a form of relaxation, nor is it a form of positive thinking. Its main premise is to promote and enhance self-awareness. Mindfulness facilitates the capacity to notice and be free from habitual reactions.

Mindfulness is not a way for you to avoid your in-the-moment experiences, but rather to become more aware of your experiences as they occur moment by moment. Again, as Jon Kabat-Zinn notes, mindfulness is “paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, as if your life depended on it, non judgmentally.”

Mindfulness-in-action, is an “active” approach that allows you to fully experience your sparring, without being mindless, which is to be caught up in irrelevant thoughts and labeled feelings, that take you away from the only time you really have control, which is right now!

Retention is important to any martial art business owner. Keep your clients happy and they will keep coming back—and your business will be well on the road to financial success. Get client motivation wrong, however, and you will quickly begin to lose the clients required to run a successful martial art business.

Psychologist Joseph Nuttin defined motivation: “not as an inner psychological state that forces a person to act in a certain way, but rather as a relationship between an internal need and an objective in the external world that satisfies that particular need.”
With this definition in mind, you could begin by identifying your clients’ specific needs and then focus on helping them to achieve success in those areas. This should always be your first motivational strategy with a new client.

Even if you focus training on your clients’ needs, you need a strategy to achieve continued success with them. Gregory Bateson, an influential anthropologist and psychologist, and a founder of systems thinking, noted that  “change is happening all of the time; our role is to identify useful change and amplify it.”

Strength-Based Approach

A strengths-based approach to coaching martial arts is a client-centered experience, where you as the coach focus your client’s attention on:

Solutions, not problems;

• Discovering and building on the client’s strengths, not weaknesses; and
• What is going well in the client’s training experiences with you, rather than what is going wrong.
• Simply put, the strength-based approach to coaching martial arts is about  amplifying useful change, instead of promoting the outworn idea that in order to solve a problem, it should be analyzed, reacted to, and talked about.

In strength-based coaching, there is always a solution to every obstacle and every frustration. This is the core message of the strength-based approach to coaching martial arts.

Practitioners of Positive Psychology have learned that trying to fix people’s problems is not very successful. Clients come into your gym with various  psychological motivators. They may say they want to lose weight, get in shape, manage stress, or simply feel more confident about defending themselves—all of these needs are motivated by psycho-emotional states that formed over thousands of hours in their lifetime. For example, if someone is overweight and wants to shed a few pounds, there is often an underlying emotional obstacle holding them back from achieving that goal. You can try to be the proverbial drill sergeant in the gym, forcing them to work hard on their fitness training, but the emotional obstacle is likely to remain. No amount of exercise is likely to change the emotional obstacle that keeps them searching for comfort food.

In reality, there is little you can do directly. You cannot make someone change something they don’t want to change, but you can help them focus on the things they do well. Furthermore, by focusing on what someone does well, you positively affect other parts of their lives they may have been struggling to change.

Most people get bogged down in life when they focus on what they do wrong. Conventional approaches to teaching martial arts often use the same “weakness-based” approach, and this is why the outcome is often unsuccessful.

Many traditional forms of teaching martial arts focus on a person’s shortcomings and relentlessly try to overcome weaknesses. It’s no surprise that this strategy doesn’t work: for example, a relentless focus on how out of shape someone is, and highlighting the exercises they fail at, simply reinforces their weight issues.  This approach often results in a client who is not consistent in their training, makes numerous excuses about why they didn’t show up for class or they simply quit training altogether.

When so much time  is spent discussing what people are doing wrong (whether in martial arts or in life), people never get to focus on what they can actually do well.

Most martial arts instructors focus on what a client cannot do or get right. As a result, martial arts is often treated as a system for fixing problems rather than finding solutions.

In strength-based coaching, by contrast,  the coach focuses on helping clients develop their inner game, while building a strong relationship with them.  This relationship is centered on trust, cooperation, and a solutions-focused attitude. The strength-based coaching approach is about encouraging clients to focus on possibilities and guiding them through their frustrations and expectations by helping them reframe deficit-based thinking toward a more positive attitude that focuses on potential, instead of allowing clients to become entrenched in what they simply cannot get right.

Imagine what a strength-based approach could do for your relationship with your clients?

The G.A.M.E. Approach

Following are four steps you can take to help your clients focus on their strengths. I call this formula for strengths-based coaching the G.A.M.E.

Ground your clients in what has previously worked for them in training. Use the memory of past great performances to spark confidence in the present. Now focus your client on what is currently working for him in the current training session, and then simply repeat it.

If, in a coaching session, a client does something really well, don’t be afraid to work on that specific topic for the rest of the lesson. It is far more beneficial for you to have your client leave a training session feeling empowered over one thing they did exceptionally well, than leaving the session thinking about the several things they could not get right.

Attitude—How your clients feel in their current training session, along with past experiences that have shaped their overall attitude to training, are strong predictors of who they can and will become through your coaching. Allowing clients to see their past successes by asking questions or creating discussions will help them become strength-focused—paying attention to what is required of them now in your coaching session. If your client has succeeded even in a small way in a previous session, using that as reminder sets the stage for achieving what is possible.

Mindful Motivation—A strength-based coaching approach recognizes that clients have the ability to do more than they ever thought they would be capable of. However, clients are often simply not aware of this. Making your client mindful of their ability to stretch and to achieve small goals is very important for their future performance development.

A client can be motivated to move into a solution-focused mindset by the coach asking questions and by using language that highlights solutions to problems. Whether we direct them at ourselves or our clients, asking the right questions helps to create a sense of hope and possibility where there may have been none. According to  Marilee Goldberg (1998):

Questions are the primary means by which doing, having, accomplishing, and growing are catalyzed-—and often even made manifest—in our lives. Because questions are intrinsically related to action, they spark and direct attention, perception, energy, and effort, and so are at the evolving forms that our lives assume.

Execute—Conduct the entire training session by focusing on what works for your client. If something does not work, then do not repeat it and, instead, try something else. Trying to do the same thing over and over, even when the client clearly is unable to get it right, is the definition of insanity.

Conclusion

The basic premise of strength-based coaching is that by focusing on what a client does well, you champion their efforts, and they will want to be around you more. Being around you more is good for them, leading to consistent training, and achieving their goals. Strength-based coaching is about taking the direct route towards a solution. What can be more motivating than that?

As a trainer or coach, I have always focused on my clients’ strengths as a way to motivate them and to build up their confidence. If you also adopt and integrate the G.A.M.E. approach when working with your clients, I think you will find that this is an effective way to improve both their physical and their mental game. And that’s the best way to keep your clients coming back for more.

References

Goldberg, M.G (1998) The Art of the Question: A Guide to Short-Term Question-Centered Therapy. New York: John Wiley and Sons