Mind Like What?

“Mind Like Water” is a simple concept that makes instant sense until you try and apply it. Water responds exactly to whatever it encounters. It doesn’t pause, doesn’t reflect. It doesn’t hold onto the past, does not try to make things into what they’re not.

How can we take something as complex, often neurotic as a mind and let it react as simply as the element of water? I don’t know about your mind, but mine is full of things I wish would happen, things I need to get done, fears about the world, and happy memories. How can this complex and often uncontrollable organ (or state) achieve the same elasticity of water?

Especially during, say, sparring? Or in a real self-defense situation, which sparring only partly simulates? How does the mind let go of all the information we’ve stuffed into it and just find the right action?

One of the keys, we’re told, is not thinking. When you think, your body waits until your mind figures out what to do next. Time passes, circumstances change. Meanwhile your mind, which has many other things it wants to think about, takes license and starts adding other ideas, other ways, other potential consequences. The mind doesn’t like to be pushed into making decisions quickly.

For me, the key is knowing when to think, and what to think about. If I’m sparring and someone steps toward me and raises his leg, do I think “sidekick coming, I should step back and take it on my arm?” If that thought process passes through my head, I’ve probably just taken a sidekick to my ribs. Yet I often do step back, block the kick, and follow it back in. I can even make a choice, step back or move forward inside his power range and jam the kick. How does this happen?

Practice. I’ve practiced enough that many parts of the thought are programmed into my body. I simply choose between “jam” and “avoid” and my body knows the rest.

The other hint is in the word: “focus”. While apparently contradictory, focus means that your mind and body are engaged entirely in what is in front of you. The here and the now.

This means that, even though I’m “not thinking” I can’t just float along, daydreaming about what I’m going to cook for dinner. (in fact I’ve done that, and it always results in me getting hit in the face). My mind is still present and engaged. It’s just working on a different part of the scale. Instead of thinking: “his head is open, I should lift my front leg and turn it over, snapping a round-kick near his face, and then he’ll shift his hands and lean away” I might think: “back heel, balance” and then my instincts drive him over that balance point, using that round-kick that I don’t have to think about. Many other items are being recorded as I spar: “He drops his hands and leaves them when he attacks, he sets before he does a combination, he crosses his feet as he circles.” I’m not fast enough to take advantage of everything I see, but people tend to repeat. If I can record it the first time, I can usually take advantage when it happens again.

The focus is on what I’m doing, but I’m trusting my body to handle many of the details. For me, this as close as I get to “mind like water.”

Written by Mr. Daniel H. Jeffers