A Lok Hup instructor once said, “You should be able to stop at any point in the form and be balanced.” This isn’t an easy task. I’ve been working on it for years. The more I work on it, the more stable and grounding the form becomes. It helps me connect with my surroundings more. It’s worth trying, no matter what form you practice. Obviously, if you are doing a flying kick, the instruction is not applicable. For the most part any of the internal martial arts can use this instruction to discover more connectedness.
Constellate this with the idea out of industrial engineering of walking the process. In the quest for continual improvement, a process is walked through. During this, someone sees what the actual work being performed is, asks questions and learns what is happening. This activity is then aimed at reducing waste and inefficiency. Process engineering of this nature is about making every step and movement of product count.
I’ve been living this for some time in my life. I try to optimize my activities so I can squeeze as much life as I can out of the time I have. Recently, my wife made an observation. We get up at the same time. She starts a shower while I go feed the dogs. In recent times, I’ve been able to get back up stairs by the time she starts her shower. One morning she said, “Do you even feed the dogs?” I laughed and shrugged it off, however, thought about it over the next few weeks. The thing is, I optimize my time by expending as little energy as possible so I can have more energy for other things like getting back up stairs in the morning to do a couple martial arts exercises, stretches or writing before I take my shower. The dogs just want their breakfast as soon as possible so my leaning of my tasks helps them and helps myself.
As in business, so in martial arts. If we can use the smallest amount of energy in our movements of the forms, we optimize them. The movements become more simple and easier to remember if you go without practice for a while. Forms become more efficient and thus more powerful. We are told many times by our instructors to keep the form simple or trust the form. Simple form is efficient form and has a greater impact on our ability to use the form for its intended purpose. When we move simply, we relax and enable ourselves to do more with what we have.
This is economy of movement. When we are aware of the energy our movements take, we can more readily take corrections and learn new aspects of the form. We can establish good habits quickly which then become the foundation of more advanced movements using the same form. When we get lost in all the things the form can do, it can quickly disintegrates into something other than what our instructors showed us originally. The key here is to keep it simple, balanced and use as little energy as possible thereby enabling us to use the form to discover more advanced aspects of the forms or deeper elements of ourselves. With enough economy of movement the form itself can take on a stillness of sorts where there is not thought required.
This is one of the experiences of the ancient art forms that can incrementally transform our lives. It occurs when stillness is born from our movements and movement is generated out of our stillness.
thebubblingspring.com 