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Tomi Saarinen, 28.7.2015
My Experience With Energy
Everyone has their own different motivations for why they train martial arts. When I started, mine were to improve fitness, to learn new cool skills and to hang around with nice people. Those are still valid reasons for my training but during the years of training I’ve also learnt that they are not the whole story. There’s more to what meets the eye.
Energy and Me
Most traditional martial arts speak of something called Energy or Ki . Also in Haedong Kumdo the concept of Ki is very important. Still, after some years of training, If I’m really truthful, I must say I don’t know if I really know what this Ki is, or if it even exists. Is it just a product of someone’s imagination? I have a background in engineering and engineers tend to be practical.
As a sceptical engineer I usually don’t believe in anything before I have enough proof that it is true. So when I’m being told, for the first time, as a beginner martial arts student that there is some kind of weird energy surrounding us but I cannot measure it or prove its existence or most likely even see or feel it at the moment because it’s difficult for beginners, well, let’s say I was suspicious at the very best.
So I wasn’t a true believer of Ki when I started, but as I liked the art of Haedong Kumdo and I was committed to training it, I thought that even if no one can measure Ki and easily proof it exists, it must still be worth something that for some reason hundreds of experienced high skilled martial artists consider the concept of Ki to be hugely important. So even if I didn’t believe in it immediately, I thought I could keep my eyes open because there was nothing to lose after all.
I mostly work as a computer programmer and everyone who has done programming for many years knows a concept of flow or being in the zone . With these concepts they refer to a state of mind where one is extremely focused to task in hand, has figured out how to solve it and is currently in the process of doing the work with maximum performance.
For most programmers this state of mind is the most gratifying way to work but at the same time very difficult to start and maintain. After listening to teachings about Ki and what do we try to achieve by finding it, I noticed major similarities between it and what I have been noticed when programming. This was encouraging for me,
I actually had experienced something that has similarities with the topic in question. Since the concept of flow is widely recognized also in many other contexts than programming, e.g. among athletes and artists, it is quite safe to say that many people have probably experienced that state of mind already, they just haven’t realised it. And even if they have realised it, they might not know how to get it back or that they might be able to trigger it intentionally in the first place.
Trying to Learn It
After I realised there is something for me to find out within the concept of Ki, I soon started recognizing situations where the Energy was more strongly present. During Haedong Kumdo training they usually occurred in the intensive parts of the exercise such as when I was performing multiple forms consecutively with a good pace or doing 1000 vertical cuts and just counting with high focus and nothing else going on in my mind.
Later I’ve found out that the presence of Energy can be experienced outside the dojang too. Everyone probably find it in different places, but here are some that have worked for me, in no particular order:
-.Staring at the lake alone when It’s dark and windy and waves are crashing to the shore
-.Having exciting discussion with friends about topics I’m passionate about
-.Laughing at our inside jokes with my lovely wife
-.Running and listening to good music in a moist autumn weather
-.Sitting by a large campfire and listening to burning wood crackle
I’ve learnt that some of these activities guide me in my search for Energy by helping me relax my mind and body. others by making my muscles work and blood flow, hence easing the movement of Energy inside my body. So depending on the situation I can feel the Energy in a few different forms. Sometimes its relaxing and sometimes it’s focusing.
The best effect, however, can be uncovered when both relaxing the body and mind, and focusing to the task or situation at hand are combined with the actual instantaneous decision to put everything I have in me to actually do what is needed in that situation. If this is successful, I should achieve a feeling where I’m kind of not totally in control of each of my actions. They just happen correctly and faster than what I could possibly do if I were thinking about them separately.
For a few moments I just see the big picture and how it should be implemented as a large pattern at once. It is also what I think Grandmaster Kim wants to tell us with his three guidelines:
1. Relax and feel the energy
2. Focus and see it
3. Realise and do it
Trying to Teach It
As a martial arts teacher I consider myself even more novice than as a student. This is why I feel I want to keep it simple and focus on stuff I’m sure works for most people. And what works for most people is to train hard and get sweaty.
I base statement on a question: Have you ever heard someone who is fully covered in sweat say he or she didn’t enjoy training? Have you even heard them criticize and say or the training was somehow bad?
Me neither. Even if people are totally exhausted and physically tired after training, they are almost always happy, provided
of course that they were able to perform most of the exercises and didn’t have any injuries. So in my training I often opt for the sweat because sweat is easy. Let’s just do 1000 vertical cuts for the starters.
If that’s not enough, add some pushups and other muscular exercise combined with highpaced forms and eventually everyone are exhausted. The difficult part is that every individual has specific level of endurance and even if the training can be hard, as a teacher I probably should not try to kill my students to exhaustion. This is still an easily manageable challenge.
But as people we want more than just sweat. Maybe we even deserve more. In addition to physical training we want to learn something. Many sports are challenging but needless to say martial arts are intriguingly complicated and provide infinitely many things to learn when the conditions are right. But that’s easier to say than do. Teaching martial arts techniques is difficult.
Firstly, you cannot argue about sweat but you can argue about techniques. As a teacher I should know my techniques really well before trying to teach them because in a modern society people are used to question what they don’t understand.
By this I mean that even correctly implemented demonstrations of techniques might become unaccepted by students if the teacher is not able to explain why the technique should be implemented like that.
It’s a reality that a beginner student knows so little about the art that one could argue that the old method of hitting a student with a stick if he questions his teacher would be more efficient than discussing and/or arguing about some basic level topics.
However one must admit that in the end of the day both student and teacher learn more if the student asks for proper explanations and the teacher makes the effort of giving them.
All sports have physical and technical training, but what really sets martial arts apart from the rest is inclusion of mental level topics and role as a self improvement tool.
This is also by far the most difficult area to teach and learn. Whereas some people learn techniques faster and some slower, it is still possible to teach people in groups based on current skill level. Mental training,
on the other hand, is always personal. As martial artists we should be able to improve our ability to be good persons so that we could live good lives in harmony with the nature and help others to do so too.
This means we should first learn to know what is good for us and for the world and then act accordingly. All students, however, have different personalities, histories and problems and there’s no way a teacher can be aware of them all.
So different challenges are always encountered with different people during the years of training and there is very little that can be done to prepare for them.
Due to preparing being difficult or sometimes impossible, it is important that teacher’s own behavior is exemplary so that he can earn the trust and respect of his students. It is good if teacher is a positive person who can lift up the spirit of students but even more important is that he is honest. Personally, I don’t consider myself a very positive person.
I can be quite pessimistic at times so that’s something I still need to learn. But I think I’m quite honest. Other good qualities would be unselfishness and approachable. Some people are naturally like that, some need work to get there. Nevertheless, it is sure that as a teacher and student I have much to learn about the mental side of the martial arts and life. Luckily I guess
I’m not alone here.
Practical Application of Ki in Everyday Life: Using Standing Desk At Work
So here I’m about to tell you about how I’m an office worker and how I recently started using standing desk at work. What is a standing desk, you might ask. It’s basically just a normal office desk that has longer legs to make it higher so you must stand in front of it instead of sitting.
You can still type your computer and use your mouse, everything just is higher. I started using it because I read about it from the internet and we discussed about it at work. It’s also really trendy too, everyone’s using it now. But isn’t this a borderline unrelated topic and has nothing to do with martial arts. My answers are maybe and maybe. But I’ll write about it anyway.
Let’s consider how the body is positioned when one is sitting down like in normal office work. There are many 90 degree angles in body, one in knees, one in lower back, and probably the posture is not very good in general too.
You can almost imagine how the blood flow gets stuck and muscles pressure each other. In general, there are many different tensions and negative things going on in the body. So how is body when one is standing. It’s very different.
First of all, your feet are in direct contact with the floor or actually with a soft mattress between feet and floor. When standing on a slightly soft mattress similar to martial arts tatami, one’s legs and body are in constant work of getting balanced. This naturally increases blood flow and the result is a more focused mind due to having more oxygen in brain.
When we practice Haedong Kumdo we often focus on how we set the body weight on big toes so that we can gain the maximum balance. Furthermore, we try to find a posture in which all the body parts are both relaxed and vigorous at the same time. We recognize that positioning our bodies like this gives us better feeling for some reason.
It can be because our blood flows undisrupted, our muscles are moderately active, our lungs have space to breathe, our brains are focused on the single movement or stance. We are feeling this combination of good things happening in our body as Energy.
I have noticed a surprising relation between Haedong Kumdo training and using standing desk at work. The former, of course, is my beloved martial art and hobby with many different techniques and ideas and the latter is just a way to change how I’m positioned in front of a computer. But interestingly enough, they both are kind of reaching for the same goal, that is, using one’s body in a more natural and energetic manner.
It requires more to stand for the whole day instead of sitting down, which is something that not everyone is willing to do. And partially because of that I would even dare to say, that using a standing desk is a small but practical application of the martial arts spirit in an extremely ordinary everyday work situation. It requires a small sacrifice, that is standing instead of sitting, but it gives you a much better feeling. It’s a small type of training inserted into a normal work day.
Tomi Saarinen, 28.7.2015
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