Reflective Intelligence

following capability

following is sticking and yielding to an opponent as he retreats or advances.

following is distance control, among other things.

it is an essential component of the art. if you cant follow, you cant join.

'he moves, you moves'

fighting is relational. it is about relating. it is about relating to various factors. if you don't relate well to these factors, then you will have troubles. we all make mistakes in our techniques because at that time we are not relating what to what is happening.

we don't relate well to what is happening because we are not really paying attention, moment by moment, to what is going on. the mind becomes occupied with a conceptual tangent and loses track of the opponent. 'listening' comes and goes.

to follow demands that you maintain listening and outreaching. this, in simple terms, means that your mind is clear of any expectations. you cannot 'know' how the partner will move. you have to match him movement, and if you try to do that by 'thinking', it wont work.

in fact, when we train following, you will see how prone we are to extrapolating. you will make mistakes because you think he is going to zig, when he is actually going to zag. and it happens a lot.

the benefit of highlighting conceptual extrapolations is that we can make the distinction between the part of the mind that extrapolates, the domain of concept, presumably the cortex, and the part of the brain that is capable of following, because they are two different areas. you have to find the 'mind' that can follow, and that does not extrapolate.

' a still pond reflects the moon instantly' is the type of thing you read about on the more poetic end of martial arts instruction. the reference here is to reflective intelligence, which I have put forth as ' bottom up' or 'data driven' action as opposed to 'top down' or conceptually driven action.

for reference, what I am addressing is classically known as 'mushin' or 'no-mind'. what is amounts to is a cessation of extrapolation in favor of maintaining a current awareness of sensory input. that means you are paying attention to now, and now, and now, and now without drifting off, or loosing it any way, or by allowing the mind to take a 'form'(extrapolation)

now there is some misunderstanding here when it comes to training about the relationship between ritual technique concepts and a reflective intelligence. I will often say to those who are training that they 'just went into a concept', indicating that they are not 'connected'. the counter argument to this is that it is concept is necessary for learning, and so to be 'lost in concept' is proper for the training phase of technique. well, yes and no. there is definitely a period of time required to intellectually grasp the nature of technique, the footwork, mechanics, arm shapes, and whatnot. however, people go on far too long with this analytical process, trying to 'figure it out'.

what is not realized is that all that thinking about it that you do, after a certain, is completely missing the mark. what you need to do is use your senses to get the right information, like distance, angles, timing calculated correctly. this is what makes a technique work. but you cant there by thinking about the physics of it. you just have to ballpark it, and then FEEL the physics of it. moving in and throwing someone down doesn't require some deep intellectual understanding of how it works, it requires that your awareness is current, so that you can intuit the angles, timing, and changes involved. in reality, no one is going to sit nice like uke while you think your way through it.

what I have pointed out and will continue to point out is that the part of the brain that thinks about technique IS NOT THE PART OF THE BRAIN THAT ACTUALLY DOES IT.

so what you have to do is train the parts of the brain that really matter. past a certain point, continuing to try and rationalize and 'figure out' a technique is only going to be wasting time. oh, youll get it eventually if you stick with it, but that will be because you finally lock in on the feeling of it, not because you thinked about enough.

so that I'm not misunderstood here, what I am saying is that you have to take your intellect out of it, and train in ways that stimulate access to your spatial tracking skills. following is exactly that type of training, as it demands that you drop extrapolation, and learn to hone in on your tracking abilities.

all in all, extrapolations suck. they are just guesses. and you cannot afford to guess in training. and we guess all the time. you can tell when you screw something up. that means you guessed wrong. if you had been paying attention, then you would have never had gotten off track in the first place. I go on about peripheral vision and blindspots, but everyone should realize that conceptual extrapolation tends to be the biggest 'hole' in our defense. the eyes are not the problem.

the difficulty here is ironic. people have a difficulty in 'being present' because they fear being in a state of no extrapolations.

what we normally do, at all times, is plot and plan our next move. maybe we call it our schedule, our responsibility, or our life. while your in class, in the back of your mind, your thinking about going home, taking out the garbage, and whatever else is needed to maintain things. we spend our time projecting and problem solving, in an intellectual domain. the speed of events in everyday life is such that we have to time to go through all sorts of considerations before we need to act. even when we are put on the spot, and have to 'think fast', we can pull it off because we are on the same level....i.e conceptual speed vs conceptual speed.

in kung fu, its a whole different story. like my teacher would say, " you think about it, you dead'.....

the time frames in the arts are measured in tenths of a second for individual motions(if your lucky). you cannot think fast enough to keep up with a steady flow. not a chance in france.

given you understand this:

(1) beyond basic learning, you cannot think your way through technique
(2) two flaws in 'thinking' /extrapolation/'knowing'
(a) an extrapolation may very well be wrong
(b) wanting to 'know' makes you wait to see what it will be, and by then it's too late
(3) motor function is uncognized. spatial calculations are not a cortex function...i.e. its not 'you'
(4) the actual skill, being uncognized, is not accessed by 'thought'
(5) the vast majority of information you need is a combination of visual and tactile input and it needs to be current
(6) you don't do kung fu, your brain does.
(7) if you train the right way, you will improve your skill, perhaps even dramatically, because you address the real issue
( the easiest way to tap in to the body's capabilities is through feeling