Master Your Mind

There is a single point at which the fields of psychology, neuroscience, Eastern spirituality, and martial arts converge. In neuroscience, it is called “conditioned reflex.” In psychology, it is “unconscious competence.” In meditative traditions (especially Zen Buddhism), it is called “no-mindedness.” In martial arts, the exact same concept is often referred to as “mind like water.” Each approach describes a different aspect of the same phenomenon: acting without conscious thought. While scientists are primarily concerned with the mechanics of how such a process works, practitioners focus more on the mental and physical training that facilitates it.

Neuroscience research has demonstrated that the portion of our brain that controls movement (the motor cortex) begins to activate up to seven seconds before we consciously decide to move. While this opens the door to some intriguing questions about free will, the clear takeaway is that thinking slows us down. If you’ve ever shot a firearm, you know that you don’t consciously decide to blink when the gun goes off; in fact, the challenge is not blinking! Anyone who has ever done full-speed sparring has also experienced this lag time: if you think about what you’re going to do in response to an attack, your defense will always be too late. This is why in every fighting system — as well as in most sports — one of the goals of training is to be able to act from reflex, rather than cognition.

The problem, of course, is that unless you are very highly trained, your reflexes are usually wrong. This is why a novice…