Intention and involuntary analytical response.

[Interloper]

Well, why do you think "thought balloons" became a mainstay of comic art, or voiceover "thought" narratives are such a popular method of conveying what people are thinking in the movies and on TV?

Amazing....

Amygdala anybody?

Well, it is amazing. It's more of a cultural thing that encourages over-analysis and verbosity. The amygdala oversees big part of human brain activity, and yes -- non-verbal -- it is our primitive "animal brain" far older than the developed cerebrum. But in humans the cerebrum can override it , especially when we're engaged in new activities. But unless you get some serious brain injury in the cerebral region, it's not likely that the amygdala is going to govern your everyday activity (with the exception of the character in the "Amygdala" comic, of course). If we lived by our "animal brain" all the time as you seem to imply, we'd have a very different social system and way of life than we do now.

When I was studying primate evolutionary ecology as a grad student, we had to pick apart monkey brains (yes, monkey brains! ) and make comparisons among the different species (including humans) as to the relative sizes and state of development of various parts of the brain, including cerebrum, amygdala, cerebellum, etc. That's where we explored and discussed the derees of verbal ability among the so-called higher apes (including humans) and the cultural implications of mental (cerebral) "verbosity," btw.

Anyway, it was only one small point of my earlier post that a lot of cultures promote verbal communication, and with it comes the overlap to verbal thought, which is connected to over-analysis. Maybe it's common among Westerners because as a largely urbanized group we are forced to be more verbally communicative, and we're also more neurotic. Dunno. The greater point of my post was that Shawn seems to have trouble quieting the verbal-analytical processes in his mind when he trains, and he needs to override it with a distracting activity, or set of actions (such as exhaustive training).

[Interloper]

Interesting tie-in to similar research going on -- There was an interesting article out a few months ago that cited studies being done on intent and the part of the brain from which it originates. IIRC, we already have decided to make a movement or action before the "verbal" cognitive mind knows it. When we let that cognition interfere, it causes a delay between intent and action and so slows down our response or reaction time. So, the cerebral cortex is kind of a Middle Man that can impede us when we really need pure intent translating directly to action. Eliminate the middle man.

[shawnsegler]

I've experienced some insight when engaged in tuishou with a couple of different people, here and in China. As a matter of fact, Segs, I was at your Laurelhurst Park pushing grounds a couple of evenings ago playing with a guy whose skills made me go back and look at Libet's ideas again.

Who were you pushing with, and why don't you ever call me when you're down here?

Best,

S

[klonk]

Interesting tie-in to similar research going on -- There was an interesting article out a few months ago that cited studies being done on intent and the part of the brain from which it originates. IIRC, we already have decided to make a movement or action before the "verbal" cognitive mind knows it. When we let that cognition interfere, it causes a delay between intent and action and so slows down our response or reaction time. So, the cerebral cortex is kind of a Middle Man that can impede us when we really need pure intent translating directly to action. Eliminate the middle man.

Now that's facinating. If this bears out in the research, it is a scientific basis and justification for mu shin (wu xin) in martial arts.

The more I look into things like this, the more it appears that the ancients were every bit as bright as we are, they just worked with prescientific paradigms for understanding the mind and body. The traditional answer is often right. (How do you think it got to be traditional?)

[Walk the Torque]

Too complicated for my taste. Ive always been fond of the saying "fighting should be like taking a walk...hitting the opponent like looking at the grass".

We generally dont think about walking. we just do when needed.

I'm so far behind on this thread, at work and am finding it hard to reach the end before commenting on any of it; but..........


Josealb, your statement above doesn't take in to account the process that took place during gaining the ability to walk. When you were a mere babe, there was most likely more than a little effort , trail/error and frustration to even grasp the fundamentals of walking.

I mean if someone told you that in order to use internal arts properly all you have to do is, learn to breath from your lower abdomen, align your skeletal structure so well that it negates the necessity for inefficient and excess use of your muscles, and finely tune your nervous system to gain the ability to sense the amount, direction and timing of a force emanating from your opponent, then you may well have said "na, too complicated for my taste".

I think Shawn is working on containing his yi through balance. In my experience this adds not only to speed and appropriateness of action, but also power. I remember my first encounter with this sort of thing when learning Yang Style TTC. We were taught a technique of rotating the forearm (in pushing hands) in answer to an attack from our partners. The important point was to concentrate not on the side in contact with the partners hand(s), but instead to be mindful of the opposite side of the active forearm. This meant that any excess intent was taken out of the body part being used to neutralize/issue force.

One aspect of this sort of practice that makes for more effectiveness is the skill of stabilization; but not just stabilizing the body, stabilizing the intent. Excess intent in a given direction has IMO, an undesirable effect on the overall efficiency of the body.

There are a number of "intent games" that can be played that really changed my view on "what to do with your mind" during sparring. One is to cultivate the feeling of a sphere (that is mirrored by your structure and motions) and try to maintain it through a sparring session; the other is to operate not only your out going actions, but also your perception and receptivity from the dantien.

Not exactly new I know but easily forgotten in the heat of the flurry.

[affa]

Hmmm... I sense a kindred spirit

heart/xin gives you a base trained instinctive response that's better and faster and issues with less hesitation than thinking. xin doesn't think, xin decides. xin makes a foundation and decides where the lines are that the opponent crosses. play/not play? hurt/not hurt? kill/not kill?

intention/shen is a more difficult trained instinctive response that takes the heart/xin and applies it to the situation, and maybe nuances it one way or the other *while it's happening.* shen makes tactical decisions without 'thinking' to produce a result. shen applies skill you've cultivated to an emotional foundation.

do you think what i'm talking about here matches up with xin and shen, respectively?

when a sufficiently disciplined xing has been habitually successful at completing a given task in a combatively realistic environment... its appropriateness becomes UNQUESTIONABLE in that generic context.

the more generic contexts of live combat to which you've applied a particularly disciplined xing, AND the more you've disciplined the yi-gate in general, the more you can

spontaneously (and appropriately) shuffle among

optimally powerful responses. the marriage of efficient action and efficient decision making, without the paralyzing recursion of rational thought.

http://eprints.ucl.ac.uk/2933/1/2933.pdf

Abstract:

[i]Time is a fundamental dimension of consciousness. Many studies of the “sense of agency” have investigated whether we attribute actions to ourselves based on a conscious experience of intention occurring prior to action, or based on a reconstruction after the action itself has occurred. Here we ask the same question about a lower-level aspect of action experience, namely awareness of the detailed spatial form of a simple movement...

nice find. is this from your particular area of expertise or something you've just come across?