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SIXTH SENSE
Author: Stefan Verstappen
One day a young samurai approached a revered teacher of swordsmanship and begged acceptance as a student. “You must do everything I ask of you without question,” the teacher warned. The samurai agreed.
“Hai,” the teacher said. “Go to the dojo and walk along the edge of the tatami by placing one foot in front of the other.”
Perplexed, the samurai did as he was told but after a week of such practice, he was impatient to pick up a sword.
After the 10th day, he could take no more and angrily questioned the teacher about when they would start serious training.
“Very well,” the teacher said. “Tonight we will begin.”
That night under a full moon, the teacher led the samurai into the mountains until they came to a deep and narrow gorge. Spanning the chasm was a fallen tree.
“Here we begin training,” the teacher said. “Cross over the gorge.”
“But the tree is too narrow,” the samurai said.
“It is much wider than the edge of a tatami,” the teacher replied.
The samurai jumped up on the fallen tree, but as he stepped forward, the dim moonlight and the sound of rushing water below seemed to pull him off-balance.
“I cannot cross,” he said.
“How can you expect to master the sword when haven’t yet mastered walking?”
the teacher asked.
Moral of the Story
At first glance, this story, like many “teaching tales” from the Far East, illustrates a simple lesson in humility. However, a deeper meaning is revealed when you begin to wonder why the samurai couldn’t cross the gorge. The answer is, he hadn’t mastered his sixth sense.
Before relatively recent developments in medical science, human beings generally recognized that they had five senses: sight, sound, touch, taste and smell.
The so-called sixth sense was thought to be extra—hence the term extra-sensory perception, or ESP. It is now known that we possess three other senses: balance, proprioception and direction. (The future discovery of a paranormal ability will now have to be moved down the list to the “ninth sense.”) The samurai story teaches us a lesson about the sixth sense, balance. The ability to master one’s senses and control perception is an important skill that underlies all others. In the case of the samurai and the gorge, it was his inability to master his perception of balance that prevented him from crossing.
The sense of balance is one most of us take for granted, yet in the traditions of every martial art, mastery of balance has played a primary role in developing fighting skills. One reason is that in battle, the greatest strategic advantage lies in mobility.
For the martial artist, mobility requires both strong legs and excellent balance. To truly master balance, one first needs to understand the way it works.
How We Sense Balance
Balance is controlled by input from three sources: the vestibular system, vision and proprioception.
Our sense of up and down comes from the vestibular system located within the inner ear. It consists of three semicircular tubes that are set at angles to each other. The tubes are filled with liquid that moves when the head is tilted. Lining the tubes are hair-like nerve endings that, when stimulated by the movement of the fluid, produce a neural signal. That provides information on the position of the head. However, the vestibular system does not transmit data about the overall positioning of the body. That information comes from two other sources: vision and proprioception.
Vision tends to dominate. It often overrides all other senses, including the sense of balance. You can test how much vision influences balance by standing on one foot first with your eyes open and then with them closed. Most people will begin to lose their balance as soon as they shut their eyes.
However, vision is not essential to balance, and in certain situations, its input is detrimental to performing complex physical movements.
In fact, gymnasts, acrobats, platform divers and martial artists are among those who must train their nervous system not to rely on their eyes for balance.
For example, when dancers and figure skaters perform pirouettes, they focus their eyes on a point on the horizon. As their body spins, their head and eyes remain focused on that spot until their neck will not twist any farther. Then their head turns around quickly ahead of their body and again focuses on that same spot. If they allowed their head to spin in tandem with their body, the overwhelming visual and vestibular sensations would cause immediate dizziness and disorientation. The same principle is needed to execute a spinning kick or hand technique. The eyes must focus on the target, while the body feels its way through the movement.
This “feeling your way through a movement” is done by the third sense involved in balance: proprioception. Also known as the kinesthetic sense, it is the result of the combined information the brain receives from the Golgi tendon organs. They are sensors that measure the amount of tension each muscle exerts. That information enables us to sense physical movement and posture, as well as how heavy an object is or how hard to throw a ball. It gives us a sense of being “in” our body.
Information received from all three sources is processed, and directions are sent to the various muscle groups to maintain balance. It thus becomes clear exactly why the samurai could not cross the gorge: Unable to suppress his visual input—which conflicted with his proprioception—he ended up losing his balance on the log.
Training Methods
Now that you understand how balance works, you can learn how to improve it. The following exercises are aimed at refining your sense of proprioception while reducing your reliance on visual cues. A fringe benefit of this type of training is that it builds your body’s stabilizer muscles, which help polish your movement and augment your grace and fluidity.
• Three-Point Balance: This exercise is similar to those done in modern dance, ballet, figure skating and gymnastics. While standing on one leg, bend the other leg and raise your thigh until it is parallel to the floor. Hold this position for a 10 count. Keeping your thigh horizontal, swing your leg to the side until it is 90 degrees from where it was.
Hold it for a 10 count, then lean forward and reposition the leg behind you in what a ballerina would call an arabesque.
Hold it for a 10 count, then repeat the sequence with your other leg.
Gradually increase the length of time you hold out your leg until you can exceed one minute. Once you have accomplished that, modify the exercise by straightening your leg as you hold it horizontal. To raise the bar even more, do it with your eyes closed.
• Walking the Beam: Place a 10-footlong beam (no more than 4 inches wide) on the ground and walk across it several times a day. When you can do so without losing your balance, close your eyes and try it. Once you have mastered that, place the beam about a foot above the ground. When you feel comfortable crossing at this height—at first with your eyes open and then with them closed—raise the beam higher still. When it is six feet above the ground and you can easily walk along it, you will have mastered this exercise.
Note: If you don’t have access to a suitable beam, you can begin this exercise by walking on curbs—as long as you don’t mind the strange looks it attracts.
• Single-Leg Squats: Hold one leg parallel to the ground and in front of your body. Grab that foot with your sameside hand. Keeping your knee straight, slowly lower yourself until your buttocks rest against your calf, then stand up. Repeat using your other leg.
• Outdoor Training: In China and rural Japan, much time is spent training in parks, along beaches and in the mountains.
Such varied conditions improve a student’s balance and stability much better than training on a uniformly flat surface does.
Because living conditions in the West are not as rustic, you should make an effort to train on different surfaces and under different conditions. That will make you better able to react and move in any combat situation. Practice your forms and drills on grassy hills, sandy beaches, rocky fields, snowy meadows and rainsoaked sidewalks. When you do so, the first thing you will notice is the incredible strain it puts on your legs, and that in turn will spur the development of stronger muscles. Because the ground is unreliable, you will learn how to move in a more balanced state.
Conclusion
Although every martial artist loves to perform moves that are acrobatic and awe-inspiring, in the end we usually find ourselves following in the footsteps of the old masters who came before us: We return to the beginning, struggling to master the first skills we learned as children. Ultimately we recognize the importance of simple skills like standing and walking with precision. Better balance will boost your ability to move in all your physical endeavors, including your martial arts training. ...
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