by Phillip Starr
We often hear our teachers tell us to “concentrate your mind on….”, but truly focusing our minds on any given thing is more than a little difficult. One of my early karate instructors had a cure for that. I don’t know if he learned it from someone else or if he thought of it himself, but it certainly worked.
During one class, he instructed all of us to sit on the floor. As we did so, he placed a clock on the floor in front of us. “This is a good exercise for teaching you how to really concentrate”, he said. “Focus on the clock and use your mind to stop the second hand from moving.”
I figured he was kidding but I guessed wrong. The best was yet to come.
“Sit comfortably so you won’t be shifting around or fidgeting your hands…” Okay, no problem. This was sure a lot easier than firing off endless reverse punches and front kicks! Then came the punch line…
“…and don’t blink your eyes. Not even once.”
What the ****!!! Okay. I had faith, so I did it. My mind soon was focused on something other than the clock; it was wholly concentrated on NOT BLINKING! Now, blinking is an involuntary action of the body but…it can be consciously controlled! To do so requires more than a little concentration and determination, however.
We only practiced this exercise for about one minute the first time. With practice and effort, I slowly built up my time to five minutes but my teacher cautioned us that to do it much longer than that might have undesirable results (the eyes dry out pretty quickly). But after I was able to control my urge to blink fairly easily, I was free to focus back on stopping the second hand of the clock.
Which I never was able to do… but then, that wasn’t the point of the exercise.
If you would like to learn martial arts and how to meditation in China you can find a number of great courses and schools when you visit StudyMartialArts.Org. To read more on the subject you can also check out some of these great articles.
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