“The art of peace is medicine for a sick world.” — Morihei Ueshiba
The world today has so many options for people looking for better health both physically and mentally it’s bewildering. We are at a time in history when ancient traditions are advertised like soap commercials along with the newest fashion trends. On any given day I will see ads for Shamanic workshops, miraculous Energy healing methods, and even “secret inner teachings” of various arts advertised on my newsfeed on social media. It’s a stunning time to be alive as many of these practices (if they are honestly a traditional practice) have come out of the far corners of the world to be available for us to simply click and try. It is in many ways something to be grateful for.
However there is a downside to the commercialization of these traditional arts and medicines. And it is not that money itself is the problem. Teachers need to eat and expenses need to be covered. Most Sensei, Sifu, Shamans, or Medicine Men/Women need to ask for monetary payment for the service but most of them will tell you it’s not the money that has gotten them to commit themselves to their chosen art. They have sacrificed a huge part of their lives in both practicing and teaching their arts because they feel it is important for the world. They know that they’re taking part in a massive and profound effort to help humanity find a better way of living than the one which has wrought such destruction and suffering in the world as exists today.
The famous quote by Mahatma Gandhi reminds us to be the change in the world that we wish to see because that is the way forward. This is well understood by the truly qualified teachers of various arts like KarateDo, Tai Chi Chuan, and other various Bujutsu. It is why these arts focus on teaching individuals to achieve their own best results. The idea being that the external world is not the source of the problem. The issue lies within the human mind. Nature doesn’t need us, the solar system doesn’t need us, but we need it. It is humanity that must forge a better way forward, not the animals, or the natural world. The problem in the human mind can be described as what might be called the mentality of the consumer culture. We’re used to buying products that are designed to need to be upgraded every few months or years. There’s always a new movie to go see or new band to listen to. You can do a retreat for a weekend to unleash some primal and intense energies but then go back to hanging out a Starbucks and feeling anxiety about whether or not your socks are fashionably correct. In the end very little, or just as often, nothing actually changes. Treating the idea of internal transformation like a TV show you can turn on or off without consequence is a fundamentally flawed and even dangerous idea. Even when the idea of personal transformation is regarded as a positive direction to take it often gets completely derailed by the desire for everything to be experienced as only bright and sunny and personally pleasurable. The quaint saying that growth occurs outside ones comfort zone is an absolute rule and cannot be any other way. Very often people will use the difficulty that developing these arts present to justify excuses and quit. Not only does this change nothing for the better it actually can push a person further into disharmony and regression. I cannot count how often I’ve listened to someone say things like, it’s to hard, I’m just not that good, or you don’t understand how tough this is for me. Then use those ideas to quit training. It’s something that has caused me a fair amount of frustration as they are exactly right. It is a very hard to learn Karate or Tai Chi, and you are not good at it, especially at first, and nobody can possibly know the depths of any other individuals personal challenges. These are all very true statements but they are also precisely why training is so important. It works like this. Training is designed to truly change the habits and patterns that hold us back in our own lives and as collective species. It has been well documented that there are several measurable brain wave patterns that are the foundation of all brain activity. The most important one for this discussion is called alpha wave pattern. This wave pattern (which is steady fluctuations of electrical activity in the brain between 8-13 cycles per second) can be associated with feelings of inner peace and the clarity. High level Yoga practitioners, mediators, and martial artists have displayed this pattern during their practice. This aspect of brain function can be tied in to high level athletes, dancers, and many other practices as well. What makes Karate, Tai Chi and things like Yoga unique is that they are designed to teach a person to consciously connect to that brain wave state whenever they wish to. In the terms of psychology this is known as the id or unconscious. This part of the brain is responsible for more than just us feeling at peace and content. It also regulates and monitors all the bodily systems like the heart rate and digestion. An enormous task but one it is perfectly suited to managing. What gets in the way is largely things like anxiety and guilt. These feeling take much needed energy from the unconscious and reallocate them to the frontal lobes where abstract thoughts of doubt and fear can hamper every aspect of a persons life. This throws the entire system out of balance and is what eventually leads to disease in the body. More than that this is also where the roots of the problems that we face as humanity stem from. So the way forward is to keep our minds at peace and allow ourselves to think and respond from that state as deeply as we can. This is the real value in training. By practicing a Kata or the Tai Chi form we reconnect ourselves to that all important mental state. This in turn acts like a fueling up for all the other aspects of ones life. A teachers job is to guide a person to ever evolving and deeper understanding of that process. By combining the personal home practice with regular class training you can literally keep yourself always connected to that profoundly important task of staying centered and living in peace. And by doing that you are doing the most important thing in the world, you are being the medicine the world needs.
