Improving your form

“MUCH have I travell'd in the realms of gold,    
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;    
Round many western islands have I been    
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.    
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told            
That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne:    
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene    
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:    
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies    
When a new planet swims into his ken;     
Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes    
He stared at the Pacific—and all his men    
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise—    
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.” 

Image via Wikipedia

I love this poem, “On first looking into Chapman’s Homer”, by John Keats, about the literary experience of looking at the world through fresh eyes, or as they say in Zen practice “Beginner’s mind”. Cortez, standing on his peak in Darien (that’s in Panama, fact fans) would be looking out over the Pacific for the first time. What must he have been feeling at that moment? To make progress in martial arts you need to reflect on what you’re doing – you need time, space and an awareness of your own movement, so you can effectively see it from the outside. Often, we’re too caught up in doing it to see it. We’re too close to the subject because we are the subject. We need some way to step back and see the bigger picture. Luckily, modern technology has the answer to obtaining Cortez’s state of mind.

I was training XingYi at lunchtime today and the guy I was working with had brought a video camera. He wanted to film me doing the first 6 XingYi animals to help him remember the moves. Viewing it back was interesting, to say the least. Watching yourself doing martial arts is a great learning experience. Your first thought is usually something extraneous along the lines of  “does my head really look like that from the back?”. Next you start to notice the more important stuff, like the mistakes, which always stand out a mile.  You never move quite like you thought you were moving when you did it. But the camera never lies.  It’s the ultimate in beginners mind, and a useful way to get a good honest look at what you’re doing from the outside. If you’ve never filmed yourself doing a form I’d recommend it – although be warned - you might just need a stiff drink after you watched your Tiger pouncing like a donkey or your Horse cantering like a hamster on a wheel.