Why on Earth would anyone engaged in martial arts (a deeply embodied practice), be interested in the insights of philosophy (an “airy” mental practice)?

Well one good reason would be to explore how a philosophy of embodiment  could help martial artists hone their “mental game” and improve performance on the mat and in the rest of life.  Process metaphysics is just that—a philosophy of embodiment that can be applied to life, on the mat, on the street, in the home, or in the office.

Process philosophy grew out of the work of Alfred North Whitehead in the 20th century—particularly his major work Process and Reality. One of the most revolutionary ideas in Whitehead’s philosophy is that reality is made of “events” not things.  Process, not substance, is fundamental.  The science of quantum physics has discovered this, too.

Whitehead presented another revolutionary idea: Body and mind are related in the same way as past and present.  And just as you never have a present without a past, you never have a mind without a body—or vice versa. In other words, every body comes ready-made with a mind, with its own innate, natural intelligence.

While Whitehead never practiced a martial art, his philosophy is one of the most effective ways for understanding the dynamics of martial arts mastery as the cultivation and practice of embodied intelligence.

Without getting bogged down in the details of his philosophy and his unusual use of language, martial artists can benefit from a basic understanding of how Whitehead’s key insights illuminate the process of embodied mastery. So, to become a “process martial artist,” it will help to become familiar with two of Whitehead’s core ideas.

Let’s begin with “actual occasions.” The main point to get here is that according to Whitehead, reality is not made up of static little objects (whether atoms or molecules). It is made up of actions. Everthing that really exists, according to Whitehead, is an actual occasion. In other words, whatever actually exists is always a moment in an ongoing process—where each momentary “now” almost immediately becomes the past, and is replaced by a new moment of now.  This is the universal process that creates everything in the world, and it’s made up of these “actual occasions.”

The next major, and revolutionary, idea from Whitehead is that every actual occasion is a moment of experience. In other words, reality is not just a random process, it comes with consciousness or intelligence already built in, right from the start.  Think of it this way:  Every process has a purpose.

Everything that actually exists has choice. This is true whether the actual entity is you as a human being, a martial artist, or one of the cells or molecules in your body.  At every moment, every actual occasion—every sentient being—has a choice among a range of possibilities.  And every choice is always guided by some aim or purpose. Ultimately, the aim is to maximize the experience of satisfaction (joy or happiness).  That’s what every body wants.

But within that general aim, every individual has many other subordinate “strategic aims,” intended to take us step by step toward a moment of satisfaction. Even though we are not always conscious of our aims, they are always present nevertheless. Most of the time, most of our aims are unconscious, below the threshold of conscious awareness. For example, since every cell in your body has its own aims and choices, these form a major portion of your embodied unconscious.  You may not be aware of it, but your body teems with its own natural intelligence. Part of the training of an effective martial artist involves practices that help him or her become more aware of this natural embodied intelligence. Every choice we make has an impact that carries over to future moments. Every choice that you make as a human being affects other people and the world around you. Not only that, it also affects the cells of your body. Likewise, the choices made by your cells influence the choices you, as a human organism, make.

Process martial arts, then, is a way (1) to become aware of the two-way dialogue between the choices made by your body’s cells and the choices you make as a whole organism; (2) to master the “dance” between the aims and choices of your cells and your aims;  and (3) to engage in a larger “dance” or “dialogue” between you and your environment, which includes other people with their own, often competing, aims—e.g., an opponent or adversary.

 

Aims Shape Who We Are

Okay, so what is your aim or purpose—how does it come about? How does any actual occasion  (e.g., a human being like you) form an aim? From Whitehead’s philosophy, we can identify three kinds, or levels, of aims:

1.    Evolutionary aim—The “initial aim” comes from the universe itself. Everything we do is influenced by the overall intentions of all other sentient beings making their choices according to their own aims. Individuals and species succeed in evolution when they align their individual aims with the greater collective evolutionary aim.
2.    Social aim—Every actual occasion (e.g., you) is influenced by all of the societies to which it belongs.  As a martial artist, this means that your personal aim is influenced or conditioned by all of the groups to which you belong (family, community, country, etc.) and, in particular, by the shared aims of the group of people you practice with.  The unified aim of the group empowers each of its practitioners.
3.    Personal aim—Even though our aims and choices are greatly influenced by the larger social and evolutionary aims, each of us always has the ability to make our own choices, guided by our own personal aims.  Our choices do make a difference. Each personal choice works like a “trim-tab” (a small rudder attached to the larger rudder of a ship, which helps to fine-tune the movements of the ship). Likewise, each personal choice is small, but it can have disproportionate effects over time.  The key phrase here is “over time.”

 

Importance of Practice

We have little say in how the larger evolutionary and social aims are formed.  We more or less simply inherit them from the environment and our social groups through a kind of “osmosis.” Despite their all-pervasive influence, however, we are not completely at the mercy of those “external” aims.

The key to successful performance in life, as on the mat, is cultivation of our personal aim.  Yes, at every moment, we always start by inheriting all the previous aims that have shaped our personality (including the evolutionary and social aims, as well as our own past choices)—but we always have a “say” in how those aims are shaped as we pass them on.  We are always responsible for the choices we make.  And those choices affect not only the development of our own personality but also influence the aims and actions of other individuals.

Choice is guided by aim, and every aim is based on what we value.  In order for our personal aims to make a difference and to achieve what we value (whether this is to become satisfied with our skill and ability to perform effective self-defense or to grow as integrated human beings), we have to find a way to carve a channel through the surrounding social and evolutionary aims.
We do this by exercising choices—over and over—aligned with our personal aims, thereby shaping the development of our future personality. Only through repeated practice can we amplify the power of personal choice to burrow through and make a difference in the wider context of society and the wider ever-changing environment.

 

Elements of Mastery

Initial aim. Practice starts with an initial intention or aim (inherited from our personal, social, and evolutionary past). However (except in rare cases), a single momentary decision is not likely to make a long-term change in our personal effectiveness.

As Aristotle famously said: “One swallow does not a summer make . . . similarly one day or brief time of happiness does not make a person entirely happy.”  It takes multiple repetitions of focused choices to counteract the immense momentum or inertia of our inherited, habitual past.
Repeated practice.  Therefore, to counteract the surging tide of old habits, we need to reinforce new skills or habits by making the same choice over and over—e.g., to master a move in martial art.  Repetition and practice lead to greater and greater power and results. Often, we also have to make a choice over and over again before it changes our mental attitude.

Maintaining mastery. Even after long periods of repeated practice, and mastery has been achieved, we still need to constantly maintain our standard of mastery through continued recreation of the original intention backed up with repeated further practice.

Group Effect. When a personal aim is practiced with a group of colleagues sharing the same aim, the collective power of the “social aim” amplifies the effect of the personal aim. Practicing together, therefore, is far more effective than practicing alone.

Present choice solidifies (or changes) past habits. Every habit is the result of constantly repeated previous choices. If we want to change a habit, therefore, we need to frequently make alternative choices. Martial arts mastery involves repeatedly making conscious choices in the present moment, over and over—either to change an old habit or to reinforce a desired attitude or action. In time, with practice, intention penetrates deep into unconscious memories stored in the body and leads to the development of a new automatic skill.

Another key element of martial arts mastery is cultivating expanded awareness.  This is so important to developing an effective “mental game,” we’ll look at it in more detail.

 

Expanded Awareness

As we all know, things are not always what they seem. Much of philosophy is about distinguishing between “appearance” and “reality.”  Likewise, effective performance, whether in life or on the mat, also involves paying attention to the difference between how things seem and what is really happening.  The more we pay attention, the more we expand our awareness.  And expanded awareness increases options for more choices.

To get a little technical for a moment, Whitehead talked of appearance as “presentational immediacy” (whatever our senses detect in the immediate, present moment) and reality as “causal efficacy”—all past actions that cause actual effects in the present.  Appearance, then, is the immediate surface of things perceived by the senses; whereas reality involves the full history of prior actual events that have led up to (“caused”) the present moment.

By paying closer attention to how the world appears, we can penetrate beyond the surface appearances and see, or feel, deeper into the actual reality of the surrounding world—including what’s happening our own bodies.  Beyond normal conscious awareness, our bodies are constantly picking up energy and information from other bodies in our environment. Every body is causally affecting every other body.  Your body registers the effects of what’s happening in your environment—including the bodies of other people.  In other words,  you literally feel the presence and pressure of the world around you.  This universal interconnectedness-through-feeling is the fundamental nature of reality.

Of course, most of the time, most of this deep embodied feeling is unconscious.  Therefore, to penetrate beneath surface appearances involves cultivating the ability to feel, or intuit, the feelings and intentions of other beings in the environment.  Paying attention to the unconscious intelligence of your own body is an effective way to enhance expanded awareness. Doing so requires mental discipline and focus. For a martial artist—where the central aim is to either neutralize an attack or achieve victory over an opponent—mastering this “mental game” is as crucial as mastering physical skills and moves.

This “mental game” involves learning to simultaneously pay attention to what we feel in our bodies (“causal efficacy”) and to whatever presents itself to our senses in the immediate, present environment (“presentational immediacy”).  With this expanded awareness, we can choose to take actions that either align with and enhance our body’s unconscious, automatic responses or that inhibit or override them. In this way, we can choose to amplify our body’s natural intelligence or interrupt a habitual way of acting that doesn’t serve our current aim or purpose.

 

Expanded Embodiment

Viewing reality through the lens of process philosophy can be beneficial for all of us because it offers a radically different way of understanding and experiencing ourselves as embodied intelligent beings.  We readjust our relationships between one another as individuals and with the wider world in which we are always embodied and embedded.

However, process philosophy is particularly valuable for martial artists and others who use their bodies as vehicles for self-expression (e.g., athletes and dancers).  The most dramatic shift in awareness available for process martial artists is what we could call “expanded embodiment” or, following some indigenous traditions, “the long body.”

One of the most important new ideas in process philosophy is the realization that our bodies do not end at the surface of our skin.  As Taoist philosopher Alan Watts said: “We are not skin-encapsulated egos.”

According to process metaphysics, our bodies are formed, moment by moment, from the never-ending influx of past events (prior “actual occasions”) into the here and now.  In fact, right now as you read this, the entire history of the universe is flowing into the particular point in space and time that is your body.  The specific way the universe converges on this point creates “you” as an individual. Even though every body literally contains the entire history of the universe, each of us is unique because no two points in spacetime are ever identical.  Everybody has a unique perspective.  And this individual perspective is just that—a perspective. That’s why the world shows up differently for each of us.  Your perspective is different from mine, and everybody else’s. Each of us sees the world through our own unique window.  All we ever perceive with our bodily senses is a limited slice of reality—an appearance (Whitehead’s “presentational immediacy”).

Nevertheless, the entire universe is present in our bodies—in fact, it is each body—as past reality flows into and converges on the “here and now” that is each of us as an individual.  This is the process Whitehead calls “causal efficacy.” It’s the transmission of energy and information from the past into the present, and that’s what accounts for the phenomenon of memory and, indeed, for the fact that every moment is connected to its own past.

However, this continuity is not merely the transmission of energy through time. Every body literally feels the pressure of the past flowing into the present.  What is energy from one perspective (the objective past flowing into the present) is experience from the opposite perspective (the subjective present feeling the impact of the past, right now). We literally feel the feelings of other bodies. Indeed, that’s what energy is: It’s the transmission of experience in a process where one body feels the feelings, or experiences the experiences, of the other bodies around it. Our bodies, then, are antennas that “tune into” the experiences of others.

Because every body is composed of the entire past universe, in particular states of consciousness we can expand our body’s awareness to encompass everything around us. Of course, this requires developing a special, paradoxical, quality of focused attention and expanded awareness beyond our normal mental states. Cultivating this ability is an important aspect of effective martial arts practice.

A successful process martial artist develops an awareness that his or her body literally incorporates the other bodies around it.  By feeling the feelings of other bodies, he has access to the aims and intentions of his opponents, and knows, unconsciously in his own body, what they intend to do in the next moment.  The practitioner who more skillfully and deeply feels the embodied feelings of her opponents has a decisive advantage, and is more empowered to take charge of the situation.

 

Embodied Intelligence

All prior events transmit their effects (energy) into the present (“causal efficacy”).  This pressure of the past on the present is also the transmission of embodied experience (from one actual occasion to the next). Since this happens at the level of cells and molecules—which, of course are so tiny, they don’t have any sense organs, such as eyes, ears, or noses—the transmission of experience is extra-sensory or telepathic (no sensory information is involved).
Deeper awareness of the transmission of energy/experience at the cellular level is what most folks call “feeling” or “intuition,” and it gives the martial artist a greater ability to literally feel the opponent, and thus to anticipate his or her next moves. Consciousness penetrates deeper into the body, allowing the martial artist to more effectively express his/her embodied intelligence.

An alert and aware process martial artist makes use of both modes of embodied intelligence. One, by paying sharp attention to appearance (“presentational immediacy”), he is aware of the other through the windows of his senses;  and, two, by paying closer attention to his own embodied feelings, he experiences the experiences of the other (“causal efficacy”). He expands his body, and so gains direct access to the experiences, aims, and intentions of the other bodies around him (because they are now part of his extended body).  A master martial artist, then, knows what his opponents aim to do in the next moment, even before they do.

Embodied intelligence, therefore, can enter the practitioner’s conscious awareness in two ways: as perceptions (e.g., images of the opponent’s actions); or as a felt bodily sense (without sense perception) of what the opponent will do next.

By paying closer attention to subtle clues of her body (noticing how her energy and experience shift in concert with her opponent’s—as one body feels what the other feels), the process martial artist both expands her present awareness (presentational immediacy) and gains deeper access to the unconscious embodied intelligence of the “expanded body” that includes self and other (causal efficacy). In short, unconscious intuition enters more and more into conscious awareness.

This dialogue between consciousness in the present and embodied intelligence flowing in from the past gives the process martial artist a greater range of options for choice and action, accompanied by an expanded awareness of the wider circumstances, leading to appropriate choices for action.

Remember, your opponent is also doing his best to achieve his aims, too.  Whether he is aware of it or not, he is also feeling your feelings, and this influences his actions.  You are both engaged in a dance—an exchange of experiences and energy.

 

The Process Martial Artist

Martial arts mastery, then, depends as much on psychological qualities as on physical prowess or skill.  That’s why attitude is crucial in effective performance. From the process perspective, “attitude” depends on our aims, which incline us to view and take in the world in a particular way.  For example, if our personal aim is dominated by self protection, that can lead us to respond to the world with fear—thus distorting its appearance and making intelligent choice less possible.  Or, if our aim is dominated by aggression, we may see opponents where we could be seeing possible allies.

To aim at mastery in martial arts requires an attitude of openness to what is, which leads to a greater awareness of what is possible.  True mastery of martial arts involves overcoming fear and aggression to achieve a kind of open, flexible response to incoming experiences.  This open attitude is cultivated by aiming not at self-defense or victory, but rather at feeling the situation as deeply as possible, and responding naturally to the dynamism of what is.
If you cultivate an attitude of open flexibility, you will be less likely to inspire anger or fear in your opponent—thus opening up possibilities for the transmutation of conflict into cooperation.