Notes From A Fight Ritual
A definition of ‘Fighting’: “concerning confrontations with a partner; to defend oneself, assert control, or achieve victory” (Marcello Palozzo)
The following notes were taken after The Tao Of Movement’s first ‘Open Fight Ritual’, and following two weeks of complimentary Movement- and Fighting-focused materials…
3 Research Parameters (taken from Marcello Palozzo) - Duration, Intensity, Complexity - we manipulated all 3 at various points throughout the evening (NOTE: intensity can be an emotional measure, as well as a physical one; eg. competition / higher stakes might result in higher intensity)
Finding Oneself / Overcoming Oneself (the real ‘fight’) - sometimes choosing to lose against an opponent and/or to conserve energy helps us to discover something more precious and valuable about ourselves (‘losing the battle but winning the war’)
Closed vs Open Loop Scenarios - Educational research strongly suggests that smaller, successful goals/challenges create a more positive and supportive learning process. Eg. better to choose, succeed at and integrate many realistic goals (closed loop) than struggle and strive unsuccessfully towards a bigger one (open loop). Open loop ‘failures‘ often result in thoughts and beliefs such as: ‘i can‘t do this‘, ‘fighting is not for me‘, ‘movement is just not my thing‘, ‘I‘m too sensitive to be able to enjoy fighting‘, ‘i‘ll never be able to reach x,y,z goal‘ etc…
...99.99% of people are not too weak, too sensitive, too unfit etc to fight/play/move - they simply just didn’t find a better way to practice yet.
Why no gear, padding, helmets, protection like we see in most other fighting ‘gyms’? - 1) it won‘t protect us from the most important issues (related to attention, awareness, discipline, technique etc); 2) they‘re big, expensive and time-consuming to use, store, transport etc; 3) they make our practice much less transferable (zero equipment means we can practice anywhere, anytime!)
Why is a (slightly) unsafe practice better than a perfectly safe one? - life is random, chaotic, messy, therefore a useful and powerful practice must partly resemble this. The ‘unsafety‘ initiates emotional layers of adaptation/learning also, concerning fear, anxiety, trust and self-doubt mainly.
Natural Consequences Of A (Good) Fight Practice: humility, compassion, empathy, confidence, courage, connection, humour and gratitude - these things may be better left ‘unsaid‘ however, and to simply be experienced instead :)
“Never give a sword to a man who can’t dance” (Confucius)
Some recommended sources for further (Fighting) Research:
The Art of War (Sun Tzu) / The Tao Te Ching (Lao Tzu) / Meditations (Marcus Aurelius) / Artist of Life - Biography of Bruce Lee / Bushido (Inazo Nitobe) / themartialbody.com
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