The mind or mental processes are ephemeral. The gray matter that makes up our brains are physical while the thoughts and emotions we experience that are from the brain/mind are short-lived. Ephemeral is Yin; Physical is Yang; one is fleeting from moment to moment while the other resides permanently in the present moment.
What is it that gets us humans, more males then females, into a lot of trouble, emotions, the monkey brain driving the train. If we are not aware of our emotions, how they affect us and our bodies, then they tend to control us once triggered. To become aware of emotions; to label the emotions; to stop stories from being attached to while remaining aware of how they feel is the beginnings of controlling our emotions - to an extent.
All our emotions have the potential to drive the bus causing us any number of issues, both positive and negative emotions. In karate we train to shackle the monkey so we can balance intuition with reason. Reason means access to the things we train and practice while intuition, unencumbered by emotional effects, etc., can allow a mindful use of proper tactics to avoid, deescalate, etc. in a conflict/altercation. When the mind is clouded by our emotional monkey driving the bus it cuts the circuit that connects reason and intuition, it freezes or slows to a crawl leaving you unresponsive in the altercation, verbal or otherwise.
Stories and emotions are attached to things, this gives fuel to the bus and tells the monkey to do its dance leaving us subject to its whims. When we train the body and leave the mind to its own resources we get chaos but if we are aware/mindful of our bodies and minds with all there luggage we can control how we respond, i.e. with the monkey in charge or with reason and intuition - your choice, always is; always has been. Ease of implementation - practice, practice, practice ...
I find that the ken-po goku-i touches in all eight tomes both the physical and mental. A person's heart is physical yet making a reference the Heaven and Earth as the ancient Chinese did it becomes mental or of a more spiritual nature which is not physical.
Blood is a physical yet circulating and it similarity once again is not physical but an analogy that means both physical and mental/spiritual.
The body is physical but the performance of changing its direction comes from the mind and the minds perception of stimuli in the physical world which causes us to choose, a mental activity, to change a direction which is a physical manifestation of the choice the mind made, mental.
Time is both physical and mental, it exists when referenced say on a watch yet is truly a mental perception in the mind like our ability to project into the past or contemplate the future but more importantly remaining in the present moment which really stops dealing with time for time has not relevance in present moment mindfulness.
The eyes see all sides where one type of "eyes" is the physical eye that sees stimuli and transmits those signals to the mind which then translates through the minds knowledge and experiences, both not of physical nature, into some thought where actions of the mind are mined and again non-physically transmitted to the part of the brain that will trigger the physical manifestations, i.e. what is instinctual and/or trained/practiced.
The ears may be physical yet all they do are non-physical. The more you allow the mind, Yin, to function and work the more you can transmit/translate that into actions which your body, Yang, take in life. It can be living every day or it can be the actions taken in a physical confrontation, physical:Yang, and finally the act of avoidance, Yin:a choice, into moving away from the danger zone, physical:Yang, to safety.
Duality, Yang-n-Yin, and the ken-po goku-i do teach us something if we are willing to "see" and "hear" more than what we may be comfortable with ... ?
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