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You all probably know, especially the karate-ka, that a huge influence on karate from Okinawa is from influences of the relations with China. If you can accept that, can you not? If you can accept that then you already know that a huge influence on Chinese Gung-fu, martial arts, came from nature…animals.
There is the “Tiger.” [虎]
There is the “Leopard.” [豹]
There is the “Crane.” [鶴]
There is the “Snake.” [蛇]
Then there is the one symbolic and not of nature except in the imagination, “The Dragon.” [竜]
There are others such as the “Praying Mantis,” “Wild Boar,” and the “Eagle,” that all fall into categories or styles of Chinese Martial Arts. In short, it depends on whom you seek out training from and all of them have connections to nature’s animals.
It appears that through observation of the animal world the Chinese were able to gleam possibilities that humans could create and enhance their efforts at defense, protection and combatives in their arts whether empty handed or with the various exotic weapons of Chinese Gung-fu.
It began to influence my thinking in that observation of the animal kingdom may provide us critical and important information as to how we could apply the principles and methodologies of our karate, or about any other martial art. The obstacle we have in modern times are the lack of wild animals like the Tiger, Leopard and Snake to observe and still as you can imagine we do have animals all around us to observe who actually live around us.
Birds, Snakes, Cats, and Dogs. Especially our family friends the dog [犬]. In this article I will use two dogs as example BECAUSE to really observe dogs and how they relate two or more provide us with a dynamic environment that can tell us a lot as well as how the two dogs act and react to the humans who love them.
For instance, like humans dogs sense emotions and emotions drive how humans and dogs act and react. Can you imagine how our emotions might effect our dogs, just take notice the next time strong emotions pop up with us and observe how those dogs react especially one the status of human and dog is established. It can be amazing and enlightening.
As much as we humans might disagree, the research that has come out in the last decade or two or three indicate that everything happens is about emotions.
This is why my current studies started with this most excellent expert research written by Lisa Feldman Barret, PhD, titled, “How Emotions are Made.” It spells out a lot and what I derived from my studies of her work so far is that in martial arts philosophy we strive to rid ourselves of the “self” and to remove emotions from the application of our karate especially in regard to protection and defense. What we have to do is bring our emotions up to a master level, so to speak, something called, “Emotional Maturity and Emotional Intelligence and Emotional Granularity.”
Once we learn how our brains, minds, actually handle emotions and how emotions contribute to the creation of concepts then we can get a clearer picture on how we can “change” our understanding of things, especially martial arts and karate, to better apply them in sometimes dangerous and aggressive situations.
Time for divergence before readers mis-read my intent, when I mention animals thoughts leap toward how we can derive applications and techniques (methodologies) from their actions and in truth this article is about how animals act and react to things before physical actions and reactions become necessary. You probably already know, or guessed, that the mention of emotions, status and concepts meant it might diverge from the favorite and fun part, the physical techniques, to a more mindful part.
Example: I have a temper, mostly I get loud and angry (when I get quiet … ) and one afternoon my trigger points were tripped once too often and my voice began to increase causing both dogs to begin barking, a lot. Then I realized that when the discussion began to get the emotions charged up the dogs came out of nowhere to become agitated and moving around both of us a lot. Our intent on each other caused us to miss those signals and when the dogs barked a lot, we both stopped and looked and you could see the light come on in our heads.
The Chinese as you already know were way ahead of their times and because they were able to “see” and “hear” and “perceive” nature and the animal kingdom in such a way that not only did the martial arts flourish and evolve, many other aspects of the culture manifest and became a part of the whole we know refer to as “Bu-do” and “Karate-do” and “Martial Arts.”
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