Mindfulness

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(or present moment awareness)

Mindfulness is a mental state achieved by focusing one's awareness on the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting one's feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations. Mindfulness means maintaining a moment-by-moment awareness of our thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and surrounding environment.

Mindfulness/Present Moment are the yin/yang principle often missed, ignored or laughed at as a concept in martial arts, karate. You cannot have mindfulness without being in the present moment for mindfulness is a concept to address how we handle each present moment of life. 

One sub-concept of the mindfulness principle is the "outside-in vs. inside-out" concept. It is in regard to feelings or emotions often referred to in martial arts as the "monkey brain." The monkey brain is that one that lets loose the dogs of war via triggering the emotions so that our adrenaline pumps chemicals, i.e., neurotransmitters etc., that jack you up and let you fly recklessly in conflict and violence and other stress states of mind. Mindfulness and present moment awareness are those concepts with skills necessary to control the monkey thus controlling oneself so that one can control situations thus avoiding conflict and violence. 

For instance: "The more their head is filled with thinking, the less present they are to the moment. There are no feelings that can ever exist separate from our thoughts. We are always experiencing our thinking and our feelings from the inside-out. AND The feelings we are having in any given moment are arising from our thoughts, not from our external circumstances." This sounds counterintuitive considering we tend to feel, believe and understand that it is external stimuli that triggers our emotions or feelings. Think about this...

I quote, "When we look at our experience through the lens of an outside-in mindset, we believe our feelings are giving us honest feedback about our circumstances and other people. This outside-in mindset leads to blame. The alternative is to experience life through an inside-out mindset. Moment by moment, we can interpret our feelings as signals, giving reliable feedback on the quality of our thinking."

Our interpretations of any external stimulus is our mind telling us what our state of mind is in at that moment. Present moment mindfulness is about taking the reins of that stagecoach and handling things in the present moment through mindfulness. I quote, "Observe when intense feelings arise. Observe any thoughts blaming other people or circumstances for your feelings."

One way to look at it is giving ourselves permission to recognize this concept/principle so we are willing and able to say, "I must be mistaken because I am blaming." 

Another quote, "The Stoic philosopher Epictetus began his life as a slave. He overcame physical bondage and then attended to his mind to free himself of his own inner chains. In the collection of his writing The Enchiridion, he shared his timeless discovery: 'People are not disturbed by things, but by the views they take of them'."

Epictetus continued: "When therefore we are hindered, or disturbed, or grieved, let us never attribute it to others, but to ourselves; that is, to our own principles. An uninstructed person will lay the fault of his own bad condition upon others."

One of those professionals I like to study from made two statements that felt, to me, like they addressed this concept or principle:

“… it's not a particular thought, that precedes an emotion. It's a massive unconscious blend of assumptions, beliefs, values, habits, expectations, self-image, sense of entitlement, world model, and experience that give rise to not only the emotion, but the strength of it." - MM

"An analogy I use is an arroyo in the desert. The deeper and more entrenched that arroyo is (the way you think) the more powerful and out of control the flash flood will be (emotions). Every time you have a flash flood that arroyo gets deeper and more entrenched." - MM

I have always found that the study of martial arts, karate with its kata, basics, etc., is a most excellent tool to study and understand and imbed a mindful present moment state of mind BECAUSE to learn the martial arts and its karate takes a focus, attention to detail and dedicated study that fosters present moment mindful training, practice and application be it sport, philosophical or hands-on practice for self-protection. 

To understand, encode and perceive karate one must achieve mindfulness in the present moment to learn, study, practice things like basics then kata and finally drill-based and free form kumite. It is that one place, the dojo, where allowing external thoughts to intrude and interfere; thoughts that are mind-habits where attaining a mindful present moment state awakens us from that mind-habit or intrusive interfering mind chatter. 

You see, oh you already see and know this, the very core of developing mindful present moment ability comes from skills found collectively in martial arts, karate. It has the training that is also a moving meditative practice with actual meditation processes involved. Mindfulness is based on a meditative process that is an element of Buddhism, Zen and Tibetan meditation techniques. Even todays medical industry rely on a mindful state use toward therapeutic applications to help people with a variety of psychological conditions. 

You are already saying to yourself, if our martial arts provides the tools for mindfulness then why do we have to make it a conscious training requirement? In answer, letting anything remain in a state of assuming or assumptions is a recipe for disaster BECAUSE not addressing it means you don’t perceive or even realize when it is not being fully completely and efficiently addresses similar to ignoring all those concepts and traits and skills necessary to address the full spectrum of the self-defense of self-protection. 

When we practice, such as mokuso at the start and end of training, we can make sure we practice and train the techniques that pump up our ability to remain in a state of present moment mindfulness. For instance, when doing mokuso we are taught, as you already know, how to breathe and meditate and bring focus of the mind off external past, present and future mind chatter toward a focused, disciplined and attentive mindfulness of the mokuso practice, i.e., why all aspects of martial arts and karate are also arts and disciplines within themselves often watered down until one reaches a stage where further research and expansion of the art is encouraged. 

ALSO:

Ishoshin [意生身] Buddhism term, i.e., mind-made body; body as born out of a certain kind of intent or mindfulness; Life

Rinjushonen [臨終正念] Buddhism term, i.e., holding the proper state of mindfulness at the moment of death; end of life. 

Shonen [正念] Buddhism term, i.e., right mindfulness; Right mind. 

For reference and sources and professionals go here: Bibliography (Click the link)