Konpon [根本]
The act and concept of rooting in karate is to have a stable and grounded body, both physical and mental. The foundation on which all movement and methods are built through proper applicable ability of principled stable movement (methodologies).
Mind
To root the mind is to create emotional maturity along with solid knowledge, understanding and applicability of mind-state so high stressors are suppressed so one remains positively relaxed and fluid and stable and most of all calm.
Look at mind stability or root the mind as how you create a strong psychological state that you root your spirit to, especially in high risk stressful and dangerous situations.
No matter how stable you physically set your body, if the mind is not rooted in spirit (spirit/earth concept) then the body will become unbalanced as if weighted down till it’s useless when you need it most.
Build your mental/psychological grounding through increasing confidence through continuous regular training and practices, specifically a reality-based system.
Once you achieve a baseline, let it infiltrate your every day living.
Body
To root the body involves more than achieving a solid stance where you connect your hara through legs and soles of the feet to terra-firma.
This is critical taking precedence over strength and mass, proprioception. Proprioception is our ability to know the exact position, speed, and rotation of all parts of our body without conscious effort.
Everything else builds on our ability because in “the fight (defense),” we are in a constant state of fluidity where everything changes on a dime(root the mind addresses the ability to change quickly and efficiently feeding proprioception.
Think rooting the body as in its parts building a whole; fingers root to the hands: hands root to the wrist/forearm: rooting to the upper arm: rooting to the shoulder girdle, and so on (think the old song, hand bone connected to the …).
Note: the reason I’m ignoring karate’s tendency to take a stance then applying methods is because in conflict and violence seldom is that an opportunity yet as I’m intimating one must root in motion. Setting a stance, rooting stances, also wastes energy and telegraphs to an attacker, you have to “shorten the line,” or better get through the OODA loop faster than your attacker.
Remember, “free the mind, freeing the body, freeing the mind-state! (Mind, Body, Spirit)
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