Breaking the spirit?

[DennisBreene]

IMO, in the military they are reshaping them to fit into a unit. So, like a bone that has been incorrectly set, their spirit is broken, realigned, and then allowed to grow whole again.

But for martial arts, I think it should be more like muscle training: we want to push their spirit as far as it can be without injury so it grows back stronger. If we tear that spirit, it must heal first before resuming training.

I would comment that, in my experience with the military, I did not hear much about breaking a soldiers spirit. I think a major factor is training someone to survive the initial shock of real life and death combat, and that involves building a set of skills that get the soldier through the initial tendency to freeze. Drawing parallels between martial "arts" and true martial training for war has limitations.

 

[Hyoho]

All the muscle in the world won't help as long as you sub consciously associate aggression with tension. especially with younger fit people its all muscle and no brain. We have to break people down on a daily basis physically and spiritually until the naturalness kicks in. We get pushed and the first thing to go is breathing. Then the rest follows, physically and spiritually broken down Then your teacher will glean out of you what you didn't think you had. And the daily process continues. You know you should go to your teacher for 'the medicine'. That being broken down actually builds you up.

Its hard in all weathers too. In winter I would pull the bamboo hanger out of my uniform at it would be frozen solid. Break it up, get dressed, warm up (did I say warm) go get the med. In years to to come you stand in front of 50 people issuing the med.

Talking to an aged well respected mentor about is amazing spirit. He replied, 'When you get to my age...? Spirit is about all you have left'.