I used to be a highly stressed, uptight and high strung person. I was easily spun up and prone to reacting too quickly, often making rash decisions on the fly.

Luckily, I was pretty good at making rash decisions, with little input and obtaining successful outcomes. However, I never realized (or maybe cared) about the impact me being this way had on others.

Now, it may seem odd that I have listed this blog post under body and not mind or spirit.

There is a good reason for that.

I have trained for over thirty years (well not as much in the last five or so) in the Martial Arts. One thing I have learned is that to react properly to a threat, you must stay calm. You cannot allow fear, anger or excitement to take over. These things make you less effective not more.

As such, I have fostered a calmer style over the years. This began with my body first and has spread to my spirit and my mind. For me the process had to transition this way. My mind and spirit are not calm things. I wish they were. I learned to tame my body and a byproduct has been a calmer disposition across the board.

My first reaction is no longer movement or action.

This began when I started integrating my training into my everyday life. Breath control is a key to proper technique in Martial Arts. Learning to center yourself in a stressful situation on your breathing allows you to control the rest of your body.

Think about it, when you get excited, what happens first; you start breathing faster. This is a natural response the body has under stress. Whether it is a fear response or an adrenaline rush the body reacts through the breath. Secondarily, your muscles tense for action. Both of these are natural functions of the body under stress, and highly detrimental in a combat situation.

Tense muscles and rapid breathing are not conducive to quick and accurate movement.

Thus, focusing on breathing and centering in a stress situation are key. You must be calmer than the world around you. I found this true in business as well. When I approached things in a calm, centered manner, the outcome was typically much better than when I rushed in headlong.

I have lead teams through very high impact and stress ladened times. I myself have learned to better control my anxiety, which I am very prone to by simply centering and focusing on my breathing.

Along with this, another technique that I learned to foster is releasing the tension in each muscle one at a time. This had an effect that I did not at first recognize. I now have a heightened sense of exactly what is going on with my body. It is both about teaching yourself to manage each body part and the action it performs under a load. This can be done without weights by simply tensing the muscles involved throughout the range of motion. It becomes a slow motion action with the muscle under intense tension.

Think pushing air that weighs more than you do. You can get the senses of what I am relating by throwing punches under water.

This is a form of kinesthetic exercise or learning. You are tensing, and thus “feeling” the motion throughout the range of the technique or exercise, controlling the breathing, and “impressing” upon the muscle group “muscle memory”. Thus, when done naturally (without the kinesthetic tension action) the motion is fluid and quick. You have trained your body what to do to produce a given effect. Done properly and in conjunction with something like Martial Arts, or Yoga or other “technique” based forms this can be quite a workout. Air can be very heavy!

The ultimate benefit is a very natural movement, a feeling of how you move through a situation that can be extended to other aspects of your life. You can give purpose to every activity. You have centered the action, trained the muscle to react and done so with skill and precision. This goes for the muscle between your ears as well.

Too often we don’t consider the need to train our head when we train our body. We learn an action (Martial Arts, lifting weights, running, whatever) but never put the mental or spiritual aspect of it into practice.

This is natural, as westerners we are taught to do more than think. Learning a bit about Zen practices changes this. Early on in my Martial Arts training I began to be interested in the spiritual and mental control aspects of Easter philosophy. In the small town I grew up in and the church background I was heavily steeped in, this was not viewed positively.

However, I never found that any of this study had any impact upon my faith. No, in fact it has strengthened it. Jesus went away many times during his ministry to meditate. He understood the need to be with oneself and to allow the divine to come in and calm the spirit and assuage the mind.

This connection between the body, mind and soul is nothing short of divine in nature. It is how we were meant to be. How we were meant to live connected with ourselves, others and the world around us.

Foster these vastly important connections.