Fitting all that Integral into the Art

Now that I am a little over a month into teaching my newly minted Integral Martial Arts class in Ridley, Pennsylvania, I am learning first hand how overwhelming it can be for the teacher. If you read the literature on Integral Theory, the generally accepted view of when something is considered "Integral" is if it includes consideration and honors all Stages, States, Quadrants, Lines, and Types. The abbreviation for this is AQAL, standing for "All Quadrants All Lines...etc."

What I can tell you is there is a significant difference between gazing at your navel to map out an Integral curriculum that honors AQAL versus figuring out how to TEACH AQAL and actually include AQAL on a day-to-day basis for a 1-hour class. There just isn't enough time. What do they mean by "include and honor" anyway? So let me offer my take on it.

As I mentioned, there isn't enough time to make people consciously pay attention to AQAL overnight. In fact, doing so might confuse the hell out of a student that initially thinks he or she is coming to class to learn how to throw a punch. I mean, you really need to teach them how to throw the punch in the first place! So, my attitude has been that there's no need to convey AQAL overnight. There's time, hopefully, to introduce things little by little as the student can incorporate and integrate it into his or her consciousness. In my class I have paired down the Quadrants into the Good, the Beautiful, and the True, and renamed them the Personal, the Social, and the Physical. (See previous blog posts on this.) These names help them remember things when studying the different perspectives of techniques. First and foremost, it starts with gross motor which lies squarely in the Physical. After integrating that, the student can learn how to breath through it. Breathing starts to bring attention to the Personal, and from there we can start to talk about the gross, subtle, and causal aspects of a punch. However, again, you cannot get into those things unless the student can do the physical parts of the punch without conscious thought.

Just doing those two things are a lot, but there's still a third (and fourth) perspective to take into account, both of which are melded into the Social aspect. This is a little easier to do. Any time an exercise is worked with a partner, it is Social. The students must consider what is happening with their partners, and they can no longer think solely about what is going on inside their own little heads, else they might wind up accidentally hurting someone else during the exercise. Doing this changes the whole thing: how it feels, how it moves. Tall students have to adjust to short students. Stiff students have to adjust to loose students. Slow students have to adjust to fast students. There's always a meeting of minds, and a meeting in the middle somewhere. During partnered exercises, I call attention to these things as the Social. There are other things within this perspective that I can call attention to, such as the dojo itself, but I won't get into that here. In any case, it does not necessarily require complete gross motor control to do a partnered exercise, but it sure helps. Plus, the student can tap into a partner much more easily if brain power can be diverted from keeping good form. Thus, as the students mature, they gain better insight into the Social.

So that leaves the life practice that I'm trying to help each student build outside of class, tailored specifically to the individual. There's very little time to help them with that in class, so often what I find I do is spend a few minutes with a particular student after the class is done, and then on the next class that week I pick a different student and talk. It's slow. It's probably not optimal, and I'm probably going to change things as I get better and get advice here and there, but it's going well so far.

Integral Martial Arts Practice OUTSIDE The Dojo

Next week I will be starting a new adventure teaching an Integral Martial Arts class as the Ridley Sports Club in Ridley, PA. This is my first crack and teaching a truly Integral school. My friend Nathanael Chawkin and Sunstone Yoga gave me an idea for using wrist bands in addition to belts as a means of tracking student progress. Belts will be a traditional market for tracking progress within class while the wrist bands track progress OUTSIDE of class. This is a work in progress and will be evolving as things get clearer for me.

This is a draft of a sheet given to students about the OUTSIDE of Class work:

Integral Martial Arts – OUTSIDE The Classroom

Martial arts can be a powerful vehicle for self-development. This class uses the study of a number of different martial disciplines for personal transformation and growth. The class honors the traditional values of fitness, discipline, and self-defense while weaving in deeper insights from meditation, breathing, and other elements. Students will be taught techniques from a number of Eastern and Western styles and guided through their own construction of a life practice both inside and outside of class. Based on Integral Theory, a profound system for understanding the universe, students’ progress will be marked in class with a more traditional belt system. For marking progress outside of class, a wrist band system based on a color scheme for Ken Wilber’s Stages of Consciousness is used. Specifically, the wrist band system marks a student’s level of understanding of the practice of Martial Arts: what Martial Arts means to that student, and why they are practiced.

Stages of Understanding Martial Arts
Purple
Student practices martial arts because he or she idolizes a central figure in the class (living or not), and sees being a part of the group as necessary for growth. Student feels a connection with ancient forces that have practiced before, and wants to connect with them. Sees the group as a support structure for self-defense, a source of belonging.
Red
Student practices martial arts for personal power. Perhaps the student was bullied and decided he or she needs to learn how to fight for self-defense purposes. In some way, the person either feels powerless or sees the martial arts as a way of gaining more power and ability for self-preservation.
Blue
Student sees his or her martial art as the one true way, either to enlightenment or to perfect self-defense. Student forms identity from being a part of the class and having relationships with other class members, in order to be accepted and to belong. Student upholds the principles of the class as the ultimate truth.
Orange
Student practices martial arts in order to personally achieve something. This could be belt ranks, trophies, recognition, becoming the ultimate fighter, or all of the above. Student is very interested in technically perfect execution of the martial art, and what the optimal technique for something is.
Green
Student sees martial arts as a fun and convenient path for achieving harmony and enlightenment, especially along with other practitioners. Student does not think that any particular martial art is superior but believes that his or her current class most aptly expresses an open belief system that holds all martial arts as equal. Student uses this as a platform to learn as many different things as possible.
Teal
Student sees martial arts as a tool that can serve practitioners of all stages by addressing them where they exist. Student realizes that his or her own practice stage is simply one partial step along a greater path of unfolding that will change yet again, one day. Student understands that his or her own practice is addressed in different ways, spanning pre-Modern, Modern, and Post-Modern means.
Turquoise
Student sees martial arts as a means of addressing the growth of others in which ever stage they occupy. Through the growth of others, and service to others, the martial artist grows in turn. If the student is not inherently a teacher, he or she understands that practicing martial arts in this time and place along with his or her class perpetuates the growth of others automatically.

Wrist Bands and Practicing OUTSIDE of Class
Periodically, instructors will evaluate students on their progression and understanding to see if there has been a change. If a change has occurred, a new wrist band of the appropriate color will be given to the student. It is important to realize that “understanding martial arts” is a way to describe more than just a factual knowledge on the subject matter. Cognition is necessary but not sufficient by itself to advance to a new wrist band color. More is needed. To demonstrate true “understanding” at a certain Stage, the student must live the Stage in his or her whole psyche. This level of understanding is something very difficult to demonstrate falsely or with intellectual understanding alone. All new students will begin with a Purple wrist band, and many will likely advance up by one or two colors quickly until their wrist band color catches up with their actual level of understanding. At that point, the student may have the same wrist band color for quite some time before the next one is bestowed.

Working OUTSIDE of Class
Working on self-development outside of class is optional for all students, but highly recommended. Techniques within this school cover three different aspects or viewpoints:

• Personal – This viewpoint deals with anything “below the skin”. Your personal domain is made up of your Body, Emotions, Mind, and Spirit.

• Physical – This viewpoint deals with anything “outside the skin”. Your physical techniques and form, as well as the dojo are all physical.

• Social – This viewpoint deals with any interaction between you and someone else outside of you. It includes sparring, interactive exercises, and interpersonal relationships.

All work OUTSIDE of class is in the Personal domain. The intent for these exercises is to increase personal strength, control, calmness, and happiness, while decreasing negative emotions and thoughts. This work will be divided into “Modules” offered to the students, which they can modify to their own liking at will based on their personal beliefs and convictions. Modules fall into four categories:

• Body Modules – These deal with physical training as a means for dealing with emotional stress, fear, and pain, as well as increasing awareness of personal energy and aliveness.

• Mind Modules – These deal with both mental and emotional exercises. They can be used to uncover buried feelings, but also to increase personal knowledge of facts and figures.

• Spirit Modules – These deal with increasing personal consciousness and mindfulness of the present moment.

• Shadow Modules – These deal with addressing unacknowledged pieces of ourselves that hamper our efforts at being happy and fulfilled.

A number of modules from each category have been selected based on research regarding their effectiveness. These will be offered as options to students, but students are also encouraged to develop their own modules that suit them with guidance from the instructor.

Integral Martial Arts: The Physical Perspective --- Gateway to Everything

Perhaps you have watched dozens of cheesy Kung-Fu flicks that used to air on Saturday afternoons, or perhaps you are an avid Pay-Per-View fan of the UFC. Maybe on top of that you have read a few books on martial arts techniques, some of them with pictures. Whatever the case, through those different media you are looking at the "face" of martial arts. You are looking at The Physical outward trappings. All of these things that we traditionally think of as "The Martial Arts" that deal with punching, kicking, killing, maiming, and all that other good stuff are real. There are hundreds of books written on them by dozens of teachers, and many people make their living off of teaching these physical techniques to students.

To study all of the intricate physical details about martial arts that every unique teacher has put out would take lifetimes. I am not going to do that here, except to say that most, if not all, of those things in those books are true.... but also partial. If you have read the previous posts on this blog, you will understand that The Physical perspective is only one third of what happens in the Martial Arts, along with the Social and Personal perspectives. Each of these things is not separate, of course. I am only pointing them out separately to make things easier to write. They all take place simultaneously, and co-arise together. They also evolve through Stages together.

So what about The Physical?

For the most part, this is the easiest thing to think about. Find yourself a teacher, and if you already have one, just keep doing what you are doing and chances are you will develop your physical talent in the Martial Arts. Depending on your reason for living, you will adapt your physical techniques to the way you see the world, and whether or not you think the world is a nice place or a dangerous one. But what if you want to go farther than that? What if you realize that this physical stuff only goes so far? (I mean, how many 80-year-olds do you see wiping the walls with 23-year-old UFC fighters?) What if you truly feel that the internal stuff that happens with your own mind and emotions matter? Or if you feel that your interactions with people are something you need to improve?

Then, you are ready to begin broadening your view, and it just so happens that The Physical aspects of Martial Arts are the perfect gateway to that road. After all, we go to class and we practice on our own by physically doing something. We move. We perform. We spar. The only difference between doing these things forever and getting nowhere in your life and doing these same things and finding yourself on a road to fulfillment and happiness is intention.

Intention is the key.

So here is the dirty little secret about the power of intention: If you have a persistent bad habit in Life, it's usually reflected by some bad habit you have in Martial Arts. Intention links these two things together, so if you fix one, you fix the other. By coming to the dojo and working hard on that technique or that bad habit in class, you are doing yourself a favor for the equivalent bad habit in Life. When you intend to fix that problem in class, and you do, you will find that the problem also clears up in Life *as long as you link the two together and intend to fix one by fixing the other*. This can be something as silly as correcting a stance, or much deeper.

The other day, I lost a sparring match pretty badly to a fighter with far less control, but also far less experience and skill. It was pretty brutal. Going over the loss in my head, I could see a lot that I did wrong, as far as techniques went. However, the real problem was the hit to my confidence and even my whole reason for teaching and practicing Martial Arts. I got stressed, and I criticized myself, and beat myself up over it for a bit. Nevertheless, even at my low point during that self-loathing session, I still held the intention to learn from the experience, to learn both about the techniques and Life. As I began to turn inward, I realized that this loss was a great lesson. It was not a lesson about winning or losing a fight at all, but more about my REACTION to winning and losing battles.... but not just winning and losing battles with others. It was about winning and losing battles with myself. I realized that this stress I felt from the interaction was exactly equivalent to (and caused by) my criticism of myself and my own fear of learning through confrontation.

The key realization is that sparring is resistance. When you spar, and you study how you react and work during sparring, you are gaining exact insights into how you resist Life, and what you do when Life resists you. My resistance to learning about what I did wrong was analogous to my tendency to resist resistance itself sometimes, and then to beat myself up (spar myself) over the fact that I did that. Cleaning this up, along with looking at the technical details of what I did wrong in that fight, will possibly improve my sparring.... which I actually do not care about as much. On the other hand, it will definitely improve my capacity as a teacher and as a fully humanized human being.

Therein we have an example of a lesson through The Physical perspective, which spanned into both The Social and The Personal. All three perspectives are One, and completely inseparable.

Integral Martial Arts: Viewing Them from the Social "Quadrant" or Perspective

So now let's look a little bit at Martial Arts from the Social "quadrant" or perspective.

From this view, Martial Arts is about you and I, together. "You and I" could mean literally you and me. It could also mean you and your school, you and your opponent, you and your web forum and other blog readers. Ultimately, it means you and the rest of the world. You and I make a "We". All I have done here is simply rename the "We" quadrant in Integral theory as the "Social Perspective" to describe the aspects of Martial Arts that are social.

Martial Arts from the Social Perspective

Unless you are practicing alone in your room, there is always someone else involved with you while doing your thing! The first question to ask is who is that someone else, or maybe multiple somebodies? The second question is what is your relationship to them?

In the conventional Stages of Martial Arts, your "partner" may be a sparring opponent, an uke, or even a mugger. The object is to beat them somehow, or otherwise dominate them. Though this has its applications and its uses, it is also limited. There are other realms of possibility for the Social aspects.

Just like in the Personal side of things, with Social everything is internal, except this time it is internal between two or more people. You cannot cut open a relationship and look at it, but you can see the outward effects of a relationship: wars, marriages, baptisms, etc. So ask yourself at any given point in your practice with another person, what is going on with the relationship at that moment? Are you antagonistic? Are you collaborative? Is that attitude you hold the right one for the right time?

Each person that practices with you sets up a new relationship. The two of you make a different "We" than you and the last partner you sparred with. How is this "We" different from the last one? Maybe you have noticed that sparring some people just feels different from others, even when you account for skill and training. Why is that? What is it within the two of you that sets up a different "We"? How does that "We" affect your techniques together?

Integral Martial Arts: Training from the Personal Perspective

As I write, I realize how difficult it actually is to encompass so many possibilities on a meager blog. In my last post I proposed a series of questions that one could think about while doing Martial Arts from the Personal perspective. I can think of more, but what I want to do here is use some of these questions to broaden the scope of what constitutes Integral Martial Arts.

In the first post on the blog I introduced how Martial Arts can be understood from different Stages or Levels, although I did not detail how I think every single Stage understands training. One of the things that makes Integral Theory complicated is how it all fits together and creates a huge monster, i.e. the Universe itself in all its intricate glory. In this case, not only can the Martial Arts be understood from different Perspectives, but each Perspective is understood differently depending on your Stage.

My questions about breathing, visualization, concentration, etc. in the last post might cause someone in the Red or Orange Stages to ask, "What do I care about these things? They don't help me win fights or trophies. They don't help me fight longer and harder." Maybe they do and maybe they don't. I guess it depends on how you implement them. However, taking that view is limited and partial. For instance, what benefits might be gained from learning to breath correctly? Is that only good for fighting?

Here's a story about that. When I was in graduate school getting my PhD in Biomedical Engineering, I did animal research for years. Mostly, I used rabbits for my research, and ultimately I became allergic to them. If I breathed in their dander, I would come down with an asthma attack. After a string of nights where I sat in bed at night struggling to breathe, I decided to see a doctor. The next day, while I was having an attack coincidentally, I went to the clinic and they measured my expiration flow rate and lung capacity. Both were normal. The doctor was puzzled. He told me there was nothing wrong with me, but I begged him to do something. After all, he could hear me wheezing. So he consented and put me on a nebulizer in the office with some Albuterol and kept a close eye on me. After about 10 minutes I felt like a million bucks. I could breathe normally. So at that point the doctor took my measurements again for expiration rate and lung capacity. Lo and behold, those measurements were close to TWICE that of a normal person. He was floored.

"You have asthma." He said.

I nodded triumphantly. Of course I had asthma, dummy! The only thing was that during an asthma attack my breathing measurements were REDUCED to that of an "average human" my size. While under an attack, I was "normal". While I was well, my usual lung function was about twice normal and I was used to existing like that. Feeling "normal capacity for my size" was odd for my lungs. That's also why during this asthma attack I was able to function just fine, albeit I was a little scared and worried. Physically I was unimpaired.

I attribute this to my Martial Arts training, specifically my focus of study on breathing. In essence, my training taught me how to get through asthma attacks and how to increase my lung function for every day activities. That benefits me every day..... fighting and combat are side issues. I'm talking about walking down the street, taking a run, making love, or whatever the activity. I'm still frequently out of cardio shape and not a marathon runner by any means, but being able to compensate with my breathing allows me to be a little better than I would have been at those things had I not trained breathing.

Even so, I'm still a novice at breathing! I've walked into yoga classes where they discussed things about breathing that cracked open huge doors for me that I never even knew existed! There is a long way to go.

Nevertheless, this is an example of how a skill in Martial Arts affects every day life for the better. There are a host of life skills that can be developed that may or may not be useful in a fight but are completely advantageous in Life.

Integral Theory Applied to Martial Arts: Personal "Quadrant"

Now that I have set some vocabulary for thinking about Quadrants from a Martial Arts perspective, and narrowing it down from four Quadrants to three perspectives, what do we do now?

What if we dissect each of the three perspectives individually and view the Martial Arts from there?

The Personal "Quadrant" or Perspective

Pretty much anything that you cannot cut open and look at with a scientific or physical instrument falls into this perspective. These are the things that go on internally inside you. At this point, Science has not really developed any tools (physical or otherwise) to look directly at anything occurring in this perspective, although one could argue that the study of psychology is at least a start to that. After all, can you detect an emotion with an instrument? You may be able to see the effects of an emotion: change of facial expression, increases of certain hormone levels, etc, but you cannot actually measure the emotion itself and apply some metric unit to it. Now what about thoughts? You cannot detect them either, unless you are talking about measuring brain impulses. Again, here you are measuring electronic currents and magnetic fields, not thoughts.

This does bring up an important point associated with Integral Theory. Every one of these Personal phenomena has some kind of physical equivalent in the physical world. Thoughts have brains. Emotions have guts and hormones, and so on. You cannot really prove that the thought IS the brain or that the emotion IS the cortisol. You can only prove a link between them.

So it goes with Martial Arts. There are internal phenomena, including thoughts and emotions, that happen and they have physical equivalents, or better put, external manifestations of what is going on inside of you. Thus, training from this perspective is all about paying attention to what is going on internally. Here are some appropriate Personal perspective questions you can think about while you practice any technique:

• Breathing
• During a technique are you breathing or holding your breath?
• Can you picture the pathway the breath is taking down to your abdomen and back up through your lungs?
• When you picture the air in your mind, does it have a color?
• Does the color of the air in your mind produce any differences in your technique when you perform it?
• What happens if you picture the air going to places that the air isn't actually going to, like your hands, feet, etc?
• If you work with chakras, breath into different ones. How does that change the technique?
• Thoughts and feelings
• Think about your hands. Do a technique while only thinking about your hands and nothing else. What happens to it?
• Think about your feet. Put your mind solely in your feet and nowhere else. Was it any different from when you had your mind in your hands?
• Do the same thing again, but this time put your mind in your ear lobes. What happens to the technique?
• What happens if you do the techniques while actively trying to stop your thoughts?
• How does that change when you simply give up trying to control your thoughts and let them happen, while still keeping your mind focused on the technique?
• Causal Attention
• What is the one thing within you that never changes, no matter how you do a technique?
• Can you find it?

Techniques in The Martial Arts

There must be hundreds of blog articles and books out there talking about technique. The largest focus in that literature is about the nuts and bolts of how techniques are executed. Do you hold your hand this way or that way? Does your foot do this and that? What about your balance? Some of the literature goes so far as to suggest which techniques are better and for what reasons, and where those techniques may be used. Countless videos on YouTube show bunkai, or application, of one technique or another.

That's great. A lifetime can be spent studying techniques and building a personal shoe box of techniques for yourself. "Hey man! You got the Five-Fingered Exploding Heart Technique! Cool!" Hell, maybe you know someone who does a Four-Fingered Exploding Heart Technique. Nifty. However, when I think about technique from an Integral perspective, the actual technique itself doesn't really matter. The point is that an Integral framework can be overlaid on top of most techniques, so I want to talk about that without getting into the debates over specific ones.

In Integral Theory, you can look at something from multiple perspectives. That is really one of the most powerful aspects of the framework, in that you are not stuck with looking at something only one way. By broadening your view and seeing something from different angles, you can get a more complete, or less partial, view of what it really is. In particular, there are four major perspectives that Integral Theory talks about, i.e. The Four Quadrants. Ken Wilber and his colleagues never say that there are ONLY Four Quadrants. There certainly can conceivably be something other than a 1st, 2nd, or 3rd person perspective. However, those four perspectives are the dominant ones that have the most influence over what we do all the time.

My proposal is that no matter what technique you are talking about, from whatever style, you look at it from each of the Four Quadrants. Moreover, you study it from each of the Four Quadrants as part of your Martial Arts practice. Now, for the most part, having Four Quadrants can be cumbersome, so one thing that is often done, which makes a lot of sense to do here is to combine the Upper Right and Lower Right Quadrants into one. Essentially, we are taking all physical external stuff, both your individual external stuff and collective external stuff and combining it into just "External Stuff". Philosophers do this when they talk about "The Good", "The Beautiful", and "The True". I'm going to rename these for the purpose of studying Martial Arts into "The Personal", "The Social", and "The Physical". Those more aptly describe what we need to discuss.

A good way to get this across is just with an example. Let's look at a straight punch from each of the three perspectives.

The Personal

When you throw the punch, how do you feel? Are you angry when you throw it? Are you calm? Are you scared? These things will influence your power. What sorts of stuff are you thinking about when you throw the punch? Are you wondering what you will have for dinner tonight? Are you seething with hatred for your piece of oak board? Do you believe in chi? If you do, are you thinking about where it flows as you punch? These things and more cannot be answered or trained in just one punch. They are something to study, and they are personal. No one can cut you open and see the answers to these within you.

The Social

Who or what are you punching? Are you in harmony with it? Are you anticipating its next move? Maybe there is no enemy there, but you are punching in front of your sensei or coach. What is going on in the relationship you have with your teacher right now? Is your instructor angry with you? Happy with you? Are you doing this to show off to him or her? Perhaps you are doing this as part of a demo in front of a lot of people and they are watching your every move. What understanding is passing between you and that crowd as you throw the punch? What effects will that demonstration have on your school? Will it gain them more members? The outcome of your punch will influence all of these things, and naturally the whole mood and setup of your punch will vary with the environment you are in when you throw it. There's a big difference between throwing a punch in a demo versus throwing one on the street.

The Physical

Here is where the nuts and bolts of your punch go. How do you hold your fist? Do you use a vertical fist? Do you keep one finger uncurled like the Kosho folks do? Do you even make a fist? Are you about to break a bone?

So, the understanding here is that it doesn't matter what technique we are talking about. You can keep your own techniques, honest. The only difference is in how you view them, with new eyes and an Integral Framework. I believe this can potentially open up the study of Martial Arts to a different Stage.