Awareness

Another aspect to consider for our awareness training is that awareness we train to "feel" things. We feel how a stance when in its proper pose feels as to our feet connecting to the Earth. We feel the positioning of the lower leg over the feet, the knees aligning and connect to the thigh. If anything is amiss we should feel it when we are doing it. This is not just assuming a stance, rooting, and then remaining in it to feel it but to learn to feel it as we move into it and then out of it.

We feel our feet as they move and reach into the next stance  with proper positioning, alignment, posture, etc. Our awareness means our minds are trained to focus on this in training so our minds will instinctively "feel it" if something is not right. Lets say your fighting. You move into a specific stance so a particular technique can be executed to not get hit and stop the fight. Your body moves, you feel it move, you sense it going further than you wanted due to external circumstances so it will tell your mind to do one of two things, either not execute that technique and start moving into a new one with all its parts or try to adjust so you can get that technique executed, NOT the second part for sure. If you don't have all the ducks lined up for a particular technique you don't use it, it loses its effectiveness.

This is why awareness goes beyond the obvious and into the realm of feeling and sensing what your body is doing and where it is going at all times. It is one component that is critical to making all the components of power and force work as you would intend. Range and how you get to it; weight transfer into momentum for power, etc.; no wasted movement to include an patching or adjusting to make it work; timing and placement so it all comes together as one in the right direction and the right time; and finally adding in those acceleration techniques to boost power and force.

This is all geared to your awareness of all those concepts and components through awareness of   body movement and all it entails so you can "sense" or "see" with the minds eye and "feel" where your body is, was, is going, etc.

Let me extend this post to the ken-po goku-i, parts that reference the ability to '''see" and "hear" in all directions is more than just north, south, east, west, etc. but in all metaphysical/metaphorical/spiritual/conceptual directions and more. Its references to hard and soft, feel it and apply it appropriately, body changing directions is not only turning and such but changing the way your body moves and assumes poses/postures where awareness tells you to see and feel and sense these actions of the body.

The time to strike is not just applying a punch or kick but timing awareness so that all components of your system come into that "one" instant that applies what your goals, tactics, and strategies use to not get hit and stop the attack.

Another lesson to me on NOT assuming that what I see is all I can see for seeing goes beyond the obvious as well as hearing is more active than just having sound reach and ring the ear drum, it is an awareness of what is being heard beyond initial impressions and allowing our ability to see, hear, sense, go beyond the first layer.