Awareness – Attention – Intention

Physical movement is a big part of martial arts training however 90% of high level skill in martial arts is determined by mental acuity and perception. High level martial arts skill is attained through strengthening and increasing the connection between the mind and the body. There are three aspects to mental training in the martial arts and it is important to be aware of these aspects as well as being able to distinguish between the three. These three aspects are awareness, attention, and intention; let’s see if we can come up with some working definition for these terms.

Let’s start with awareness, we can define awareness as the quantity and quality of information that we can absorb both internally and externally through observation. A good way to experience this is to try and notice how aware you are of yourself. How much muscle tension do you carry with you without being aware of it? Do you hold your breath when you exert yourself without realizing it?

Next we have attention, the ability to focus on a specific stream of information within your awareness. Attention can be described as selective awareness and it is an acquired skill although many of us may display aspects of selective awareness unknowingly or unintentionally. Not hearing what someone is saying to you because you are watching television is more an illustration of distraction than of attention. The ability to attend to various aspects of energy, structure, and balance is a high level skill in the martial arts.

Lastly we have intention which for the purposes of this discussion we will define as the ability to modify the quality of physical movement by changing the way in which you think about that movement. A good way to experience this is to have your training partner hold a focus mitt and allow you to give it your best punch. Next, throw that exact same punch but focus on striking a target somewhere directly behind the focus mitt. Notice how the quality of your punch changes with just a simple change in how you thought about punching. A good teacher can help you think about things in a way that qualitatively changes your performance.

These mental aspects of training go hand in hand with the physical aspects. Beyond kicking and punching, fine-tuned perception and mental acuity can open the door to sublime levels of skill and personal transformation.