by Jaredd Wilson
Can you make mushin a habit?
“And when there is an opportunity,
I do not hit. It hits all by itself.”
-Bruce
Lee, Enter the Dragon
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| Kanji for mushin "no mind" |
Mushin is a state of mind characterized
by a lack of conscious thought. In many
Japanese martial arts and martial ways this is a high-end goal to achieve. There is a lot written on what mushin is, and
how to best achieve it. I wrote on
mushin in a previous article and you can check it out if you want more
information. However, it can only really
be experienced. I’ve felt this a couple
of times and it amazed me. It was only
in memory that I knew what happened or what I did. What sparked this article was actually an
article on another website www.artofmanliness.com
. Their website is one of my favorite
perusing sites, and they put up new articles every couple of days. What this particular article was about was
the science behind habit formation.
MIT started doing studies in the 1990’s
on mice to find out the purpose of a small section of the brain that is part of the brain called the basal
ganglia. Before this, the only thing we
knew was that it was probably involved with Parkinson's Disease. Basically, what the study did was hook up
little electrodes to the brains of mice and put them through a maze. The first time the mice went through the maze
the basal ganglia showed almost no activity. The activity was centered in the
cerebral cortex, the thinking part of the brain. And this makes sense. The mice had to learn the maze. They were busy exploring, sniffing,
scratching, doing micey things. As they
repeated the process over and over, the activity in the brain shifted from the
cerebral cortex to the basal ganglia.
This meant the mice weren’t thinking about the maze. It had been downloaded to the basal ganglia. Through repeated experience, their mind had
made a habit of remembering the maze.
The mice had created a routine set of physical actions. They had created a habit.
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| The Basal Ganglia is a combination of parts deep inside the brain |
To make things even more habitual the
experimenter produced a clicking sound right before the mice went through the
maze. This became a cue. There was also a reward of chocolate at the
end of the maze. What their further research
shows is that this cue and reward were required to for habit formation. The cue triggers the basal ganglia to produce
a response, i.e. remembering the maze pattern, in expectation of getting the
reward, the chocolate. It also showed
that once a habit was formed it was permanent.
However, it could be overridden with other habits.
So what does this have to do with
martial arts? It is exactly how we learn
and prepare for combat. At first we need
to learn our technique. It takes
observation, thought, processing, and trail and error. We are using the cerebral cortex part of the
brain, our thinking part. Eventually we
have repeatedly practiced the technique until the response becomes
habitual. Our brain dumps the
information into the basal ganglia where it becomes a permanent habit. We even have sensory clues; a specific attack
to promote a specific response. When
someone punches me in the face, I shift my body. If we think of the appropriate response, it
will take to long and we get a bloody nose.
If we react out of habit, we can do so quicker. The reward is often a self induced one. Not getting punched is pretty good, but the
satisfaction of performing a technique correctly is the reward.
Our goal as martial artist is to
practice often enough and with enough variation that all our techniques become
“basal ganglia” responses. This means
that we are trying do all of this without thinking. When you can respond without though you are
experiencing mushin. Any activity that
has a cue, a heavily practiced response, and a reward can become habitual. Entering mushin is not exclusive to martial
artist, it is just one of their goals.
Anything done with enough repetition can produce a mushin/basal ganglia
effect.
Originally posted on www.atemicast.com
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