The Great Qi Mystery Continues: "Kinesthesia"

Kinesthesia... I just love the way it rolls off my tongue. I picked up this word watching a very dope anime, "IGPX: Immortal Grand Prix", and I knew I needed to know this word. On this particular episode, during a race it was said a racer used kinesthesia to accomplish an incredible feat: balancing two racing ships on her own ship while continuing to guide her ship toward the finish line.

The very moment I heard the word, I felt like it was relevant to me; I felt like I had used kinesthesia before. Like when I shot a bow and arrow in PE class as a youth, and when I used to shoot basketball, and when I shot a pellet gun before. It's a strange feeling; I forget about my body and focus on making the shot, but at the same time my body does just what it needs to, like magic almost. And my shots, especially with the gun and arrows, were exceptionally accurate.

So what is kinesthesia? It's not really that difficult. It simply is the ability to know the position of your body relative to other body parts. Close your eyes. Put you finger on your nose. You used kinesthesia to accomplish that; if you couldn't do that, you're either drunk or you have terrible kinesthesia, lol. (A more fun exercise is trying to point your fingers together with your eyes closed)

Kinesthesia is reminiscent of hand-eye coordination, except without the eyes. The only thing you rely on to know your body's position in kinesthesia is the nerves at the ends of your muscles all over your body. Then it hit me: Bruce Lee. I remember Bruce used to talk about having "awareness" of his body; when he was in a fight, he was fully aware of himself. That allowed him to concentrate on the fight itself instead of his bodily actions and reactions. Now I see even more what he meant when he said "there is no fight"; he was able to function almost without thinking and everything he did in the fight was not calculated, but natural. Could it be that Bruce Lee achieved total body kinesthesia?

I did a little more reading and found something else interesting. Searching for ways to improve kinesthesia, I came across the "Alexander Technique". As I read on, I came across the notion that "habit diminishes sensation". But the goal of kinesthesia is to basically totally rely on sensation. As I read further in the same article, an interesting theory jumped out at me: mastering kinesthesia frees the mind to concentrate on other things. Hmm....

So here's where I have another unsubstantiated hunch...

Martial artists train and train and train their bodies using kata until the movements are second nature to them, right? So... in a fight situation, I believe less thought is dedicated to movement. However, as I said before, kinesthesia is not simply memorizing motions, programming oneself you might say, and following through; that's where traditional martial arts (as opposed to Jeet Kune Do) conflicts with kinesthesia. Kinesthesia would be the martial artist who makes his every move consciously and not out of habit, and is mentally aware of his every movement as it happens. The picture of this is the blind fighter; he devotes none of his brainpower to his vision, so there's more to dedicate to his own movements. I wonder if a fighter were to be deprived of sight and hearing, where would his mind dedicate its energy? I hope you see where I'm going, lol.

Perhaps a fervent pursuit of the sense of kinesthesia would answer this question. I have a hunch that the mastery of kinesthesia would free the mind enough that it could direct it's energy to other things, i.e. Qi? It's a lead.

Big shout to Cartoon Network and Wikipedia, lol
B-J