Mind Dumping

Killer Miller · Brown Belt

This post was originally published as an article in a dedicated KarateForums.com Articles section, which is no longer online. After the section was closed, this article was most to the most appropriate forum in our community.

What is Mind Dumping?

There are 3 mind/body functions that occur when competing in Karate:
1. The "Conscious" mind - Current activity and surrounding details.
2. The "Subconscious" mind - Long term memory, repetitive memory and emotions.
3. Motor skills or reflexes - Subconscious telling the muscles to activate.

Mind Dumping is the process of clearing your Conscious mind of all current activity, personalities and emotions, except for your Match activity and surrounding details that "only" pertain to your current match.

Properties of Mind and Body:
Let’s first examine the details of the 3 properties that are required for competition.

The Conscious mind:
The conscious mind is the part of your brain that observes current events from your 5 senses (sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell) and writes them to the memory of your subconscious mind (we will discuss the subconscious mind in a moment). Your conscious mind also analyzes current events and makes decisions as to what motor responses to ask your subconscious mind to invoke.

How does this relate to karate:
• what opponent you are currently competing against.
• the type and quality of the floor.
• his/her current stance or position.
• the type of technique execution being presented to you - Punch, Kick, etc.
• Any other current event/factors worth noting.

These are all karate activities/events of the conscious state of mind.

The Subconscious Mind:
The subconscious mind is the part of the brain that stores everything that you have experienced, learned, or done repetitively - how to move, think, etc. The subconscious also activates all of your motor responses and emotions (love, hate, enjoyment, and above all: fear!) Your subconscious mind basically remembers things/events that you have either done in repetition, abnormal events/occurrences and especially traumatic events.

How does this relate to karate:
• a nervous reaction that occurs when sparring someone with a much higher ranking than yours or the final point to win the tournament.
• all your practiced or learned shots, stances and techniques - Zen Kutsu Dachi, Ko Kutsu Dachi, etc., correct or incorrect!
• all combinations of techniques (really known as "strategies"), e.g. Kake Waza, Sen No Sen and finally: the kill point!
• any other normal reactions or good and bad habits you have retained or developed.

Primarily, if your subconscious mind hasn't learned it or experienced it, then you don't know how to do it! Your subconscious mind can also override your conscious mind through motor responses that may occur (or instinctive reactions), such as extreme fear or panic situations, when initially triggered by the conscious mind events. The end result is that all of your muscles tighten up, counteracting any type of body movement, cutting off blood circulation to your brain, then you go to what we know as "Blank" or "Stage Freight!"

Motor Skills or Reflexes:
Motor skills and reflexes are the physical occurrences of your body - muscle contraction/expansion, reflexive actions and reactions, etc. Your body's motor responses do not think, they react to the signals that your subconscious mind gives you. Such as punching, stepping, kicking, etc.

What Does This All Mean?
When competing in a karate match:
1. You observe the opponent coming towards you and your conscious mind notes the type of presentation of his stance, the breathing pattern and a punch to the face is executed and requests a reaction or response by your subconscious mind.
2. Your subconscious mind says the best response it has been programmed for this action, and for this competitor, is a block then counter punch. Thus telling your body to perform the technique that it knows how to do.
3. Your body performs the motor responses that it has been asked to perform by the subconscious mind.

In general, if you have not learned or programmed a technique to your subconscious prior to the match, through repetitive practice, your conscious mind will ask your subconscious mind to do a technique it currently does not know how to do or do correctly. Therefore, a lot of errors!

The Art of Competition!
A truly aggressive match is really "focus" with the combination of "readiness" for quick reactions and the "calm" to minimize opposing muscles from restricting blood flow and counteracting reflexive body actions.

You don't "think" in a match and you don't get "emotional" in a match. You are trained well enough to naturally and properly "react" to the situation and "dump" your mind of all stresses and personality conflicts prior to the match. Your only focus is the current match at hand!

If you cannot do this, then you have not achieved perfection of the "art of competition." Of course, I will be the first to admit that this is much easier said than done. However, this is the attitude you must maintain. There is an "art of competition" that is universal to all sports. And the sooner you learn this art, the better competitor you will become.

Let me share and leave you with a bit of the "art of perfection" - an old saying.

"Mizu no kokoro"

This means, in this context (there are other literal translations), "Mind like water." Now I'll tell you what this really means. Imagine you are at a still and calm pond. You sit there very relaxed. Your senses are heightened. You hear the birds, the leaves blowing, you see in the pond and also to the bottom of the pond. You are aware of "all" of your surroundings, including in and through the pond to the bottom. Now, someone throws a tiny pebble into the pond. Now, you are no longer aware of "all" your surroundings. Also, you can no longer see though the pond or what is on the bottom. Your only "focus" is the pebble and the ripple in the pond.

This pebble and water ripple represents the emotional factor in a match. When you disturb your clam, you no longer have the heightened awareness to naturally react to all of your surroundings of the match.

"Focus,” as I refer to, is the heightened awareness of the calm of this concept and through this calm you are able to generate "all" the factors necessary for competition - speed, power, agility, reflexive reaction, etc. You are not only aware of what the fist/foot is doing, but also aware of the opponent’s breathing pattern and the body action of your opponent.

I will also add that he/she is only your physical opponent and not a personality or ranking.

Emotions:
Any emotion, good or bad, clouds the mind and causes excessive tension in the muscles restricting blood flow to the brain (conscious and subconscious minds) and muscles. You actually become more conscious in the state of "Dumping" your conscious mind in a match. This is because the only thing you are focused on is your technique and what the opponent is doing - one action at a time. If you think aggressively (as a conscious mind thought), you have already brought in the emotion of winning or fear of losing. You no longer react naturally and instinctively as you are trained by your subconscious mind.

A mind dump does not mean that you are a "Zombie" when competing. A mind dump means to heighten your awareness of the match you are about to compete in to your highest potential and react naturally as you are trained without the interference of your emotions clouding the conscious and subconscious. A lower level practitioner, typically, only performs in a match at 50% to 75% at best of their ability during training because of this battle. This is usually due to the emotion factor.

This would be like the RAM in your computer being your conscious mind of current activity, and your 15 gig hard-drive being your training and experience database - or subconscious mind. When your conscious mind (RAM) sees the need to call up techniques from your subconscious mind (15 gig hard-drive), your conscious mind buffers it and reacts to the current situation, then releases it back to your subconscious mind. Now, if you have 10 applications open on your computer (your emotions!), you overload the RAMs ability to buffer your subconscious mind, and what happens? Your computer crashes and goes "blank" (this is why I reserve the word "blank") - blocking off your hard-drive (the subconscious). This is the exact same thing that happens with your mind in competition with the emotion factor.

Dump your mind of all emotions and unrelated thoughts of the match in the name of "focus" (heightened awareness of the match), do not fill your mind with aggressions (in the conscious mind context) or personality conflicts.

Training and Strategies:
Training is the subconscious state of mind - this is your reflexive and natural reactions (like stepping around a rock in the road naturally). When your conscious state of mind is clouded by "emotions," you naturally revert to your subconscious state of mind. This means that you are only able to perform as good as you are technically trained to - and that's as good as it gets. That's the importance of regular training/coaching and that is to build your arsenal of tools of your subconscious mind.

Strategies are also part of your subconscious mind or database of individual techniques or combinations of techniques that you have practiced for a given strategy of winning the point. Your conscious mind actually observes what events and circumstances are currently occurring. Your conscious mind says that a heavy front kick is coming and tells the subconscious mind (natural reflexive action) to block. Your subconscious may also tell you to do the combination of block, kick and then punch for the point as a result of the query of your conscious. You don't think about doing it, you just do it because you have practiced this scenario over and over through training.

Strategy is the coordination of the conscious mind, subconscious mind and body working together. The conscious is current activity calling upon the subconscious (database) for techniques and combinations, and then the subconscious telling your body to perform the action or actions.

Competition:
Competition is "your test" of your subconscious abilities - this means how well you have trained or been trained (the need of a coach). The coach acts as your conscious mind telling you what to do to build the subconscious mind through drills and training concepts. This allows you to dump your conscious mind to build your subconscious database of techniques. If you try to learn on your own, you have to use your conscious mind to build your subconscious database - this does not work for competition! An overload of the conscious mind is the result and that will result in the loss of matches. The more you build your subconscious mind with a database of techniques, through regular training, the quicker you will become a winner. This is truly what sets the champions apart from us everyday working people with all the other stresses of life. The champion's entire life is his subconscious mind of karate and almost nothing else.
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Shodan - Nishiyama Sensei
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monkeygirl · KF VIP

Good article! Very informative.
What a great way to expand upon every time Sensei has said: "Relax!", "Don't think about it so much", "It has to be instinct!", and most importantly: "Use your nervousness!"
_________________
1st dan & Asst. Instructor TKD 2000-2003

No matter the tune...if you can rock it, rock it hard.

Killer Miller · Brown Belt

Thanks...

It's a subject that seems to be lightly touched, and not specifically explained. However, it's a very important part of MA.

- Killer -

LeaF · Black Belt

Very good article... it noramally takes substantial pratice for one to clear one's mind... it is so difficult because you must think of nothing without thinking... you can not make a conscience attempt to do it... your article makes me think of star wars for some reason... emotion leads to the dark side which thus clouds your mind... Interesting conicdence no

_________________
Goju Ryu Karate-do and Okinawan Kobudo, 17 Years Old 1st kyu Brown Belt in in Goju Ryu Karate-do, & Shodan in Okinawan Kobudo
Given enough time, any man may master the physical. With enough knowledge, any man may become wise. It is the true warrior who can master both....and surpass the result.
I AM CANADIAN

karatekid1975 · KF VIP

My instructor says, "You think about it too much. Just do it." Now I get what he was saying

_________________
Laurie F

jeffrogers · Blue Belt

KM that is a good article. Same principle is used in all sports. basically being in your "Zone" is usually the buzzword for it.

I remmeber going to that ancient place the Library while back. Don't usually venture there munch since obviously the internet is around. But I was looking at self hipnosis books that talk about sports hipnosis about auto suggestion and mind visiulation that helps clear your mind or better term focus your mind or put you in that place you need to be to perform. The book and excercises contained in them was very interesting to read. Thank you for the article KM

-Jeff ffff

Killer Miller · Brown Belt

Thanks Jeff, and you're quite welcome.

- Killer -

jeffrogers · Blue Belt

Have you ever heard of a man named Tony Blauer KM?

This article you wrote braught up idea or memory that must instructers I met haven't gone through great dills of how to deal with the emotional factor of a physical confrontation. If you spar first time you get it a little bit or alot as far as nervousness or maybe down right being afraid. But they don't talk about how to deal with these issues in a physical confrontation. You get alittle bit in the dojo but only for a short while. For example in sparring but wants you become comfortable with every one you may get it a little bit. But not as much pressure. You man experience it a bit more in Karate tournments.

But what I am getting at is the Fear factor (no pun intended) and the adrinline dump that goes into some one before a physical confrontation. That only way to calm the mind. Cause as you mention before that if the mind isn't calm the body is tenste there for slows down the reaction time and such.

Any one the person I mentioned talks in detail about that sort of thing. But I decided to bring this up. Because it came to my mind when talking about the mind being calm. -Jeff

wado_lee · Orange Belt

fantastic article gives food for thought and well worth loking into
_________________
theres no one style just your style---------

Rotten Head Fok · Green Belt

I like this article, it has giving me food for thought and I know it will help my ma, thanks KM for posting it!
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You must be stable and balanced in your foot work, if you have to use your martial knowledge in combat, your intent should be to win. If you do strike, you must release great power! The martial arts are easy to learn, but difficult to correct.

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