There is a long-established bias out there that we should all own up to; that head skills have more value than hand skills (or hand and body skills).
This has enormous relevance to students of the martial arts, as we know that things can go bad very quickly if in a practical fight situation we live in our heads instead of our body. Theory alone will not save your neck.
Head only.
In David Goodhart’s book, ‘Head, Heart and Hand’ the author was particularly savage regarding the ‘head only’ skills and how educational institutions were built solely on the single advancement of those who are classified as ‘academic’1 For Goodhart the education system created an ever-narrowing funnel to push youngster into with false promises that it will give them an automatic leg-up the career and social advancement ladder, straight into the job of their dreams. The truth is that those positions of employment exist but only for a comparative few; certainly not enough to match with the massive numbers who now attend degree courses.
To my mind it reveals itself in the coffee shops on the High Street. How many Baristas are in possession of high-status degrees yet can’t find work in their field? Cheekily, I did ask a bunch of friendly Café Nero baristas how many had degrees and four out of four had, and this was just a ‘fill-in’ job.
In Goodhart’s book he makes the argument that we hugely undervalue the qualities and importance of our physical skills in terms of creative and practical challenges; achievements in engineering and the arts do not just happen in our heads. The visionary side of genius might be initially processed in our heads, but often the major work happens with the physical side of the equation.
Success as a species.
How on earth did a puny semi-ape species rise to be top of the hierarchy in the animal kingdom? Experts say our super powers were the qualities of our sophisticated hand/eye coordination combined with our highly developed communication skills, connected to our advanced understanding of cause and effect. It is these very same cause/effect, action/reaction high speed calculations that are the zone of the martial artist.
If your self-view is that your body is just a concoction of animated meat; a puppet whose job is to carry around your wonderfully sophisticated brain, then you really are missing something.
The wisdom of the body.
Karate master Ushiro Kenji in his book ‘Karate and Ki’ makes the argument for two modes of, let’s call it, ‘reactive problem solving’ in the body.
He has the ‘thinking calculating brain’ and the ‘body brain’. According Ushiro Sensei, the ‘thinking calculating brain’ seems to have a very fast reaction time, but the reactiveness of the ‘body brain’ is significantly faster. You can call it ‘instinctive’ or ‘intuitive’ or you can even make it out as paranormal, but whatever it is it is definitely a thing; particularly for martial artists.
In his interview with Stanley Pranin, the late Takamura Yukiyoshi Sensei of Shindo Yoshin Ryu Jujutsu was discussing the abilities of the famous swordmaster Sakikibara Kenkichi who his grandfather trained with. He described Sakikibara Sensei as possessing a concept called, ‘Heiho Totsuzen Totsuken’, he said it was, “striking from the subconsciousness, so fast that you yourself are not aware you have made it. It exists in only the most dangerous and superior swordsmen. It is a technique of true masters”.
The Body Brain.
The Body Brain theory is gaining traction in medical circles as well. It is being looked at as part of a greater holistic understanding of how we function (example: the gut and the digestive system appears to work as another brain and seems to have a super-involved dialogue with the stuff that happens between our ears).
Man is not unique in this aspect, but it is our understanding of our own functioning that sets us apart from the rest of the animal world.
As long as we remain informed and curious about our own physical and mental mechanisms we can use the knowledge gained and build skills. I am sure this has been around for a long time.
As an example of this, I had an interesting conversation with a Japanese Wado karate Sensei, where I happened to mention about how the fitness and movement industry seem to be obsessed with understanding and working with the ‘core’, and ‘core exercises’ (definition: ‘Core strength can be defined as the ability of the musculature to produce force through contractile forces and intra-abdominal pressure’, Hibbs 2008).
The Sensei commented that in his experience in Japan the concept of the ‘core’ had been around forever; it’s just that they don’t have the same terminology for it, if they can be bothered to speak about it at all – remember, the general methodology in Japanese martial arts teaching is focussed on primarily feeling it through the bodily experience, cutting down the verbal analysis to the absolute minimum, or at least putting it in its place.
On balance, for martial artists, head learning on its own has limited currency, although some value can be extracted from it, but the dominant mode should really be body/hand learning. There is no substitute for putting the time in on the tatami and working through the sweat.
Header image: Tim Shaw via AI.
After spending my entire working life in education in the arts, it has always been a source of irritation to me when people refer to the Arts as non-academic subjects, because I have always found that these subject areas actually demand the highest levels of intellectual engagement.