Focusing is hard. When talking about focusing on a job or on a lecture, we have this image of paying as much attention as we can all the way through. We're doing it wrong. Tae kwon do does it a little differently.
In a tae kwon do strike, focus is the point in space and time at which all our energy is directed. Only in the last few inches of a strike do the muscles tense, and in those last few inches you put forth everything you have. The muscles immediately relax after impact.
In a tae kwon do strike, focus is the point in space and time at which all our energy is directed. Only in the last few inches of a strike do the muscles tense, and in those last few inches you put forth everything you have. The muscles immediately relax after impact.
Focus enables you to throw faster strikes, more powerful strikes, and more strikes period. Let's examine a uniformly tense strike and a uniformly loose strike.
Tense limbs arrive at the target after relaxed limbs (try it on a soft, non-living target). It is more difficult to adjust a tensed limb's trajectory. Maintaining a tense limb while in-transit to the target or after impact causes excess fatigue.
Loose limbs collapse upon impact rather than causing the target to collapse; otherwise, they are superior in all stages of a strike. We conclude that focus is actually not about capturing the value of concentrated energy but about capturing the value of relaxation. The milliseconds of focus in a strike are only possible because of the relaxation before and after.
We can relax and tense our minds in the same way as our bodies. Chronic stress and worrying lead to the same fatigue and inflexibility mentally as tense strikes lead to physically. Avoiding or ignoring important problems rather than solving them is analogous to the collapsing of a loose limb at the moment of impact.
Spiritually, holding grudges against the penitent fatigues and fixates the soul. Dogmatically clinging to a nonjudgmental stance in the face of egregious immorality is like a loose limb collapsing on impact.
The applications of focus are endless. The alternating relaxing and tensing in a strike is tae kwon do's staccato music.1 Writing's similar rhythm is a rhythm of brain-dumping and editing. Programming is a rhythm of implementing and refactoring. Try replacing intense, temporally diffuse concentration at work, school and play with focus. Find the music in what you do. Get the most out of your body, mind, and soul.
1 Tae kwon do's martial nature does not negate its musical qualities.
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