If you study Martial Arts for Self Defence…..  What is most likely to kill you?  The answer is of course, bad health – and therefore that should be your first line of defence!  You have to care for your physical, mental and emotional health to be able to deal with any external threat effectively

An important day in your life as a Martial Artist is the day you take responsibility for your own well being and training regime.

The art of healing is an essential part of your Martial Arts training.  The Japanese say satsu/katsu that it is essentially that ‘life taking’ and ‘life giving’ should be in balance and the study of taking care of your own and others wellbeing should be a natural part of your study.

Prevention of illness is obviously better than cure so your training should include deep breathing to get more oxygen into the bloodstream and therefore to the brain, encouraging a more sensitive and aware mind – and then meditation to focus that mind and help you to become more calm and wise.

With good postural training, this calm, focussed, aware and sensitive mind then permeates a well structured and aligned body, getting rid of excess tension and ‘stringing the 9 pearls’ of internal connection to give good health and powerful movement.

The daily exercises should then take the body through it’s natural range of movement and be both diagnostic in the sense of being able to find stiffness and injury before it becomes chronic – and therapeutic in that the exercise can ‘ease’ the body back into a healthy state, using the mind and breath to soften and encourage healing in the tissue and methods such as MET (muscle energy technique) to release locked tissue.

With an aware, sensitive and focussed mind, a relaxed body ‘at ease’, the knowledge of how to animate your mind and body (make sure you’ve read my last two articles) and how this energy is reflected through the chakras to promote the alchemy of your life as a Martial Artist you are able to utilise this ‘harmony’ of mind, body and breath to work energetically with yourself and others.

We all know how therapeutic touch can be, a hug from the right person when you’re feeling down, when a Mother ‘rubs’ a child’s wound better, the way we automatically put our own hand to a wound when we hurt ourselves – it’s the most natural method of healing in the world.  The value of this form of healing is highly underestimated in the modern world of not taking responsibility for our own health and the reliance on pills and potions of the modern day sorcerers.

The great thing with touch energy healing is that it is completely natural and non intrusive and can be complimentary to any other form healing.  Empathic people have this energy naturally but it can always be cultivated and used more skilfully; others have to go through the personal alchemy described in the ‘chakras’ article developing and cultivating their empathic and healing energies.

This energetic healing touch is so natural that it’s rolled (or should be) into nearly all the more natural complimentary and alternative healing arts such as Massage, Shiatsu, Reiki, Acupressure, Osteopathy and is used in spiritual and magical healing.

In Taiji it is said that ‘where the yi (intention) goes, the chi (animation) follows.  When you put that aware, sensitive, empathic, focussed mind into your hands the energy flows freely and if you place them on (or even near) a person, they can feel it.  The magic in this is that it encourages the person being healed to feel well and their body to heal itself.

If you put your hands palm up in front of you at waist level and put your mind into your hands, they will start to ‘mottle’ as the blood flow changes and tingle.  If you put your palms so that they face each other around 3 inches apart you will feel the energy between them.  If you place your palms 3 inches away from someone else’s palms, you will both feel the ‘energy transfer’ between you.

You do not need to pay anyone to do this (unless you’re hard up for friends) or have your ‘chakra’s aligned’ or be ‘attuned’ by anyone.  It’s only ‘magical’ in the sense that it is the most natural thing in the world.  If you place your tingling palms on someone where they hurt, their body will start to feel better – and remembering what it feels like to be healthy, will start to try and heal itself.

The more you cultivate your mind, body and breath on a daily basis, the more powerful this natural skill will become and have greater benefit for yourself and the health of those around you.

If you place your hands over their chakra’s you will intuitively feel what areas in their life they have problems because of the energy flow in the relative areas of their body.  By affecting the energy flow in those areas of their body, you will be able to help a little in the way they deal with those areas of their life.

People ask – “Is this Reiki?”  “Is this Katsu?” And/or various other names, but they are simply business, style or political labels, they ask if I’m guided by angels, dead people, gods or their representatives, but the truth is that I’m an atheist and see this as just natural energy or animation that can be trained and cultivated.

It’s important to take some responsibility for our own health and training, we have natural ability that can be trained and it’s not the be all and end all of healing, we do sometimes need medical, drug and other types of intervention, hand healing and the training that cultivates it can go a long way to promoting our own health and of those around us.  It also adds to the healing aspects of our own Martial Arts.

Natural healing should be a part of every family regime, the posture, breathing, mental awareness, sensitivity, and focus and ability to touch, massage and heal will help to keep family members bonded and always willing to help each other.  It should also be a fundamental part of any Dojo, Kwoon, or Martial Arts Centre, energy cultivation keeps people training together and empathic towards each other.