How many times do we make decisions “in conscience,” and how many times is unconsciousness the true mark of our actions?
Neuroscience attributes to our brain the ability to develop self-awareness, awareness of the environment around us, and reflective capacity—that is, the ability to observe and report one’s own mental states.
From this perspective, the subjective experience of these capacities forms what science currently defines as consciousness.
Through the lens of neuroscience, three main states of consciousness can be identified: wakefulness (corresponding to the waking state); awareness (the ability to produce conscious contents); alteration (ranging from sleep to dreams, fainting, anesthesia, and dissociative states).
Martial Arts practice offers the student a real laboratory in which techniques are the initial tools to develop self-awareness in relation to the environment. In fact, a beginner who accidentally bangs his/her partner into a wall, or hits himself with a stick, gradually develops reflective capacity to better measure movements in future training sessions.
One of the underlying, transversal aspects not only in martial disciplines but also in traditional sports is the naturalness and relaxation of movement.
In practices such as Aikido, it is common to meet adults (and increasingly, unfortunately, young people as well) who use their bodies dysfunctionally. Is it just stiffness, age, and non-optimal physical states?
Let’s look at two human modes of expression: the child and the dismounted biker.
A small child, when falling to the ground or bending to pick something up, recovers posture immediately, in an integrated and natural way. An adult, when picking up a pen from the floor, will in most cases execute a rigid bend on their supports-with questionable results for their joints and lower back.
A biker thrown off the bike on the track is overwhelmed by the speed of the event and often falls into fainting or shock. In those terrible moments, the body moves through space and impacts in a totally natural way. Thanks to wide escape routes and protective equipment, the enormous amount of energy is almost always dissipated, often without fatal consequences.
In both cases we see a de-structured state of consciousness. The child has not yet built a structure; the adult, under stress, has too much structure-as if it were absent.
Aikido practice fundamentally aims at guiding a person back toward reclaiming their faculties of consciousness.
It does this with humble exercises where, repetition after repetition, one mirrors oneself in different practice partners, experiencing limits, rigidity, and blockages. Those black holes where our energy is wasted and dispersed.
By rebalancing the body’s active response, the naturalness of movement is restored, along with the conscious animation behind it.
That’s why practice cannot be separated from technical repetition: we are what we repeatedly do. But this process must take place under the attentive guidance of a teacher capable of directing improvement.
A fundamentally wrong repetition-technically or motor-wise- cannot lead to greater awareness, just the opposite. The same is true when the process, even if geometrically perfect, is carried out without opening to a broader perception of self and reality. In other words, a discipline taught only at the physical level creates excellent robots -who may then end up asking ChatGPT why, despite being eleventh dan, they have poor relationships and can’t sleep well at night.
Introducing carefully chosen difficulties in practice, to highlight motor blocks and non-linear executions-and doing so without demeaning intent—makes the practice more human and becomes essential to activate real improvement, rooted in the acceptance of limits.
And it is one of the most powerful antidotes to the unconsciousness that fills our daily lives.
Disclaimer: Picture by Jose A.Thompson from Unsplash