Pages

Thursday, March 2, 2017

Mushin No Shin or Turn Fear into Anger

Self-defence, fighting, combat sports, close quarter combat, etc, and every sport - the question always is, emotion or no emotion.

Mushin no shin is the Japanese term for an idea where you fight with no emotion. No fear, no anger, no nothing. Is that the best approach?

Nature didn't think so. Nature provided emotion for the exact reason to promote an individual's survival. It does so cognitively and physically. The latter I refer to as 'nature's performance enhancing drugs' which is the physiological reaction that accompanies emotion.

Women's self-defence typically teaches to turn fear into anger. Emotion into emotion. They don't teach mushin no shin. Why?

I was watching my 12yo step-daughter train Australian Rules Football yesterday and was thinking about this issue. How do you coach these kids to play? Emotion or no emotion? If emotion, then what emotion?

There is a trade-off. No emotion means no physiological and psychological benefits, but it also means that your performance is not effected by the emotional physiological and psychological automatic responses.

What is the best way to go? That is not something I am considering in my second book. What I am doing is providing the means to understand the question in the first place.

2 comments:

Your comments make my work all the more relevant as I use them to direct my research and theorising. Thank you.