VICTORY, not SURVIVAL: Warrior Flow Combatives II

 By Jack Kerwick

At least in principle, it is common knowledge among martial artists of all varieties that the mental dimension of martial training is no less, and possibly a considerable deal more, essential than is that of the physical dimension (though, of course, vigorous, constant physical training is indispensable).

Warrior Flow Combatives, however, has a developed philosophy of the human person that is rooted in the most recent scientific discoveries.  In the next installment of this series, we will explore the physical training modality on which it is predicated.  Here, though, we look at its vision of the whole person.

Warrior Flow recognizes that one’s personality, one’s very self, is constituted by one’s thoughts, feelings, and actions.  It is this constellation of the mental, emotional, and behavioral dimensions of one’s self that is the lens through which one views the world, views reality.

So, one’s identity is an intricate complex of these three aspects of one’s being. You are your thoughts, emotions, and actions.

Given a lifetime of subconsciously wiring these mental, emotional, and behavioral habits into our bodies, we fail to recognize that, yes, they are habits!  It only seems that we were born this way, that our mental, emotional, and behavioral patterns are the products of nature.  The truth, however, is that they are only what has historically been referred to as “second nature.” They are learned programs that, unbeknownst to ourselves, we have burnt into the subconscious over the span of years and years.

This is good news, for what it means is that if you do not like who you are, you no longer have to be that person.  Since your patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting, however deeply wired into your nervous system they may be, are learned, then they can be unlearned.

And you can learn new habits, thus making of yourself, quite literally, a new self, a new person.

This in turn means that you can become a warrior.

Before a person can transform from his old self to a new self, he must first commit to doing so.  This commitment requires him to take stock of his old self.  As Dr. Joe Dispenza puts it:

“To transform from the old self to a new self requires us to become conscious of all our unconscious [more accurately, subconscious] thoughts, automatic behaviors, routines, and emotional reactions that we’ve been conditioned into.

To become conscious of any of these unconscious programs is the first initiation to change.”

Given the context of Warrior Flow, a person must, first and foremost, acknowledge his fears.  He must acknowledge that it is his fearful old self that he has every intention of crucifying.  Before he can create a new self, he must, simultaneously, slay the old self.

This project of recreation begins immediately.  In fact, the initial decision to train in Warrior Flow in itself is the first blow of the chisel into the stone that will eventually become the sculpture of the new self.  Like Michelangelo’s angel who he claimed to have merely emancipated from the prison of the marble in which it was encased, so too is Warrior Flow training undertaken with an eye toward liberating the Warrior within from the cesspool of irrational fear that concealed it.

Students can start remaking themselves from day one.  By growing in ever greater awareness of the mental, emotional, and behavioral habits of their old selves, they can also continually imagine their future new selves that they are forging in the present.  Their imaginings, however, are not lofty fantasies, abstract ideals, or anything along these lines.  Rather, in visualizing their future selves, they must also visceralize their future selves.  They must not only see themselves and the new world or reality that they will inhabit; they must see, hear, taste, touch, and smell their future.

Practitioners of Neuro-Linguistic-Programming would say that Warrior Flow students, to unleash their inner Warrior and become the people who they want to become, must imagine their future selves in an associated way.  They must rehearse their future selves in the present.  They must become their future selves in every present act of the imagination.

They must think and feel as their future selves think and feel.

And, of course, they must act like their future selves (within reason, of course, for while envisioning and visceralizing one’s future Warrior self, one must envision oneself waging war against enemies—actions, needless to say, in which one wants to avoid actually engaging if one isn’t actually threatened by predators).

But one can begin to act like a warrior by training each and every day to become a warrior.

To repeat a point made above, the aspiring Warrior Flow student should understand in no uncertain terms that the transformation that he will undergo, and that he must undergo if he is to gain from his Warrior Flow training that which it exists to supply, is not symbolic or figurative.  It is literal.

It is literal because neurologically, biologically, chemically, psychologically—in all of these respects the student transforms.

Again, Dispenza is helpful here as he explains the process by which a person can cease to be the person who he has been and become someone new:

“Throughout the day, I review how I am doing and stay conscious.  Via awareness combined with repetition, I fire and wire these new thoughts and behaviors into the fabric of my nervous system. In the act of combining the emotions of my future with my intentions, I am conditioning my body into a new future.”

Dispenza elaborates:

“The more I perform this process, the more I systemically install new circuitry into my brain, while at the same time chemically and genetically conditioning my body to become that new personality” (emphases added).

Dr. Dispenza notes that as you “rehearse these new ways of being and think about who you are going to be in your waking day…the more they become automatic, and it’s that new automatic neurological network that creates a new level of mind.”

The brain “will look like you’ve already experienced that [envisioned, future] reality.”  Thus, these “mental rehearsals” have the effect of “priming the brain into a new future” as opposed to “revisiting the old circuitry from the past.”

In short: “When you emotionally embrace your new life before it happens, you literally change your body’s biology.” 

The idea is that since “the environment signals the gene, and the end product of an experience in your environment is an emotion, you are signaling new genes ahead of the environment.”

The conclusion is simple and straightforward: “Thus, because your body is so objective, it does not know the difference between the real life experience that produces the emotion and the emotion you are creating without the real experience.”

To put this another way, as you begin to think, feel, and act differently, “you are becoming a different personality who is connected to a new personal reality.”  

Warrior Flow recognizes that this is how in fact people become new selves.  Most people, though, have a difficult time wrapping their minds around any of this.  Dispenza’s explanation is as clear and concise as any, so it is worth once more quoting him:

“To feel and experience the emotions of your future in the present moment—before that future has occurred—is what most people generally have a hard time with, because most people are waiting for some thing, person, or event to happen in their life to take away that feeling of emptiness, lack, or separation” (all emphases above added).

Most people are reactive. They erroneously think that external agents and circumstances can rescue them.  The Warrior knows better.  He doesn’t wait for his future to happen to him.   He creates it, and relishes, in each present moment, in the process by which he creates it.  His future will materialize, but only if he creates it.

Even the most novice of Warrior Flow students, as soon as they proceed to rehearse their Warrior’s future, begin, with the first rehearsal, to make that future a reality.