How are you 'feeling' today?
Published: Wed, 09/30/15
Another word I hate is ‘feeling’. I am not going into a long preamble like I did yesterday because I am not really feeling like writing very much this morning. So lets just get it over with before I am feeling bored with writing and you are feeling even more bored reading this.
I think the word ‘feel’ is good, lets face it, along with sight, hearing, smell and taste touching and therefore feeling is one of our five senses and you really would not want to be without it. In martial arts training learning to feel is at least as important as learning to see. I have heard it suggested that you can respond 7 times faster to a touch stimulus than you can to a visual one. Add in the limitations of vision in terms of direction and the requirement for light and you see how important feeling touch is.
When training even with weapons I can feel through a staff or axe whether or not a training partner is on the right line or not. If not, then a technique is not going to work properly, if the line is correct then it will work. When we talk about ‘seeing the lines’ in Stav is means experiencing the web with the whole self, not necessarily literally ‘seeing’ with just the eyes.
To feel is something you do, you choose to do it and you can interpret what you feel if you know what you are looking for. To have feelings is to believe that feeling is happening to you and has some effect that you should take notice of. This may be wise sometimes in the sense that you might say. ‘I feel flue coming on so I had better go to bed.’ or ‘This morning I can still feel the effects of the alcohol I drank last night so I had better not drive until later.’ I would suggest that that is making responsible use of your senses.
What gets tedious is the excuse. ‘I am not feeling like it.’ If you don’t want to do something or you really cannot see the value in a particular activity then just say so and do something else.
Only use the word feel in a responsible and active sense. If you are just ‘feeling’ then please just keep quiet about it.
That is all I feel like writing on the subject this morning.
Stav Self-defence seminar on Saturday morning and I am prepared to teach a dagger workshop in the afternoon if anyone feels like attending. http://www.somersetstav.co.uk/sd.html
regards
Graham