Yet in the same building as the digital rainforest, in the next room over, an impromptu martial arts session begins, wherein we carry on the task of regaining knowledge and sensation of the body itself, momentarily shedding higher level thought processes, giving into intuitive muscle movements and immediacy in consciousness.
All this through a discipline called Wing Chun, a distillation of numerous martial arts schools, which, curiously, according to the teacher, is currently being passed on in a decentralized manner from student to student, which is rationalized by the explanation that it will be easier to teach in an unstable time, through crises, which is a phenomenon we are beginning to see with more frequency.
Many types of martial arts practices involve repetitive, mechanical movements that acquaint one with the body. A carefully articulated, measured movement of a limb, or the slow conscious positioning of the body brings attention to the sensations of individual muscles, and the way in which they relate to each other, and the body's overall structure. This is in addition to the general strengthening of the muscle groups and an improvement of balance among other things.
Wing Chun in particular seeks to develop body awareness and the consciousness of structure and the way in which the various parts of the body relate to each other, which positions achieve power, how to distribute weight and make one's muscle groups cooperate, and etc.
This is a valuable process, as living in a complex society and a world of abstraction means that lower level processes, the integrity of the body itself, becomes ignored by the brain's heuristic systems, becoming automated in the background of the subconscious itself and through muscle memory. One can only cast one's attention on so much, so that basic bodily movements and postures, deemed successful and not requiring further conscious attention by the heuristic hierarchy, is left to its own reflexive operation.
An industrial, information society is built on this preliminary success of the basic operation of the human body, but then as the superstructures built on this successful framework grow and evolve, they produce numerous effects of their own that wash back and affect the basic operation of the body itself.
Sedentary lifestyles that are based on office tasks, mechanical transportation, and media consumption wreak absolute havoc on the body. I've become much more active in the past year, but I carry over many of the habits and methods of functioning from a sedentary lifestyle. I slouch and sit for periods of time, arc my neck and back looking at screens, fail to keep various muscle groups worked, and etc. And it is certainly catching up with me.
One's structural modes of dysfunction put great stress on the numerous components of the body, and the components under the greatest stress begin to act up, and one is tasked with restoring communication between the various components, so that they work together best in the structure they exist in. Normally one tackles various bodily ailments in a piecemeal manner: take this supplement, take this medication, exercise this component, have this component massaged or corrected, and etc. Sometimes it works, but if one's structural manners of functioning are not conducive to body integrity, one has to rethink those manners of functioning, or piecemeal solutions will only be temporary.
Meditation seeks to accomplish the same for one's mental processes. The vast stimulation from endless social, fictional, and theoretical abstractions is far beyond what the brain's rational (and pre-rational) systems were meant to handle, so it takes a resetting and redirecting of those systems to get the rational and pre-rational working together again.
You begin to realize it takes everything to do one of the things right. To meditate for long periods of time, it is necessary to strengthen one's back and improve one's posture, or else fatigue sets in and muscle pain is too much of a distraction. This strengthening, this restoration of communication with one's conscious mind and the movements and behaviors of one's body, is achieved with various martial arts and disciplines like yoga.
This then is closer to the meaning of kung fu.
Kung Fu is just one of the methods for accomplishing these re-orienations. There are many out there. Whatever is readily within grasp, and is appealing to the individual, seems to suffice.
