"Transcending the physical"
Introduction When I was in my instructor's dojo back in the '80s, we trained annually with the head of our parent organisation at his geiko and gashuku (intensive training courses and camps). During these our "headmaster" would often speak about the need to "transcend the physical" at some point in our martial journey. But he never really explained exactly what he meant by this. After a few years, and a few more gashuku, it became clear that he was speaking of some kind of "metaphysics": ie. something "supernatural" or "beyond our current scientific understanding". Yet whenever I observed our headmaster during training, there seemed nothing remotely "transcendent" about him: he did the same stuff we did, namely basics, kata, applications, weapons - just with the odd parlour trick thrown in (like the " unbendable arm "). It's now quite clear to me that many, many other schools' headmasters s...