Kokoro-Unbeatable Mind Yoga and Meditation

The magnificence of the universe

YOGA AND MEDITATION

You hear a whole heap of phrases about "pushing  through, be tough, hang in there," the list goes on and on. As one who regularly undertakes long endurance challenges, I often ask myself what the hell do they all. They are just meaningless words in the end. At the 28 km mark of an Ironman marathon you can hang tough all you want and still fall in a big hole, spit the dummy, or have your "wheels fall off ". What I have come to realise is that you really need some solid tools to use. You need to use those tools to train your mind to pull itself into line, and mesh and be at one with your goals and your spirit. I hate my mind dominating my spirit, and  it was a big reason why I enrolled in a course that has just opened up, called Unbeatable Mind or Kokoro which is the Japanese term. This course is run by the SEAL Academy in America. Interestingly, my teacher is Commander Mark Divine. Commander of SEAL Team one for nearly 10 years. He was a Navy SEAL for 20 years. These days, now retired, he is running an Academy to train seal candidates before they do their selection process. He was getting calls from the general public wanting to participate, to develop themselves into better whole people. And so minus all the military specific training, he has developed a course called "Unbeatable Mind" – Kokoro, . This is the stuff they are teaching seal candidates to help them bring focus, concentration, and intense trust and love of their teammates. These men when on a mission where ever it may be, need to be focused, and aware on a way higher level than the common man in the street, because their life literally depends on it. If you blink at the wrong time, you are dead. Two tools that are reiterated again and again are YOGA and MEDITATION. Who would have thought that these men and women would do something like this on a daily basis to help keep themselves alive. Just like physical practice needs to be undertaken on a regular basis, so does mental training and has for me at least been the missing link in my development. You can be as fit as anything but if your mind wanders all over the place, and you do not have a mastery of your mind  then you could end up with your race in tatters and for the SEALS worse. It is that black and white. Lots of people are attracted to yoga and meditation, but few persist. Why? Well like me they thought it was for sissies and really did not improve anything. I personally saw it as a fad. But when these 2 practices are part of a daily ritual of a Navy SEAL, then it raised my attention level, and gave me the courage to do and try something different. Whenever I have not felt like practising I think of these SEALS, I am all over it then, because I want to attain that higher level of mastery and focus.But like your physical practice it needs time and patience to develop some sort of mastery, infact like the physical side the mental practice should be seen as a life long journey  Never will my mind take over. My spirit is in charge. Because now I have the tools. They just need to become part of me which only time, patience, and courage to tread the road less followed.