The Continuum of Resistance

When an aggressor grabs our wrist, our tendency is to use resistance as our course of action. Perhaps we attempt to jerk our hand away, or maybe we suddenly start pushing, twisting or even shouting. We tend to react one of two ways: fighting it or giving in to it. Similarly, we employ the same practices when encountering difficulties in our everyday life circumstances. In Jiu Jitsu we train to not meet force with force. Instead, we practice to ‘become one with’.

Jiu Jitsu Class, 03/07/23

Each of us struggles with something called ‘the gap’. The gap is like a chasm between two cliffs. We are on one side and on the other side is something we are trying to achieve or overcome. The other side can represent a goal or objective. It might also represent a gap in our understanding.

Our class was addressing this issue, even though we didn’t specifically refer to it as a ‘gap’. Rather, we were discussing resistance, in the sense that resistance can represent a chasm or a property that is inhibiting us from getting to point B from point A.

DEFINING RESISTANCE

The term ‘resistance’ needs to be placed into context. For example, imagine if someone grabs your wrist to restrain you, perhaps in an attempt to force you to do or to not do something. We can call that grab an act of force or resistance. Our imaginary attacker’s grab is, therefore, an act of restricting or restraining our freedom It inhibits our movement through the use of force.

There exists a similar internal force that resists and restrains. For example, I want to mow the lawn. But mowing the lawn can give me an intense allergic reaction from the pollens. While it is my desire to mow the lawn I have something restraining me, something grabbing my figurative wrist. In this case, my fear of an allergic reaction restrains me from accomplishing what I claim to be my goal. We refer to this restraint as resistance. So, I am placing a higher value on my fear of an allergic reaction than on my stated goal of mowing the lawn. I’m not saying my fear is unreasonable. Maybe I need to stay away from lawns. But the point is that no matter which way we cut it, my own resistance has in a sense become my own enemy.

When an aggressor grabs our wrist, our tendency is to use resistance as our course of action. Perhaps we attempt to jerk our hand away, or maybe we suddenly start pushing, twisting, shouting, or even becoming limp and compliant.

We react one of two ways to aggression and even life itself: we fight it or we give in to it. As a Jiu Jitsu practitioner we train to practice a third form of response when grabbed or attacked. It’s a form so utterly foreign to us that we don’t even recognize it when we encounter it. We have to train and train to even acknowledge that it might, just might, exist. The more we train, the more ‘that which cannot be seen nor described’ becomes apparent.
We train to not meet force with force or to surrender to its inevitability. Instead, we practice to ‘become one with’.

Perhaps you can consider yourself a yukyusha (beginning students) or yudansha (black belts). Either way, as a Jiu Jitsu practitioner we train to practice a different form of response when grabbed or attacked. We also train to employ the same advanced practices when encountering difficulties in our everyday life circumstances. In Jiu Jitsu we train to not meet force with force. Instead, we practice to ‘become one with’.

This third way of adapting to force is vital to correct Jiu Jitsu. It becomes essential to our practice.

What is meant by this idea of not meeting force with force? We can meet force several ways: 1) we can push against it, 2) we can pull away from it, or 3) we can enter into it, becoming one with it. Each of these responses represents a point on a continuum (see Figure 1).

Figure 1 conveys an essential element about resistance… that no matter which way we move relative to center, we are residing within the realm of resistance.

We tend to define resistance as struggle or as force meeting force but resistance also includes compliance, surrendering, or giving into abuse. Whether we are aggressive on the one hand or compliant on the other hand, resistance can be viewed as a ‘moving away’ from the center. Any direction away from the center is an encounter with resistance.

Resistance isn’t always what we think it is. Sometimes it is very passive. The main notion here is that we can’t achieve oneness when we are caught up in behaviors that move us away from that specific point.

Early Studies

I began studying these concept over 30 years ago. At the time I was a controls systems engineer and project manager in New York, designing and installing automated control systems for buildings. I also programmed the systems.

I traveled to Boston and Minneapolis to receive my programming certifications, where I studied a concept of which I was previously unaware. It was called PID, an acronym for Proportional, Integral, Derivative control. What I discovered was best explained by dissecting how a simple thermostat works.

A thermostat is an interesting creature. It’s purpose is to keep us comfortable and it does that by maintaining something called setpoint.

An example of a comfortable setpoint is 72 DegF. So when a thermostat senses the temperature has deviated from setpoint, it turns either the heating or cooling ON.

The thermostat allows a certain amount of deviation or error to creep in before starting the HVAC. For example, it doesn’t turn ON the HVAC when it is +/- .001 degrees away from 72. It allows error to creep in, or deviation from setpoint. Once sufficient ‘error’ occurs, it turns on the HVAC. Similarly, once it is ON it won’t stop precisely on the exact setpoint. There’s a delayed response that allows a certain amount of overshoot or droop. This helps prevent short-cycling. In other words, there is a form of control that allows a certain degree of built-in error or deviation. This is accepted as normal behavior.

What’s interesting is how closely these control concepts mirror our own behaviors, with one striking exception. Similar to a thermostat, we accept a certain degree of error or deviation as normal behavior. But before looking further at the correlations (and the one exception, referred to in Figure 4), it may help to see several diagrams.

TECHNICAL SIDEBAR

But first… there are many ways to discuss what I am presenting. Mine description is technically based, with a premise that I understand professionally as a controls engineer. It’s a bit geeky, so you may find other explanations superior to mine. Either way, the thermostat is a great teacher, mostly because of a very surprising element: as we’ve seen, it often never quite achieves setpoint. It merely lands on it now and then. It ‘hits’ setpoint only on the way through it into continued error. The achievement of precise setpoint control becomes only intermittently available.

Figure 3: The straight vertical line represents setpoint. Every time the temperature gets a little too hot or cold, the thermostat commands the HVAC to turn ON. As we can see it runs for a while, and has a tendency to overshoot and undershoot the setpoint. In fact, most of the time it is NOT on the setpoint. It simply intersects the setpoint - from time to time - along its journey toward more or less error.
The area between setpoint and the far ends of the overshoot and undershoot is called error.

Figure 4: This image, starting in the top left corner with proportional only control. The diagram then depicts a series of steps implementing the integral and derivative functions along with corresponding gain adjustments. The bottom right image shows a smooth approach and then landing precisely on - and holding to - setpoint. This precision is what was earlier referred to as an exception: the PID loop anticipates error and adjusts accordingly.

Extropolating our inner thermostat

The thermostat provides a pretty strong hint regarding our own behavior, relative to the Continuum of Resistance (see Figure 1):

We tend to only hit the setpoint in brief encounters.
We are typically in a state of overshoot or droop, also referred to as the resistance, that occurs when we either push against or pull away from the center.
The attributes of an effective PID implementation include the concept of ‘gain’ which are minute adjustments that allow the programmer to tune the loop, i.e., to bring the control into actual, effective control. In this state, we can get a thermostat to stay precisely on setpoint at all times.
Perhaps most importantly, we can apply these control system concepts to our own lives.
We wander around in a state of drift or error, never quite knowing what our setpoint or center actually is. Put another way, we tend to hit the center by accident and our encounters - if they occur at all - happen only briefly. Landing on oneness becomes, unfortunately, an intermittent accident. And understandably, we have little to no idea how to ‘gain’ precise control.

CLASS NOTES

Why do we suffer so much from this hit or miss arrangement?

Well, to reiterate: How can we achieve a thermostat's setpoint if we didn't know what the setpoint actually is? We have discovered that in many cases, when setpoint is achieved it’s typically only by accident.

Career-wise, I’ve long since transitioned from my years of being a controls engineer to becoming a Commissioning Authority. Commissioning people test buildings. More specifically, we test the operation of various systems within the building to make sure they work right. Is the owner getting what he/she paid for?

Examples of various systems include the HVAC, lighting controls, hot water, and more. If I don’t know what the temperature setpoints are for the thermostats (typically 70/74) then how can I write a test to verify its operational correctness? In construction we use drawings and specifications, which detail the owner’s and designer’s intention. Commissioning people, armed with these design documents, have clear standards or benchmarks against with to test the systems to verify they are in compliance… achieving their setpoints or design expectations.

Unfortunately, we don’t have similar documentation for how to be an ‘on-setpoint’ human being. We have nothing to measure ourselves against. It’s a crushing and oversight.

Who would build a high-rise building or suspension bridge without plans and specifications? Yet, here we are, running through entire lifetimes, without basic guide documents. No wonder we are struggling.

CLASS DISCUSSION

Our class involved a discussion including examples that take this oversight into account. Part of the class premise is that if, on the one hand, we don’t have sufficient guidance to identify the center (or setpoint), then let’s at least start to develop a set of tools that identify when we are NOT on the center point. In Jiu Jitsu this means developing the ability to measure when our Jiu Jitsu is being more or less effective.

Several of us took turns providing an everyday life example of what we were learning from this class. I shared my own example by citing an experience from this past week. I had gotten a day or two reprieve from weeks of seemingly endless and tiring work. I had even written about it:

I’ve been slugging and punching my way through work and other tasks. For weeks and weeks. It’s been tiring and at times exhausting. And then, yesterday afternoon, there was a work break. And today there is another one. I am living inside a day or so of being able to breathe more freely. Which has given me a mental break. And that space, that gap, has brought about a re-alignment. Because I upped my game of awareness.

I explained to the instructor that this mental light switch had helped me realize that there were actions we can take that bring us closer to the point. I characterized those actions as ‘mechanics’. What I meant was that I was seeing that a set of steps could be employed to get me across ‘the gap’, so to speak.

Sensei then asked me to use what I had learned to go even closer to the point. “Show me how you are going to do that. Do another repetition,” he encouraged.

I began by stating that I had (previously in Jiu Jitsu training) learned that repetitions can, over time, help us develop conditioned reflexes, implying that with enough repetitions I could learn how to reflexively draw closer to the elusive ‘point’.

He interrupted me, stating that my statement about repetitions wasn’t getting me any closer. Rather, it was keeping me in the same place. A bit like treading water, it seemed to me. So, he politely asked me to try again.

He restated his question. “What is it you are trying to achieve?

I paused, with noticeable silent hang-time, finally responding with, “I don’t know.”

“Exactly,” he replied. “I don’t know, either. But don’t you see? You stated you were seeing how to do it, but then you realized that you don’t know.”

He continued, pointing out the challenges we face when we are chasing after an objective but we don’t really know what it is that we are trying to find. “How can you achieve your goal when you can’t even describe your goal?”

It seems so obvious… but it isn’t.

Related Class Notes

We also tend to subconsciously position ourselves against the very thing we want to be about. Why do we do this? Because we are afraid that the very thing we want to be will turn out to be something we actually don’t want to be about. Or, perhaps we secretly believe we can't really do the very thing to which we aspire. We fear failure.
All this being said, a big part of our problem living in and from the center is that we really dont’ know when we are NOT on that point. In fact, we are hard-pressed to define the actual point itself. The point being, if I don’t even know what I’m aiming at, how can I possibly hit the target? (Refer to the last sentence of Figure 4.)
The point is getting to the point… but we resist getting to the point. It's that resistance that creates an internal feeling of pressure. When we feel that pressure, we tend to resist even more, mistaking the pressure for a feeling that occurs when you are positioned on the center point. But the center does not feel like that. That feeling of pressure or being overwhelmed is something encountered along the way toward the center. Typically, we feel it and then flee, turn-away or change the subject.
There is a habitual fear of being more present. Being more centered.
If we have to adjust, and we do, the pressure we feel is because we don't know how to do it yet (i.e., how to find and maintain ourselves on the center point).
Because we spend to majority of our lives in various places out along the continuum of resistance, it becomes easier to define ourselves by what we are against than what we standing up for.
We can't achieve setpoint, or oneness, when we are caught up in distractions that move us away from that point. We play out our lives giving greater value to the things that aren’t the center, i.e., aren’t our natural setpoint. Labrador dogs are genetically modified to retrieve. If we make them spend their lives doing things other than retrieving, such as being a guard dog or a housebound pet, then they aren’t ever going to be truly themselves. And they will live their lives feeling the pressure of that deprivation.
In our pursuits toward the zero point or oneness, we have various things that represent a deeper movement in that direction. But those things are not the one-point. Yet, they are taking us closer. Yet, if we remain true to these things and follow them, they will eventually take us inward more and more. Toward the zero line. The line between the heartbeat, the space between the push and the pull.
So, in a very real sense, the ideal practice is looking for that direction in everything versus only in certain situations or only when performing particular practices.
Being open to this: Openness is NOT about being the victim. If I want to be more open, for example, then I don't want to be doing it from the perspective of being opening up to being a victim.
Perhaps more to the point: If you don't know what your are for, then you are stuck on what you are against (i.e., this means we are stuck along the continuum in one or more forms of resistance, and are defining ourselves accordingly).

Mushin 無心: The mind must always be in the state of 'flowing,' for when it stops anywhere that means the flow is interrupted and it is this interruption that is injurious to the well-being of the mind. In the case of the swordsman, it means death. - from ‘Zen in the Martial Arts, 1979, page 84.

Once mushin is attained through the practice or study of martial arts (although it can be accomplished through other arts or practices that refine the mind and body), the objective is to then attain this same level of complete awareness in other aspects of the practitioner's life. - Wikipedia

CLASS WAS TAUGHT by Scott Walter, Shihan. Great River Jiu Jitsu is located in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. This article was written by Mark Walter - I attended the class virtually.

The Continuum of Resistance

Jiu Jitsu Class, 03/07/23

DEFINING RESISTANCE