Building The Stamina Of Your Mind
I recently had a student who was a chess player. He came to study Shaolin with me for two weeks. He asked me if he needed stamina when he played chess, I said, yes, it would help him, because when you play chess, you need to be steps ahead, working out your moves and your opponent's moves. This is the same as fighting but every teacher or coach knows that if their student don't have stamina then it doesn't matter how good they are, they can't use their skills. This means, you have build your stamina. Through building your stamina you build the strength of your mind.
When you're tired, you can't show your weakness, you have to pretend that you still have stamina. If your opponent finds out then this is your weakness and he can beat you. Sometimes you have to learn how to hide your feelings, it's the same when you have an injury, you have to hide your injury. This is the same as a chess player who makes a bad move, he can't show it or give up, he has to hide.
The warrior fights to the end. The warrior is really competing with him or herself. His competitor is his teacher
When I taught this chess player, I made him do a lot of physical exercise; running, punches, squats, press ups. All training that had nothing to do with the mind. He wanted to give up but I pushed him. He trained with me every day for two weeks. Towards the end of his training, I made his training plan a little easier and suddenly he found out he strong he was. Everyday he trained, I would do just 25 minutes of Qigong to show him how to balance his Yin and Yang. I didn't want to do too much because I didn't want him to think.
He told me that the Shaolin training gave him a lot of confidence and he felt stronger when he played chess because he no longer cared whether he won or lose, he only thought how to make a strong move and how to conquer himself. If he made a mistake, it didn't matter, he just kept going, sometimes he could change the situation from bad to good but the most important thing was that he always gave his best.
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