Teeing Off With The Masters

The pieces of the puzzle were gradually coming together and Charlie’s confusing story was beginning to make sense.  Those surrounding Charlie, including his Doctors and family, were considering but fragments of the larger picture, or so it seemed to me.  I thought back on my conversations with Andreas, as we had so often discussed holistic alternatives to modern medicine.  He would sometimes quote Thomas Edison, “The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, in diet, and in the cause and prevention of disease.”

I remembered how he so persuasively argued how our mind is our greatest personal resource, making education the foundation for truly informed decisions and personal development.  He always insisted, truly effective education is best focused on fundamentals, advancing an idea he had learned in his martial arts, physics and engineering training as a young man.  Andreas was fond of saying, from one thing know ten thousand things.

It was within this context, when he introduced me to his 4-Core Competencies of Self-Mastery.  I remember him emphasizing how everything that exists, exists always in a state of movement, and when movement is fluid, flowing and rhythmic, it is energy efficient, proceeding as Mother Nature intends.  I agreed, rhythmic movement seems a pivotal issue and essential to personal effectiveness in virtu­ally everything we do well.  I knew this from my own experience as a musician.  He’d often illustrate his point by emphasizing the obvious relevance of rhythmic movement to excellence of performance in the arts and athletics.  Music, ballet, gymnastics, basketball, tennis, golf, swimming, dancing, singing, all performances occur at their best when rhythmic movement prevails.

Then he added, the most significant variable undermining flowing, rhythmic movement is physical tension.  While it is our preferred state to be relaxed, numerous forces generate tension, compromising energy efficiency and effectiveness in all things human.  Simply put, the singly most important force governing fluid, coordinated human movement, is the degree to which we are relaxed.  Fortunately tension, the enemy of relaxation, is tangible he argued, and something we can eradicate if we have the required knowledge.  We can choose to replace tension with relaxation, if we know how to do it.  Ability to relax thus becomes the 1st of his 4-Core Competencies.

Andreas also emphasized the importance of fundamentals while learning balance, his 2nd Core Competency.  As I came to better under­stand how the governing force of gravity shapes our physical func­tioning in all situations, and better appreciate how balance eliminates strain, I began to catch his evolving drift.  Rhythmic movement re­quires balance and this applies to all our movements.  Clearly, our bodies obey the same physical laws as the spinning top, making the pirouette in ballet an excellent example of rhythmic full body move­ment.

He then added Flexibility as the 3rd-Core Competency underlying rhythmic, full body movement.  As rhythmic movement evolves, it needs elasticity and there soon appear multiple forces to restrict freedom of movement.  These forces can exist within our body, as is the case with tight muscles, and outside our body, such as cold weather, tight clothing and numerous other constrictors.  Flexibility, in conjunction with relaxation and balance, allows for adaptive rhythmic movement in an ever-changing environment.  I had to agree with his conclusions.