Becoming a “warrior” in Thailand. Ch 1, Pt 12: Meditation.
The Renaissance Man Project is an original non-fiction novel by Nathaniel Kostar, occasionally known as Nate Lost. Follow @natelost.
Journal Notes from week 2.
It’s a struggle to wake up this morning, so I sleep in. I don’t make it to breakfast at Tony’s ‘til round 10AM—scrambled eggs, ham, bacon—a taste of home. Afterwards, I bike to Tiger to lift weights. In the afternoon, I rest some more and write in my journal. Then I walk around the corner to a 7/11 (for some reason Thailand is full of 7/11’s) to pick up a 2-gallon bottle of water, yogurt and a few packs of Lays Seaweed potato chips.
I go to Muay Thai class at 3:30. It lasts 3 hours.
Only one Muay Thai session today. My body hurts—left wrist especially. Top of my right foot is sore. Scraped knuckles. I get my ass handed to me in a sparring session with a chubby German kid with surprisingly quick hands. I’m beginning to learn that a person’s appearance says very little about whether they can fight or not.
“It’s my 10th day in Thailand. Knuckles are cut and tender. Left shoulder sore. Right knee stiff and my right shin and the tops of my feet hurt from kicking the heavy bag.”
I sleep in again today. My body needs rest. I’m beaten and bruised.
Despite the intensity of the training and my modest ability, by the beginning of the third week, I’ve started to settle in. The two and a half hour workouts twice a day aren’t as grueling, and some days I have the energy to lift weights and hit the bag in my free time. My flexibility is improving little by little, and my kicks, though nothing like the vicious strikes my trainers unleash, are becoming more powerful. I know I won’t be ready to fight after a month’s time, but every day I’m discovering more about my body’s capabilities, and I have begun to enjoy my training.
Furthermore, I’ve made friends with many of my trainers, who aside from their uncanny ability to destroy another human being in a ring, are warm, generous, and kind. More than fighting, it seems, they like to joke and laugh. I’ve also made friends with professional fighters, teachers, monks, students, and screenwriters from around the world, all of whom are training at Tiger.
Some mornings I wake up early and go to yoga, and at night I’ve begun to meditate with Lars under the soft orange light of the camp after the other fighters have gone home.
Meditation is intended to help the practitioner gain control over their own mind. It is part of nearly all spiritual practices, including the 8 limbs of yoga. In fact, asanas, the physical postures in yoga that have become so popular around the world today, were originally practiced to prepare the body for long periods of sitting. Of the 8 limbs of yoga, meditation is arguably the most important.
“After a good meditation your muscles will be so relaxed that you will be able to stretch much better than usual,” Lars tells us while we stretch out on the mats to prepare for the meditation.
Then Lars, this mass of Nordic muscle who speaks like a sage, calm and confident, explains to me and a few guys from England how to fold our legs into lotus position, properly align our spine, and let our eyelids rest half-way open— “It is best not to close your eyes at first. You can fall asleep,” he says gently.
For me lotus position is so strenuous on my hips that I couldn’t imagine ever falling asleep. The hips! So much of this month depends upon the flexibility of my hips. Even if I had the strongest legs in the world, without flexibility in my hips the power of my kicks could never reach their full potential. Even power, it seems, needs softness to manifest fully.
“Now breathe through the nose. Pull the inhale down into the stomach. Begin to count the breath. When you forget—and you will forget—count again. After practice, you will not need to count breath. Focus mind. Then, forget mind.”
For 15 minutes, we sit, trying to be as still as we can both in body and mind. In my head, I count my breaths, and one night, I recite a poem over and over until I can feel every syllable and sound running through me. Lars later tells me this isn’t exactly the point of meditation (to workshop poems in your head), but he agrees that it’s an interesting exercise.
When the meditation ends, and we stretch again, indeed our limbs have become noticeably looser. By alleviating some of the tension and noise in the mind, we have also alleviated tension in the body.
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Read Intro, Part 1
Read Intro, Part 2
Read Intro, Part 3
Read Intro, Part 4
Read Ch 1, Part 1
Read Ch 1, Part 2
Read Ch 1, Part 3
Read Ch1, Part4
Read Ch 1, Part 5
Read Ch 1, Part 6
Read Ch 1, Part 7
Read Ch 1, Part 8
Read Ch 1, Part 9. Yoga