THE ANSWER TO THE UNEXPECTED THINGS
It is very important that the karateca being always prepared to face and to overcome the unexpected things. This is very difficult and it is gotten after several years of training, then it is practically reserved to the black belts.
In karate the different techniques are repeated one and a thousand times, to automate the movements and to achieve a capacity of reaction in the one at the beginning acts the brain, that gives the order so the muscle it moves. Then the students trains the reflections, and in this way the reflections are conditioned to certain things, as that before the opponent's more minimum movement a reaction exists.
At the beginning of this training, it is very important the concentration that the student should maintain, to achieve an appropriate effectiveness in his reflections. In this stage the studen has been possible to condition the reflections in such a way, that it is no longer the brain who gives the order to the muscle, but rather it is the spinal marrow the one acts, so that the blockades and the attacks - or counterattacks - leave automatically.
As previously I say, this is very difficult of achieving, since at the beginning the student must repeats the exercises thousands and thousands of times. Then - when the student reacting - he always does it in the same way, that is to say always executing the same techniques that so many times have repeated in his training. This is called "to be blocked", that is to say that the student is "blocked" by himself, and inclusive he can arrive to be "blocked" by his opponent, if the one proposes it.
To "unblock" the students, it is necessary to have a good professor who will supplement those first trainings with other more sophisticated. In this way the student is "unblocked", and his reactions won't always be the same one. Then that infinite repetition of techniques it will serve him so - anyone of these techniques that he carries out - the movement will be the nearest thing to the perfection.
In general - in our daily life - we gets used to do all the things in a certain way. We solve - or trie to solve - all our problems in the same way, or with the same approach. Many are the times that we don't find solution to the same ones, although the solution is fully to our reach and many times it is extremely simple.
When this happen, it is necessary that the person being "unblocked", that is to say that he tries to find the solutions by another side - or with another posture - and don't as he accustoms to do it. While he doesn't achieve this, the solution it won't be the best, and also it can end up being him impossible.
There are stories that will help us to understand what it is "to be unblocked", and what simple are the solutions of problems - or situations - that sometimes we find impossible to solve.
= There was a very humble peasant that, to buy tools and machinery to plant, he requested credit to a loan shark of the town.
Running the time - and having had bad luck in his crop - because several storms had destroyed it almost completely, the peasant was with the situation that it had conquered the term to liquidate his debt with the loan shark.
This, refusing totally to grant him a bigger term, proposed the following thing: " You have a very beautiful daughter with who I want to marry. As you will see this road only has white and black stones. I will put in this bag only two stones - a white stone and black stone - and your daughter will put the hand in the bag and she will only take out one stone. If she takes out the black stone she will have to marry me, and you you will be free of your debt and if - on the contrary - she takes out the white stone, I will forgive you the debt and also your daughter won't have to marry me.
I believe that it is a fair treatment, both have fifty percent of possibilities, so much of winning as of losing, and you will always be free of debts.
If on the contrary you don't accept this treatment, I will execute the mortgage that I have on your house and your lands, and I will stay with them in very little time.
While the peasant doubted, the loan shark took the two stones, but making a trap that the peasant's daughter realized. Instead of taking one white stone and one black stone, he put inside the bag two black stones.
The youth woman realizing she could no goes back, and that she could not accuse the loan shark of doing trap - since the one it would be made offended, and would keep her father's goods, after thinking some instants, she requested one hour to decide.
In this way, while her father - and the loan shark - were waiting, the young woman went to her Master, who gave the solution that allowed the young woman not to marry the loan shark, and that her father conserved his house and his lands. =
WHICH THE SOLUTION WAS ?
It is necessary "to be unblocked", in order to find it. Think some instants before reading the answer. Try to find the solution without reasoning as habitually you do it.
THE SOLUTION WAS THE FOLLOWING ONE:
The young woman introduced her hand in the bag and took one of the stones, but - when taking out it - she allowed to fall it to the floor. Then the stone mixed with other stones.
"I regret it very much, the youth said. But I believe that in all ways we will be able to know the color of the stone that I chose, if we look at the one that was in the bag."
In this way, as in the bag it was a black stone, the loan shark should accept that the peasant's daughter had taken out the white stone.
FERNANDO PRIETO
6th. DAN