We should aspire to have a relaxed and robust heart.

-The Shoninki

The ancient ninja manual called the Shoninki offers us this wise advice. Our hearts should be both relaxed and robust. But how do we do that?!

As with all things in martial arts, there is tension in the paradox between the two. Wisdom comes to us when we find a way to hold them both. And then the next step is to embody them both!

I feel the tension of this whenever I’m practicing a form. You want it to flow, but you also want to display power at the appropriate times. The trick is to know which moment to relax your shoulders, and which moment to kick or punch robustly.

Even if you don’t know a thing about martial arts, if I showed you a video of someone doing a form that embodies both of these, you’d know. You’d say, “Wow, so beautiful.”

And it is.

In tai chi, you practice holding these two traits in your upper and lower halves, moving together. The top flows, the bottom holds strength. This is great practice for living into the tension of relaxation and robustness.

In more traditional martial arts, you have to find this yin/yang balance in the midst of every movement throughout your body. Relaxation here, robustness here. You aren’t holding them in separate areas, but all at the same time, together. The black belts at my dojang are constantly fine-tuning this dance. They return again and again to forms they learned long ago, working on small adjustments that bring more flow and more power.

These wise words from the Shoninki apply to life as well. If we want to sustain our engagement, we can’t go through life rigid and tense. We have to relax. But if we want to make an impact, or make our voice heard, we need robust hearts. We need energy and power.

So, how will you aspire to have a relaxed and robust heart this week?

Where do you need to relax in your life?
What areas need more power and robustness?