The following is my synopsis of Mind Over Matter: Higher Martial Arts by Shi Ming and Siao Weijia with Thomas Cleary (Translator). It is a slim volume (136 pages) of essays examining the role of consciousness in Chinese martial arts, specifically taijiquan. The additional references to William CC Chen are mine (Sifu Mark Bernhard)

The position of refinement of consciousness in the theory and practice of martial arts is utterly critical…To abandon this is tantamount to throwing away the living soul and fundamental work of the techniques and theories…

Chinese philosophy and humanistic ethics have a strong color of the search for universal beauty. All Chinese exercise routines unify form and spirit. All have a joyfulness, color, rhythm, meter, crescendo and diminuendo of mood, alternating movement and stillness. The martial arts are distinct from any other system of physical exercise or self-defense in their connection and intimate relationship, interpenetration, and mutual influence with every aspect of Chinese culture: philosophy, literature, art, music, painting, drama, and dance. The meaning of martial arts far transcends the domain of ordinary physical and mental exercises, or combative techniques. Advanced martial artists regard fighting per se as a minor aspect of a path or way by which to seek the Tao (Truth). Pugilism itself is a minor art: we must “defeat the enemy without doing battle.” This sublimation of martial arts from its primitive motives and purposes into the embodiment of the philosophical teachings result in a highly evolved psycho-physical activity.

The taiji postures (or “brain shapes” as William Chen calls them) are lively, expressive gestures and movements that are by turns firm, soft, like a rock carving, floating clouds, flowing water, like inspiring art and poetry. They imitate rivers, mountains, animals, plants, sun, moon, struggle and harmony, feelings and temperaments. Bringing an attentive consciousness to the morphology, movement, temperament, and spiritual conditions of animals, plants, and natural phenomena restores, nurtures and enriches our own biological and biodynamic abilities without returning to a bestial, uncivilized, or primitive state. This dynamic training of firmness/flexibility, emptiness/fullness, movement/stillness, speed/slowness, etc. creates a comprehensive processing of instinct, the subconscious, and consciousness to refine and use inner power to, in turn, refine mind and spirit.

The postures require the practitioner to go through training and principles analogous to what Buddhists call discipline, concentration, and insight until they reach a state of profound stillness known as “emptiness” (Buddhism), “the infinite” (Confucianism), and “non-contrivance” (Taoism). Continued training brings this stillness to a high degree of resilience, and stability, difficult to break down. Enlightenment can be defined as a consciousness field not subject to disturbance that, consequently, allows intrinsic or innate intelligence to emerge.

In calligraphy and Chinese painting “consciousness precedes the brush” and “the effect is outside the brush.” In taijiquan, the craft is in the body; the effect outside the fist­––inner and outer practiced simultaneously. Inner is the refinement of the person; outer is cultivation of the human to commune responsibly with the universe. Training the consciousness controls and directs the mechanical body, via regulation of the respiratory, nervous and endocrine systems. This can cure illness, strengthen the body, lengthen a life span, and disinter latent supra-normal capacities.

In this light, consciousness is not abstract or “mental” or “in the brain,” but a fusion of mind and body, spirit and matter, wherein will (intention) is used in place of physical strength, eliminating all excessive and inefficient tension: the tension of physical and mental instincts, the tension of initiative, tension produced by contradictions between conscious and subconscious, and tension aroused by external stimuli. This is not “natural” and does not come “naturally” but is, in essence, a mastery of Nature through a disciplined conformity to it,  bringing consciousness back to its root in the body. This is a very rare state of spontaneity, raising the subconscious to the level of consciousness, requiring the elimination of “conscious intent.” “Consciousness is a spiritual-material structure, consisting of a triad of information, capacity, and format. Only when it can perform successfully as such a structure can it function interactively with any spirit or matter at all. Consciousness has a field. And it has a force; it is a supra-normal consciousness whose own inherent capacity can activate other capacities, forming a potent force field.” Consciousness is always a medium and an instrument, as well as the object of training: practice cultivation is a cyclical pattern of using consciousness to refine consciousness.

• Vitality = the body/mechanical system
• Energy = power system (including the brain)
• Spirit = total expression of the life activity of vitality and energy = consciousness = mind with content = motivation and direction system.
• When consciousness dwells on something = intent.
• Changes in attention based on intent = thought.
• The means of disposal of affairs = mind = the order according to which energy operates
• Reaching afar by thought = consideration.
• Managing things with consideration = intelligence.
• Doubt disappears through habituation.

In martial arts, the most fundamental objects (raw materials) of processing are vitality, energy, spirit. The processing instrument is consciousness. The whole exercise system is the gathering and concentration of power, will, motor awareness, symbolic representations of exercise movements, memorization of exercise movements, key exercise centers of the brain, etc.­ and reducing it all to “consciousness” or “conscious intent in movement,” which we shorten to “conscious intent,” where the “recollection of something in mind is called conscious, and the sustaining of consciousness on a particular point is called intent.”

The goal is to establish a relationship of direct coordination between thought, intent and action, ultimately refined to spontaneity without conscious intent. First consciousness moves, then power moves, and then the physical body moves. William Chen states “taijiquan is feeling…passion…expression.” Power comes from qi moving in an unobstructed (song) field. Dynamic thought is defined as unifying thought and the coordinate extracorporeal consciousness field outside the body, when you reach the level of “original mind.” This is the realm that is “so vast there is nothing outside, so minute there is no inside,” “doing everything without doing anything.” Then the force of consciousness, like electricity in a wire or water in a pipe, can move unencumbered through and even outside the body. It is “free to move.”

This creates a highly relaxed and stable condition of body and mind. Metabolism slows down and stabilizes while the efficiency of physical and mental work increases. When environmental conditions are beyond human control, the practical thing to do is to change the human ability to adapt. Only when you have tuned yourself and strengthened your own ability to maintain balance in motion (fluctuation of influences) can you respond to (dissolve) imbalance brought on by opponents or the environment and you enter the realm of taiji (where “yin and yang play”), leaving behind the “world of 10,000 things.”