The Reset Button
Getting out of your head is easy.
After fighting, everything else in your life got the volume turned down. You could deal with anything.
I started judo while writing my Master’s thesis. I was doing a lot of procrastination and worrying. But twice a week, no matter how the writing was going, how stressed I was over what I hadn’t gotten done, no matter how unwell and in my head I felt even during warm-ups, while chatting with my friends on the mats, there was always a point — usually the first time I got thrown hard, 10-15 minutes into class — where all that worry went out the window. I was »here«. That sensation only heightened during class, until during sparring when all of reality extended exactly into the next few seconds and my identity was perfectly contained to my body. I was clearly still thinking; I had to plan, remember, practice the things I’d learned, be fully focused on gaining position and defending attacks and avoiding injury. But it was all so immediate.
If I have something important to do after training I always set an alarm, because I can’t be trusted to remember once sparring starts. Time tends to melt away when flow hits
I figured I would get used to the intensity, but I haven’t. Once things really get going I can’t help but fall into that meditative state. One of my favorite things is going to the gym for a class after a hard day with a dizzy nervous system because I know without a shadow of a doubt that it will all get shaked off like the an etch-a-sketch and I’ll get to tackle whatever is still there to handle and take care of with a clean slate.
That feeling of reset doesn’t solve any of your real problems and all of your life is still there when you come back. But like a computer reboot it kills off zombie processes, gives programs a chance to start properly from an ordered state, breaks loops. It helps you trip yourself up less if that’s your habit.
I was recently at an event which gathered intelligent, open, spiritual and creative people over a weekend. One event was a workshop in coming up with new “psychotechnical” techniques — think meditation, chanting, breathwork — by combining various ones that we like.
Fortunately, I know only one psychotechnical technique well: pushing my body into a hightened state through training or fighting. So me and my partner came up with a technique: we’d sit across from eachother, place our legs between us so we could push off against their hips, grab each others wrists as hard as we can and start pulling, slowly, but building up to pulling as hard as we could, but without moving. We were building as much static tension as we could, holding it, while chanting a mantra. This had the usual magic effect of mantras, plus acting as a cue for more and more intensity. The whole things lasts less than 30 seconds and if you’re really giving it your all and you’ll come out of it feeling refreshed. And no wonder! You’re essentially doing a deadlift1 in a way where you need to remember to breathe, cooperate with a partner and mind your body position.
The feedback was incredible from everyone who tried it. As great as movement, breathing and chanting is, there’s nothing that gets you into the here and now and out of your head as quickly as another person challenging your body to work as hard as it can, with a bit of tolerable pain in the mix (wrists could get pretty sore).
I’ve taken to calling this — and any other technique to quickly get out of your head — the Reset Button.
What I enjoy about the Reset Button is how mechanical it is. It doesn’t require you to learn anything you don’t already know. It’s widely accessible and almost infallible. If it’s not working you just need to pull harder and chant louder. If you think you' can’t pull harder, find someone slightly stronger, pull as hard as you can, and when you think you can’t anyore have them pull a little harder. You’ll be surprised.
And the same things happen on the mats constantly. There’s a moment of almost ego death, where people’s thinky brain is shutting down but struggling to stay active, telling them “this is getting too hard”. And if you’re better at the sport — grappling, boxing, whatever — than them, all you have to do is take that last thinky bit out the back and shoot it by adding a bit more pressure and intensity. When they think they can’t anymore, show them they’re wrong.
Technically it feels closer to a Zercher deadlift.