AN EXPLORATION OF TANG SOO DO´s EIGHT KEY CONCEPTS: TONG IL SBN Mary Cayte Reiland

An Exploration of Tang Soo Do's Eight Key Concepts: Chung Shin Tong Il

SBN Mary Cayte Reiland

An Exploration of Tang Soo Do's Eight Key Concepts: Chung Shin Tong Il

SBN Mary C Reiland, USA

Tang Soo readers, happy February! This month, we continue with the discussion of the second of the Tang Soo Do Eight Key Concepts. Up today is Chung Shin Tong Il (IL), also known as concentration. According to the dictionary, concentration is “the action or power of focusing one's attention or mental effort”.

When I think of concentration (or focus), the first thing that comes to mind is the Karate Kid remake with Jackie Chan and Jaden Smith. They’re training after their trip up the mountain to drink from the dragon well, and Jaden says he already has great focus. Jackie then nearly topples Jaden off the dock into the water, saying “Your focus needs more focus.” Not only is this funny, but it proves a point about training over time and concentration. Once they learn a few things, newbies (white and yellow belts) think they can handle anything, but that’s not always the case. Concentration and focus come over time, the more you practice, the better your concentration is. that concentration isn’t as obvious a concept as courage or endurance (coming next month). I had to really delve into my past experiences to better define concentration and how it comes into training, what truly makes it “key”.

When I was a newbie, my concentration was horrendous. During class, the slightest noise made me flinch, or shift my focus from what I was doing. Instead of focusing on my invisible enemy, I would look at my instructor, waiting for the next instruction. While doing a form, I would look everywhere, instead of focusing on my line of sight. Once this was made apparent to me, I worked hard to fix it, but it was very difficult and took a long time.

One of the coolest things that helped to improve my concentration and focus was this meditation drill. We would turn off the lights in the classroom, light a single candle, and sit around in a circle focusing on the candle. We weren’t even allowed to blink, such was our concentration. Obviously, we couldn’t do this for very long, but it was a cool way to focus our attention.

Last month, in my article about courage, I had a discussion about a senior master who taught me to do the dragon sweep kick, which ultimately helped me to conquer my fear of board breaking. That same senior master was a gigantic proponent of concentration and focus. We used to have these drills where we would partner up and practice close-in fighting. Mostly, what I want to discuss about this is how much concentration and focus it takes to fight within arms length of someone else and not actually make contact, or block in time before getting hit. When most people think of fighting, the concepts that come to mind are control of power (#6) and speed control (#8), but it really does take great concentration to fight effectively.

Ultimately, we all need good concentration to be good martial artists. Keep fighting, keep practicing, keep moving forward. Take care everyone, and as always, Tang Soo!

SBN Mary Cayte Reiland, USA