One day, you will understand the magic of the sword.
That is a quote from one of men I trained under while learning European Long Sword. It’s a constant goal for all martial artists, and once felt in one aspect of your life, you continue to persue it in everything that you do.
To the Japanese Samurai, it is called “No Mind.” The Shao Lin would say a “zen moment.” Robert Jordan, through Rand Al’thor, calls it “the void.” The concept pops up everywhere you find a practice swordsman.
It is the moment when your thoughts shut down, your mind blanks, and you just move.
Physiological reasoning would tell us, that moment it caused by our brains releasing a cocktail of chemicals into our system to as a result of our fight or flight syndrome taking control, and muscle memory carries us through the rest. I get quite a bit of New Age hippy spam emails that would say its the unconscious mind asserting itself and bringing our spiritual selves to the for front.
Me, I say it doesn’t matter. Trying to understand whyis thinking about it to much, and that defeats the point.