Taking One's Time

故形氣盛而能縱橫，精神斂而能飛騰*

Therefore one finds great ease when his/her vapours flourishes, may soar when he/she has collected vitality

鬆則活變**

From relaxation comes lively changes

且夫乘物以遊心，託不得已以養中，至矣***

Further still, let your mind find its enjoyment in the circumstances of your position, nourish the central course which you pursue, by a reference to your unavoidable obligations. 

Once one's form and heart were fixed through stillness, moving could be contemplated, normal speed being the first step since it allowed the student to remain relaxed. Deep and uninterrupted relaxation being one of the most important principles in internal practices, adding any kind of pressure had to be done with method and in a progressive way. Therefore, learning motion by beginning at a normal and relaxed pace was the preferred method for internal practices. Normal speed was not only a way to going beyond just memory but also to learn how to use one's vitality.

Keeping the Mind in a Leisurely Mode

The first thing one is working on while moving at a normal pace is to keep his/her mind totally relaxed, as if calmly doing something, very similar to the principles from Zhuangzi's quote. In this type of training, the mind has to be as relaxed as the body, in the same state as when going for a walk as it was already mentioned in Shake Your Body. The idea is for the student to reach the state where he/she has not to go through a deliberate memory effort or any pondering, that on the contrary moves become an oblivious reflex. A comparison with driving, or any other a bit complex body motion, can be made. For a beginner, everything is a deliberate memory effort and pondering, pushing on the gas pedal or the brakes while looking at the rear mirrors and signalling turning left, all at the same time, can seem excruciating, not to mention adding the gears issue when the car does not have an automatic transmission. After a while, when everything is so deeply memorised one does not have to think about it, the same process will be done automatically, the body just doing what it has to do, reacting automatically to the information given by one's senses. Training at a normal speed, hence relax, aims to speed up such process, i.e. reaching the time when moving just comes naturally. That is why Martists, once they reached this kind of deep memory, could keep themselves from practicing routines for a very long time without forgetting them. Like riding a bicycle, once you're on it again, reflexes come back to life, even though it has been a while you did not ride. If routines were a memory effort, one would have had to spend hours every day just to revise them, time that professional Martists did not have, they had a real job in the old days (army, police, protection...), very few of them where only teachers, an occupation more suited for retirement and old age.

Once the moves became a second nature, pure reflexes, one could really start to discover what was behind motion. Not having to concentrate on the moves to be executed, one could easily insist on what was happening inside one's body, the more important aspect of one's training. 

Still, apart from memory issues and behind the motion principles, normal pace was also a way to start to understand how to train one's vitality.

Full of Vitality

Being not stressed by having to move fast, one could concentrate on how to mobilise one's organs (the peeping thief described in previous posts being the first exercise) in order to end up feeling in great shape whenever training. However, this feeling had not to be actively sought, one of the reasons behind the leisurely mode, but had to come as a consequence of a proper training. If training allowed someone to gain more vitality (see Health), the main aim was to tap into it in order to feel full of energy. A obvious sign of such skill was the capacity Martist had to fall asleep and, which was even more crucial, to wake up instantly and go from sleep to being wide awake in an instant. For a car, this issue would be the one of acceleration, the capacity to reach a certain speed in the shortest time. For a Martist, it was a question of mobilising one's organs to shake one's spirit in order to improve reflexes by becoming wide awake at will. Still, the main difficulty was that it was certainly not a question of feeling or sensation to be sought, but a process, mobilising the organs through relaxation, to be understood and mastered. Normal pace, bringing no extra pressure, was one of the preferred ways to do so. Indeed, there are more than one process which can lead to enhancing in an instant one's reflexes, like those connected to the nervous system and adrenaline. It may be interesting to compare regular and  abnormal methods when faced with a stressful situation:

- One may react with abnormal methods with one or more strong emotion(s) (anger, fear, excitement), releasing adrenaline, which will make the heart move faster in order to have more energy, which may enhance one's reflexes.

- One may also prevent in regular trainings any emotive reaction by keeping the organs in check, avoiding adrenaline release, keeping his/her heartbeat steady, making one's mind clear, which also may improve one's reflexes.

Once again, at their extreme, the main difference between the so-called abnormal practices using heighten emotions to tap into vitality and regular ones taping through an emotional void (see The Forest).

Pure unconscious reflexes and how to become alert studied through normal speed, one could then contemplate deeper trainings through the very slow motion.

*Divine Motion Canons, Left (Upper) First Paragraph, Talking about the Divine Motion Body 神運經右（上）第一章，言神運之體

**Boxing Method Six No Formula 拳法六不訣

*** Zhuangzi, Inner Chapters, Man in the World Associated with other Men 莊子, 內篇, 人間世