7 - The Visual Plane

Kosho Chronicles Issue #7

TO THE READER
You trust your eyes. You have been trained to watch the punch, track the kick, follow the weapon. Your eyes are the first sense you turn to in danger, and they are the reason you get hit.

Mitose called them the great betrayer. I did not understand what he meant until he showed me.

THE TEACHING
The eyes are the directors of focus. When the eyes move, the head rotates, and the body follows. This is true for you and it is true for your opponent. Whatever we see, whatever we take into the visual plane, stimulates the rest of the body. Your posture changes. Your breathing changes. Your world changes.

In combat, there are two ways to use the eyes. Tunnel vision, where you fixate on what is directly in front of you. And peripheral vision, where the eyes sit in a neutral state and take in everything without focusing on anything specific. Most people, when threatened, default to tunnel vision. They lock onto whatever scares them. That fixation delays their timing, limits their movement, and hands the advantage to the opponent.

Peripheral vision does the opposite. It cuts down the negative stimulus. It allows the body to respond to movement rather than react to a specific threat. When you use peripheral vision, the eyes are less likely to deceive you about what is really happening.

Learn to see without looking. That was Mitose's instruction, and it took me years to understand what he was really saying.