The moment of ‘ping!’

Like a single chime. A flash of light. A breakthrough.

In Shintaido practice, there are movements where no physical contact is made. Perhaps you bring your wood sword down and forward toward a partner. Perhaps you even run toward each other, and past each other. Or there is eiko dai where you run through your own personal breakthrough.

Any of these might bring on 'ping!' (my own label for what happens). Yes, it's a subjective event, where you feel stunned, as though something's happened within. I've experienced various phenomena involving light: slashes, explosions that I can't quite see through, or general heightening of light. I say 'I' because I don't really know what others experience within.

But there are also behavioral markers of that moment that are observable. There can be the buckling of the knees, or a dazed look on the face. There's a little giggle that sometimes happens, not a nervous giggle or a seductive giggle but more like water bubbling upward. Happy or surprised. However, these markers could be intentionally produced, copied as a part of the experience, and so even though I’ve observed that they don’t seem intentional, they aren't the most objective evidence of some internal physiological event.

The best evidence to me is wet eyes. Again and again, you bring your sword down in a simple no-contact movement that is repetitive and practiced, not frightening nor upsetting. You bring it down, and maybe the third time, or the eighth, you see your partner’s face, dazed. Eyes misted.

You run and run, and you experience light, feel that little squirt, that experience of release in your own eyes.

There’s a medical column carried in The Daily Advertiser, the local paper. Today, Dr. Gott mentioned ‘reflex tears’—something different from weeping tears and tears that wash and lubricate the eyes. It got me thinking.

I’d been calling it mist. The eyes sharply moisten and the person pauses, as though they've been touched in some way, opened, made vulnerable via something flowing from their partner or through pushing themselves past their limits.

The tearing is interesting because it's a marker that's not subjective, an external marker of something that's experienced within. It's an objective, measureable event, not easily faked or initiated by volition. I've observed it in others. I've experienced it in contexts where greater distance is involved, or people aren't involved at all. I've never heard it discussed.

So. From a short distance away, we can get someone's legs to crumple, their eyes to abruptly mist, not to mention whatever goes on in the mind since that's harder to isolate.

In eastern and holistic approaches to the body, it's accepted that there is a flow of energy through the body. And I suppose there's some explanation involving unblocking that flow. But I've still got my feet in the western tradition and scientific method. To me, something small but observable like reflexive tears is a measureable phenomenon, and thus is a building block for further knowledge.

It would help if there were a specific question. Something like, are people interconnected without body contact? (As some insects, fish, mammals and birds appear to be.) What is that mechanism and how does it work?

Of course, I do have hypotheses, and good reasons for wanting to look at and document this, not just experience it.

Meanwhile, this morning, I squeezed a grapefruit and the very last three oranges from the tree in the yard. I poured some of the juice into a glass for my dad for when he’d awaken, and poured the rest for me.

I took a sip.

ping!