Integrative Zanshin: Mastering the State of "Relaxed Alertness"
A mindset promoting safe psychitecture in the 21st century?
Japanese archers practicing kyūdō in the mid-19th century (Image Source: Henry and Nancy Rosin Collection of Early Photography of Japan. Smithsonian Institution; Accessed: James Clear)
“Zanshin” is an ancient Japanese practical ideal, drawn from the quiver of martial practice known as kyūdō – what was samurai archery. Despite the subtitle, zanshin is often described as a “state of being” rather than a “mindset” because it is holistic in the sense of incorporating the “mind—body connection” into “one unified state”, and integrative in the sense that it weaves these strands together into a “way of being” that interacts with the world outside, and in.
“State” is an apt descriptor because states can change, and the practice of zanshin exists within an ever-changing continuum, based on internal (mind—body) and external (environment and other mind—bodies) stimulus, responses, events and situations. Once practiced and refined, however, embodying the way of “relaxed alertness” or “remaining mind” reinforces, in modern systems-thinking terms, the development of strong “psychitecture” – the foundations of our own cognition.
One mechanistic, easy-to-follow way of imagining our “psychitecture” is this flow chart adapted from the work of Ryan Bush (2021) who coined the term in his book “Designing the Mind: The Principles of Psychitecture”. Zanshin becomes another control mechanism by which to ensure this psycho-cognitive system is “flowing” optimally.
Whether it be a warring archer about to release an arrow at a charging enemy, or an inner-city mother of five trying to maintain control while cooking for her entire family in the chaos of her apartment kitchen, zanshin appears to be a compatible tool for both the extreme and the everyday. A resource to decouple corrupted responses to our environment; a lens through which to view reality in a clearer, more meaningful, purposeful and actionable manner. Zanshin can remind us of our values, our goals, our beliefs. It can shape our world view, or stop it from being shaped uncontrollably. It can align the relationship between our value—reward systems, and allow us to feel but not act on emotion. It is not the only state of being that can do this, of course. But nonetheless it is a stress-tested tool that can be deployed, for free, immediately.
Zanshin can be broken into three manageable, more importantly – trainable, components:
Breathwork
“The Pashupati seal discovered during excavation of the Indus Valley archaeological site of Mohenjo-Daro” circa 2350-2000 BCE, depicting a figure seated in the “lotus" position, perhaps deep in meditation. (Public Domain)
To breathe is not only to live, it is to at once control and let go. Breathing creates space for mindfulness, for presence, at all times. There is no substitute for a consistent meditative practice. Whether or not that is setting your phone alarm for 5-10 minutes and just sitting in silence with your eyes closed when you wake up or before you go to bed, or whether you choose to undertake extensive meditative systems, it would be foolhardy to discuss “breathwork” without at least pointing to the direction of meditation — that which supports everything else.
But in terms of zanshin, most often we are thinking about states of being throughout the day, having to react to different situations and events that come our way. Different breathing systems can calm, slowing the heart rate, allowing regulation (e.g. “box breathing”) and clarity of thought when combined with subtle, fluid movements (e.g. XinQi “circular breath” or Nadi Shodhana “alternate nostril breathing”).1 Other breathworks excite, raising the central-nervous system, creating influxes of chemicals like adrenaline, nor-adrenaline and dopamine (e.g. holotropic breathing or Kapalabhati “breath of fire”). Focus and awareness can follow – a state of relaxed alertness has started. Consistent, conscious practice will ensure it continues.
Practicing breathwork helps to strengthen the connection between our mind and our body, yet it simultaneously helps to remove our “selves” from the confined space of both, to occupy a liminal space of emptiness,2 to make space for equanimity and peace – making way for the “remaining mind”. As a situation arises, immediately go to your breath. Are you holding it? Has it become irregular? Is your heart rate furiously pumping? Are you too relaxed, and need to get moving? Questions like these can be answered simply by looking to the breath.
Like every martial arts practice, conscious breathing is the foundational layer of kyūdō, and is thus foundational to the state of zanshin. First ground yourself, the rest will follow.
Daniel Simpson’s excellent article “Yogic Breathing” notes ageless wisdom, over 2,500 years old, from the pre-Buddhist Chandogya Upanishad (6.8.2):3
“For the mind, dear boy, is tied to the breath.”
Discernment
The capacity for accurate judgement. Some situations provide space to sit and think, others are fast-paced, requiring split-second, in-the-moment decision making. When action must be an instantaneous response, having full trust in your judgement and acting upon this immediately can be the difference between a good and a bad outcome. Think of discernment as building reactionary trust over time.
Like everything, discernment is something that must be practiced to be improved. Unfortunately, this means finding a means of building reactionary trust in a safe environment, where the outcomes of your decisions do not have dire physical (or psychological) consequences. Practicing a “kinetic” martial art (e.g. muay thai, jiu-jitsu, taekwondo, kyokushin karate, wrestling, boxing, MMA) can go part of the way in building reactionary trust. You are forced to trust your judgement under stressful conditions and instantaneous consequences. Reactionary feedback loops quickly form. The learning curve is steep, but deep and rich if followed sensibly. Other physical means of building discernment can come from contact and team sports (e.g. football and rugby) or non-physical tactical games (e.g. speed chess, Go, and yes, even some gaming consoles), but the tactile nature of physical consequences cannot be underestimated in the formation of reactionary trust. Balance of the physical and non-physical is crucial.
If the physical route is chosen, it is important to find a trusted trainer, coach — leader — and a healthy, respectful training environment. Indeed, a study in 2023 found “sparring” (the act of engaging your martial arts prowess with another) can improve brain function, increasing the size of the caudate — associated with memory, movement and intuition but, pivotally, once a certain threshold is exceeded, because of the physical damage this activity can cause, uncontrolled sparring risks irreversible damage. Highlighting the importance of a controlled, safe and balanced environment for building reactionary trust. Remember zanshin is predicated on the mind—body connection. Connection being the crucial component. You want to create interconnections between your reactions and your trust in them. Not destroy the connections between the neuronal synapses in the brain by taking needless damage. Yet, at some point, to really trust your own judgement in consequential situations, you will need to have exercised it in those situations, or at least situations simulated as such. Until these situations arise, safe practice builds a base to support optimal discernment when the time comes.
Sensemaking
If we were to imagine our thought processes and actions like a “stream” flowing down a rolling hillside, then “sensemaking” (Signpost A) is as upstream as we can go: the source from which our choices and decisions run out. At least, it should be. Making the most accurate read on a situation can be hard. This is often why we feel overwhelmed with choices, or conversely, feel a lack thereof: the effective channel of “choicemaking” is blocked (Signpost B). If this is the case, and our sensemaking and thus choicemaking are not flowing optimally, then downstream, where our senses meet reality, where our choices become decisions and our decisions become actions and behaviours with real-world consequences, our decisionmaking (Signpost C) is where everything, for better or for worse, comes flooding out of. We do not want crashing, broiling torrents. We want a steady, measured stream. What some call “equanimity”.
First and foremost, once breathing is conscious and discernment is set, as the name suggests the first step is to assess your five senses. What do they signal? Why do they signal that? The second step is to realise those five senses are fallible, and to get used to feeling a sixth sense: what some call “gut” intuition.4 Where the mind—body rubber meets the road. Toggling between senses and intuition, at some point you should be able to pause and “zoom-out” of your surroundings, placing yourself into an accurate and actionable local and global context. By remaining “relaxed” it is less likely your psychitecture will become overwritten by hoards of corrupted biases, desires and even digital algorithms which are always waiting at the gate to pull it down and take your psychitecture by storm. Ultimately we are mimetic creatures — we learn through mimicry — so learning to not just resist but to work with mimetics may be the optimal choice to make. By remaining “alert” or “vigilant” a meta-view (a view of the view) can be achieved. Metacognition (thinking about thinking) is at the heart of a psychitectural approach. Whilst zanshin is even more of a holistic approach than that, it does offer insight into at least a key component of the state of “relaxed alertness”. Providing more clarity as to what interpretation and response makes “sense” in the given situation.
To understand what is happening, why, and how to respond appropriately helps in the myriad of situations awaiting everyday life, from road rage to meeting someone disagreeable at the bar, from intense work meetings to complicated communications with your family. Even, as kyūdō proves, it is necessary in extreme life or death situations. But first to do this you must know yourself. All the mystical traditions hang on this self-reflective thread, so too do the ingressing troves of modern self-help courses. It takes time and effort to map out your biases, your desires, what influences you and your thinking. Sometimes being honest with yourself can be painful. Trust me, it almost should be. But the reward for doing the tough work is tenfold the effort required to start it.
Sensemaking is not a fixed position; it is an ongoing process of self-discovery and engagement with your environment.
Start by feeling when you have the urge to “react” to something. This is why journaling is so popular. Recording your days, your thoughts, your actions and feelings is a fast-track way of making sense out of the world. Take a second, breathe, think about your current environment, the nuances to your situational context. Who or what is around you? Any other people? Any wildlife? What technologies are you engaging with? Any digital algorithms creeping in? What is the weather like? What season is it? What day of the week is it? How has your diet been today? For the past week? How did you sleep last night? How much movement have you done in the past 24 hours? Who have you connected with recently? What was the last interaction you had before this one? How much caffeine have you had? How much of your to-do list have you completed?
Yes, this is information overload. Yes, it is unnecessary to think about all of these branching possibilities in one singular moment. But yes, by practicing how to filter through your list of “relevance sorting” items, when those testing moments arise your sensemaking will be attuned to provide you the best possible base to address whatever the situation calls for. Because you are aware. You have thought about these factors. Most importantly, think about yourself and why you think you should act in the way you are about to act. By practicing this in a variety of situations, you can begin to build upon sensemaking.
As the 2023 United States Naval Research-funded paper above suggests, “decision making”, which we have seen is downstream of sensemaking, is a dyadic: both analytic and intuitive. Analytic decision making takes time, often requiring expertise to master. That is the time you can take to sit, reflect, learn and practice. Over years. Whilst practicing a specific skill or navigating a problem space in a specific domain of knowledge using zanshin as a base could eventually lead to high analytical decision making, the state of Zanshin itself is a more general way of being.
Perhaps famous swordsman Myomoto Musashi said it best, “Once you see the way in one thing, you see the way in all things”.
The paper suggests “intuitive” decision making does not require deliberate and lengthy information processing. Instead, utilising fast, non-deliberate actions seemingly from a preconscious state of being — zanshin — intuitive decision making can be “implicitly learned”, individuals subconsciously accessing cues from their environment, and without even being aware, incidentally discern patterns to increase their intuitive process. As I made clear in a recent Instagram post:
“The implications of this far exceed the limited (and to be honest, far too brutal) nature of military-intelligence organisations and reach out to the everyday people who want to enhance their own intuition to make the world a better place for themselves and those around them.”
Zanshin is about building your intuitive decision making abilities so it becomes second nature, but this will not happen in isolation. The state of relaxed alertness must be practiced everyday, in every situation, to successfully implement its benefits. By all means the above list is not conclusive, it is merely the way I interpret and integrate zanshin into my own daily life, and I am sharing it in hopes it can offer help, however small the tether, to anyone else searching for ways to ensure their psychitecture is safe and secure from the maelstrom of information warfare that is a very real threat, and protecting against businesses and nefarious actors who are spending billions to plant their flag in the inner sanctity of your mindspace.
There are plenty of other ways to enjoy the way of the “remaining mind”... if you find some, you know where I will be!
The former you can do subtly, in-context, without needing space nor privacy. The latter may require somewhere to practice if you are concerned with being judged, but that is another story for another day.
See the Dao De Jing, Chapter 11: Emptiness indeed has a functional value.
I would highly recommend reading Daniel’s article for a very in-depth exploration of yogic breathing and the importance it has on everyday life.