Potential Health Benefits of Lightning Contact

Over several years of practicing Lightning Contact*, I’ve noticed a great number of changes take place in my everyday life. As is the case with many similar sports, I personally have found that my daily practice has brought a number of striking health benefits, including but not limited to the following:

• Release of nervous tension
• Increased concentration and focus
• Waking up without the use of stimulants
• Greater relaxation in social situations
• Efficient use of energy
• Fluidity in one’s movements
• Deep muscular relaxation

Please note that the practice of Lightning Contact is not a substitute for conventional medical or psychiatric care; if in doubt, consult your physician. Now, let’s go through these points one at a time and look at how each one relates to the use of a rolling ball.

* as distinguished from contact juggling, which often puts more emphasis on practices resembling those of Chinese medicine balls, mime work and illusion.

Release of Nervous Tension

First of all, I find that there are times when it seems like I have too much energy (or at least, a kind of nervous tension) for what I need at the moment. This kind of tension or energy is what makes people bite their nails, chew their lips, shake their legs, and play weird repetitive games with various body parts. It is especially prevalent in children, who are famous for their capacity to fidget endlessly.

Lightning Contact helps in these situations by giving a means to channel this surplus of energy into a more useful form. Students begin to learn this skill as soon as they start to work on balancing the ball on various points on their bodies. This is not the “static” balance which is most often seen in the similar sport of contact juggling, and which involves blocking the ball in certain bodily crevices such as the inner elbow or the temple. Rather, it is a much more “dynamic” balance, in which a student gradually learns to balance the ball on the most difficult areas, such as the point of the elbow or the center line that runs up and over the crown of the head. Maintaining balance on any of these points for even a second requires the entire body to move in order to maintain contact with the ball.

When starting to work with the crown of the head, for example, you may quickly notice that your entire body begins to shake in a sort of wave pattern as the ball moves back and forth over the point you’re working toward. This shaking is a release of excess energy and nervous excitation, both of which can keep us from relaxing at moments when this would be most beneficial, such as the time between when we lie down at night and when we fall asleep. By learning to use dynamic balance to release this excess energy, we simultaneously increase our sense of balance in life in general, and discover the means to calm down and be both physically and mentally still whenever this is most beneficial.

Increased Concentration and Focus

Another benefit I’ve often experienced while practicing Lightning Contact involves the need for a strong sense of focus on the present moment in order to maintain contact with the ball, especially when working on new rolls. Although it’s possible to do other things while rolling a ball around on various parts of your body, even experts often find it necessary to still their minds and concentrate exclusively on the ball’s movements in order to provide the fluidity which becomes much more natural with time.

Once you master a certain roll or movement, however, you can repeat it endlessly while doing other things. This is what many street performers learn to do in order to interact with people passing by. Despite its usefulness, there is a danger involved in over-performing certain movements. It is very easy to fall into certain habits which in themselves are not harmful, but can cause damage when performed to excess. For example, the world of contact jugglers, who for the most part rely on the use of specific moves and tricks to entertain others, is full of people who have developed health problems such as repetitive strain injury (RSI), carpal tunnel syndrome, disjointed shoulders, and general wear and tear to the body’s muscles and tendons.

The key point here is that while concentration is necessary to learn new movements, focusing too strongly on a few movements to the exclusion of all others is hazardous to one’s health. Once again, this comes down to a sense of balance which you can arrive at by continuing to expand your area of expertise by constantly working outward from its core. Lightning Contact fulfills this requirement by allowing you to find areas of excess tension or stagnated energy, which you can then either tonify or sedate using techniques based on shiatsu massage.

Waking Up Without the Use of Stimulants

When I was first learning to balance a ball on my forehead, I would often take a short break from my work in order to practice in the hallway. Very quickly I realized that when I sat down to work again, I felt much more awake and ready to tackle the remaining hours of my workday. With the early morning sluggishness gone, I was able to increase my effectiveness as an employee and to take on more and more complicated projects.

At first, I believed this “stimulating” action came exclusiveness from past neck problems, and that tilting my head back to the degree required to hold a ball on my forehead opened up the blood vessels in my neck and pumped extra blood to my brain. While this may have been true to some degree, I eventually came to realize that the stimulant action was more complicated than a simple blood-to-brain factor.

You see, what wakes us up in the morning is the release of adrenaline caused by sunlight. However, with our society’s excessive use of artificial lighting and late bedtimes, most people need to block out the constant glow of streetlights and the first rays of sunrise. In order to get their brains in gear in the morning, they pump themselves full of caffeine, and sometimes other, heavier drugs. This does actually seem to work for most people, despite the fact that any beneficial effects of caffeine are often followed by a crash.

Lightning Contact, because of its wide movements and need for heightened concentration, can make you very thirsty very quickly. When you do reach for a bottle of water (I recommend always having a liter or more when practicing), you will likely notice that any headache or feeling of sluggishness you may have, simply disappears. I attribute this effect to the common belief that most people are dehydrated most of the time, and that stimulants like caffeine mask the symptoms of dehydration by increasing the body’s water uptake. Add to this the fact that coffee and tea are mild diuretics (i.e. cause frequent urination), and that many people can’t tell the difference between thirst and hunger, and you have a recipe for obesity and kidney failure. Remember, if you’re thirsty, this is a clear sign from your body that you’re already dehydrated.

A final avenue to Lightning Contact’s stimulating effects can be found by examining its effect on the nervous system. Many beginners are surprised at how easy it is to lose contact with the ball after letting it roll out of its starting point in the hand. After years of practice, I have come to realize that there are two types of points which are responsible for this. The first type of point holds an excess of tension, and the feeling of contact with the ball is overwhelmed by the sensation of the point itself being over-stimulated. In shiatsu massage, this is called a “jitsu” point, and requires sedation rather than stimulation. The second type of point seems to be empty of feeling, and when the ball crosses it there is a moment when you feel nothing at all. This kind of “kyo” point benefits most from a technique called “tonification”, or stimulation through continuous, repeated pressure.

By working toward a more natural daily cycle based on the sun’s movement, drinking more water, and releasing excess tension from your body’s jitsu points while tonifying its kyo points, you can begin to wake up both your body and mind without relying so heavily on external sources of stimulation. And in the process, you may find that life itself is stimulating enough to get you out of bed in the morning.

Greater Relaxation in Social Situations

This is probably the most difficult benefit to describe, much less support with clear evidence. I also cannot promise you that you will feel the same as I did (i.e. a sense of “connection” with others) as a result of my practice, but since it is a somewhat subjective mental state, I suppose it really does have to be felt to be understood. Even so, I will try my best to explain.

Mental and emotional health are just as important, if not more so, than physical health. A feeling of worthlessness or isolation from society can be more deadly in its effects than cancer. Similarly, a feeling of optimistic joy and wonder can be more effective than a scalpel held by the world’s most skilled surgeon. This is not to say that surgery has no place in health, just that it is best to avoid the need for it by adopting healthy emotional habits in our everyday lives.

Several years ago I was very shy toward strangers, tending to avoid any social situation that might put me in contact with a lot of new people. I tended to mask my anxiety by being flashy, crazy, and generally different. In that way, I suppose I was able to feel separate even when I was getting close to others. You see, I really did like people; the problem was that I didn’t know how to reach out to them without making myself vulnerable. So this was a vicious circle of social anxiety producing more anxiety. Fortunately, because of its visual similarity to the spectacular art of contact juggling, my practice of Lightning Contact got people to come to me instead of putting me in a position of having to go to them.

As I continued to practice, I began to notice that after I finished a session I was much more attuned to other people and things. For example, I could tell exactly the right thing to say or do in social situations that would have troubled me years before. I also found that I was more relaxed and receptive to what my friends and acquaintances were trying to tell me. After studying shiatsu massage for the past several years, I’ve come to understand that in order to connect with other people, you must be both physically and mentally relaxed yourself. By being empty of tension and thought, we are open to receive what others want to share with us. And it is only through accepting others just as they are that they can in turn accept us just as we are.

In Chinese medicine, this process is referred to as a bridge connecting heaven and earth. Heaven is the outside, represented in Lightning Contact by a ball in contact with your body. Similarly, earth is the inside, represented by the fundamental physical and mental forces that stimulate your actions from deep within. When these two meet and learn to move together in balance and harmony, a bridge of unobstructed communication opens up, connecting our most primitive internal instincts to the calm unity underlying the chaos raging outside.

From this vantage point, a pinpoint of consciousness in the center of a hurricane, we can reach out and touch others passing by. And some of them might even touch us back…

Efficient Use of Energy

How many times a day do you realize that you could have done something much better if you’d only been concentrating a bit more and not rushing through the task? If your answer is “more often than I would like,” then maybe you should calm down a little and take things slow.

We all have a tendency to rush things, especially when we don’t really enjoy what we’re doing or we know there is something good waiting for us at the end. However, the very act of rushing robs us of the time and attention we need to do things the right way on the first time. Even if we make mistakes or miscalculate what is needed to finish a task, when we take the time to fully concentrate on what we’re doing, we learn much more quickly and become more and more efficient with each new try.

Lightning Contact is special in that if you don’t place your full attention on what you’re doing, there is very little chance you’ll succeed. Similarly, if you try to rush things out of a sense of excitement or impatience, you will generally make the same mistake over and over again without advancing any further. The remedy to this situation is simple: just back up a little and work on an easier area or movement.

When you learn to take things one step at a time, waiting for a certain level of success before moving on, you will find that the learning process becomes much easier, and that the time and energy you put into any situation reaps its rewards in the most efficient manner. As Taoist masters have said since time immemorial, “If you swim against the current, you will only exhaust yourself. Instead, learn to go with the flow.”

Just remember that sometimes you must swim against the current in order to remain true to yourself. Ignoring your thoughts and feelings is not an efficient use of life, and finding yourself is much more difficult than not getting lost in the first place.

Fluidity in One’s Movements

Strongly related to the concept of efficient energy usage is that of fluidity of movement. Any sudden change in direction in Lightning Contact is often accompanied by a loss of contact with the ball. These sudden changes can come from either a decision to try to force a specific unnatural movement, or a momentary lapse of attention to point of contact.

The remedy to this is to not try to control the ball, but to follow its movements and use its inertia to control your own movements. When both you and the ball are moving fluidly, and you are able to accept the ball’s path without projecting your attention into the future by trying to decide what to do next, it becomes much easier to improvise on-the-fly and create new possibilities out of the present state of things.

The avenue to such ease of movement is called “kinesthetic awareness”, and involves conditioning the body’s nerve endings on the skin’s surface to respond directly to pressure instead of taking the longer route up the nervous system to the brain and back down again. Through continual stimulation accompanied by appropriate movements, the nerves controlling the muscles begin to fire directly upon contact with the ball and move your body automatically in response. Thus you may quickly find that you are more aware of the coordination between different parts of your body, as well as the location in time and space of external objects with respect to your body. This subconscious awareness supports the ability to judge exactly how much physical action is needed for any specific movement without relying on the longer processes of decision and thought.

Fluidity of movement is one of the most attractive visual aspects of Lightning Contact, as the ball often seems to be floating in the air while the artist’s body moves around it and cradles it. Despite the months or years of practice one may have put into these movements, the illusion of effortlessness is what makes this art form so beautiful to witness. Fluidity is the key to this illusion, and the more fluid you become in your practice, the more effortless it will be for you to move forward into new creative paths and possibilities.

Deep Muscular Relaxation

In addition to Lightning Contact’s health benefits in releasing nervous tension, some of the exercises involved in learning this art form help to greatly increase bodily awareness and bring areas of tension to light.

The type of bodily consciousness developed in this art is called “proprioception”. In contrast to the kinesthetic awareness required to react to an external object, proprioception is a much more internal type of awareness involving the body’s relationship to itself. One of the major problems in modern society is that whereas our mental worlds change constantly (for example, the entertainment industry thrives on providing endless variety), our physical worlds tend to be flat and unchanging. Flat concrete roads; streetlights that turn on at sunset; air conditioning and heating; chairs we sit on at work, at home, in the car or on public transport, while going to the toilet – all of these work to provide us with the greatest level of comfort.

While such comfort definitely makes life more bearable, it unfortunately comes at a price. Our bodies are designed to work best in a changing environment, and we have complex sets of muscles that allow us to maintain balance on uneven ground, and natural heating and cooling systems to regulate our body heat while simultaneously burning calories or flushing out toxins. Our eyes and brain are also able to adjust to lower levels of light, and even require them for certain kinds of healing to take place. To deny these natural changes by living in a constant, artificial environment, causes certain bodily capacities to atrophy and stagnate while others are overused.

Lightning Contact can help bring your body back into a more natural balance by stimulating areas that have stagnated, and sedating others that are overactive. Every session involves times of movement in which you become more and more aware of stagnated areas, and times of rest in which you close your eyes, breathe deeply, and let your awareness descend into your body to seek out areas of unconscious tension and bring them into a state of deeper relaxation. The combined effect of these two types of action balances the workload between various parts of your body, and allows you to gradually recover from past injuries and, finally, to adapt more easily to a changing world.