What are the origins of Mamba Mindfulness?

The origins of mindfulness as a mental technique, as a series of mental exercises can be found in Hindu yoga. We are talking about a discipline originating some thousands of years ago. No one knows exactly when yoga began, therefore no one knows exactly when mindfulness began, but in the Bhagavad-Gita, a sacred book of Hinduism dated between 50 and 500 BCE, the teachings of the god Krishna to his disciple Arjuna on the field of ‘duty’ at the dawn of a great battle included a direct reference to this mental technique. The teachings of this god to his mortal disciple focus on a fundamental principle of mindfulness – the need to calm “the whirlpools of the mind” in order to be able to accomplish the things one must accomplish despite emotional conflicts such as fear, feelings of guilt, anxiety etc. As far as I know this is one of the first literary references to this practice, to this mental discipline, and to the role that it plays not only relating to individual behavior but to the fulfillment of social duty itself. Mindfulness is central to the psychology and spiritual philosophy of Buddhism and of Zen and therefore it passed on to play a central role in the warrior paradigm of the Asian martial arts. With mindfulness one learns to live in the present - but not only for the present.

What does mindfulness consist of?

Despite the fact that the English word does not encompass everything of the meaning of mindfulness, it does give us an indication of what it consists of: mind + fullness. Mindfulness consists of on the one hand filling the mind, and on the other hand of being conscious and responsible for the contents of the same. With mindfulness we learn to focus our attention: focus our attention on being conscious and focus on what we think of, on what we put into our minds. But mindfulness goes beyond being conscious or placing one’s attention; it also consists of a certain type of control, of management, of domain over the conscious mind. Mindfulness seen thusly is a program that consists of learning how to focus the mind deliberately, of freeing us from the extraneous, of making a selection of which types of thoughts, emotions, or stimuli we want to focus on to the exclusion of others, of deciding which are the useless and even hurtful thoughts and not allowing ourselves to be dominated or carried away by them. The final objective of mindfulness is the development of control over the conscious mind through what we could call a ‘super-consciousness,’ a ‘meta-consciousness’ – an attention to the mechanisms and contents of the mind in order to control its mechanisms and select its contents.

What is MAMBA-MINDFULNESS?

Mamba Mindfulness is a much more structured and intense version of mindfulness than is commonly taught. Due to the fact that it forms part of the martial paradigm that is Mamba-Ryu, the ultimate objective of mindfulness (the development of a super-consciousness) is much more of an imperative than in other typical mindfulness programs. In general these [common] programs consist of a series of basic exercises – be they breathing or meditation – practiced in a very static and tranquil fashion, removed from the hustle and bustle of everyday activities; a typical program teaches one to meditate according to the principles of mindfulness and it ends there. It tells people they have to meditate half an hour a day and that this will help them with their stress. Some mindfulness programs are more advanced than others, applying the principles of mindfulness to the management of mental processes during physical activities such as walking or eating lunch. However, these programs have little to do with applying the principles of mindfulness to the real world. Of course meditation in itself is important – it gives the mind and the body a refuge, a space in time where it can take a break from the stresses of life. But Mamba Mindfulness is much more extensive and intensive, much more dynamic and strategic in its applications of the principles of super-consciousness. This in great part is due to the fact that Mamba is a martial paradigm for life in which there is a distinctive warrior paradigm in operation. For Mamba the acceptance of adversity as integral or inevitable combines with the self-imposed directive of maintaining emotional equilibrium and stability; that is to say, for the Mamba to maintain himself centered is not a desirable option but rather an obligation, an acceptance of the responsibility that one has within oneself, a mandate to achieve peace and inner harmony.

How does one develop ‘SUPER CONSCIOUSNESS’?

Although the details of the training program depend largely on the dedication and capacities of the student or disciple, one can outline a general program in three phases: static, dynamic, and strategic.

The first phase consists of learning how mental processes work at their most rudimentary level. Here we learn to be aware of our breathing and of its relationship with our thoughts and emotions. We become conscious of the basic connection between the body and the mind and we become aware of how difficult it is to calm the incessant ‘whirlpools of the mind.’ In this basic phase we learn to meditate, we learn to breathe, we learn to become aware of what we are inside; in other words we learn ‘how our mind works.’ We discover the elemental truth about the human mind – that it likes to eschew the present, escape from the here and the now at all costs and focus on the future, on fantasy, on the past, on the beyond, on the ‘there’ and the ‘then’.

The second phase is the dynamic phase. In this stage we learn to apply the same principles of mindfulness that we used in the static phase during meditation, but instead to states that require movement. Here what is needed is to learn to apply the same control over the mental processes of meditation to movement – when one is walking, writing, or giving a lecture. Life becomes a meditation because we apply the same concentration, the same control, the same interior harmony to all aspects of our lives – one learns to be ‘present’ instead of escaping from life, instead of being ‘absent.’ Life takes place in a world of movement, not in an isolated and static place. Therefore it’s important to develop the techniques necessary to impose this harmony onto the most dynamic of tempests that is life.

The third phase is more sophisticated because it consists of applying the strategic precepts of Mamba-Ryu to the mental processes of mindfulness. We are speaking now of a strategic mindfulness. Here one learns to make a preferential selection, conscious of what we want to think about in each moment. We learn to focus our thoughts, consciously aware that there are certain thoughts, certain notions that are more favorable than others, consciously aware that some are more conducive to peace and interior harmony while others, to the contrary, will only bring us misery and unhappiness. We execute a measured control, carrying out mental movements as if they were pieces on a chessboard and knowing all the while that the opponent is ourselves.

What is MAMBA Mindfulness good for?

Today in the United States mindfulness has been used for some time in anti-stress programs to recover from critical pathologies such as cardiac problems, cancer, and even AIDS. In every situation what is indispensable for the patient for physiological/psychological reasons is to exercise control over their mental-emotional processes. These people need to learn to live in the present because the present is all they have; the past no longer exists and the future – who knows? With mindfulness one learns to control the mind – he who controls his thoughts exercises an important influence over his emotions. Since emotions are a great connection between the mind and body it’s important that these patients learn to manage their minds; one who controls his mind exercises control over his emotions and one who controls his emotions exercises control over his body and therefore over life itself. For people with a nervous personality, mindfulness teaches them to control how they think, how they feel, how they live, how they ‘are.’ Mindfulness is also useful for people who are affected by emotional crises such as depression or anxiety; these people also need to learn to be present. A depressed person lives in the past and feels that the tragedies of the past will inevitably manifest themselves in the future – they project the past onto the future. Anxious people fear for the future. That is they feel that the future is going to bring about some disaster, predictable or not, and they live imagining possible future calamities. They project an undesirable future over the present. Anxious and depressed people alike are incapable of appreciating the present – both of them live in their minds, emotional victims of mental processes that have trapped them in the ‘there and then’ instead of being able to take advantage of the peace of the present moment in the ‘here and now.’

Inteview of Elizabeth González Musello with Master/Founder James Alexander Guerra Overton

There is a Zen story that captures very well the attitude of MAMBA mindfulness with respect to living in the present:

Once upon a time there was a monk traveling one evening through the forest. Suddenly and without warning he was chased by a tiger and in order to escape had to hang from a vine dangling over a cliff. But while escaping the tiger the monk discovers that there is another hungry tiger awaiting him below. Hanging there between two tigers, things only get worse when some rats appear and start chewing at the vine. Looking around and realizing the catastrophic nature of the situation, the monk suddenly notices a ripe and tasty wild strawberry just within his reach. With a smile on his lips the monk plucks the strawberry from the ground and delights himself in so tasty a morsel. 

Mamba Mindfulness teaches one how to live in the present but not for the present. Life consists of a series of present moments in a continuous flux of time that begins with the individual’s life and continues to a certain end – death. There are times when one has to ‘be’ in the future, because he who does not plan for his future will be lost in the present. And there are times when one needs to ‘be’ in the past, because he who does not understand the past will suffer from it. But the problem of the human mind is its pathological tendency to escape from the present; living, suffering, distressing in the past, in the future, in fantasy, losing sight of the authentic wonders of interior peace and spiritual harmony that only the present can offer.

James Alexander Guerra Overton , "The Founder"