This is something we talked about during our brief stick fighting tweetups this summer, but a principle I’ve used in practicing and learning martial arts since I started in 1999.

I’m a proponent of applying martial arts principles to the rest of life, particularly in business, and I wish I had applied these specific principles to my professional career earlier on. As a budding finance manager, it would have been great to work with a senior controller and matched or mirrored them as I grew – without this, I really took the long way. Still a great path, but it took a lot longer than it needed to.

Dave

Isabella, I’ll attempt to answer your question. Matching may be characterized by equal and opposite movement or positioning. For example, Someone is facing you, right foot forward, holding a stick in their right hand. So, to match them you would stand right foot forward, your right foot lining to their left, their left to your right. If they move left, you move right, in an equal and opposite fashion. Two opposites creating one whole.

Mirroring is as if you were looking in a mirror. So, same deal, someone standing as before, right foot forward, you stand left foot forward, lining to their right, truly as if you were standing in front of a full body length mirror. Therefore, you are performing exactly what you see if front of you.

This is one way to explain the physical basic ideas and differences of matching and mirroring.

Michael

I completely agree. We actually have a group of cells in out brains called mirror neurons. When we start to learn new skills of others, its very easy to “mirror” the other persons body language and techniques.

Including language patterns and thought patterns!

Thanks!
Ryan Yokome

can you describe some more what you mean by matching, and what you mean by mirroring?