A Good Dojo Isn't A Comfortable Place

Photo Copyright 2014 Grigoris Miliaresis

Practice on Saturday was very good, but not what I had been planning at all. We started out according to plan, working on jodo kihon. About halfway through though, we veered into dangerous territory. We started looking at some of the core principles. One of the newer students in the dojo has background in aikido and kenpo, and asked some good questions related to ma’ai and intent and origin. The answers clearly were nothing like he had expected, and we could nearly see steam coming out his ears as he worked to process the new ideas. He found himself having to revise his understanding of things he thought he understood.  A good dojo is a dangerous place for preconceived notions and dearly held ideas. It can be downright brutal on concepts and conceits that aren’t built upon solid foundations. A good dojo can make you question who and what you are. A good dojo doesn’t just teach techniques for fighting. A good dojo will make you look at yourself and help you strip away self-delusion and simple poor understanding.  

In very solid ways, my student is discovering that what he thought he knew about the effective range of weapons and where he might be safe isn’t very accurate. The solid way he is discovering this is by being on the wrong end of a piece of wood poking him in the gut or stopping just short of walloping him in the head.  

There are lots of ways the dojo can should be uncomfortable that are less physically solid than a stick in the gut, but they are no less real. We all have areas where we are less than perfect, and training in a good dojo will bring these to our attention. Budo is all about dealing with conflict. What nobody told me when I started was that some of the toughest conflicts would be with myself.

Everyone starts budo with a variety of goals; to learn how to fight, to stop being intimidated by aggressive people, to learn about samurai, to gain a sense of personal power, to learn to physically defend oneself. Those are few of the reasons I’ve heard given by people who start martial arts. They are all fine motivations for starting on the journey. It’s just that the journey involves dealing with many parts of ourselves we never intended to deal with, and going places in our minds we never thought we’d go.

Many people start budo who aren’t comfortable with hitting people or doing anything they think might hurt someone or might be aggressive. This is a problem for people who want to learn to defend themselves. This is a problem that is usually apparent to people before they walk in the door of the dojo, so it’s one they are already willing to confront. Training every day brings them face-to-face with this issue. More importantly, it brings them into contact with  a senior or a teacher who is telling them “hit me” or “throw me” or some other version of an attack, but we we all grow up knowing that nice folks don’t hit people.

When a beginner in the dojo says “I don’t want to hurt you,.” they are admitting to several things. First, that they think they can hurt people. Second, that they don’t trust themselves to have enough control to not hurt someone, and third, that at some level they don’t believe the teacher can handle what they are doing.  All three of these are things that make most people uncomfortable.

Society doesn’t approve of hurting people, and we internalize that as we grow. Coming into a dojo is uncomfortable from the first step because studying budo involves learning how to hurt people, and everything in our public culture says that is “bad.” So the first mental discomfort we have to get over is the idea that knowing how to fight isn’t something “good” people know. I realize I’m preaching to the choir here, because I suspect everyone reading this already trains in martial arts.  Think about it though, outside the dojo, people are afraid and intimidated by fighting skills, even if the folks in the office never see you do anything more aggressive than shredding old documents.  This is just first thing people have to get used.

Photo Copyright 2014 Grigoris Miliaresis

In judo and aikido, the next fear people have to get past once they are in the door is the fear of falling. We spend half our time practicing technique on our partners, and the other half being practiced on, which means a lot of falling down.  Falling is something we learn to avoid as kids, because it hurts and it’s embarrassing. It can take a while to get comfortable with falling down. It’s counter to what people are used to, but I love taking falls for people. You can feel their technique, how they move and set up a throw, and how they do or do not take care of their partner. Frankly, I also think it’s really cool that someone can throw me at the floor hard enough that I should have broken bones, and I can bounce up and say “That was great! Do it again!”  Once you get over your fear of hurting yourself, falling down is fun.

A bigger discomfort for many people is they are afraid of actually hurting someone else. They don’t trust themselves to be able to not hurt their partner, and many people don’t feel comfortable with having physical power. We can let pass the fact that real beginners in the dojo don’t have much in the way of skills that would make them a threat to students who have been around for while. New students have to get over the feeling that just having the knowledge of how to hurt people, much less being really skilled at it, is something bad.  

Add to that, the niggling voice at the back of many people’s minds telling them that they can’t trust themselves with this knowledge and skill. “What if I get angry and do something I regret?” “What if I’m not good enough to control my technique and I injure someone unintentionally?”  “What if I really like being powerful and become a bully?” People have all kinds of worries, some of which seem pretty silly. Until you’ve been around the dojo long enough to see a few people go badly wrong. Then the worries don’t seem quite so silly.

Not trusting the teacher to be able to handle what the student does is a lot easier hurdle to clear than not trusting yourself.  After a few rounds of the teacher saying “Hit me”  the student finally decides that well, she really wants it, so it’s on her if she gets hurt. The student tries to hit the teacher and discovers that the teacher isn’t where the strike went. Worse, or better, the teacher has counterattacked in some way that would be really unpleasant if the teacher didn’t have such good control.   It doesn’t take very many repetitions of this kind before the student starts to trust that the teacher can do what she says and will keep herself safe.

Learning to trust yourself though is a lot tougher. We don’t get a lot of experience with physical conflict and violence in Western societies (Japan is even more peaceful). Most new students likely haven’t even been in a pushing match since high school, much less a fight. Before people start training, they are aware that they can hurt others, but they don’t have any technique, so they have little idea what will happen if they do something. Beginners, quite reasonably, don’t trust themselves. They don’t have any technical skill and they don’t have much control of their own bodies, so not trusting themselves to be able to attack someone, or to be able to apply a technique without hurting or injuring their training partners is probably wise.

It takes time to learn to trust yourself and understand what you are really capable of.  The journey to really trusting yourself is a complicated one.  The first steps are just learning to trust your basic technique, that you can safely take a fall, or throw your partner or attack with precision and control. Once students start to have a degree of confidence in their physical skills, they run into some of the other uncomfortable questions. Do I have enough self-control for this?  Could I lose my temper and hurt someone? I’ve rarely encountered students who had the self-control and discipline to stick with training but lacked the self-control to not use what they are learning without good reason. That students worry about this is good sign to me, but it does require the sort of self-reflection and consideration that is never easy and almost always is uncomfortable.

It’s tough to consider that we might not be perfectly wonderful human beings. That makes the self-reflection one of the most uncomfortable things in training. As a student acquires skill, it’s not uncommon for them to wonder what sort of person knows these things. I find this especially true for women. “Good girls don’t behave like that.” “Hitting people isn’t ladylike.” “Ladies are above that sort of thing.”   Add to that social stereotypes that girls can’t fight (He hits like a girl), and the mental and emotional hurdles can get high fast. I have to thank Ronda Rousey for demonstrating to the world that, yes, women can fight.  Each woman that comes through the dojo though has to make that mental journey for herself.

Everyone has to decide what kind of person it is who knows how to fight. This usually isn’t an issue for men, but a lot of what is taught in a martial arts dojo isn’t fighting. It’s the careful, nearly scientific art of how to deconstruct another person. What kind of person knows this stuff? A monster? Until students become comfortable with knowing how to dislocate joints and break limbs, with how to choke someone unconscious or throw them across the room so hard they bounce, they are going to be uncomfortable.

Students have to look within themselves and figure out who they are, what kind of person they are and decide that it’s ok for them to know how to do these violent things. They have to decide it is ok for them to have this power. It’s easy to say “That’s no challenge” when you’re standing on the outside. We all have facets of ourselves we don’t particularly like though, personal traits and characteristics that we aren’t proud of, and maybe even that we’re ashamed of.  Those parts of ourselves gets all this knowledge and power too.

These are just the issues that everyone has get over in the martial arts. Different hurdles will be higher or lower for different people. Then there are the particular issues that people can bring with them. If someone has suffered abuse or trauma, just grabbing a partner’s hand to practice a joint lock might be difficult. Allowing a partner to throw them might require a leap of trust, faith and courage greater than I’ve ever had to take.

Being in the dojo isn’t comfortable, but it is good. A good dojo gives students a place to work on all of these issues. Good teachers give students support to work through them. I’ve known people who thought they had to “push people’s buttons” to help them grow.  I find that just being in the dojo and actively training is usually more than enough. What we do in the dojo is play with violence, aggression and force. Stuff that’s not allowed in polite society. Just working with these things, learning to control and and how to apply them will make people face parts of themselves they can avoid facing in their day-to-day world.

Sometimes the stress of training exposes bits of ourselves we’d rather not face. Perhaps we are too ready to be angry at other people when we are unintentionally bruised or hurt during practice. Maybe we discover that we aren’t as good under the pressure of a steady, continuous attack and that we start to panic. It might be the discovery that we can’t stand to lose, even though losing in randori isn’t really losing. These are just some of the issues that can come up in the dojo.

Working with these things can make the dojo an uncomfortable place, but a great one for learning not only how to fight and inflict harm, but also about what sort of person you are. Looking at ourselves clearly is almost never comfortable, but being in the dojo demands it that we look at ourselves again and again as we progress. Maybe it’s simply discovering that we don’t know things we thought we understood. All of these involve making a discovery that we aren’t quite as good as we thought we were.

In the dojo though, that’s fine. That’s what the dojo is for. You can’t be a good fighter if you don’t know your own weaknesses, so a good dojo helps you deal with the issues and weaknesses you find in yourself.  A good dojo is a little bit uncomfortable because it provides a mirror to look at yourself in. A good dojo is also wonderful because it gives you the support and structure for dealing with what you see in that mirror.

Kaminoda Tsunemori Shihan

Kaminoda Tsunemori Shihan 1928 - 2015

I am working on an essay about the concept of on 恩 (pronounced like “own”). It has to do with obligation and indebtedness. The concept is one that is particularly strong for me right now because a great teacher, to whom I am indebted in many ways, direct and indirect, passed away recently. Kaminoda Tsunemori Shihan was 88 when he passed away last month, and he stands as one of the great budo teachers of the second half the 20th century and into the 21st.  

Kaminoda Shihan was a teacher of Shinto Muso Ryu Jodo and Muso Shinden Ryu Iaido. Born in Kagoshima in the third year of the Showa Emperor’s reign, 1928, Sensei grew up and came of age during the era when Japan was at war in China and Asia. In that era, like every other boy in Japan, he would have studied kendo and judo and maybe even jukendo as part of the school curriculum. IN 1955 though, he was accepted as a student of Shimizu Takaji Sensei, and began learning Shinto Muso Ryu.

Over the decades, Kaminoda Shihan mastered the jo, the staff of Shinto Muso Ryu, as well as the associated arts of Shinto Kasumi Ryu Kenjutsu, Isshin Ryu Kusarigama Jutsu,  Ikkaku Ryu Jutte Jutsu, Uchida Ryu Tanjo Jutsu and Ittatsu Ryu Hojojutsu.  Eventually he received Menkyo Kaiden, or “License Of Complete Transmission” signifying that he had learned completely the curriculum of Shinto Muso Ryu.  

At the same time Kaminoda Shihan was doing this, he also found the time to become 7th dan kyoshi in kendo, and 8th dan hanshi in both iaido and jodo from the All Japan Kendo Federation.  Any one of those ranks is impressive, to achieve all three of them as well as mastering the koryu bugei of Shinto Muso Ryu is incredible.  

I first had the privilege of meeting Kaminoda Shihan in about 1998. My teacher, Matsuda Sensei, introduced us at the big taikai in held in Shiga, Japan every year.  Already, I was indebted to Kaminoda Shihan, because he had become my teacher’s teacher. Thus, I am indebted to Kaminoda Shihan, as I am to all of the teachers before him, who worked and trained and polished Shinto Muso Ryu into the art I am receiving, and who also patiently and carefully taught the generations of teachers who have made it possible for me to begin learning Shinto Muso Ryu.

A few years later, for reasons I was never brave enough to inquire about, I received an invitation to attend a gasshuku that Kamindo Shihan sponsored twice a year. Shihan and his senior students, all Menkyo Kaiden themselves, would gather at in the countryside outside of Tokyo at Kashima Shrine to train intensively in Shinto Muso Ryu for several days.  I asked Matsuda Sensei about this, because training with another teacher is highly frowned up if you don’t have the understanding and permission of your teacher. Matsuda Sensei was more than gracious about this unexpected invitation. He said that Kaminoda Shihan was an exceptional teacher, and that any time I had the opportunity to train with him, I should seize it.

With such strong encouragement from Matsuda Sensei, I couldn’t wait to go and train with Kaminoda Shihan.  Training with Kaminoda Shihan was a wonderful experience. He was frighteningly fast and intense, and his precision seemed inhuman. He, however, was very human. After practice he welcomed all of our questions, and he was unfailingly patient with my poor Japanese.

Many of my fond memories are of the post practice gatherings in Kaminoda Sensei’s room at the gasshuku, as we all talked about the Shinto Muso Ryu and any questions we might have from the day’s training, or from some other source. It didn’t matter that we were all in sweats or yukata and ready to relax. If a question came up that required demonstration to adequately answer, Kaminoda Shihan would be up and demonstrating, moving us around the room easily with smooth technique. I was nearly twice his size, and yet Kaminoda Shihan could move me as easily as he did anyone his own size.  He enjoyed pointing out our suki, or openings, with a simple amusement and a big smile, especially when one of us thought we were strong enough to resist his technique. We never were.

Kaminoda Shihan wrote several books about Shinto Muso Ryu and it’s related arts. He was unfailingly kind and generous whenever someone asked him to sign one. He never just signed a book. He always took some time to think of something to say, and wrote it in his marvelous calligraphy.  I have several of Kaminoda Shihan’s books, and each has a thoughtful and beautiful dedication in the front.

Book dedication by Kaminoda Shihan  Photo Copyright 2015 Peter Boylan

I remember well going to a gasshuku Kaminoda Shihan was sponsoring, and arriving the night before.  When my friends and I arrived, Kamindo Shihan was the only other person there. He took us out to dinner and spent the evening talking with us about all manner of budo.  In fact, at every gathering, he was always patient about sharing his ideas and understanding of budo.  I don’t always remember the post-training discussions as well as the above dinner. After training we usually had beer and sake to accompany the discussion, and that may have sometimes clouded my memory.

My experiences training with Kaminoda Shihan are all vivid and clear in my memory.  His technique was crisp, clean and when he was teaching and training, just difficult enough to make you work to reach the level he was giving you, without being so far above you that you couldn’t get there.  That doesn’t mean it was easy or what you would exactly call “fun,” but training with him was an incredible experience that would push you to new levels. I remember the full throated fear that I was not going to be able to keep up with him, with his sword whizzing at my head much faster than I thought it should be. He always kept the speed just within what I could do, nothing I was comfortable with, but a level that I could manage if I dug down deep and found ability I didn’t know I had.

I only knew Kaminoda Shihan for a small part of his life. He had many accomplishments far greater than sharing a bit of himself with me, but that is what I know, and the part of him I knew.  I owe Kaminoda Shihan for all that he shared so freely with me, and for all the times he kicked my butt during training. There was never any thought on his part that I should or could ever repay him, and I always suspected what I now know, that there was never any possibility that I could repay him. The best I can do is to give away what he so freely gave to me, remember him to my students, make sure they know where all the things I give them came from, and let them know that they are part of a grand tradition that includes great men like Kaminoda Tsunemori.

Kaminoda Tsunemori  Shihan 1928-2015        

神之田常盛 範士

Kendo Kyoshi 1965                                         

 剣道教士　昭和４０

Jodo Hanshi 1985                                             

杖道範士　昭和６０

Iaido Hanshi 1992                                             

居合道範士　平成４

Taihojutsu Jokyu 1966                                      

逮捕術 上級　昭和４１

Kenjuho Jokyu 1966                                        

 けん銃法 上級　昭和４１

Kodokan Judo Sandan 1976                            

講道館 柔道 三段 昭和５１

Fuji Ryu Goshido Nanadan 1984                    

 富士流 護身道 七段 昭和５９

Shinto Kasumi Ryu Kenjutsu Menkyo 1971    

神道霞流 剣術　免許 昭和４６

Shinto Muso Ryu Menkyo Kaiden 1972           

神道夢想流　免許皆伝　昭和４７

Isshin Ryu Kusarigama Jutsu Menkyo 1978   

一心流鎖鎌術　免許　昭和５３

Ikkaku Ryu Jutte Jutsu Menkyo 1978              

一角流十手術　免許　昭和５３

Ittatsu Ryu Hojojutsu Menkyo 1978                 

一達流捕縄術　免許　昭和５３

Uchida Ryu Tanjojutsu Menkyo 1978            

 内田流短杖術　免許　昭和５３

There is more about Kaminoda Shihan at the Capital Area Jodokai website.

Budo Is Not Competition

Shiai. Photo Copyright 2015 Grigoris Miliaresis

Competition seems like the ideal place to test your budo. You can test your techniques against other people. Challenge your abilities. Polish your skills. See how you do under the pressure to win. Learn what it takes to be a winner. Learn how to be a winner with humility and grace. Learn to lose with honor and dignity.

Those sound like great benefits.  They are exactly the arguments used to support all competitive sports.

In martial sports competition, one person wins, and one person loses.

A problem with this paradigm that that most things in life, including conflict, are not games with clear winners and losers. There are far more situations where everyone involved can gain, as well as endless opportunities for everyone involved to lose. Life is not defined by a win/loss column.

When you see the world through the lens of competition, it’s a zero sum game. Someone wins and everyone else loses.  When you see the world through the lens of budo, it’s a non-zero sum world, just like keiko in the dojo. When we train together, you don’t have to get weaker and less skilled for me to become more skilled. We both grow in skill and strength and understanding when we train together.

Budo keiko offers many profound lessons that will not be found in the arena of competition, and defining things in terms of competition, in terms of winners and losers, misses a number of those points.  There a plenty of outcomes that aren’t covered by the idea that there is a winner and loser in every conflict.

I had this reinforced in a memorable incident.  I was teaching an evasion to a sword attack that involved stepping to the side and cutting up, under teki’s arm as it came down with the sword. I did my step to the right just fine and placed my cut under teki’s arm. I did so just at the moment her sword smacked me in the side of the head.  I had moved too early and teki was able to track me and adjust her attack.  The result was not a winner and a loser. It was two losers. Her attack would have killed me at the same moment my counter attack killed her. Not a very satisfying outcome. One fight, no winners.

That lesson that can come as a huge surprise if you’ve never focused on anything other than fighting in tournaments. Tournaments provided a very limited view of budo. They are safe, controlled duels. They follow rules. One person wins and one person loses. One of the problems with that arrangement is that in pretty much everything outside of competitive sports, nothing works out that cleanly.  Life is not clean and clear.  It’ messy and unfocused.

Remember that yin-yang symbol that is used to decorate so many dojo? Inside the black half is a drop of white. Inside the white half is a dollop of black. Things aren’t clear cut. In my example above, we both achieved the basic objective, and we both would have died doing it. Sports competition can give students of martial arts just as skewed a view of martial arts as watching action movies can. In competition, there are two options. You win and your opponent loses, or you lose and she wins.  Simple.

In real conflict there are lots more options. All parties end up so badly damaged that there are only losers. One side decides to give in for the sake of avoiding the physical conflict. All parties decide that the fight isn’t worth the risk and everyone goes off in a different direction. The police show up and everyone involved is arrested. There are a whole range of possibilities beyond “I win,” or "I lose."

Budo practice teaches a not just about fighting, but about recognizing all those other possibilities. I’m not going to say competition is entirely bad. It's great fun, and it gives people with too much energy a way to stay focused on something. I’ve seen that as a young judoka. The weakness is that we focus far too much time on competition and forget about the rest of the path. The lessons of competition seem tiny compared to all the other lessons that can be learned on the journey that is the study of budo. That in itself may be the first lesson.

It’s a journey, not a destination. Winning a match or tournament doesn’t mean much in the context of that journey.  You’re still trying to learn the lessons. When you start to study budo, and not just a martial sport, you’ll discover that there is a whole lot more to your budo than the stripped down set of techniques allowed in competition.  

I’ll start by using Judo as my example. Competitive judo prohibits strikes, a range of throws that endanger your opponent, a few throws where you can endanger yourself, gripping techniques that you can hurt yourself doing or that provide an unfair advantage, grips below the belt (don’t ask why, I still don’t understand the IJF explanation), attacks to any joint beside the elbow, throwing with an armlock, and numerous other things.

Even though these things are all banned in formal competition, most of them are part of the formal syllabus of Kodokan Judo.  Just take a look at the two videos below.

The Kodokan Goshin Jutsu and the Kime No Kata are both part of the Kodokan syllabus. Almost nothing in either kata could be used in competition. If you focus on competition, you miss all the rest. Competition presents too small a slice of the possibilities that are budo, and the possibilities that are life. In life there are lots of options beyond simple win or lose scenarios. Business people spend much of their time trying to fashion what they call win-win agreements, so that everyone involved gains something in the exchange.  They don’t always work out, but just being able to try for something like that seems a lot better than scenarios like a match where one person wins and one loses, or worse, tournaments, where there is one winner, and there are many, many losers.

Often the ideas of learning to be a gracious winner and accepting defeat honorably are mentioned as benefits of competition.  The weakness I see here is that outside of organized competitions, there are almost no opportunities to practice this lesson. Life doesn’t consist of of competitions with clear winners and losers. There are other lessons that I find useful every day though. The best people to be around aren’t the ones keeping score.  The best people to be around are the ones who don’t keep score. The ones who try to, in the words of Bill and Ted,  “be excellent to each other.”

One lesson of competition is to keep score.  The lesson of budo practice is that there is no score.  We all improve together.  I can’t improve my skills without your active support, and you can’t improve yours without my active support. If you and I are busy trying to keep score of who learns the most techniques, or who gets the most reps, or anything else, we’re not providing the mutual support necessary to truly improve our skills. That kind of practice is a lot more like life than any competition.

The other, discreet lessons of budo apply beyond the dojo as well. Budo teaches numerous lessons about ma’ai and timing. Ma’ai isn’t just for combat, and neither is timing. I haven’t gotten to all the places where an understanding of the principles of structure will serve you. Understanding ma’ai is about understanding the weakness or strength of a particular position relative to those around you.  It’s a fluid, constantly changing as the situation changes, even if you don’t move at all.  

Timing is important in whatever you do, from gardening to business. Structure too applies outside the arena of competition, mostly in place where being aware of strong, stable structures and weaknesses that can undermine them are critical to not getting hurt in physical, or not-physical, ways. Timing needs to be considered for anything you want accomplish, in or out of the dojo. Too early and you give away your objectives and strategy. Too late is, well, too late.

One of the most critical lessons of budo practice is that it’s OK if you don’t master these lessons today.  The goal isn’t to master anything thing right away.  In budo there is no illusion that we will ever perfect anything. We learn that there is no goal to reach. The point of budo is to improve a little bit every day. To be better today than yesterday, and be better tomorrow than you are today. This isn’t a goal because a goal is an endpoint, a place to get to and stop. With budo, there is no endpoint.

What you do every day is more important than what you do during any 5 minute match. It doesn’t matter what the match is.  Dr. Ann Maria DeMars is a former world champion judoka.  Let that sink in.  World champion. At some point, she was the best on the planet at what she did. Yet now she can write about how she completely forgets having done that. Whatever we do, it will quickly be in the past, and we can’t live there. Life is a journey, not an event. Each day we have to continue that journey.  With competition, we focus on the events and an artificial concept of a winner and a loser. With budo, we focus on the journey, of moving forward and improving every day. Working with our teachers and seniors and partners and juniors so we all are a bit better today than we were yesterday, and so tomorrow we’ll be a bit better than today.  We don’t stop at any event.

Competition is a limited view of the world. It’s a zero-sum game with clear winners and losers. Life isn’t a zero sum game.  Life is big and messy and so very unclear. In life, winning and losing isn’t decided by a set of rules. It’s more like a fluid range of success, and that success is much more dependent on not keeping score than it is about winning points. You have to work with the people around you, your training partners, so you all succeed and improve together. If you aren’t better today than you were yesterday, that’s probably the closest thing to a loss. You succeed when you and your partners are better people tomorrow than you were today.