The Only Things I Really Teach Are How to Breathe And How To Walk

I spend a lot of time writing about the more philosophical aspects of budo, but there is a concrete area that I believe is close to universal in the martial arts.

So you’ve decided to learn a martial art, and by some cosmic mischance you end up in my dojo.  You’ll probably be disappointed when I tell tell you that the only things I really teach are how to walk and how to breath.  This is ridiculous, since everyone over the age of 18 months can do both, and by the time you wander into my dojo you’ve probably got 20+ years of experience doing them, right?

You probably think you’re pretty good at both. I beg to differ.  You’re probably lousy at them.  Breathing and walking are the foundations of all movement in the martial arts, but almost nobody spends enough time practicing them.   The only people I know who spend time practicing breathing correctly are wind musicians and vocalists.  I don’t know anybody who practices walking properly.  Everyone just assumes that they walk and breathe properly because they do both all day long.

The truth is that most of us have no clue how to breathe properly, and we walk like gorillas with leg cramps.  Good breathing is fundamental to everything we do, and yet most of us have no idea how to do it.   Ask a tuba player or flautist how to breath and you will get a simple but valuable education.  Breath comes from moving the diaphragm but I can’t tell you how many martial artists I see breathing by moving their shoulders up and down or flexing their chests.  That’s bad technique, and if you can’t breathe properly you wind up out of breath and unable to do much of anything.  You certainly won’t be able to coordinate and integrate your body into a single unit.  It will stay a disparate bunch of parts until you learn to breath.

You can’t really be balanced if you’re not breathing properly.  And if you’re not balanced, you’re not walking and moving properly.  And if you you’re not walking and moving properly, you won’t be able to do anything that is taught in the dojo.

Musicians spend a lot of time working on proper breathing.  I teach students to understand what proper breathing feels like by having them lie on the floor on their backs.   In this position you cannot breathe with your shoulders or your chest.  You have to breathe with your diaphragm.  Lying on their backs, students can put their hands on the stomachs and really know what it feels like to breath properly from the diaphragm.  Then they can get up and practice replicating the experience while standing.  At first they have to feel with their hands if they are using their diaphragm and stomach properly, and after awhile they will know the feeling well enough to recognize it without sticking their hands on their bellies.  To check for shoulder breathing they can look in a mirror. If they see their shoulders move when they breathe, they know they are doing it wrong.  

It takes quite a while for this method of breathing to become habitual.  After decades of bad breathing habits, proper breathing does not come naturally.  The body will default to whatever habits it has developed over the years, so it will take conscious intervention to correct and ultimately change the habits.   Initially someone learning to breathe won’t notice they are breathing wrong except in class when it is consciously called to their attention.  Over time, as they become more familiar with the exercise and comfortable with the feeling, they will start to notice outside of practice when they aren’t breathing properly and self-correct.  Eventually proper breathing will become their default breathing method.

That’s a lot of work just to learn a different way of breathing than the one that has served just fine since you were born.  So why bother?  First, diaphragmatic breathing is more efficient than chest breathing or shoulder breathing.  Your lungs expand more so you can take in more oxygen with each breath.  Second, diaphragmatic breathing keeps the body together in a single unit.  To breathe from your shoulders or chest you have to loosen the connections between your shoulders and chest to the muscles in your back and abdomen so they can float up and out to let your lungs expand and take in oxygen.  In doing so you are shifting your balance up and out.  Breathing from your diaphragm doesn’t involve shifting chunks of your body around.  Your stomach is built to expand and contract without changing your balance or rearranging big pieces of you around.  

Once you can breathe properly, you’ll be able to relax into your body more effectively.  When you stop throwing your chest and shoulders around with each breath you can learn to connect with the ground through your legs and feet.  As I said above, you can’t really be balanced if you’re not breathing properly.  And if you’re not balanced, you’re not walking and moving properly.  And if you you’re not walking and moving properly, you won’t be able to do anything else that is taught in the dojo.

So now you’ve learned to breathe properly, and hopefully we’ve got you standing still in a nice, relaxed, stable posture.  Now it’s time for the tough part: learning to walk.  Just because you can get from place to place without falling over every third step does not mean you are good at walking.  Breathing can be done while lying down and standing still.  Walking requires coordinating everything you’ve learned about breathing while actually moving your whole body.  This is tougher than it sounds, and since even the Mayo Clinic has a page about it, I’ve discovered I’m not the only one concerned about this.

The basic walking method for naked house apes like us is to extend a foot and then fall forward onto it.  Watch a toddler who has just learned how to walk and this becomes very clear.  They really are falling forward and catching themselves with every step.  This is fine if you are 18 months old and just figuring out how to get around on 2 legs, but if you want to do anything more than that you’ll need to refine the technique a bit.

The two basic walking movements in the arts I do are ayumiashi and suriashi　(roughly walking feet and sliding feet).  Both of them require moving as a connected whole without throwing your balance into the air with each step.  Start with the balanced, relaxed posture you have when breathing properly.  Your head is up (the Tai Chi guys describe it as feeling like it is hanging from a thread, which is such a good description that I’m stealing it).Your back is straight and relaxed, your shoulders are not slumped forward and your back isn’t pulled into an excessive arch.  Everything sits naturally above your hips and your hips sit comfortably atop your legs without any tension required to stay there.

Now move your leg forward driving it from the hips and without swinging your hips forward.  You’re hips should stay under your shoulders.  Shoulders and hips should stay square and not rock from side to side or swing forward from right to left with each step.  Your foot should not be so far forward that your weight comes crashing down on it.  The transfer of weight should be smooth as the foot rolls from heel to toe.  This is ayumiashi, regular walking, and just like breathing, it can take a bit of practice to make consistent even when you’re not thinking about it.

Suriashi is a sliding foot movement where the ball of the foot never comes more than a hair’s breadth off the floor (I was going to talk about the thickness of a sheet of rice paper, but that’s been done).  This is not normal walking.  This method of walking has an important place in training and learning to move for budo though.  To manage it, bend your knees slightly, sink your hips a little and extend your right foot forward a bit.  This time, instead of reaching out with the front foot as in ayumiashi, drive your whole body forward as one unit by pushing with the left leg and the ball and toes of the left foot while keeping your body stable and balance over the right leg.  Do this all the way across the room.  No do it with the left foot forward.

Now, since I know you were holding your breath while you focused on doing the movements properly, try doing them while breathing.  Once you can breath properly and walk correctly you’ll be ready to start learning budo.  When you move and breath well your body becomes a single whole, with every part of you supporting every other part in accomplishing whatever you set out to do.    If you aren’t breathing and walking well, you aren’t balanced and you don’t have a solid platform upon which to build techniques.  Instead you have a base like a pile of sand.  You can’t learn to do anything budo related until you have a solid foundation that doesn’t rock like a sailboat in high seas.

Now that you now longer move like a pregnant musk ox we can start doing fun stuff like swinging swords and sticks and throwing people.  None of these work when you are off balance and huffing to get a breath.  All of them require a body and breath that are fully integrated and working to support each other. If any part of the body or breath are out of whack it will be readily apparent to your teacher, and eventually to you to.

Trust In The Dojo

Trust is a wonderful thing.  Real trust is something that is earned over time.  In budo practice, trust is absolutely essential.  What we do in the dojo can’t happen without it.  We are practicing dangerous, potentially crippling or even fatal techniques.  We have to practice them on our partners, and we have to turn our body over to them so they can practice.  We have to expose ourselves to incredible physical vulnerability so our partners can practice.  In a very real sense we are loaning them our bodies so they can learn.  In turn, they do the same for us.  Without fuss, without complaint, seemingly without concern, they turn their body over to us to practice throws, strikes, joint locks, weapons attacks and all sorts of things which at are simply dangerous and could get them seriously injured.   When we’re in the dojo, it seems perfectly natural.

When I think about the amount of trust I give to my partners, and how little I even think about it at this point in my training, it’s really amazing.  I don’t think twice about letting someone throw me, twist my wrists so the bones in my forearm cross, turn my arm so my elbow is taken in an unnatural direction, or assault me with large sticks.  It’s what I do now.  I can’t believe I trusted training partners so much or so easily back when I started out on this path.

Trust, real trust, the deep down kind, the “here’s my body, go ahead and throw it around a room” kind, the “hit me with that stick” kind, isn’t something you you give naturally.   I have to remember back a long way to when I started Kodokan Judo, and letting people throw me and armbar me and choke me.  I was stiff for a while.  Absolute trust in my partners did not come right away.  I had to work at it with them.  The first people I trusted were my teachers.  They could pick me up and put me down and it felt even safer than diving into my own bed.

Trusting my peers, especially my fellow beginners was different, and took a lot longer.  We had to work hard together, and go through more than a few bumps and bangs as we learned to throw and to be thrown.   It’s scary when someone who knows as much as you do, which is nothing at all, picks you up and then hurls you at the ground.  No wonder beginners are stiff.  They are trusting some stranger to not break break them horribly.  Over time students learn to trust their partners not to hurt them, and they learn to trust their own skills to receive the techniques safely.  

I know that I trust the people I train with regularly a lot.  A lot more than I trust people that I spend significantly more time with.  Based on the amount of time we spend together, and that fact that we do what we do as much for the enjoyment it gives us as anything else, it’s surprising how much I trust these people.  I freely hand them my body to do with pretty much as they please, without any worry at all.  In many ways, I trust them vastly more than I trust most of the people in my life.

This level of trust has been earned.  I train with these people often, and the training environment is one where people’s fundamental nature becomes remarkably clear remarkably quickly.  As I train with people, the vast majority of them are fundamentally good. You quickly realize who is a little careless or a bit thoughtless when they are training, because these people hurt their partners more often and don’t realize that they are doing it.  There are all sorts of personality quirks that show up quickly when you’re handling people and doing dangerous things with them.  The ones who are careless or thoughtless get extra instruction about that in the dojo, and they are genuinely upset and apologetic when they do something wrong.

There are some real diamonds in the dojo too, people who go out of their way to be helpful and willingly absorb extra pain while you work on a technique that is giving you problems.  They are also the folks who are quick to work with beginners who have no control, which makes beginners dangerous regardless of how wonderful a person they are.  They are also wonderful to let work on you because of their care and the honesty of their technique. They aren’t hiding anything, there is no hidden agenda and no secret desires.

The folks who aren’t nice but usually cover themselves with at least a civilized veneer in conversation and outside the dojo though don’t seem to be able to hide anything in the dojo.  The guys who get a kick out of hurting people or who like to prove how powerful they are show their true colors when training and they get a reputation pretty quickly.  There are the guys who always crank an armbar harder than it needs to be, and they always seem to hold the technique for a while even after their partner has tapped to signify that the technique is effective.  Nobody likes these people, and nobody trusts them.  They show who they are very quickly.  They muscle their techniques and they throw extra hard so their partners hurt when they get up. 

This is why I trust the people I train with so much.  We are operating at such a raw level that peoples true natures are nearly impossible to hide. We give our training partners immense power over ourselves.  We routinely give them the power to hurt and injure us.   We know who will be petty and mean enough to hurt us more than absolutely necessary, who might be basically good but a little careless, and who is a truly wonderful human being.   In the dojo, we play with raw power to harm people, and the ones who enjoy hurting others can’t hide this from us.  And they lose the trust that everyone else in the dojo has for each other.

I’ve seen a few of these guys over the years, and they happily trade the trust and community of the dojo for the feeling of power they get when they abuse a partner or when people are afraid to work with them.  They seem to think this makes them strong and powerful.  They are always on the outside of the dojo community because no one really trusts them, regardless of how good their technique becomes.

I trust the people I train with so much because it is so easy to spot the rotten apples and avoid them.  Better yet, the best dojos I’ve been in simply don’t tolerate their behavior.  They either shape up and play nice, or they are encouraged to leave.  I just don’t tolerate them in my dojo.  I love the people I train with because time and time again they have proven that I can give them my body to do with as they please and they will give it back to me whole and healthy.  In fact, I often have to tell them to be a little bit stronger, to hit me a little bit harder because they really don’t want to hurt anyone, and they do the technique less than completely because they don’t want to cause me the little bit of pain that goes with it.  We trust each other because know each other at the fundamental level where we have the power to harm and we know what the others heart looks like there.

It’s amazing how true this is even when you visit a new dojo.  After working with a person for just a few minutes you will know more about their personality than you would in days of working with them outside the dojo.  There are so many opportunities for someone of ill will to take advantage of during budo training that in under 15 minutes I can tell if someone should be avoided. 

What is wonderful about going to a new dojo to visit is that the vast majority of people are very good, and they show it clearly when we train.  After an evening of training with a group of people at a new dojo, I have a new group of trusted friends, because we have shared ourselves with each other, and shown that we care about each other’s well being.  Training means operating at a fundamental level where we offer ourselves to our partners and they show who they really are by how they treat us while they train.  It’s hard to find an activity outside the dojo where you do something with such a powerful exchange on a regular basis.

The trust that this builds is a wonderful thing.

Is it still Aikido (Iaido/Jodo?whatever) if you take away the Japanese clothes, the bowing and the etiquette?

Someone asked on a discussion board “How important (or unimportant) do folks here feel Japanese customs are important to learning Aikido?  It stuck me recently that a lot of the behaviours carried out during training have nothing to do with learning Aikido, but more to do with Japanese culture.  Bowing on entering the hall, learning the names of the techniques in Japanese, folding a hakama in specific way, bowing when picking up a bokken, I'd even add shiko/knee walking to this list or even wearing a gi for practice.  None of these, to my mind have anything to do with learning aikido, its like thinking you have to wear a beret to learn how to speak French properly.  Most of us don't train in Japan and are not Japanese, so I don't know why we do these things any more. “

My short answer is, “If you strip all that away from Aikido, it’s not Aikido anymore.”

A Way, an artform, is more than just the discrete techniques that are taught.  If Aikido is reduced to just the techniques, and the expressions of etiquette and tradition are removed, you’re making something else.  A Way is all the parts that come together to make it a whole system.  The aspects of Japanese culture inform the techniques and the values of the system.   They are as important to learning Aikido as learning ikkyo is.  This is true not only of Aikido, but of all of the Japanese ways.  

A Way, a DO 道、is so much more than just the individual techniques. The etiquette teaches us how what we study relates to other people, and how we should treat them when we interact with them.  I’ll stick with Aikido because that’s the example I started with.  Aikido is about complex interactions between people.  The etiquette that permeates training is all about how we interact with people.  The techniques of Aikido are not Aikido.  They are a means for learning the path and the way of thinking and acting that express Aikido.  To paraphrase the old Taoist saying yet again, the techniques of Aikido are like the finger pointing at the moon. They aren’t the moon, we look where they point to be able to see the moon.  If we get stuck on the techniques of Aikido, we will never learn Aikido.  This is true of any budo, of any Way.  The techniques are tools for learning the Way, but the Way is far more than the techniques.

In the dojo, pretty much everything is a lesson about the Way you are studying.  The etiquette teaches lessons, the techniques teach lessons, the kata teach lessons, learning the names in their original language teaches lessons.  If a person wants to jettison all of these parts of an art, they should really ask themselves if that Way is appropriate for them.  Why should the etiquette be removed from Aikido?  The etiquette regulates action in the dojo and makes it a safer place to train.  It teaches respect and a different way of thinking about human interactions.  The bowing and respect are critical to the ideas of Aikido and the way they are expressed during training is essential to the Way of Aikido.

Aikido comes out of Japanese culture, and the concept of DO 道 that has developed in Japan for more than 1000 years.  To summarily remove all these aspects of Japanese culture would be to create a very different art, a different way that leads somewhere other than where Aikido leads.  There’s nothing wrong with creating a new martial art, but you should be aware that’s what you are doing.  The learning atmosphere, and the higher lessons about life, the universe and everything that are pointed to and taught by practicing a Way are very different when you change the etiquette and the clothing and the language.   

All that bowing and using Japanese to describe what you are doing set a frame for your practice and establish a particular set of expectations about what you are doing, what the goals are, and how you will do it.  Aikido, and other budo, are not ultimately about learning to use a particular set of techniques or how to do a particular kata.  The techniques and the kata are tools for teaching students about principles of the art.  The etiquette, language and clothes are also part of that.  

Mastering the techniques of Aikido, or any Way (Do 道）, no matter how good one is at them, does not mean that you have mastered the Way.  The techniques are some of the tools by which you learn the way, but they are not the Way.　　It is quite common to mistake mastery of technique for mastery of a Way, regardless of whether it is a martial way or a flower arranging way or a calligraphic way or any of the other ways that abound in Japan.  

The Ways teach lessons about the world and how to live in it, using ordinary activities as their foundation.   Each Way is a complete package, with it’s own etiquette and language and often even clothes that are worn for various activities.  Given the thought and consideration that has gone into these Ways, I would be very hesitant to monkey with one without decades of experience in that particular Way, even if it is one as young as Aikido.

Those funny clothes and funny words and weird behaviors have a lot more to them then just adding another layer of useless stuff to learn that gets in the way of learning the important stuff.

If all you want from something like Aikido is the techniques, you are missing the real treasures of what you are studying.  The techniques of any Way have only very limited application in daily life, but the Way of thinking, of moving, of being, that is something that can be used every moment of every day. 

What is Self-Defense? A Reality Check.

Some genius named Sam Harris got together Steven Graff Levine (former California DA and now a defense attorny), Rory Miller (former National Guard, 14 year prison guard, 18 months in Iraq advising the prison system, modern and classical martial arts), Matt Thorton (BJJ and MMA coach), to talk about what really qualifies as self-defense under the law, when it is legal to defend yourself, and when it is not.

One of the big take-aways should be that if you are in a situation that escalates into a fight, and then you do something causing serious damage or death, it wasn't self-defense, it was a crime.

This is really should be required reading for anyone who carries a weapon (knife, club or firearm) or who trains in martial arts.  Don't fool yourself about what qualifies as self-defense.  You might just fool yourself into prison.

http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/self-defense-and-the-law/

Is Martial Arts Training For Self-defense Really A Good Idea?

It has occurred to me that practicing martial arts for self-defense is not that sensible an idea.  On the surface, it makes a lot of sense.  I mean, train in the martial arts and you learn great skills for fighting and you can protect yourself if you are attacked.  And yes, I have read the anecdotes of people who have used martial arts for self-defense.  In addition, I’ve been training in various martial arts for over 25 years, during which time I have touted the arts I train in as wonderful forms of self-defense.

Lately though, I’ve been reconsidering the equation.  I can use martial arts to defend myself if I am ever attacked.  This may help me avoid injury and losing personal property.  These are both laudable things.  The odds of my ever being in a situation where I will need these skills however is small.  It is even smaller if I take very sound and excellent advice of Marc MacYoung at No Nonsense Self Defense and simply avoid areas where violence is likely.  Since the vast majority of violent crime happens in very concentrated areas this shouldn’t be difficult.  

Basically, the odds of being injured and/or losing property in an attack are really small if I avoid dangerous areas.  OK, but I still think self-defense training might be a good idea.

Let’s see, martial arts classes run anywhere from $50 to $150 per month.  That’s $600 to $1800 a year in most cases.  Since, in my experience, you need to practice techniques regularly for them to be effective when you need them, basically you are going to be paying this as long as you want your skills to be effective.  So over 10 years you will pay $6,000 to $18,000 just for the training.  That doesn’t include the cost of any uniforms and equipment you might need.  If you go on for 20 years you’re at $12,000 to $36,000.  Now you are way over what you can expect to lose in some sort of robbery of your person.  I know never carry anything close to that in cash and valuables.  About the only way you could steal anything close to that much from me is to take my car, and that’s insured, so fighting for it would be a stupid risk..  Besides, in 2002 the rate of carjackings in the US was 2.1 per 10,000 people.  That’s 0.02% chance of being carjacked.  Add to that that carjackings are most common in particular, known and generally lousy neighborhoods where I don’t go and the odds get even less likely.

Ok, so maybe martial arts training isn’t a cost effective way to protect my property.  What about protecting myself?

I can guarantee one thing that will happen if you practice martial arts.  You’re going to get injured.  It will happen.  It’s the nature of what you’re doing.  Just like football, in martial arts practice people bang into each other and the ground, so from time to time people get hurt.  It’s going to happen, and just like in football, it’s a known and accepted part of what goes on.  Every person, EVERY PERSON, I know who has trained martial arts such as Judo, Karate, Tae Kwon Do, Aikido, Jujutsu, Hapkido or any other vigorous, useful martial art, has been injured.  The longer we train, the more injuries we accumulate.  In my more than 25 years in Judo I have broken a collar bone, cracked several ribs, sprained my ankles a few times, hyperextended my elbow, torn my ACL completely, and accumulated more bumps, bruises, strained  and pulled muscles, torqued joints and other assorted injuries than can possibly be remembered.  This list, or something like it, some with worse injuries, some not quite so severe, can be rattled off by anyone who practices a martial art for any length of time.  If you insist on a practicing an activity that has lots of hard contact you will be injured.  Not a question of if, just when.

So wait a minute.  If I study martial arts for self-defense, but I keep getting injured studying martial arts, have I really gained anything?  Lets see.  Someday I might be violently attacked and injured. OK. That’s bad. If I train in martial arts, I am certain to be injured repeatedly.  Um, let me think about that.  I might be a victim of a violent crime someday, but if I train in martial arts to defend myself I am certain to be injured repeatedly as long as I continue to train.

Somehow this doesn’t make training in martial arts seem very sensible.  There is a small chance I will be a victim of crime at some point in my lifetime.  During such a crime I could lose personal property and may be seriously injured or even killed.  If I train in martial arts, the cost will be tens of thousands of dollars over my lifetime (far more than could ever be stolen from me by anyone other than a banker or a hacker), and I am guaranteed to get injured over and over.

Dang.  It’s a good thing I don’t do this stuff for self-defense.  The cost-to-benefit ratio for training in the martial arts for self-defense is so bad I’d have to quit.  Fortunately I train in the martial arts because I love the training and the arts for what the teach about all sorts of things that have little to do with self-defense.

I didn’t write this to knock martial arts for self-defense.  I believe they can have immense value, but this value is not easily quantifiable in dollars and cents.  How do you quantify the feeling of security and confidence that training can impart?  That’s a tough one, especially when it is so different for everyone.  

I do know that with a little discretion about where you go, what you do and how you behave, most men don’t really need self-defense training.  Stay away from places known for fights and violence, and your odds of needing to defend yourself go way down.  Detroit is known as an incredibly dangerous place, but even there most of the violence is concentrated in a few really awful neighborhoods.  I love going to Detroit for shows and food and cultural activities, but I know enough to avoid areas of the city where violence is not uncommon.  This strategy works great for men.

 

Women have a whole different paradigm to deal with.  Women have to deal with men, and the do so from a position of being smaller and weaker.  The statistics for violence against women are much higher than those for men.  In one subset, 5 times as high.  For women, martial arts training can be exceptionally valuable.  Not that there is any particular style of system, but that they learn that it’s ok to fight, they should fight, and that they can do so effectively.  Any reasonable martial arts system can do these things, and the effect on their lives can be far wider than just knowing how to fight back if assaulted.   it can translate into being treated with greater respect everywhere in their life, because they don’t accept intimidation from anyone.  That alone might be worth the monetary and physical costs of training.

Never Practice Anything More Than Once

I saw someone comment that :

“my Sa Bom Nim says, "You can't learn something until you are ready to learn it." That's why repetition is so important in the martial arts, because you never know when that "learning moment" will arrive. Doing that technique thousands of times was what made you ready to learn the new setup. “

I used to do thousands of repetitions of individual techniques and movements.  I thought it was essential to mastering the techniques.  I would set my mind on autopilot and do the same technique over and over, thinking I was building speed and consistency.

I can’t say about speed for sure, but I can speak to the consistency part of that.  I was building consistency.  I was teaching myself to always do the technique a the same level of skill.  I wasn’t improving myself, I was nailing my skills to the ground where I was at.  My father is a music teacher, and he has always said “Practice doesn’t make perfect.  Practice makes permanent.” However you practice something is how you will do it.  A thousand repetitions of a technique done one way, make it a thousand times harder to do it another way.  You will always do it the way you practice it.  Any errors in the technique you are repeating will be reinforced and that much tougher to correct.

One of the few things I know about my technique is that it’s not perfect.  I don’t want to be doing things tomorrow the way I am doing them today.  I want to be doing them better.   So I don’t do lots of repetitions of my techniques any more.  I try to do every technique one time only.

This is a pretty radical sounding statement for someone who trains classical Japanese martial arts, with a teaching methodology built upon the continued practice of a small set of techniques and kata.  It’s true though.

Each each time I do a technique or kata it is a unique event, never to be repeated.  Now one of my goals is for my mind to never go on autopilot.  I try to always be fully present when I practice.  I want to be completely mindful of what I am doing.  By being aware of what I’m doing with each cut and in each kata that I do, I can make every cut and every kata unique.  I can sense that I am using my hips one way or another, how I’m gripping the sword, what sort of rhythm I’m moving with, how I’m breathing.

If my practice of the kata is a unique event where the combination of all these factors and many more come together to create a single, unique, expression of the kata, then with this awareness of the kata, I can change elements of my action to make my next expression of the kata both unique and, hopefully, better.   To do this though, I have to be mindful.  

The best practice is mindful, aware and always looking for ways to improve what you are doing.  SImple repetition means that you are just programing yourself to do the kata at whatever level you’re currently at.  It ingrains your current mistakes into your body and makes them permanent.  Mindful practice never does the same kata twice.  Mindful practice seeks to improve with every action.  If I’m not really aware of what I’m doing, I can’t change it.  To change things, we have to be aware.  When you do a kata, be aware of your hands, your feet, you tanden, your hips, the location of your head, the rhythm of your breath.  All of these are important. If you are aware, you can experiment with how you use all these elements of your body to improve the kata.  And even if a particular mix of elements isn’t an improvement, you’ll be learning.  You’ll know about another combination that you want to avoid.

I try never to do the same kata twice.  If I’m repeating the kata, I’m stagnating.  It’s only when I mindfully do new things that I can really improve.

(How I balance this with mushin is fodder for another essay)

Budo Expectations and Realities: Know what you don't know.

Budo.  We all train different arts.  We all have expectations and ideas about what our arts teach us.  It’s easy for us to imagine that the techniques we study are applicable anywhere, and that if we practice diligently, we can use our skills against anything.  We love to believe that what we study is the greatest art in the world.  We tell ourselves how strong the techniques we study are, how effective they are, and how they will beat everything else.  It doesn’t matter if the art is Judo or Hapkido or Brazilian Jujutsu or Savate or Escrima or whatever.  We like to believe that what we study is the absolute best.

I’ve been doing this martial arts stuff long enough that I’ve learned that “best” is a highly relative concept.   A good friend, when asked if the martial art he teaches is the best martial art, replies “No, thermonuclear warfare is the best martial art.”   He makes a number of good points with that answer.  For a martial art to be “best” what does it have to do?  If you’re going to war, almost everything is better than a hand-to-(probably empty) hand martial art.

Every martial art teaches different things with a different focus.  I train in a sword art that teaches a particular way to use a sword, one that helps to maximize the range of the sword.  The sword is the core of this art.  A friend of mine trains in a different art, one that uses a different set of body mechanics to wield the sword. The way his art does it give a significantly smaller reach with the same length sword.  However, it maximizes the learning and usefulness of the core of his art, which is jujutsu.  The principles that guide the body mechanics are the same for his jujutsu and his sword work.  This makes the learning much more effective.  He doesn’t have to learn one way to move while unarmed, and a different way to move while armed, and he doesn’t risk mixing movement systems under stress.  The sword movement may not be optimal for the sword, but the movement is optimal for teaching  effective movement and action across a range of applications.  Which is “best”  then?

I have trained in judo for a long time and studied the knife defenses and counter attacks in the Kime No Kata and the Kodokan Goshin Jutsu .  I thought these were really great.  Then I started studying how to use weapons, and I became much less impressed with my skills against weapons.  I discovered there were all sorts of things about weapons that are critical if you want to be effective against them.  The first being, understand how something is really used.  When I trained techniques for use against weapons in Judo, I was training with other judoka, not with people who were skilled with the weapons in question.

When I started training in weapons arts with people who were skilled with the weapons, my understanding of the range and speed that particular weapons function at changed dramatically.  What I had been doing before turned out to have been little more than us imagining how a knife or stick or sword was used and then practicing against what we imagined.  When I started working with people who knew how to use those weapons, I discovered that their effective ranges were lots longer than I had imagined, and they were much faster than I had thought.  I had to throw out pretty much everything I had practiced and start over using actual knowledge upon which to build my training.  That’s pretty humbling.  I thought I was reasonably good, and I had to admit that I was worse off than beginner, because I had learned a lot of things that were nothing less than completely wrong.

I’m guessing that this is a not uncommon issue, especially in gendai (modern) martial arts.  Lots of modern arts teach defenses against a host of weapons, without really teaching how those weapons are actually used, so even when people do paired practice, the lessons are not effective.  This is what happened to me in Judo.  In koryu (classical, pre 1868) budo, the systems only train with weapons that they teach the use of, and the person doing the attacking is always the senior.  This takes care of two issues.  They don’t develop illusions about being able to handle weapons outside of those they teach, and their study is always directed by someone who really knows the weapons to be trained.

There used to be an incredible seminar held every year in Guelph, Ontario.  Kim Taylor would gather senior teachers from all sorts of koryu arts.  Each would teach a 2 hour introductory class about their art, and then spend the rest of the weekend learning side-by-side with you in other teachers’ classes.  It was a rare treat and a chance to get a taste of how all sorts of arts and weapons are used, from jujutsu stuff to swords to 10 foot spears.  The teachers all knew their stuff, and quickly knocked any illusions we had about how things worked out of our heads.  I vividly remember a high ranking Aikidoka saying after a sword class “I thought I knew swordwork.”  He was admitting to himself that what he had studied in the Aikido dojo about swords was very incomplete.  He certainly wasn’t the only person to walk out of one of those classes with the shards of previously held conceptions tinkling at the base of his mind.  I had quite a few ideas rendered into old junk in a jujutsu class with Karl Friday of Kashima Shinryu.  I just wish we’d been practicing on mats instead of in a dance studio.

I’ve discovered training with people who really know the weapons is critical.  It is possible to work out effective ways to deal with weapons you aren’t expert with, but I really don’t want to experience all the pain that goes with that sort of learning curve, and I can’t recommend it to anyone else because usually the only way to find out you’re wrong is the really hard way..  Working with someone who knows how to use a weapon properly means you never have a chance to develop inappropriate habits and techniques.  A teacher or partner who knows the weapon will disabuse you of any bad ideas as soon as they see them.  

I’m not saying don’t try anything new.  Just do it smart.  Work with someone who really knows the subject, so you don’t make mistakes that can have unpleasant consequences.  Train with your eyes open and try to realize the real limits of what you know. Kim Taylor’s seminars were an incredible experience because they were a chance to dive into our ignorance and find out just how small our islands of knowledge really are.

What is that other guy doing?

There are lots of different budo styles, and they each have their own way of doing things that is internally consistent.  Rennis Buchner, a fine budoka and excellent budo historian, writes about problem of assuming that you understand what another person or style does just from watching a little bit.  Rennis doesn't write often, but when he does, it's worth reading.  His essay is at
http://acmebugei.wordpress.com/2013/07/26/watch-what-you-say/

Budo and Ego

All the classical “Do” 道, or Ways, of Japan strive to achieve a better understanding of the world and the self.  It doesn’t matter whether you’re doing tea ceremony, flower arranging, sword fighting, incense smelling (kodo 香道), calligraphy or any of the other common activities that have been organized into form Ways.  You study codified ways of doing things that have roots going back generations, and sometimes centuries.  The goal is not just master one esoteric art form, but through the focused study, master the self and gain a greater understanding of the Way of the universe.

As people practice and study and refine their art, they naturally move up within the art’s hierarchy.   This is the natural progression of beginner to senior student to junior teacher to senior teacher.  There is always the risk that a person can misunderstand the respect that they receive as their skills and status increase.  There are plenty of people who become recognized for the mastery of a particular skill, who someone conclude that because they are skilled and respected in one special field, they should be respected and lauded in every aspect of their lives.  Their egos seem to take over and they get upset when people don’t acknowledge their superiority and innate greatness.

This can happen with anything.  It’s a not uncommon human failing and it is found even in the Ways of Japan where one of the key things we are supposed to be mastering is our self.  To really advance in any of the Ways, whether martial art or one of the more peaceful Ways, we have to achieve a certain mastery over our self and the voices in our head.  All those stories of the serene tea master, or the calligraphy teacher who calmly looks at the paper for a few minutes and then with a sudden flourish creates a marvelous work of art, these all require that you master the voices in your head so you can concentrate well enough to be serene and peaceful and creative.  It’s true of martial arts as well.  If you can’t learn to quiet your mind, you’re never going to figure out how to get out of the way of that incoming sword cut or jo strike.  And trust me, when your mind wanders and you don’t get out of the way in time, it hurts.  Which brings on a different kind of mental focus.

We have to master parts of ourselves to master any of the arts or Ways.  In mastering a Way though, we don’t have to master one important part of ourselves.  We don’t have to master our ego.  It’s easy for the ego to grow even more quickly than our skills do.  It’s amazing how powerful a fertilizer for the ego a little praise and respect can be.

If a Way is to be more than simply mastering the base, physical skills of the art, then we have to do more than just learn to quiet our mind for the time it takes to perform the skill.  We have to apply the lessons broadly to our whole selves, and not let the mastery of one skill enhance our ego to the point that it prevents further growth.   This is a risk for anyone studying any skill.  In a Way, it is a sad thing, because it prevents a student from achieving everything that the Way can give.

For all this, few arts and Ways have the inherent hurdle of budo .  Budo practice actually makes the practitioner more powerful, which can feed the ego with the thrill of the power and the desire for more.  If acted upon and followed, the path of the ego is completely odds with the path of budo, but it is an easy path to start upon, and difficult one to abandon once you have started treading it.

The power taught in budo is real power in the most basic, literal sense.  A student learns raw, physical power over others.  This is a huge trap for some people.  The ability to physically dominate and intimidate the people around you is an alluring drug. In most modern societies, this power is even more seductive because it’s one we avoid socially and culturally we play down the realities of physical power.  We suppress discussion physical power within social dynamics because people aren’t supposed to use it.  We’re wired to react physical power even if it’s not supposed to be a dynamic of polite society.

Power dynamics are a part of most social interactions, and physical posturing is a part of it, even if people aren’t aware of it..  There are people who use aggressive posturing to influence and dominate the world around them.  This works on lots of people, but not on those who are unusually strong, or who have great confidence in their physical skills.  People who do budo don’t react the way untrained people do, and they can in fact become quite dominant because of their skills.  This is another ego trap.  It feels good when people defer to you and let you do things your way.  That’s fine if it’s for a good reasons, but if it’s just because of your martial skills, then it’s probably a bad thing.  Letting this sort of thing feed your ego, and using it to get your way, is another dangerous detour from the budo Way.

Intimidating people, power posturing, and even physically abusing people is an especially dangerous trap in the dojo, because we are supposed to be using and practicing our skills there, and senior students and teachers are expected to demonstrate superior skills.  The lure of power over others because you are physically capable of it can be subtle.  It is easy for senior practitioners to edge from demonstrating superior technique over the line to abusing juniors.  The throws can become unnecessarily hard and brutal.  Joint locks can be go from controlling to inflicting uncalled for pain to physically damaging.  Just because the senior can do it, and they like the feeling of being able to make the juniors react.  This is a subtle trap, because it can start out with simple things, like a throw that’s just a little harder than it needs to be, or a joint lock that is painful when it’s not necessary.  The senior likes how the junior reacts, and more throws become extra hard, and the joint locks get more painful.  From this point, things just get worse, as the seniors ego needs more and more signs of his power and dominance from those below him.

Juniors can unintentionally encourage this behavior by showing greater respect and deference to the person being abusive, because they see this as evidence of the person’s superior skill, rather than as evidence of abuse.  This just makes the ego trap even bigger.

Power is drug for the ego, and in the dojo there is the danger that people will reward you for abusing the physical power that you have.  Just because what you are studying has “Do” 道 in the name, doesn’t guarantee that you will become a better person.  There are pitfalls along the way, and the one labeled “Ego” is perhaps the largest and most dangerous.  This is because it can be so subtle that you don’t even realize you are falling in.  Worse, it feels good.  Having your ego stoked by the people around you feels wonderful, and can be quite addictive.  It feels good to receive compliments and praise, but if you start trying to improve because you want the praise or the power, rather than improving to discover more about the art, yourself and the Way, then you have left the Way and are plunging into the pitfall of ego.