I was at a class once and one normally looks forward to another instructor teaching a technique. One of the other instructors was given the opportunity to teach a technique.

So we sat quietly, listened and watched this instructor. It’s always good to see a different angle or a different method of doing something. Nobody should limit themselves to one method but learn a variety of angles and views to understand the principles out there.

Questioning when learning is normal. My favourite students are those who question me and my technique.

A version of sankyo was being displayed and taught. I sat intently and listened and watched as this is one of my favourite techniques.

I normally watch the feet, watch the posture and watch the movement and placement of hands. The technique was demonstrated a few times so that we can mimic and try to understand it.

Something was playing on my mind while watching the technique. The elbow of Uke was awfully close to nage’s (in this case the instructor) chin while the technique was being applied. Having practised Muay Thai’ I’m always conscience of an elbow to the face. Having been at the end of one once, it’s not pretty and left me quite unbalanced and at the time quite unaware of what was happening. It was a very good strike and after receiving it, I wanted to learn it in the hope of avoiding it. (My first Jiu jitsu instructor Sensei Raymond Jewell used to say “pain is the best teacher”)

I raised my hand to ask about the elbow. I asked in front of the class in the hope that I could benefit and if anyone else saw it they would benefit from an explanation. My questioning wasn’t rude and in no way was I trying to undermine the instructor; I just wanted to learn. All this was fine; the instructor showed the technique again, and again I asked about the elbow. Maybe I was missing something. Maybe I didn’t understand the technique. The instructor suggested we talk about it while the others got on with the technique, to which I agreed. I was holding up the class.

We went together in a corner of the mat and I was asked to attack, so I did. The technique was applied on me and again I saw my elbow about an inch away from his jaw. I pointed at it and asked again. The response I got was “I’m taking it easy because we are demonstrating”. That sounded reasonable to me so I asked if he could apply a little more pressure and that I would try to move my elbow towards his face when the opportunity arose. This would satisfy my curiosity if worked and the issue would be fine.

The technique applied again but this time with a little more vigour. I don’t mind a little pain in the course of training so I was fine with receiving it when applied. My elbow again was close to his face and even though there was pain I found that if I moved my elbow towards his face I had a lot of leeway. I stopped just before his face but demonstrating that I could move it and in fact strike him with it.

Maybe I didn’t understand what he was doing so I asked again for him to explain. The response was something that I learned a lot from that day. “But I’m doing it with ki” came the statement. Now this really got to me because this wasn’t an explanation of the technique. In all honesty I saw it as a copout. If something cannot be explained then say ‘ki’. An apparent force that binds the universe together that can be manipulated and used to one’s advantage. Star Wars references aside, this is a belief that not all people adhere to.  So when looking at technique I look at structure, position of the feet and the straightness of posture etc. All of these are measurable and once measured, they can be used, learned and applied. I think this is a topic in itself and will need great thought.

I responded to the instructor saying “but I don’t believe in ki, show me why and how it can work”. Maybe I was getting a little frustrated by now. I was being told just to believe in it and do it because it is a mystical force that he had the ability to use and I had yet to learn.

My persistence in asking him to actually show me how it can work culminated in him walking off and saying “I’m not arguing with a 1^st Dan”. He was a 4th dan I think at the time. I do hope he thought about that particular technique after that, for his sake.

That version of sankyo would cause problems yourself. There were others in that organisation that were very proficient and showed on numerous occasions that their technique worked. One in particular was police officer that had used sankyo to great effect against an assailant. So I am not saying sankyo doesn’t work, but that particular view on it seemed flawed in my opinion.

To teach that to a student as an effective street application of the technique, as was the case that day, was giving a flawed sense of applicability of the technique. If it was stated that this was an exercise, I would have accepted that. The fact of it was that it seemed to be doing the students an injustice.

I learned that day to accept any questions that the students may ask and be open minded about the questions. Beginners don’t know the “script” in aikido.

“Oh sorry was I supposed to fall, do it again this time I will”

In the words from Monty Python

“No one expects the Spanish Inquisition! Our chief weapon is surprise, fear and surprise; two chief weapons, fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency! Er, among our chief weapons are: fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, and near fanatical devotion to the Pope! Um, I’ll come in again…”

Your own technique should always be questioned especially by beginners. They may see things that you haven’t and they may have done other arts which you haven’t. Learn to be able to learn, always.

I learned that when asked about a technique I must be able to justify it with answers which are understandable, answers that are in the realm of reality and answers that allow the student and teacher to learn.

Many of my students have asked me questions that have made me think and change my views on certain things. We must always be honest with ourselves, leave any ego at the door and be willing to accept what is right no matter who it comes from.

I started with a Monty Python quote so I think it would be better to end with one that I have slightly changed.

“We are not the instructors who go ‘ki’”

 

Train well and train hard.

My son got married recently. I mention this because of how I felt that day. You’d be surprised if I didn’t say I was happy. But what surprised me was the fact that I went through the day knowing I was happy.
There have been plenty of happy events in my life: getting married, buying our first home, the births of my children, getting my first dan aikido to name but a few. What made this event different was the knowledge that I was happy in the moment.
There is a lot of talk at the moment about mindfulness. Many American companies are using it as a way to reduce stress and boost productivity – Ford, Goldman Sachs, the Bank of America and even the U.S. Marine Corps to name a few. There is even a “Mindfulness for Dummies” with chapters on “Using Mindfulness in Your Daily Life” and “Using Mindfulness to Combat Anxiety, Depression and Addiction.”
The basic idea behind mindfulness is by paying attention to the present moment. The most common method of achieving this is through meditation on the breath (anapana sati in Pali).

The theory behind this is that the mind is never still. It is always talking to itself and commenting on what it sees, reflecting on what has passed and anticipating what is to come. To reduce or even stop this mental chatter, you should try to keep your attention on the breath, either by counting each breath or following the movement of the breath in and out of the body.

As the mind becomes still, so the theory goes, you begin to dwell exclusively in the present moment.

I have to say that I tend to look at that theory in the same light as I regard Alcoholics Anonymous – or any of the other Anonymous organisations that have modelled their programme on AA’s Twelve Steps.

Step One requires that the addict acknowledges that he/she is powerless over alcohol and that their lives have become manageable. Newcomers are not asked to accept or follow all of the Twelve Steps, but they will are asked to keep an open mind, to attend meetings at which recovered alcoholics describe their personal experiences in achieving sobriety, and to read AA literature.

Although I am not saying there is anything wrong with, it seems to me it is substituting a harmful addiction for a good one: attending meetings, making amends, conducting an on-going moral inventory instead of drinking.

And to a certain extent, I think mindfulness of breathing is the same: it substitutes the harmful chatter of the mind with one-pointed attention. The same applies if the attention is focussed on an object such as a candle flame or a mantra (a word or sound repeated to aid concentration in meditation according to the Oxford dictionary). The object is to shut out things out rather than including then.

At a seminar I attended recently, zanshin was translated as “extended awareness” rather than the usual sense of being aware of one’s surroundings and enemies and being prepared to act. To me, this extended awareness would include what was going on inside my body and mind as well as the outside.

This is where I come back to the wedding. Throughout the day (and it started early and finished late) I felt engaged. From the arranging the place settings, putting up the decorations, sorting out the caterers to the ceremony itself and the meal and party afterwards, there didn’t seem to be a moment when I was “uninvolved”.
Of course there were moments when I was irritated, anxious and just plain grumpy but they came and went. The over-riding emotion throughout the day, and for at least a week afterwards was one of happiness.

But it wasn’t a state of being happy with something. To quote Stephen Russell who writes under the pseudonym “the Barefoot Doctor”:
… your heart is open, your mind is clear and your actions spontaneous, you cannot fail to treat yourself and other people with absolute care and respect to the best of your ability at the time.

The most interesting thing is that I didn’t feel a need to cling onto the feeling. It has certainly faded since and I exist in a much more mundane state now, but I can recapture it very easily by looking at the photos and video of the wedding. Obviously it doesn’t last as long, but I know the feeling is still there and accessible.

And finally to aikido. I have said before that there is a tendency when we are practising to live outside the present moment. Again to quote the Barefoot Doctor:
This has always been the only moment and always will be. This moment never changes. What changes is the scenery occurring around this moment … whatever the time on your clock or date on your calendar, this moment will never change.

When we are about to do a technique, we either project into the future worrying about what could go wrong (“I can never do this technique”, “I hate practising with this person, they always stop my technique”, and so on) which seems to fling us back into the past as we reflect on the number of times we’ve failed at this technique, or how much better we did it when we practised with someone else.

In fact, even before we do the technique we tend to move out of the present moment: “That’s not the way sensei taught the technique last time. Is he trying to confuse us?” “This time I am going to that technique so well that sensei’s going to look over at me and smile.”

Being absent from this present moment invariably makes us sad because we usually end up with an unsettling feeling of longing. To lose that feeling we need to enjoy the now a little more. It shouldn’t be a big effort and we shouldn’t beat ourselves up when we fail, but these words of the Vietnamese zen Buddhist monk, Thich Naht Hanh sum it up pretty well:
People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child — our own two eyes. All is a miracle.

And let me tell you, it’s a great feeling when you’re aware you are part of a miracle.

 

Recently I watched a TED talk by social psychologist Amy Cuddy called “Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are”.  Her research is in body language, and one of the most important elements is the “power pose”.

Essentially one of the most common power poses is that of being “opened up”.  We see it in people and animals naturally … Mick Jagger and any creature displaying to attract a mate come to mind.  Another is the “pride” pose.  You see it in any successful athlete after they have achieved something.  Amy Cuddy illustrated her talk with a shot of Usain Bolt crossing the finishing line with his arms flung wide.  Interestingly, even the congenitally blind will adopt the pride pose without ever having been taught it.

Politicians are taught to do it, and that’s why so often it looks unnatural ; compare George W. Bush and his chopped, little moves to the easy expansiveness of Barak Obama.

Alternatively, in low power positions, when people or animals are feeling helpless, they close up.  They wrap their arms around themselves, cross their legs and close themselves off from others.

In a given interaction, one participant will adopt the high power pose and one the lower.  One will be open, the other closed.  One will be in charge.  The other won’t.

Research has already shown that non-verbal communication affects how other people perceive you and feel about you.

What made Amy Cuddy’s talk so interesting is she proposed the alternative theory: that the pose we take can change how we feel about ourselves.  She and her colleagues had subjects assume either high power or low power poses for two minutes.  They found that the testosterone levels of the “high power” posers rose 20%. Testosterone levels for the “low power” group, meanwhile, fell 10%.  Testosterone is one key chemical for “power.” The other is cortisol. When cortisol levels drop, people are better able to handle stressful situations. After the 2-minute poses, the cortisol levels of the “high power” group fell sharply. The cortisol levels of the “low-power” group, meanwhile, rose.  This meant the high power posers were more likely to take risk than the low power posers.

Effectively, our bodies change our minds.  So the question arises: can power posing for a few minutes change the way we feel about ourselves?

Further experiments by Amy Cuddy and her colleagues demonstrated that if interviewees power posed before a (mock) interview the interviewers felt more positive about them to the extent that what they actually said in the interviews was irrelevant. It was all about “presence.”

So, our bodies change our minds, our minds change our behaviour and our behaviour change outcomes for us.

I think that is a fairly accurate précis of Amy Cuddy’s theory, but I recommend you listen to the whole twenty-one minute talk, which can be found on TED talks and YouTube.  It is an interesting reversal of our understanding of man’s psyche, which is how we feel inside is reflected in what we show outside.  The whole of psychiatry is based on treating the inner man.

Amy Cuddy is saying that changing the outer man (or woman) will change the inner.

I got quite excited about how it reflects what we do in aikido.

Among of the first things we learn, and teach, are the basic postures of migi and hidari kamae (left and right stance). When you watch beginners, if you are a beginner or if you can remember being a beginner yourself, you will see how intimidating receiving that first attack is – the head drops, the feet shuffle, and the body tends to leap excessively to the left or right out of the line of attack.

As we become more confident in our aikido, the posture becomes better, deeper with no leaning forward.  We find ourselves now not only ready for the attack, but almost inviting it, welcoming it.

So Migi and hidari kamae are power postures – the body is balanced and upright, but relaxed; the hips are forward facing; the shoulders are relaxed; the hands guarding our own centre line, but also threatening uke’s.  From this still, relaxed posture our spirit projects forward.  Adopting them when we are practising doesn’t only improve our technique, but also makes us feel better, stronger and more in control.  And this in term feeds back into our technique, in a continuous circle.

It was said of Morihei Ueshiba that he could adopt a stance which presented no opening that allowed any form of attack.

Consequently, the stories of him getting ukes to attack him in the dojo when he was demonstrating without specifying the attack seem to be related to whatever opening he chose to reveal – a shoulder, his wrist, or his head.  It was assumed to be his ability to control other people’s minds, but it was actually his ability to control his own body.

This is surely the ultimate power pose, and something we can all aspire to, even if we’re more likely to be showing all the openings most of the time!

O’Sensei himself said in his book “Budo” published in 1938 that the basic stance was to “open your feet to the six directions [north, south, east, west, up, down] … the complete kamae [posture] is what arises from where the gods lead you, depending on time, situation, the lie of the land, the spirit of the moment – kamae is what is in your heart.”

This seems to reflect what Amy Cuddy is saying.  There is no difference between your mind and body.  They are one.  Which accords nicely with Koichi Tohei’s Four Principles:

• Keep the one-point (seika no tanden)
• Relax completely
• Keep the weight underside
• Extend Ki

Tohei sensei offers two concepts which are mental (keeping the one-point and extending Ki) and two which are physical (relax completely, keep the weight underside).  Achieving any one of these will also achieve the other three.

So when people ask why you practise aikido, you now have another answer:

It helps me get jobs!

A group of doormen friends of mine were sitting together in a room, all with their own skillsets of various training and ability levels.

The atmosphere was a little tense when one issued a challenge to another asking him out for a fight. A kind of dual to decide which one of them was a better fighter.
The one who was challenged accepted it and stated “Okay I’ll bring the katanas”. Puzzled the challenger quizzed “What do you mean katana?” It wasn’t the kind of fight he had in mind. “So you want a sissy fist fight” was the answer to this question.

It got me thinking about different types of martial arts and their effectiveness and application.

A lot of people compare one art with another and say this is better, or that is better for whatever reason they may have. This may be due to personal experience or the fact that they practise that martial art.

Today none can deny MMA is in fashion. Previously to this it may have been boxing or jiu jitsu. Aikido made fashionable by late 80’s and 90’s movies of Steven Siegel. The same could be said of Bruce Lee’s influence on the world in the 60’s and 70’s.

Today people judge an art by it’s effectiveness in the octagon because as stated this is what is in fashion today. We hear all the time “Is it effective in the octagon?” Not taking anything away from MMA, I do think it is amazing. Anyone who downplays MMA, I would question their martial arts integrity and credibility. This doesn’t mean it is a measure for all martial arts.

Competitors who train for a match train for one purpose, one goal and one aim in mind. They will face their lone opponent within certain rules confined to certain restrictions regulated by a referee. Not all arts will be able to able to conform to that measure. Put someone who just knows boxing in the octagon and they will be out of their depth when faced with an opponent who holds them and takes them to the ground. In that situation boxing won’t be as effective. Again I think boxing as a skill is truly underrated.
Each art was developed for a reason and has it’s history and I do truly believe no art is superior to another. They all bring something to the table.

Aikido has it’s roots in Aikijujitsu, an art which was developed for combat on the battlefield. It’s movements and techniques are designed with that in mind, not 3 minute boxing rounds. Aikido doesn’t fit in an octagon and training for the octagon won’t fit when you have a naginata pointed at you. Each of them have their own history and practicality. To judge one based on the rules of the other I think is highly unreasonable. Even if you put a world class judo champion in the ring with Queensberry rules he wouldn’t even match up against an amateur boxer.

Every art will teach you something and it is up to the teacher to guide and the student to understand what is real and what is for the dojo. What is applicable on the street and what we do for the sake of the art may sometimes be totally different.

Aikido is well at home when in a situation of a mob fight. When outnumbered and no rules,  your main objective is to limit damage to yourself and survive and not necessarily get your hand raised as the winner at the end. Your belt is you got to go home and not the hospital or worse. You go to the ground in that situation; you are likely to get kicked in the head by the person you didn’t see coming at you from behind.

Yes, we Aikidoka don’t like to always go to the ground that’s not what we train for.
As mentioned in my previous blog, it is also essential to train with that mentality too. Too often we see weak attacks in the dojo and we think we are really good when we throw around a compliant uke. This isn’t doing Aikido and us any favours.

As a final point, if you’re going to train in an art then pick one that suits you. Do it well and take your time learning it. Understand it, but don’t always limit yourself to one art. The Samurai trained in multiple arts to become effective on the battlefield because that was the objective in the end. That may not be our objective today.

So if you’re going to do MMA, then do MMA, if you are going to do Karate, then do Karate; if you are going to do Aikido, then do Aikido, If you’re going to do Krav Maga, then go do Jiu Jitsu. Whatever you do, do it well. Learn from it and if it isn’t for you then don’t do it. Learn it for the objective you have for it. All arts have their qualities learn to understand and appreciate them, even though their objective may not be what your aim is.

I am not going to apologise for my art and no i’m not going to judge it by standards it wasn’t designed for. Train well and train hard.

I was driving in my car and an interview came on the radio with Philip Glass, the American composer. Since I was driving, I couldn’t take notes, but I remembered one thing he said very clearly and as soon as I got home I wrote it down. He said:
I write music, not technique.
This statement resonated with me (how appropriate!) and my practise of aikido, and made me want to know more about his life and what had lead him to make this statement. He certainly wasn’t saying that he had abandoned technique, because from 1964 to 1966 he studied technique in Paris with the composition teacher Nadia Boulanger. He later said: “The composers I studied with Boulanger are the people I still think about most—Bach and Mozart,” and these were men who not only were geniuses but also technically expert. In fact, at the time Glass disliked the new music of composers like Pierre Boulez and Stockhausen.
It seems to me that he was saying once he’d learned technique he had to move on from it in order to write music. He has also said:
The point was that the world of music—its language, beauty, and mystery—was already urging itself on me. Some shift had already begun. Music was no longer a metaphor for the real world somewhere out there. It was becoming the opposite. The “out there” stuff was the metaphor and the real part was, and is to this day, the music.
But he couldn’t truly make that connection between “inner” and “outer” music until he had learned technique.
To me there is a clear parallel between Glass’s experience and the learning of aikido.
We move from being gotai (static – often referred to as kihon or basic) in our practice to jutai (flexible) to ryutai or ki-no-nagare(flowing), but a solid foundation must be established in gotai technique before moving on to ki-no-nagare, and then it is necessary to continue training gotai to prevent losing touch with the basics.
Or to put it another way, a person who is proficient in gotai can easily learn ki-no-nagare, but a person who has only trained in ki-no-nagare will often not be able to move at all if gripped strongly. Indeed, the founder of Aikido, O-Sensei Morihei Ueshiba, once said, “I am what I am today only because I did gotai training for 50 years.”
And this statement pretty matches up to what Glass says about himself. Although he has been described as a “minimalist composer”, he refers to himself as a “classicist”, pointing out that he trained in harmony and counterpoint and studied such composers as Franz Schubert, Johann Sebastian Bach and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. He continues to practise the basics.
Of course, this is one of the hardest things about aikido. There is nothing more confusing (and irritating) to a student than to see the instructor perform some elaborate flowing technique, and then be told “It’s all about the basics.” It’s difficult for the student see how his or her plodding steps are related to the sensei’s dynamic movement.
And it can also be difficult for the instructor to appreciate how to an observer his or her precise movements can get lost in the twirl of the hakama and the flight of the uke.
I have mentioned before the book “Outliers” in which the author Malcolm Gladwell calculates it takes approximately 10,000 hours of practice to achieve mastery. Since publication other research has called that statement into question as it does overlook genetic factors and innate talent, but the principle still applies.
And the trouble is, after practising basics for 10,000 hours, so that you are able to create the inner music in the outside world, you may forget what it was like to be a beginner in the first place.
Terry Dobson, an American who studied under Ueshiba in the 1960s says O’Sensei never taught technique. He said “He [Ueshiba] was not a tennis pro. For him aikido was not a technical exercise at all. It was part of a play of spirit, a movement of the universe”, and so classes could involve long lectures. Terry Dobson again:
He would come in every morning and teach, but his teaching was largely talking … Sometimes he would pray and you would sit there.
This then is the problem for both teachers and students. How does the one teach and how does the other learn? I would say that the important thing is for the instructor never to forget how hard it was to get where they are now, the frustrations and humiliations, the feeling of one step forward and two steps back.
Of course, part of the problem in aikido is, as Terry Dobson said, the answer to any question is “Just keep practising and you’ll find out.” So the instructor has to help and encourage the student to keep practising, because ultimately he or she is trying to lead students to the moment where they discover they too can compose the music of aikido.
But not even all that support and encouragement will prevent the famous black belt slump. When starting out, the black belt represents the ultimate goal that is as it should be. It appears to be the highest mountain, but when you get there you discover it is merely one of the lower peaks at the edge of a vast, unseen mountain range. Some black belts never see the view and quit because they think they have climbed Everest, and others become dispirited with the thought of “just more practice”.
I’m sure that not everyone who studied alongside Philip Glass at Juilliard went on to be world-famous composers, but not everyone can be an Ueshiba, a Tohei, Saito or even Seagal!
But to finish with some more of Philip Glass’s words which clearly reflect some kind of universal truth:
You practise and you get better. It’s very simple.