Aikido has gone from a martial art taught privately to an extremely small group of students in Japan before WWII to a publicly taught art after the war and eventually in which active measures were taken to spread the art globally in a single generation. This effort was fantastically successful. Perhaps a million people world wide practice Aikido today.
What made this rapid growth possible was the development of a tier of teachers, not Shihan, not even mid-level but really entry level instructors who opened dojos and clubs all over the world. Most of us in my generation were running dojos at San Dan. It was not unusual for Non-Yudansha to find themselves running clubs or programs.
In the last forty years students of the students of the uchi deshi have begun to open schools. These are people who never trained directly under a Shihan level instructor for any significant amount of time. So now, in many communities there are multiple choices of styles and teachers. In Seattle, admittedly an extreme case, there are over twenty dojos in the immediate metro area.
I think that there needs to be a discussion of what the responsibilities of a teacher are in regards to his or her students. I think that the overriding mission that most teachers who have opened dojos have adhered to was that there was something fundamentally good about "more" people doing Aikido. That somehow they were missionaries going forth to convert the heathen and bring them into the fold.
It didn't really matter whether they were qualified to run a school... Maybe they were the only ones in the area from a particular organization or under a particular teacher. Since organizations exist to perpetuate themselves, of course such people were permitted, even encouraged to open their own schools. It was seen as better to have a school doing things "our way" albeit at a mediocre quality, than to have the student attend a dojo with a much more senior and skilled instructor from another lineage. So not only was growing Aikido a goal in itself but so was spreading the gospel according to ones own teacher or style.
I wish to question the idea that there is something inherently good about practicing Aikido at whatever level is available as opposed to doing another practice at a high level. Most Aikido teachers are content with their roles guiding the practice of their students as long as they feel they are better than their students and have something positive to offer. I would ask people if this is really true? If a student. by choosing to train with you, is passing up the opportunity to train with another teacher, of the same art or even a different art, aren't you actually short changing that student?
I would suggest that, as an absolute minimum, a teacher should be offering training that will allow his or her students to be as good (even better?) than that teacher is. If each person running a dojo or overseeing the training in some community center program or other were to honestly ask this question, what would the answer be?
I have come to the belief that in the majority of cases, the honest answer would be that no one in said dojo shows any sign of meeting or exceeding the skill level of the teacher. I think that in most cases, the teacher has become the limiting factor in the development of their student's Aikido.
I hear teachers talk about "falling standards" all the time. Tests are generally conceded not to be what they were 20 years ago, weapons work is not what it was, etc. While there is general agreement that this seems to be true, I think there is very little self examination on the part of the teaching community as to how they have created this situation.
When growth for its own sake becomes the overriding goal, when creating an harmonious and well bonded dojo community becomes more important than the transmission of the art, then there is a problem.
I have been around long enough to have seen a generation or two go fourth from their respective dojos and start their own places. Many of these people have established highly successful schools, lots of students, great spirit, beautiful facilities... But when you look at the student population of these dojos you see no one who is going to be as good as their teacher. You see people who have the potential. You see people putting in the time and effort. But you don't see the resulting progress.
I have seen tests performed by students at a given level that simply weren't in the ball park compared to what their teachers had done at that very same level. (Boy does that make me feel old when I have seen both teacher and student test for that same rank.) What would cause a teacher to accept far less from his or her student than they had achieved at that same point in their training? I simply do not understand? It's one thing to not know... it's quite another to know and not pass it on.
How many people running dojos have been trotting off to seminars with their teachers for decades and having no clue what these teachers were doing? Year after year... no real change in understanding. At what point do you ask yourself what it is that you are teaching? If you know it isn't what your teacher is doing, is what you are teaching worth while or not? Is there some inherent merit to passing in what is really not very high quality?
I constantly run into teachers who admit that their weapons skills are not what they'd like. Yet, these very same teachers are responsible for preparing their students to do weapons work on their tests. If they are not confidant in their skills, how can they possibly prepare others to be anything but inadequate? So the question is, why haven't they made acquisition of these skills a number one priority so that they can do their jobs properly? Have they invited skilled teachers to come to their dojos specifically to work on these skills? Have they sought out teachers who have the skills and traveled to their dojos? Usually, the answer is no. They bemoan the fact that there isn't more weapons training at the various seminars and camps held by the organization but do absolutely nothing to take responsibility for their own progress.
The economy has caused many smaller dojos a huge problem. In our area several have already closed their doors and moved into community centers. A number of others are marginal and their teachers actually have out of pocket to keep the doors open.
So the obvious question is, does that dojo NEED to stay open. Given how much time and energy it takes to run a school and minister to the needs of ones student population, combined with the ever present financial and time pressure which interferes with doing as much personal training as one would like (or professes to wish to do), wouldn't it simply be better to close the school and start training at another dojo with a skilled instructor? Isn't it really better for that teacher and the art itself to have that teacher go back to being a serious student full time than being a mediocre instructor of even more mediocre students?
I am often accused of taking an elitist position on these issues. But really... does anyone actually think that the Founder was envisioning a global community of martial arts mediocrities when he said that Aikido could change the world?
The bottom line is that it all starts and ends with the community of teachers. They are responsible to attain the highest levels possible in their art. Their are responsible for passing on that knowledge. A student with the will and the ability should be able to attain excellence at any dojo. If not, that dojo probably doesn't need to be there.
I have been to dojos where talented people were being short changed. Fifteen minutes away there was another dojo and a different teacher turning out top notch students. This particular dojo had no reason to exist and was actually, in my opinion, a detriment to the art. Taking people's time and money, and then not delivering is borderline fraudulent as far as I am concerned. Yet, there was no consciousness on the part of the instructor at this dojo of anything amiss.
I think the whole Aikido teaching community needs to take a hard look at itself. We need to ask ourselves if what we are passing on really represents something positive for the art and for the student. We need to be aware that every time we convince s student to train with us, he or she is choosing not to train with someone else. Do we really think we offer a quality experience that is as good or better than what that student would get elsewhere? Are we striving for quality or quantity? Are there people who simply shouldn't be training? Or do we think we should change the training to make it "accessible" to everyone? And what happens to the training of the people who could have been excellent if the training is made "accessible" to people who will never be excellent?
I once asked one of my teachers, after seeing a very poor yudansha test, who sets the standard for testing? He replied that it is the job of the instructors to set the standard. In other words, it is my job. No one is going to tell me. If I settle for less in my own training I am short changing myself and my students. If I allow them to be less than they are capable of, even if it means that I lose the students who don't have the commitment to go the distance, then I am short changing my students.
I absolutely believe that it is the teacher's job, his responsibility, his imperative, to not be the limiting factor in his own students' training. I think the whole Aikido teaching community could benefit from a bit of brutally honest self examination on this issue.
Monday, December 14, 2009
Friday, November 20, 2009
The Art of Racing in the Rain
From The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein
“Secondly, Enzo's epiphany—the thing he learns at the end of his life—is that his assumption that race car drivers have to be selfish to be successful, is incorrect. In fact, he determines, in order to be successful, a race car driver has to be completely selfless. He must cease looking at himself as the brightest star in the solar system, and begin to see himself as simply a unique aspect of the universe around him—and, most importantly, as an extension of the universe around him. In this way, a race car driver sheds his ego; his actions become pure and as powerful as the entire universe, which in turn leads to success.
Does this sound familiar to the Aikido folks out there?
“Secondly, Enzo's epiphany—the thing he learns at the end of his life—is that his assumption that race car drivers have to be selfish to be successful, is incorrect. In fact, he determines, in order to be successful, a race car driver has to be completely selfless. He must cease looking at himself as the brightest star in the solar system, and begin to see himself as simply a unique aspect of the universe around him—and, most importantly, as an extension of the universe around him. In this way, a race car driver sheds his ego; his actions become pure and as powerful as the entire universe, which in turn leads to success.
Does this sound familiar to the Aikido folks out there?
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Managing Change in Aikido
The Aikido community is entering a period of change. After experiencing rapid growth world wide since WWII, the art, along with virtually all "traditional" Japanese martial arts, is now in a period of retrenchment. It is far harder to find new students than it used to be, the students who have been training are older and have spouses, families, careers, mortgages, etc that many didn't have when they started training. This means they either train less or they train not at all. The young males, previously the majority of the new students in any martial art, now want to do what they see on prime time cable. From a pure marketing standpoint, there is no way for a traditional martial art to compete with nightly presence on prime time TV.
Now, to top it off, the community finds itself in a growing "identity crisis". Slowly the Aikido public is starting to redefine what it means to be "advanced" in this art. Teachers with long history and high rank are being reconsidered by a community which is far better educated than it was twenty to thirty years ago. Starting with the first Aiki Expo, almost ten years ago now, Aikido practitioners were exposed to a number of practitioners of what we will call "aiki arts" whose skill level seemed far beyond many of the Japanese teachers, both in Japan and overseas, who had become identified with post war Aikido. It was also clear that many of these teachers had a far more effective methodology for transmitting their knowledge than the teachers from the Aikido community as a whole.
Then, with the huge rise in popularity of Internet discussion forums, the relatively small number of folks who had become aware of these teachers started to talk about their experiences. A small group of teachers from outside of the Aikido community began to have regular dialogue, not without significant dissension in the ranks, with the folks from the Aikido community who seriously participate on the forums.
An outgrowth of these discussions has been a small number of seminars conducted around the country by various teachers specifically designed for Aikido practitioners, even teachers. This group represents a core of serious Aikido teachers and students who are changing the way they practice, even how they define the goals of their practice.
So far, this change taking place is far below the radar for most Aikido folks. The majority of the teachers I know don't even participate on the forums, didn't go to any of the Aiki Expos, haven't read much at all about the history of Aikido, and remain blissfully unaware of what's coming. They are happy with what they've been doing, happy with what they've gotten from their teachers, and happy that their students regard them as being skillful and worth training with.
So what will happen as more and more people start to be exposed to another paradigm concerning their art? What will people think when they find that what they'd been told about Daito Ryu, our parent art, simply wasn't true; that there were other teachers equally skilled in "aiki" as the Founder; that there are teachers of "aiki" from outside the Aikido community whose skills match or even exceed any of the top teachers we hold as models, that with proper instruction and hard work, it doesn't have to take thirty years or more to develop an understanding of high level principles?
Right now, this realization has created a crisis for many people. I have good friends who have quit Aikido, in some cases with some anger involved. They have wa;led away from years of dedication to the art and their teachers feeling that the "goods" had been denied them; that some sort of conspiracy has existed to keep knowledge away from them. Others, more realistic in their assessment of the situation in my opinion, have found themselves unable to continue training in their home Aikido dojos because their new found training methods and the skills evolving from them created too much dissonance with the dominant paradigm in the dojo.
Even the teachers who are now changing how they practice have had a hard time finding their place in the community. Imagine being a 6th or 7th Dan in an organization headed by a Japanese Shihan. This Shihan defines what happens in the organization; he is the origin from which authority flows. Now suddenly you have developed a different source or sources of inspiration. What are you going to do? Your Aikido is deviating from the accepted model. In fact that model may be more sophisticated by magnitudes than the generally accepted model. How will that effect your place in the organization? Your relationship with your teacher?
I believe that most folks, for the time being, will ignore what is happening and pretend it doesn't exist or that it isn't important. Most folks will opt for the status quo. Revolutions do not happen easily, they happen when an imbalance gets too great. The revolution in Aikido will not be televised, it will not be conducted by the leaders of the art, it will shake things up, and it will split the community, it will close dojos, it may shrink the art rather than grow it.
Obviously, the best option for students who wish to pursue a deeper understanding of "aiki" principles, including "internal power" and related subjects, is to find a dojo in which the teacher is qualified to teach these things. These are few and far between and some exposure to folks who have these skills is required for newbies to recognize who has them and who doesn't.
For the vast majority of people training in Aikido this isn't an option. There simply are no teachers locally for them to train with who have this kind of skill. Of course the REALLY serious student packs up and moves to where the teacher is. That's a given. It is also a given that many folks consider themselves to be serious who wouldn't consider that option. So rather than indulge in a debate about what the word serious really means, let's instead be realistic. 99.9% of the so-called serious practitioners would not move simply in order to train with a different teacher. So what options do they have? Well, they can trot off to one of the increasing number of seminars with the various teachers who are intent on sharing their skills with the Aikido public. But the question is, then what do you do?
Can you go back to your dojo and secretly work on the solo exercises you've been taught and then keep training just as you had been so no one realizes? What happens when you aren't falling down as easily as before? How will you handle it when your teacher corrects you for doing something that just worked quite well but isn't what the rest of the class is doing? When that starts happening every night? What will you think when you get removed form the instructor's roster because you start teaching stuff that isn't on the syllabus? These things are already happening out there. I expect them to happen more and more.
It's no easier if you are a teacher. So you've suddenly found that teacher who can show you how to develop the kind of Aikido skills which only the legendary had... you trot off to as many seminars as you can, perhaps invite this fellow to your dojo repeatedly. Your Aikido, your whole view of Aikido, starts to change, it's radically different than what you had been doing. You are so excited, it's what you had been looking for all along. But what do your students think about all of this?
I can guarantee that there is not universal rejoicing over this new direction. Remember what we said about change? People don't like it. The fact that you have recovered your Beginner's Mind for the first time in decades may be great for you nut it is not, in the minds of many students, what they are looking for in their guru. You are supposed to be the source for them. For as much as two or more decades some of them have been doing their level best to be you. Some of them have gotten pretty close and a certain status and authority has derived from that. Then you go and start showing everybody a whole new paradigm at which the most senior instructor at the dojo isn't any better than the new guys. What do you expect them to say? "gee. I am so glad to get back to the place I was in my Aikido 20 years ago when I couldn't do anything and felt like an idiot all the time." Of course not. I would actually predict an inverse relationship between who receptive folks will be to this sudden change of direction and how long they have trained. This is exactly what has happened in one dojo with which I am familiar.
So I think people need to give some thought to managing this change which is coming. If you try to change things too fast you can expect to be isolated, from your dojo, from your teacher, from your organization, whatever. Like all my friends in high school who got "born again", the new convert to "internal skills" training is apt to go around endlessly telling anyone who will listen about the "Good Word". That same "I am saved and you are going to Hell" thinking exists in this community as well. If you aren't doing this secret training only the select know about, everything you are doing will do, and have ever done is crap. Eric Hoffer had a lot to say about the True Believer and it wasn't all that positive.
I don't really know how to advise the average Aikido student who wants to take his Aikido to a different level. I do not anticipate that you'll get much support from your community. I also don't think that going off on ytour own and working in your garage going exercises given you by a teacher you see twice a year will do anything terribly worth while. You are going to have to move. Sorry.
For the dojo head who is engaging on this study, I would recommend that you create space for your students who can't or don't wish to come along on your new journey. In my own dojo I feel that we have been moving fairly smoothly through a period of very rapid change. I think that this is due to my efforts to connect everything new that we are doing to what we have done before. I take all the advanced principles and try to connect them to the kihon waza so that people have a feeling of flow from what they've worked so hard to master towards the new paradigm. If they have a sense that what we are doing is simply the next step towards being good at what they've already been doing, that sense of radical change is made far less intimidating.
And, I would say to all those embarking on this new direction of Aikido study, keep it on a "need to know" basis. It is just not going to make your life easier with your sempai or your teacher. Pretty much guaranteed.
Now, to top it off, the community finds itself in a growing "identity crisis". Slowly the Aikido public is starting to redefine what it means to be "advanced" in this art. Teachers with long history and high rank are being reconsidered by a community which is far better educated than it was twenty to thirty years ago. Starting with the first Aiki Expo, almost ten years ago now, Aikido practitioners were exposed to a number of practitioners of what we will call "aiki arts" whose skill level seemed far beyond many of the Japanese teachers, both in Japan and overseas, who had become identified with post war Aikido. It was also clear that many of these teachers had a far more effective methodology for transmitting their knowledge than the teachers from the Aikido community as a whole.
Then, with the huge rise in popularity of Internet discussion forums, the relatively small number of folks who had become aware of these teachers started to talk about their experiences. A small group of teachers from outside of the Aikido community began to have regular dialogue, not without significant dissension in the ranks, with the folks from the Aikido community who seriously participate on the forums.
An outgrowth of these discussions has been a small number of seminars conducted around the country by various teachers specifically designed for Aikido practitioners, even teachers. This group represents a core of serious Aikido teachers and students who are changing the way they practice, even how they define the goals of their practice.
So far, this change taking place is far below the radar for most Aikido folks. The majority of the teachers I know don't even participate on the forums, didn't go to any of the Aiki Expos, haven't read much at all about the history of Aikido, and remain blissfully unaware of what's coming. They are happy with what they've been doing, happy with what they've gotten from their teachers, and happy that their students regard them as being skillful and worth training with.
So what will happen as more and more people start to be exposed to another paradigm concerning their art? What will people think when they find that what they'd been told about Daito Ryu, our parent art, simply wasn't true; that there were other teachers equally skilled in "aiki" as the Founder; that there are teachers of "aiki" from outside the Aikido community whose skills match or even exceed any of the top teachers we hold as models, that with proper instruction and hard work, it doesn't have to take thirty years or more to develop an understanding of high level principles?
Right now, this realization has created a crisis for many people. I have good friends who have quit Aikido, in some cases with some anger involved. They have wa;led away from years of dedication to the art and their teachers feeling that the "goods" had been denied them; that some sort of conspiracy has existed to keep knowledge away from them. Others, more realistic in their assessment of the situation in my opinion, have found themselves unable to continue training in their home Aikido dojos because their new found training methods and the skills evolving from them created too much dissonance with the dominant paradigm in the dojo.
Even the teachers who are now changing how they practice have had a hard time finding their place in the community. Imagine being a 6th or 7th Dan in an organization headed by a Japanese Shihan. This Shihan defines what happens in the organization; he is the origin from which authority flows. Now suddenly you have developed a different source or sources of inspiration. What are you going to do? Your Aikido is deviating from the accepted model. In fact that model may be more sophisticated by magnitudes than the generally accepted model. How will that effect your place in the organization? Your relationship with your teacher?
I believe that most folks, for the time being, will ignore what is happening and pretend it doesn't exist or that it isn't important. Most folks will opt for the status quo. Revolutions do not happen easily, they happen when an imbalance gets too great. The revolution in Aikido will not be televised, it will not be conducted by the leaders of the art, it will shake things up, and it will split the community, it will close dojos, it may shrink the art rather than grow it.
Obviously, the best option for students who wish to pursue a deeper understanding of "aiki" principles, including "internal power" and related subjects, is to find a dojo in which the teacher is qualified to teach these things. These are few and far between and some exposure to folks who have these skills is required for newbies to recognize who has them and who doesn't.
For the vast majority of people training in Aikido this isn't an option. There simply are no teachers locally for them to train with who have this kind of skill. Of course the REALLY serious student packs up and moves to where the teacher is. That's a given. It is also a given that many folks consider themselves to be serious who wouldn't consider that option. So rather than indulge in a debate about what the word serious really means, let's instead be realistic. 99.9% of the so-called serious practitioners would not move simply in order to train with a different teacher. So what options do they have? Well, they can trot off to one of the increasing number of seminars with the various teachers who are intent on sharing their skills with the Aikido public. But the question is, then what do you do?
Can you go back to your dojo and secretly work on the solo exercises you've been taught and then keep training just as you had been so no one realizes? What happens when you aren't falling down as easily as before? How will you handle it when your teacher corrects you for doing something that just worked quite well but isn't what the rest of the class is doing? When that starts happening every night? What will you think when you get removed form the instructor's roster because you start teaching stuff that isn't on the syllabus? These things are already happening out there. I expect them to happen more and more.
It's no easier if you are a teacher. So you've suddenly found that teacher who can show you how to develop the kind of Aikido skills which only the legendary had... you trot off to as many seminars as you can, perhaps invite this fellow to your dojo repeatedly. Your Aikido, your whole view of Aikido, starts to change, it's radically different than what you had been doing. You are so excited, it's what you had been looking for all along. But what do your students think about all of this?
I can guarantee that there is not universal rejoicing over this new direction. Remember what we said about change? People don't like it. The fact that you have recovered your Beginner's Mind for the first time in decades may be great for you nut it is not, in the minds of many students, what they are looking for in their guru. You are supposed to be the source for them. For as much as two or more decades some of them have been doing their level best to be you. Some of them have gotten pretty close and a certain status and authority has derived from that. Then you go and start showing everybody a whole new paradigm at which the most senior instructor at the dojo isn't any better than the new guys. What do you expect them to say? "gee. I am so glad to get back to the place I was in my Aikido 20 years ago when I couldn't do anything and felt like an idiot all the time." Of course not. I would actually predict an inverse relationship between who receptive folks will be to this sudden change of direction and how long they have trained. This is exactly what has happened in one dojo with which I am familiar.
So I think people need to give some thought to managing this change which is coming. If you try to change things too fast you can expect to be isolated, from your dojo, from your teacher, from your organization, whatever. Like all my friends in high school who got "born again", the new convert to "internal skills" training is apt to go around endlessly telling anyone who will listen about the "Good Word". That same "I am saved and you are going to Hell" thinking exists in this community as well. If you aren't doing this secret training only the select know about, everything you are doing will do, and have ever done is crap. Eric Hoffer had a lot to say about the True Believer and it wasn't all that positive.
I don't really know how to advise the average Aikido student who wants to take his Aikido to a different level. I do not anticipate that you'll get much support from your community. I also don't think that going off on ytour own and working in your garage going exercises given you by a teacher you see twice a year will do anything terribly worth while. You are going to have to move. Sorry.
For the dojo head who is engaging on this study, I would recommend that you create space for your students who can't or don't wish to come along on your new journey. In my own dojo I feel that we have been moving fairly smoothly through a period of very rapid change. I think that this is due to my efforts to connect everything new that we are doing to what we have done before. I take all the advanced principles and try to connect them to the kihon waza so that people have a feeling of flow from what they've worked so hard to master towards the new paradigm. If they have a sense that what we are doing is simply the next step towards being good at what they've already been doing, that sense of radical change is made far less intimidating.
And, I would say to all those embarking on this new direction of Aikido study, keep it on a "need to know" basis. It is just not going to make your life easier with your sempai or your teacher. Pretty much guaranteed.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Aikido - Martial Arts - Fighting
Maybe its because Aikido has positioned itself as a martial arts with a different values system... maybe its because many of its practitioners are arrogant when they talk about the art, maybe its because so many of its practitioners are woefully ignorant about other martial arts (although any more so than the practitioners of those arts are of Aikido)... whatever the reason, Aikido seems to come into more criticism for not being an effective fighting style than any other art.
First of all, I question the assumption that the only measure for a martial art is fighting effectiveness. Who would maintain that Kendo and Judo aren't martial arts? Who would maintain that either is an "effective" fighting style? Are Iaido and Kyudo not considered martial arts? They are done solo and have no emphasis whatever on winning over anyone other than oneself. Are they not worthy practices for their own sake without considerations of whether they would defeat another art?
It has been stated many times, by many people, that non-violence without the ability to defend oneself is just wishful thinking. I think that history would indicate that something else entirely is required for non-violence, or pacifism. The practitioners of Gandhi's satyagraha had no martial skills. They were ordinary people from various walks of life yet few would deny that they were peaceful warriors of the first order. The Freedom Riders of the 1960's had no fighting skills nor would they have used them if they had had them.
What is required to be non-violent is depth of character. What is required to be a pacifist is the ability to over come the fear of death. The followers of Gandhi and King walked unhesitatingly into situations in which they KNEW they would be beaten, perhaps killed, and they marched anyway; without the back-up of great destructive martial skill or weaponry of any kind other than their moral force.
Why does everyone hark back to the 1930's when talking about what Aikido lacks? Why do so few people look at how O-Sensei changed the techniques he had learned and taught as Daito Ryu and then, later, as Aiki Budo into what became Aikido after the war? The Founder taught actively until his death in 1969. He frequently resided in Tokyo and taught at Headquarters, in addition he lived and taught in Iwama as well as traveling to the dojos of his various soto-deshi like Hikitsuchi Michio in Kumomoto and Tanaka Bansen in Osaka. Whatever happened to Aikido after the war, O-Sensei was an integral part of it.
There seem to be two ideas which come up frequently in discussions of Aikido's so-called "failure" as a martial art. First, is the idea that somehow O-Sensei's son and the other post war teachers of the art took the art in a direction that the Founder either wasn't really aware of or didn't approve of. O-Sensei's statement towards the end of his life that "no one is doing my Aikido" is taken to mean that he felt that the art had gone wrong somehow in losing its martial character.
Actually, I personally take an opposite approach to that statement... I happen to believe that what he meant by that statement was that the various people he saw doing Aikido were too focused on technique and not enough on the spiritual side if the art. I think that, human nature being what it is, it was easier for many practitioners to focus on hard physical training and mastery of technique than it was for them to really try to understand statements like "Budo is Love" or the Founder's assertions that the art was not about fighting and that fighting destroyed the spirit of Aikido.
The second idea that seems to form the foundation of the critique of Aikido is the belief that post war Aikido represents a degenerate form of the art that existed in the pre-war period. I would maintain that it was intentionally different, not a degeneration, but an evolution. Japan's defeat in the war was a traumatic event for old school Japanese like the Founder. So much of the Founder's thinking placed Japan at the center of the spiritual universe. Additionally, he was a man who had spent his entire life as a martial artist. It stretches ones credulity, really to the point of absurdity, to think that the defeat of Japan, the abdication of the Emperor, and the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, would not have shaken this man's assumptions to the core.
In an age in which real fighting involves high technology, in which a city can disappear in the blink of an eye, how could one not reassess ones vision of what training was all about, what it purpose really was, or even did it still have a purpose? It is clear from reading the Founder's post war statements that he saw Aikido as the perfect martial art for the post war world. I see absolutely no evidence that this was because he felt it was a superior fighting system. It was precisely because what he believed was the transformational nature of the practice and its philosophical and spiritual underpinning that Aikido was an art that fit the new, modern, post war world. It is also clear that he believed that the art had the power to change the world for the better in a way that would prevent a repetition of the nuclear nightmare which Japan had just endured.
Unquestionably, the post war teachers who inherited the responsibility for making all this happen knew that they would need to translate the Founder's extremely esoteric expression of this vision to something that was comprehensible to a modern Japanese audience and even an international community of practitioners. Kisshomaru Ueshiba, Osawa Kisaburo, Yamaguchi Seigo, and others developed the training of the young deshi who would eventually go forth and spread the art around the world. Teachers like Hikitsuchi Sensei, Abe Sensei and Sunadomari Sensei in particular tried to pass on an Aikido that contained the essence of the Founder's spiritual perspective. I can't think of one of these teachers who seemed to think that martial application against another trained fighter was the central purpose of training in the art.
Now I am not what anyone would call a pacifist... I am non-violent up to a point. I actually do believe that ones Aikido should "work" at least within the stated context of the practice. But the practice has a form. If that form is absent, it becomes something else. The Founder quite consciously did not have a ground fighting component in his art. It wasn't that he forgot... it was purposeful. The techniques of Aikido got larger than their Daito Ryu antecedents. This also wasn't just some random occurrence, the move away from martially applicable small technique to a larger type of execution focusing on internalizing certain principles both in the body and in the mind was done, I think, specifically to take the practitioner away from the fighting mind. Aikido was meant to be less practical for fighting.
The alternative is to believe that the post war transmitters of Aikido, many of whom had some background in koryu or competitive styles like judo or kendo, accidentally created a less practical art that lacked many of the components required by a system that was geared for fighting. As if they didn't know any better.
Aikido is a practice that stands on its own. It has its reson d'etre. There are a million people world wide practicing Aikido, more in countries like the US and France than in Japan by all accounts. It would certainly benefit from an infusion of influence from outside the art,not to make it a better fighting art, but simply to make it better at what it purports to be, a transformative practice which focuses on balancing forces, external and internal, emotional, social, political, whatever. It is a practice that, should, help to make us less fearful. While the practitioners of the various martial arts out there can all do certain things that I cannot do, I can do all sorts of things which they cannot. The fact that they do not care to do the things that I can do is of little concern to me. Aikido folks do not need to let the folks from other martial arts set the criteria for how we value our art. It is quite possible that I could defeat every mixed martial artist in the neighborhood and still have Aikido that isn't very good and isn't fulfilling on any level the mission set for the art by its Founder.
First of all, I question the assumption that the only measure for a martial art is fighting effectiveness. Who would maintain that Kendo and Judo aren't martial arts? Who would maintain that either is an "effective" fighting style? Are Iaido and Kyudo not considered martial arts? They are done solo and have no emphasis whatever on winning over anyone other than oneself. Are they not worthy practices for their own sake without considerations of whether they would defeat another art?
It has been stated many times, by many people, that non-violence without the ability to defend oneself is just wishful thinking. I think that history would indicate that something else entirely is required for non-violence, or pacifism. The practitioners of Gandhi's satyagraha had no martial skills. They were ordinary people from various walks of life yet few would deny that they were peaceful warriors of the first order. The Freedom Riders of the 1960's had no fighting skills nor would they have used them if they had had them.
What is required to be non-violent is depth of character. What is required to be a pacifist is the ability to over come the fear of death. The followers of Gandhi and King walked unhesitatingly into situations in which they KNEW they would be beaten, perhaps killed, and they marched anyway; without the back-up of great destructive martial skill or weaponry of any kind other than their moral force.
Why does everyone hark back to the 1930's when talking about what Aikido lacks? Why do so few people look at how O-Sensei changed the techniques he had learned and taught as Daito Ryu and then, later, as Aiki Budo into what became Aikido after the war? The Founder taught actively until his death in 1969. He frequently resided in Tokyo and taught at Headquarters, in addition he lived and taught in Iwama as well as traveling to the dojos of his various soto-deshi like Hikitsuchi Michio in Kumomoto and Tanaka Bansen in Osaka. Whatever happened to Aikido after the war, O-Sensei was an integral part of it.
There seem to be two ideas which come up frequently in discussions of Aikido's so-called "failure" as a martial art. First, is the idea that somehow O-Sensei's son and the other post war teachers of the art took the art in a direction that the Founder either wasn't really aware of or didn't approve of. O-Sensei's statement towards the end of his life that "no one is doing my Aikido" is taken to mean that he felt that the art had gone wrong somehow in losing its martial character.
Actually, I personally take an opposite approach to that statement... I happen to believe that what he meant by that statement was that the various people he saw doing Aikido were too focused on technique and not enough on the spiritual side if the art. I think that, human nature being what it is, it was easier for many practitioners to focus on hard physical training and mastery of technique than it was for them to really try to understand statements like "Budo is Love" or the Founder's assertions that the art was not about fighting and that fighting destroyed the spirit of Aikido.
The second idea that seems to form the foundation of the critique of Aikido is the belief that post war Aikido represents a degenerate form of the art that existed in the pre-war period. I would maintain that it was intentionally different, not a degeneration, but an evolution. Japan's defeat in the war was a traumatic event for old school Japanese like the Founder. So much of the Founder's thinking placed Japan at the center of the spiritual universe. Additionally, he was a man who had spent his entire life as a martial artist. It stretches ones credulity, really to the point of absurdity, to think that the defeat of Japan, the abdication of the Emperor, and the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, would not have shaken this man's assumptions to the core.
In an age in which real fighting involves high technology, in which a city can disappear in the blink of an eye, how could one not reassess ones vision of what training was all about, what it purpose really was, or even did it still have a purpose? It is clear from reading the Founder's post war statements that he saw Aikido as the perfect martial art for the post war world. I see absolutely no evidence that this was because he felt it was a superior fighting system. It was precisely because what he believed was the transformational nature of the practice and its philosophical and spiritual underpinning that Aikido was an art that fit the new, modern, post war world. It is also clear that he believed that the art had the power to change the world for the better in a way that would prevent a repetition of the nuclear nightmare which Japan had just endured.
Unquestionably, the post war teachers who inherited the responsibility for making all this happen knew that they would need to translate the Founder's extremely esoteric expression of this vision to something that was comprehensible to a modern Japanese audience and even an international community of practitioners. Kisshomaru Ueshiba, Osawa Kisaburo, Yamaguchi Seigo, and others developed the training of the young deshi who would eventually go forth and spread the art around the world. Teachers like Hikitsuchi Sensei, Abe Sensei and Sunadomari Sensei in particular tried to pass on an Aikido that contained the essence of the Founder's spiritual perspective. I can't think of one of these teachers who seemed to think that martial application against another trained fighter was the central purpose of training in the art.
Now I am not what anyone would call a pacifist... I am non-violent up to a point. I actually do believe that ones Aikido should "work" at least within the stated context of the practice. But the practice has a form. If that form is absent, it becomes something else. The Founder quite consciously did not have a ground fighting component in his art. It wasn't that he forgot... it was purposeful. The techniques of Aikido got larger than their Daito Ryu antecedents. This also wasn't just some random occurrence, the move away from martially applicable small technique to a larger type of execution focusing on internalizing certain principles both in the body and in the mind was done, I think, specifically to take the practitioner away from the fighting mind. Aikido was meant to be less practical for fighting.
The alternative is to believe that the post war transmitters of Aikido, many of whom had some background in koryu or competitive styles like judo or kendo, accidentally created a less practical art that lacked many of the components required by a system that was geared for fighting. As if they didn't know any better.
Aikido is a practice that stands on its own. It has its reson d'etre. There are a million people world wide practicing Aikido, more in countries like the US and France than in Japan by all accounts. It would certainly benefit from an infusion of influence from outside the art,not to make it a better fighting art, but simply to make it better at what it purports to be, a transformative practice which focuses on balancing forces, external and internal, emotional, social, political, whatever. It is a practice that, should, help to make us less fearful. While the practitioners of the various martial arts out there can all do certain things that I cannot do, I can do all sorts of things which they cannot. The fact that they do not care to do the things that I can do is of little concern to me. Aikido folks do not need to let the folks from other martial arts set the criteria for how we value our art. It is quite possible that I could defeat every mixed martial artist in the neighborhood and still have Aikido that isn't very good and isn't fulfilling on any level the mission set for the art by its Founder.
The Body Has a Mind of Its Own
This book, by Sandra and Mathew Blakeslee, is a fascinating exploration of how the human brain uses multiple mapping systems to organize the body, its space, anyone and anything in its space, and so on.
Ever wonder how you can pick up a bokken and simply know exactly where its tip is, just by "feel"? Or how, if you grab someone's wrist, you can actually visualize where all their other limbs are with your eyes closed?
For many years I heard my teacher, Saotome Sensei, when describing the connection between two partners, "It's on the surface..." all the while gently running his hand along the surface of your arm. He would then proceed to simply rest his hand on your arm or shoulder and your balance would break. No discernible change in pressure at the point of contact was felt, your body just started moving. Sensei would then start talking about "auras". For years I had no idea what he was talking about. Even when, after a quarter century of training, I could begin to duplicate the results, I still didn't have any idea why what I was doing actually worked.
This book explains why much of what seems magical about "aiki" can be explained in terms of "body mapping". It has much to say about how and why practice actually produces improvement in performance, also how too much practice can actually create a mapping disorder which degrades high level performance.
Personally, I look at daily practice differently after reading this book. The need to start slow and get the "feel" of a movement, a connection, a technique before doing a lot of repetitions incorrectly has been powerfully driven home.
Anyway, I think that any teacher of the art of Aikido can find all sorts of fascinating areas for exploration in this book. It is very much non-technical with lots of descriptions of research done by people in a variety of fields all of which touch on body mapping. I would really recommend this one, especially to instructors, but really anyone who is involved in a practice of some sort which involves the body. It gives new meaning to mind - body connection.
For this title go to:
Aikido Eastside Bookstore
Ever wonder how you can pick up a bokken and simply know exactly where its tip is, just by "feel"? Or how, if you grab someone's wrist, you can actually visualize where all their other limbs are with your eyes closed?
For many years I heard my teacher, Saotome Sensei, when describing the connection between two partners, "It's on the surface..." all the while gently running his hand along the surface of your arm. He would then proceed to simply rest his hand on your arm or shoulder and your balance would break. No discernible change in pressure at the point of contact was felt, your body just started moving. Sensei would then start talking about "auras". For years I had no idea what he was talking about. Even when, after a quarter century of training, I could begin to duplicate the results, I still didn't have any idea why what I was doing actually worked.
This book explains why much of what seems magical about "aiki" can be explained in terms of "body mapping". It has much to say about how and why practice actually produces improvement in performance, also how too much practice can actually create a mapping disorder which degrades high level performance.
Personally, I look at daily practice differently after reading this book. The need to start slow and get the "feel" of a movement, a connection, a technique before doing a lot of repetitions incorrectly has been powerfully driven home.
Anyway, I think that any teacher of the art of Aikido can find all sorts of fascinating areas for exploration in this book. It is very much non-technical with lots of descriptions of research done by people in a variety of fields all of which touch on body mapping. I would really recommend this one, especially to instructors, but really anyone who is involved in a practice of some sort which involves the body. It gives new meaning to mind - body connection.
For this title go to:
Aikido Eastside Bookstore
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Daito Ryu Roppokai
The Daito Ryu Roppokai Study Group at Aikido Eastside just completed its second weekend seminar of the year with Howard Popkin Sensei,direct student of Okamoto Seigo, head of the system.
The thing that has most struck me about the Roppokai training method is the way they use exercises that are very precisely targeted to elucidate specific principles and ingrain the proper body connections to use those principles in waza. This was quite different from the way I learned Aikido. When I started Aikido class back in 1976, I simply joined in and tried to do what the other students were doing. I think the first technique I tried was shiho-nage. The amount of complex body skills required to actually do that technique effectively made it virtually impossible to do anything but fall back on some basic body mechanics and muscle power.
The Roppokai methodology really stays away form applied waza in favor of paired exercises which allow the student to identify and practice very specific skills. One can practice achieving a balance break forwards, backwards, sideways, angles, etc without the distraction of worrying about the various applications that might come off that balance break. This focus on what I would call the "entry" keeps the stress of practice down and associates the motor skills with a relaxed mind.
Execution of these various balance breaks ranges from extreme slow motion in which one can examine every minute detail, fell the result of each change on angle of the hand, every movement of the hip or bend of the knee, to faster execution in which flow becomes most important. Popkin Sensei consistently reminds one to not be attached to the success of a technique but rather to choose one or two specific principles and be very mindful of just those elements. I find this approach incredibly effective. It is virtually impossible to keep all of the elements, even the essential ones, in ones mind simultaneously. In our Roppokai training we might do a certain exercise one day focusing on one or two elements, then turn around the next day and do the same exercise putting attention on a different set of elements.
Instruction is totally body centered. Do this with your elbow and that happens with your partner, move your hip this way and your partner tips that way. I have this discussion with Aikido friends who were trained as I was... we were expected on some level to "steal the technique". Our teacher would do something completely incomprehensible and we were supposed to figure it out by seeing it or feeling it. The problem with this is that when you start talking about so-called internal power, the movements are, well, internal. If no one teaches you what to look for and what that feels like, you'll simply miss it. Our brains largely filter out things we don't have names for or things which don't fit the dominant paradigm under which we are currently functioning.
It's rather like the experiment they did with the bouncing ball and the gorilla. A group of folks was asked to watch a guy bouncing a basketball on a TV screen. They were instructed to count the number of bounces until told to stop. At one point a man in a gorilla suit ran across the screen. Most of the participants failed to even notice him.
So in Aikido waza, if you do not already have an idea what to be looking for, you will most likely not see or feel it, even when it is being done on you. One teacher of aiki, whose name I can't remember, said "If you understand what was just done to you, it wasn't aiki." With principles functioning on such a subtle level, only the most extraordinary person would be likely to both perceive the essential principles of high level technique and be able to translate them into specific muscle movements, joint alignments, or energetic shifts.
This is, more than anything else, the most important thing I have gotten out of training in the Roppokai system thus far. You are not taking anything away from the student by providing very specific instruction. You are training them to be able to see. By ingraining an understanding of the various principles functioning into both the conscious mind and the body you create a student who can look at almost any teacher's technique and see the essential elements functioning. Rather than coming in Friday night and leaving Sunday night no wiser, a properly trained seminar attendee should be able to take full advantage of exposure to a high level instructor. Even when a teacher has a different style or approach, the student who understands principle based practice should be able to see what principles are functioning. The principles are universal even though the outer form may be different.
Anyway, every time I train with Popkin Sensei, I come away tangibly improved and with a greater understanding, not just of the Roppokai techniques on which we are working, but of what I am trying to do with my Aikido waza. I am increasingly basing my Aikido instruction on a methodology which strives to accomplish the same thing.
So, once again, I find my head swimming with technique, principle, body connections, etc. I doubt I will have digested more then a small portion of it all before Popkin Sensei returns in December. I'm already looking forward to that return.
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Kihon Waza DVD
A new video title was released this month!
Kihon Waza, the first in a series of DVDs focusing on basic Aikido technique, was just released. Meant for Beginner and Intermediate students of Aikido, the material may be of interest to those instructors who have the responsibility of teaching Beginners themselves.
Techniques demonstrated and explained in detail by myself. The video was shot at Aikido Heiwa in Lynnwood< WA and edited by Will Holloway, who also edited my Kumitachi 6 - 12 DVD.
For this title and many others go to:
Aikidodvds.com
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