George Ledyard's All Things Aikido

Open Letter to My Students

2011-07-04T14:25:00.000-07:00

Hi Everyone,
After much reflection in the post Olson Sensei aftermath, I decided I needed to write something about what I see as the purpose of our art and how important the Dojo community is in preserving and transmitting it. I wanted to wait until I wasn't upset any more about the abysmal attendance at the event, which by the way, did not even break even. I was, at the time, embarrassed that my guest brought seven students all the way from Montana while the majority of our own folks, and especially our Beginner student population did not participate at all. Anyway, all that is what it is. My initial reaction was to read everyone the "riot act", which I realize simply isn't productive or effective. People cannot be forced to care about something they don't. So, I have decided to explain what I believe about Aikido, and what I see as the mission of Aikido Eastside. Folks can decide what these things mean to them, personally.

Aikido is a form of Budo. Budo is basically the use of the martial arts for personal transformation. Aikido as Budo is a "Michi" or Martial "WAY" (the "do" in Aiki-do). O-Sensei, the Founder, actually believed that through Aikido, the whole world could be brought into a state of harmony; he called our art "The Way of Peace". For him, Budo was a life and death matter. Given the right level of commitment one could truly become a better person, less fearful, stronger, braver, more compassionate. One could, in his or her own Mind and Body understand that everything in the universe is essentially connected. His creation of Aikido represents a radical transformation of how Budo was viewed historically. It is a unique art. It is not a "hobby", it is not a "sport", it is not a "workout", it is a Michi, a Way. The central maxim of Aikido is "masakatsu, agatsu" "True Victory is Self Victory".

I was blessed to stumble on to Aikido 35 years ago. My teacher, Mitsugi Saotome Sensei, trained under the Founder himself, for fifteen years. He is one of the true giants of post-war Aikido. Sensei's mission has been to create a line of "transmission" for the teachings of his teacher and to try to prevent the decline that often sets in after the Founder of a given art passes on. Josh Drachman and I have been greatly honored to be a direct part of this "transmission". We have been admitted to a select group which Sensei refers to as the Ueshiba Juku (named after O-Sensei's first dojo back in the 30's). To Sensei this represents the fact that we are in the direct line of transmission from the Founder, to himself, and then to us. I once asked him if that meant that at some point in the future, one or more of my own students would be a part of the Ueshiba Juku and carry on the "transmission". He replied "Absolutely!"

This is what Aikido Eastside is about. It represents the base of support for a number of us who are trying to attain some level of mastery in this amazing art. It is the place we come to work on our own understanding, it is the place we come to share what we know with the generations who are coming along afterwards. We serve as a support for other absolutely amazing teachers who come through to share their mastery with us and help us along this Path. I don't think that many of our members actually realize what we have here at Aikido Eastside. Often it takes "getting out" to realize what you have. We literally have people moving to our area to train with us. We have people coming from all over the US and even overseas to attend events. Some come specifically so that they can work with our students because they are know to be such great partners for` this training.

But this entire enterprise is dependent on committed participants. Without students who are "hungry", teachers cannot teach, no matter what their level of skill. We are totally co-dependent in our community. A student cannot progress without good partners. Teachers cannot teach without wiling students. Nothing we do is in isolation. People often think that it's not up to them, that someone else will make the effort. They can simply show up to the dojo and learn some interesting stuff, get a bit of exercise, pay dues for the privilege, and go home. If the issue were simply the survival of the Dojo over time, that would be fine. But that isn't what this whole thing is about. A Dojo literally means "Place for the Transmission or Practice of the Way". We have no equivalent in our culture. The success or failure of this transmission is entirely dependent on the people involved.

Aikido, and Budo in general, is endangered. Modern life places ever increasing demands of people's time, we are convinced that we need to fill our time with more and more things, just to keep pace. The number one reason for folks quitting or not training as much as they say they'd like is "lack of time". I have talked with various teachers and virtually all of them say that it is difficult, if near impossible, to find people who wish to train like we trained. Yet the fact of the matter is that every single person who ever mastered some art or pursued a spiritual path had exactly the same amount of time as we do. There have been 24 hours in a day since pre-history. If people allow themselves to become convinced that their time is scarce, then the very things that in an affluent society such as ours, in which we are not completely focused on not starving each day, we could be pursuing, making ourselves better, making our world better, then arts which contain what I call "old knowledge" will simply die out. They may still exist, just as you can see lots of Aikido being done out there, but in fact, there is very little truly deep Aikido being done. The tendency is to shape the art to fill the needs and abilities of the participants. Without a critical mass of committed folks, the art declines. Even the truly committed end up constrained by the fact that there are few who can or will train with them. Their own ability to achieve excellence is dependent on have a place which is supportive of that endeavor and offers an environment focused on attainment.

I realize that only a very few will ever devote themselves to any art the way my peers and I have done. It is the natural order of things that there always be a pyramid of sorts in which the number of the folks at the top is exponentially smaller than the number of folks at the bottom. There are an infinite number of gradations in this "transmission" of Aikido. Some will take their understanding to great depth and others will just touch the surface. Regardless, there is a certain commitment required to really participate in the "transmission". Below a certain level of time and effort, nothing is really happening... nothing is really being transmitted. I have never had the expectation that more than a few of our students will go the distance and run dojos of their own some day. It's a fact that less than ten percent will even stay long enough to get a Shodan. But what I do expect is that when the students are training, they do so seriously. That what they are doing and learning is really at some place along the continuum of of the knowledge we are attempting to transmit.

When people tell me they don't have time to train due to job, family, other concerns, what they are saying is really that it simply isn't important enough for them to prioritize their training. I won't use myself as an example, because I realize that I am not in any way, shape, or form typical or representative. But I think we have one of the finest examples I know of right at our dojo of someone who has managed to combine all of the elements of a typical person's life and still take his Aikido to a highly accomplished level. Alex Nakamura Sensei has had a family, a career, etc and still, he has been on the mat three times a week year in year out for 40 + years. When folks tell me they can't do that, I simply disagree. They could, but they choose not to. This is every person's right and responsibility. To choose. People will each choose differently, according to his or her individual concerns. But everyone should understand that these choices do not occur in a vacuum.

The folks in our dojo represent a tiny minority within our society. The demographics say that only one percent of the populace has any interest in martial arts at all. Of the folks that do train, a very small minority has any interest in the traditional arts, of which Aikido is one. Kids do Tae Kwan Do, and these days young male adults (the bilk of martial arts participants) want to fight and are doing Mixed Martial Arts. So the Aikido community in general represents a miniscule segment of the population. Then, consider that fact that of the many Aikido that do exist, only a small number can offer the chance to attain real excellence. I think it should be obvious that, whereas the numbers would indicate that Aikido is doing ok, not what it was fifteen years ago, but ok... the real issue is that while the art has grown, the commitment level of the students involved in the enterprise has not. Aikido, in the sense that it has anything to do with the art founded by O-Sensei is quite simply endangered. So, in a certain sense, the folks that do train and do care about this art of ours, have a greater responsibility rather than lesser to help save the art from a possible demise. When everyone assumes that someone else will make the effort, that someone else will support that seminar, that someone else will clean the dojo before the guest arrives, that training happens when there's spare time (which there seldom is), art is doomed.

Ikeda Sensei expressed his belief that this is simply an inevitable process. I am simply unwilling to accept that. Our school's mission is to "transmit" the art on some level that the Founder would find respectable, that my teacher, Saotome Sensei, feels justifies the efforts of his entire adult life. The dojo is at a fifteen year low in membership. This is due to the demographic issues I previously noted. Some teachers have reacted to this shift by designing the training to better fit the concerns of the larger population. They create what my good friend, James Bartee (retired Secret Service Agent), calls "happy dojos". These dojos survive because they have made the practice so user friendly that it has very little to do with the art as conveyed by my teacher. Dojos have become social centers where like minded folks get together and interact doing some interesting things and getting some exercise. But when this happens the "transmission" is broken. Nothing of any great depth is occurring, no great skill can be attained. Whatever personal transformation is taking place is very shallow. I will not do this. I have consistently resisted the temptation to dumb down the art to get more students. I have refused to construct our training to make people feel "as if" something of value were happening when it really isn't.

This dojo exists to allow anyone with the talent and motivation to become truly excellent at our art. I fully expect that some of our students will be top level teachers someday, part of the leadership of the art after I am gone. Whether or not people can or will make that commitment themselves, I hope they can see that it is an admirable effort and needs to be supported. I want every single person at our dojo to experience an Aikido that, at least on some level, has "aiki", helps them understand how we are all connected, that gives them some capability martially, helps them to understand Mind-Body-Spirit unification, etc.

Now Josh Drachman Sensei and I are actively on this Path, albeit substantially further along than you. To this end there are things that happen in the dojo that are, first and foremost, geared for our own training. The visits of Howard Popkin, Dan Harden, Ushiro Kenji, etc are really for our own training. We share it with interested folks. If we share the expense collectively, it is maintainable over time. But if it wasn't, we'd be finding a way to do the training anyway.

The Aikido seminars, on the other hand, are largely for you. Whereas I get a lot out of them myself, I don't need to do these for my own progress. But you folks do. In any dojo, there is a dominant paradigm as to how an art is taught, how it is explained and demonstrated. There is a certain point in ones training at which, if you were going to "get it" the way it's being taught, you would have already. Change in perspective is crucial. That's the primary reason there are seminars. Over and over my friends who are teachers talk about how one of their students had some epiphany at a seminar when they finally understood something their own teacher had been saying all along. It was the change in the perspective that did it.
When I invite a teacher to our dojo, I do so because I think that, at some level, this teacher is at the top of his or her game. We have hosted some of the finest Aikido in the world within our doors. When we get to the point at which only a quarter to a third of our membership participates in one of our Aikido seminars, then basically the process is broken. We are in serious danger of losing that critical mass needed to maintain excellence at our dojo. We have some fantastic instructors developing. But I am not seeing where the folks are in the pipeline coming along behind them, progressing in such a way that it pushes the seniors forward, rather than the seniors trying to pull folks along.

Basically, when a certain point is reached at a dojo, where not enough folks are interested in training at the three times a week (consistently) that it takes to progress, when dojo events happen and only a handful support those events, when the same very small group consistently shows up for the work parties that maintain the dojo, then that dojo is in trouble. Now perhaps our dojo is ion trouble because Aikido is in trouble (which is actually my belief) or perhaps there are things we are doing wrong. In any case, I think we need to take a look at what we are doing, why we are doing it, and what we have that so many are envious of and we are treating so cavalierly.

Many of my fellow teachers have solved these issues by being extremely hands on, very control oriented, by building up the "Sensei Mystique" I have always seen that as a trap, personally. When folks start to invest that much in a teacher, there's a point at which that teacher starts to think he or she deserves it. That's a trap and it isn't my style. I have noticed that at none of the dojos at which things are run that way, are they producing top level students who will be leaders in the future. So, in exchange for running a very tight ship with folks who really respect and listen to their teacher, they sacrifice (this is just my opinion) developing students who are independent, capable of progressing on their own, keeping the dojo going after that teacher is gone. I have not done this. I have been purposely low key on the whole "Sensei" thing. I ask the membership to do certain things, they do what they want anyway. It's fairly amusing how, the more I have pushed for certain things to happen over the years, the less likely they were to have happened. That's fine for me. It keeps me humble... no one can think I get too big for my britches when I get so many reminders of how little power or influence I actually have.

But I will say that I feel I have a number of students who look to be better than I am when I am gone. I have a dojo which would survive quite nicely if I were not there tomorrow. I have students whom I have made sure they have the personal relationships with teachers who could help them keep progressing if I were suddenly not around. I have set up blocks of training that have been kept going by the efforts of my students, not by my own efforts. Because I have had a hands off relationship with my students and the dojo, I have allowed those folks with the desire and the capacity to develop into leaders. These leaders within the dojo will someday be leaders within the whole Aikido community. I am not willing to sacrifice that in order to make people more responsive to my own leadership.

...

I have only one expectation of our students... that they are trying to be better. Otherwise they are wasting their own time and money and the time and effort of those teaching them and the partners who are training with them. I don't care how fast someone progresses, that's largely a matter of ability. O-Sensei was once asked which he would choose if he had two potential students in front of him, the one with great ability or the one who would work the hardest. He said that the one who works the hardest wins out every time. I am not asking that folks make Aikido the center of their lives. But I am asking for folks to do the minimum required to progress. I am asking that folks treat their membership in our dojo community as something important to them and not just an after thought. When we have a dojo cleanup, folks should consider it a responsibility of membership to participate, even if they can't actually go to the seminar... We hold three Aikido seminars each year.. just three. Participation of the membership in those three events is expected. Of course I have said this many times before and folks continue to ignore me. But I am saying this once again. IF you have the time, money, and commitment to take advantage of the other training we are offering, then great, bonus training for you. But our Aikido seminars are an integral part of your training and a responsibility of membership. When folks don't participate, they are essentially saying they don't respect me, they don't appreciate the dojo, and the don't really care about their training. When your instructors are telling you how important it is that you show up for an event and you don't bother, you are telling them their opinions don't matter. When I invite a close personal friend to my dojo to teach, a man who turned out 45 or so people when I taught at his dojo, and 2/3 of our own folks do not show up for even a part of the weekend, it is insulting to that guest and it's embarrassing for me. It makes those of us who have put so much of our time and effort into this art feel like we have been wasting our time because so few people care at all.

If you are a member of this dojo you are connected to every other member and the effort as a whole. Choosing to do less than you are capable of holds others back. I am not talking about the extraordinary effort to attain mastery or become a teacher. I am talking about the bottom line, baseline effort required to simply get better and to support the place you require to make that effort and the folks you rely on to do so. There is a point for any art at which the number of folks willing to make that effort can be outweighed by the number of folks who are not. At that point the art either gets dumbed down, which is what is happening to Aikido, or it ceases to be vibrant, developing and it loses it's vitality. Thinking that it is someone other than yourself who will determine which direction Aikido goes is a mistake. It is up to each of us, if we care at all about the outcome.

I have attached a document which has been posted on the board at the dojo for several years. It is supposed to be given to each new member when they enroll but this has fallen into inconsistency. So I am attaching it now for folks to read. I would especially point out the requirements that be met in order to be promoted past 4th Kyu. People are totally free to determine how much they train etc. But it is my job to set the "standard" for the dojo. This is something my teachers told me specifically. It isn't my teacher, or our organization... it isn't in comparison with any other school. It is my personal responsibility to set the standard for my students. So, folks are free to train any way they wish. But, if they wish to get ranking through me and Aikido Eastside, then a certain minimum effort is required. This is an effort standard, not a performance standard. It based on my assessment derived from several decades of practice of what it takes to progress in this art for the average student (not the talented whiz kid or the fanatic).

Thanks for your time. These things need to be said periodically, I think. Some folks have been around long enough to remember several of these, while others may have never heard this all before. I just want people to be conscious and intentional about what they are doing. While these are my expectations, no one is under any compulsion to meet them... that is entirely up to each individual.
- George

What Is Your Responsibility in Training?

2011-01-10T09:04:00.000-08:00

Ok, so I am attending a seminar with a teacher who decides to do a sword class. I am excited because this teacher's sword work is extraordinary and I love sword. The teacher started out with a basic flow exercise, which as it happens, is in the first chapter of his sword video which has been around since VHS days. He demonstrated then set folks to work. Folks were pretty much mangling the exercise so he stopped them and showed it again, this time a bit slower. The same thing happened. In fact it happened four times. By the end Sensei was furious. And, I have to say, I was furious.

Of course there were a few people in the room who were not folks from our organization. These folks did little or no sword at their home dojos so one could understand why they had issues. But the majority of these folks were regulars that I see every year at these events. Sensei pointed out that, in his uchi deshi days, O-Sensei would only show them something (no explanation at all) once or at most twice and they were expected to get it. He had just showed it four times, with explanation and folks were still pretty much exploring just about every way possible not to do what he had just shown.

My own partner was a person I had seen every year at this event. He never looked any different from year to year. Even with the added explanation I gave him as I walked him through it, he still never got it. All I could think was what a huge waste of everyone's time it was. The exercise in question was a basic drill. Sensei clearly intended for it to be the warm-up so he could build on it. Instead he spent half the class on it. He couldn't get to the good stuff because many (not all) folks couldn't do the most basic exercise.

I found myself asking what has happened to Aikido? It seems to have become the dumping ground for all the folks who, if they weren't doing Aikido, wouldn't be doing martial arts at all. They treat their training as if it is an afterthought done when everything else in their lives allows. It makes me crazy... Does anyone actually think that O-Sensei created this art as a hobby for middle class Americans to do in their spare time?

If this had been an isolated event, a bad day for whatever reason, then that would be one thing. But this happens all the time. Especially when we are talking about weapons work, which happens to be central to this teacher's Aikido. Sensei yells at everyone, they all look chagrined, then they go home and show up next time no better than they were the last time. What is the point? Year after year of not getting it, year after year of baby beginner exercises with no ability to move beyond in to something with some real content... What is the point?

I mentioned this to another friend and we agreed that, if we had been in a position of screwing up that badly with Sensei, one thing would absolutely happen. The next he time he saw us, we would be total and complete masters of that damned exercise. Sensei would never again have to say a word about our inability to do that particular set of movements.

Yet, what I see is not that kind of seriousness. If I had thought Sensei had meant me when he was criticizing the inability of the group to get what he was doing, I would have felt like going out in the parking lot and slitting my belly from embarrassment. Sensei was treating these folks like children because they were acting like children.

Why do people do this art who don't care enough about the art, their teacher, their fellow students, or their own training to fix things when they are broken? There are several teachers in our group who are perfectly capable of teaching these things and do so when asked. Way have I never seen any of these folks at my dojo asking for help on things like this? Why haven't any of us been asked to come to their dojos to do a workshop specifically on these elements which our teacher thinks are important enough to try to teach but the students are so weak in their fundamentals that Sensei can't even get them to do a simple beginner level exercise?

A few years ago I tried to help folks address their weak weapons work. I set up an event in which I invited two other 6th Dan level teachers from our organization to co teach a weapons seminar along with me. This was the A-Team of weapons teachers in our group and I was hoping to make it a yearly event with Sensei coming every fourth or` fifth year himself. Well, the event tanked. These very same folks who get yelled at by Sensei each year for their incompetence couldn't be bothered to come train with a bunch of American teachers, who could actually explain what Sensei is doing, and perhaps take folks up a level or two. No, folks continue to feel that it is more important to show up to train with Sensei with sub standard skills and waste his time and everyone else's than to actually go out of their way to train with a bunch of Americans who might have actually helped them to be better.

I find this attitude incomprehensible. If someone isn't trying to be good at this art, why do it. Quit and find something else one can be serious about. This is Budo. It is a serious pursuit. Many people take it very seriously. I think most of us are quite patient with beginners as they slowly figure stuff out... they are not the issue. I am talking about folks who have done Aikido for years and years, even decades, and still haven't bothered to put froth the effort to master the basics so that they can move on. Perhaps they tell themselves that it's their own practice and it's their business how much effort they put into it. But it's a group endeavor, not a solo practice. If it were iaido and you sucked, no one else would care. You could suck for decades and it wouldn't really effect anyone else's practice. But everything we do is paired. So when you get paired with someone who wants to train and you can't even hold your sword properly, you are wasting your partner's time. When the teacher has to address the group on issues that are simple beginner issues, it means that the teacher cannot take the class forward and do the things he or she might be capable of teaching.

Time after time I have seen Sensei start to do something really interesting and then have to change what he was intending and dumb it down for folks who never get any better, year after year. I pay the same amount to attend these events. I take the same time out of my life as these folks. Yet I can't get what I need from the training because these folks won't do the work.

Perhaps Sensei shouldn't even be teaching folks like this. In music someone at his level would never be teaching anyone but advanced student via "master classes". Less advanced student actually pay to watch these master classes. But Sensei has not chosen to do that. He still is trying to connect with the larger student population. I think that is admirable but I do not see that this same population understands that it is a privilege to train directly with someone like Sensei and that whenever you choose to get on the mat with him, you have a responsibility to work hard, take what he shows away with you, and come back better next time. That is the absolute minimum expectation. If you encounter something at a seminar that baffled you, you should make yourself crazy trying to get it. It should be gnawing at you constantly that you didn't get it.

This whole "we have all the time in the world" attitude makes me crazy. It's ok that I didn't get it this time just leads to a whole series of I didn't get it this times. Eventually, you have simply gotten into the habit of not getting it. You decide that you didn't get it, not because you have been too lazy to tear it apart and chew on it until you have figured it out, but that Sensei is "special", someone far beyond us mere mortals and it's ok that we don't get what he is doing.

This art of Aikido is amazing. It has the potential to take someone out into the unknown, to be trans-formative, to really change ones perspective on everything. perhaps change the world. But with folks treating it like a casual hobby placing it pretty much in a tertiary place of importance in their lives, or beyond, that not only won't happen, these folks end up impeding the efforts of the folks who do want to do the work. If folks don't want to train, they should get out of the way of those that do. I am not talking about the fact that people will make differing levels of commitment to their training. Some are striving for real mastery and other simply wish to attain a solid competency. I am talking about that group of folks who stay incompetent year after year because they will not work at it. Sure their are varying degrees of natural ability. Some folks pick some things up quicker than others. But, if you are one of the folks for whom things are difficult, you have to work harder. You don't just accept that you aren't any good and won't be. You strive harder. That's Budo.

This art requires serious people training seriously. The rest is a waste of time in my opinion.

O-Sensei and the Purpose of Aikido

2010-09-27T14:00:00.000-07:00

I spent this past weekend at Raso Hultgren Sensei's dojo in Missoula, MT training with my teacher, Mitsugi Saotome Sensei. As expected, the seminar was wonderful but I found Sensei's exposition particularly moving this time. I think that Sensei, having broken seventy now, is increasingly conscious of his "mission", begun over 35 years ago when he came to the United States to teach. Saotome Sensei has spent his entire adult life in the art of Aikido. He feels that the Aikido Founder instructed his personal students to, first of all understand the meaning of his teachings for themselves and then to transmit that understanding to students around the world. The Aikido my teacher was charged with transmitting was meant to be a trans-formative practice for the individuals who study the art and for the world, the goal being nothing less lofty than, the too often cliche, world peace.

Given the state of the world, both currently and historically, I find it difficult to wrap my mind around the whole concept of world peace. I think that the only way to even start to approach this idea is from the standpoint of how Aikido practice can transform the individual, because it all starts there, with the dedicated practitioners who pursue this practice, shaping their daily lives around an art that most people find, at best, to be rather exotic and mostly irrelevant to their daily concerns.

How could anyone think that any practice be important on any scale larger than the small community of the people who practice that art? I think it all stems from the belief that everything, every object, every being, literally everything in the universe is connected. So, just as Physics tells us that every particle in the whole universe is connected to every other particle, that a change in state in one will instantly, without temporal delay, reflect in a particle on he other side of the universe, so too does a change in any individual, on some level, effect every other human being.

These are heady ideas. But unless one has had some sort of mystic kensho experience in which he or she has directly perceived the truth of this reality it remains simply the kind of cosmic conjecture one does over wine with friends in ones living room,lacking in real substance or tangible reality. While I believe that Aikido practice, if done very seriously, for quite a long time can start to give one a real sense of this "universal connection" I think that the focus for most folks in the art should be on the aspect of how the training should be and can actually be, trans-formative on a personal level. As in the theory of the "tipping point", which deals with large scale changes in society and how they take place, if enough individuals engage in such a practice, there can really be an effect on the whole that seems to be greater than the actual numbers of folks making this change would seem to indicate.

The first thing that struck me about what Saotome Sensei discussed with us was that merely doing Aikido wasn't enough, that the trans-formative aspect of the art was not inherent in the doing of the art but rather one needed to do the art in a manner that was trans-formative. Sensei talked about how people are apt to simply incorporate all of the fears, insecurities, and aggression into their practice. Their Aikido is based on a defensive mindset and the hope is that, if one could simply achieve the kind of power that would allow one to defeat any enemy, that would allow one to be "safe" in this dangerous world.

Sensei stressed that this is not the Aikido of transformation. This is the Aikido of destruction. This is what he calls the "dark side" of the art. It's not that it doesn't exist. It's not even that one doesn't study this aspect of the art. It's simply that focus on this side of the art misses the whole point of why the Founder created the art in the first place. I think that the Founder meant for our practice to transform this isolated, paranoid, fearful mindset, which virtually produces the very threats that it is so afraid of. The dislocated vision of reality that incorporates threats, enemies, looks at every aspect of life as some sort of win lose contest is simply an illusion. Our actions cause suffering precisely because they are based on the false idea that we are not integrally connected to each other.

So an Aikido that has the power to transform is one that focuses on this connection rather than on some make believe faux samurai play acting that revolves around pretend fights against imagined aggressors. The martial paradigm isn't for the purpose of preparing us for some potential fight against evil doers, it is simply the feedback mechanism that allows us to test our own understanding and get immediate confirmation or the lack thereof. The "fighting mind" simply cannot result in anything but remedial Aikido. One is forced by the constant striving to refine ones technique, to make it more and more effortless, to let go of our mistaken views of separation and accept that we are connected.

If our practice is done properly, every time we act in a way that fails to be in accord with the underlying reality of interconnectedness, it should be instantly evident in the failure of our technique to attain that level of natural effortlessness that characterizes real "aiki". Our goal isn't the defeat of an attacker, nor should we be content with the mere fact that our partner has struck the mat and this means that somehow we have "won". No, the goal of our efforts is a level of technique that is so in accord with the essential principles underlying reality that no effort is required, that the interaction with the partner is so perfect that it all takes place without any thought of contention, without the need for dichotomies like offense and defense, beyond conventional notions of time, in a place that doesn't engage the thinking mind.

It is this search for "perfection" that changes a mere fighting system into something far greater. Rather than looking at the defeat of some imagined enemy as the goal, which doesn't require any fundamental shift in ones fear based world view, the kind of technique I am talking about virtually requires that one lets go of any notion of contention. It requires that one stop being fearful, cease trying to cover up ones fears with the hopeless search for power, the un-defeatable technique... rid oneself of the false notion that one can use force to prevail.

All of this is contained in Aikido technique when done well. Every technique has an instant in which one accepts the energy of the attack. It is impossible effectively execute a technique with "aiki" without this. One has to being willing to "let go" of the need to defend and to really , fully be right where he could be cut by the sword or struck by the blow, to have a chance of not being hit. Technique only becomes possible in the instant in which you and the partner meet.

Aikido is an art which is fundamentally about "connection" yet it attracts precisely those folks who don't actually want to connect. Weak people have to meet an "attack" and stand in the eye of the hurricane to have any hope of being safe. Strong people have to let go of the false notion that their strength is what actually makes them safe, they have to realize that the only way to be safe is to stop contending and to really relax, in the mind and the body. Each individual is called upon to develop precisely the opposite set of skills and traits which they hold onto as the false idea of who they are.

The entire practice is about attaining an understanding of balance, balance on all levels, mental, physical, spiritual, emotional, social, cosmic. This "balance" represents true freedom. It is the place in ones body in which one can move completely effortlessly as one feels the need. No one is strong enough to stop you once you make this balance part of your default setting. Training reveals to us that contention is the physical expression of mental tension caused by fear. Practice must be about transforming that fear, which is negative and the motivator for the darker impulses we all carry into something else.

If ones Aikido practice doesn't help one come to terms with ones mortality, it isn't doing what it needs to. If one delves into most negative emotions, one eventually gets to fear. And underlying all fear is at the bottom, fear of death. Budo, and Aikido is a form of Budo, is about coming terms with ones mortality. Too often Aikido practice is toned down too much for this to happen. There's no sense of walking on the edge. So, while the practice isn't about fighting, it has to keep its martial paradigm. The dojo in which everything is too safe cannot produce personal transformation. Many dojos embody a misguided desire to protect their students from anything which frightens them or might potentially be injurious. They are little more than social clubs in which the membership functions as a mutual admiration society. Human beings do not make serious changes easily and this type of atmosphere simply allows everyone to not change rather than placing folks in a situation in which they must do so.

On the other hand, in a totally misguided attempt to avoid the above, many dojos go the other way. Practice is brutal, injuries frequent. Students may exist in a perpetual state of fear of the teacher or the seniors. Students who are smart enough to see through this nonsense and leave are seen as "not tough enough", not worth the time and effort it would take to teach them technique, so good riddance. The problem is that one does not learn not to be afraid by being afraid. Those folks who prove "tough enough" to deal with the rough training and brutal instructors simply desensitize themselves. They don't transform the energy of their fear into a different positive energy, they cover it over, bury it deep and pretend they aren't afraid any more. Folks like this become the classic abused children who grow up to be abusers. Certainly no ones idea of the way to create world peace or even individual balance.

No, the answer to what training needs to be lies, once again, in balance. There needs to be risk. People need to feel as if they have to step outside the safety zone, over and over. But they also have to experience that their training allows them to take this risk and succeed. They need to have the "win" so that their bodies and their minds start to believe that the lessons contained in proper technique represent a better way to approach the world. So the practice is a tenuous balance between repeated failures and repeated successes. Too much failure doesn't result in much learning at all. Too much success doesn't force the student to dig deep, tap those unknown reserves, to go past previous limits.

Every technique requires sensitivity to the essential balance that exists between the partners. This requires that one learn to "listen". to shut up that internal dialogue, the "noise" that prevents one from really listening to the partner. At the same time, Aikido is truly a conversation... so just listening doesn't make it a conversation. One has to know the proper way to express oneself in just such a way that the partner has to hear you. So, in the partnership arrangement of Aikido practice, each partner is forced to both shut up and listen and simultaneously express himself or herself and be heard. One has to do this with many different partners, each with a different disposition, body type, etc. One finds that one simply can't force any preconceived notion of technique on these different partners. What worked with one fails miserably with the next.

So, over time, one begins, not just to understand the way in which one relaxes and balances out ones own mind and body but also one is forced to really be in the present instant. No notion of what one wants something to be in the future, or what one wanted it to be results in anything but struggle. One has to really let go of the desire to force ones own preferences on others and allow the technique to express itself. Neither one of the partners actually determines the outcome, rather, when both partners practice well, the technique is an expression of how they came together in that instant of space and time. Like a snow flake, there will never be another technique which occurs exactly the same way. This is Take Musu Aiki, the highest expression of Aikido technique. Many people mistake the stage of technical expertise which becomes spontaneous and free as the expression of this concept. I think this is mistaken... it falls short of what Take Musu Aiki really is.

Take Musu Aiki can only really take place when one has let go of preferences, preconceptions, desires... it is beyond actor or one acted upon. It occurs in that moment when principle has become ingrained in ones body as its default setting and the conversation between the partners reaches that stage that can exist between true intimates in which the whole conversation can be silent. The action feels still and the stillness contains infinite possibilities for expression, a state of potential which isn't used up or exhausted as the technique unfolds itself.

Most folks, even serious practitioners of the art of Aikido only have flashes of this state in their practice. Can Aikido be trans-formative even for those who will not train to this ethereal level? In my opinion, yes. For most folks, the most valuable lesson in Aikido is contained in the ukemi, as they act out the role of the person who initiates the interaction between the partners. In terms of taking lessons out of the dojo that will stand one in good stead in ones every day life, ukemi is far and away more important than any technical skill that one attains doing waza.

Every day, as human beings, we encounter experiences in which we are required to "take a fall". A partner leaves us, a loved one passes away, one loses ones job, a boss gives one a bad review... its endless. One of the Noble truths of Buddhism is that "existence is suffering". The Aikido approach to dealing with suffering is to "take the ukemi". One can fall hard, contract around the pain, carry it around for years and let it control ones life or one can soften up, take the hit or take the fall, let it go and get on with life, its really up to the individual.

There are no magic techniques for most of these occurrences. How singularly useless is the ability to hurl another human being to the ground is when your boss tells you that you've been downsized. The most frightening nikkyo in the Aikido world seems trivial and irrelevant when your issue is finding you are losing your mortgage and possibly your home. Many of the pivotal moments in ones life involve situations in which there simply is no good resolution in sight, You are taking the fall. Plain and simple.

In Aikido we spend fifty percent of our time in the role of uke. It is a crucial part of the practice that we embrace that role. It requires a letting go of the ego to take that fall for old folks, young people, juniors, smaller partners. This is a very important part of Aikido training and a part that, in my opinion, isn't well understood. The role of the uke is to facilitate his partner's learning. That doesn't mean "tanking" for the partner because neither one learns anything much when that happens. It also doesn't mean shutting down the partner's attempts to execute a technique that he's trying to learn. One never learns to do anything by not doing it.

So the role of the uke is crucial to the ability to take technique up to that high level we previously described. It is the role of uke that the practitioner first learns to check his ego at the door. He learns to be strong without being resistant. He develops the sensitivity to know exactly what his partner needs. The technique shouldn't work if its not right and it should be allowed and encouraged to be right by the uke. When it is right the uke takes the fall, an acknowledgment of its "rightness" and a continuous practice of being humble on the part of the uke. When the technique isn't right, the uke doesn't fall. Not out of some sense of triumph or victory but out of that sense of tough love that knows that the partner doesn't learn anything from interactions which are fake, false, energetically not true. One gives exactly the kind of ukemi one would like to get when the roles switch.

And isn't that a lesson for life? The roles always switch at some point. The "winner now will later be last", as Dylan said. So, as the Aikido practitioner learns to be the best possible uke for his or her partner, he is simultaneously preparing the mental and physical ground required to be able to take ones technique up to increasing levels of sophistication. The "letting go" that's required to be a great uke is precisely what is required to develop great technical ability. And the pursuit of that ethereal technical ability is what, in the end will create that personal transformation which is the whole point of the art. The only thing that will stop the process is settling for something less, rather than reaching for the sky. As Ushiro Kenji stated in his latest book, "What you know is the enemy of learning."

So, I am hopeful that O-Senseis dream of an Aikido that does transform the world can proceed through the efforts of our teachers, like my own Sensei, and through the essential commitment that we all have to make in our own training to develop our Aikido and make that Aikido something that in the end justifies all of this time, effort, and sacrifice. In the end, it really is up to us to make this happen. Our teachers showed us but it will simply die unless we actually make it happen ourselves. That's how the transmission works.

Leadership

2010-08-30T10:32:00.000-07:00

I just heard the news that Sugano Sensei had passed away. Another direct student of the Aikido Founder whose lifetime of experience is no longer available to us. Here in the United States we have lost A. Tohei, Toyoda, Kanai, and now Sugano Sensei. That leaves Yamada, Chiba, Saotome, and Imaizumi Senseis from that generation of post war uchi deshi who trained directly under the Founder.

The depth of experience these teachers possess is truly irreplaceable, they are an "endangered species". As these giants pass away, one bu one, I can't help but raise the question once again of who takes over when these men are gone?

I don't mean who runs the various organizations presides over testing, etc. That's just administration. I mean who takes on the responsibility for the "transmission" to the next generation? Who is even capable of taking on this mantle? Did any one of these teachers manage to pass on what he knew? Can you look at the succession and say that any of these teachers created any students who were as good as they were / are? And if not, why not?

In my opinion, many of us senior students, direct students of these giants who trained with the Founder and then pioneered Aikido's growth overseas, have failed our teachers and failed our art. We squandered the time we had with these people, always acting as if there would be another class, another seminar, another chance to master what they knew. And now, increasingly there will be no more chances. And who amongst us has measured up?

There has been a lot of discussion about the failure both the Founder and many of his most talented students to develop a systematic teaching methodology for transmitting the art. I agree that this was the case. But once realizing this, whose responsibility was it to fix the issue? Once I realized that my own teacher was doing Aikido on a level that he could not break down and explain, whose job was it to figure it out?

If we can honestly and dispassionately look at what our generation to teachers has achieved in 35 to 45 years of practice and find that we are forced to admit that none of us is as good as our teacher, then I think we have to really look at the hard fact that we failed to do our jobs. We can blame our teachers for not doing a better job, we can content ourselves with excuses based on some "special" capacity or experience on the part of our teachers, which we could never measure up to...

We got in the habit of ceding control over our own Aikido destinies to the senior teachers. We waited for them to create training events, do seminars, tell us what they wanted us to know... If they looked satisfied, then we ere satisfied. Just as long as Sensei was happy. But did any of us feel like we had really mastered what our teachers were doing? If we actually did feel that way, did we move on and find the next teacher who could take us to the next level? Did we simply content ourselves with knowing more of what our teachers were doing than the general membership within our organization and give up on trying to be as good or better than our teachers?

I think that the passing of our teachers, one by one, is a wake up call for the community of senior teachers. As tragic as it is to have our teachers passing on, retiring, etc. the one positive is that its our turn now. We can't blame any failngs on anyone else. If Aikido fails to measure up, it's our fault. We can't blame our teachers, blame Hombu, blame Kisshomaru, or O-Sensei. It is our art now and our responsibility. If we don't feel like we have measured up to our own teachers, well, what is stopping us? The sources for taking our Aikido to the next level are out there. There are very high level teachers who are in the process of entirely retooling their Aikido, even after 40 plus years of training.

It is time for us to start acting like the leaders we will need to be to assure the transmission. I do not think we should any longer be waiting for our Shihan to create events, teach seminars, determine the direction of our training. I think we should be doing so. I think we should basically dispense with all this "style" or organizational nonsense and begin to support each other as senior American teachers. Collectively we have a vast experience which, if we shared, would benefit each other. We have connections to teachers from outside the art who offer some of the "missing pieces" that could take us all up to or even past our teachers. If we network with each other and share these connections, rather than horde them as giving us some advantage over the others, we could get our own training on the right track and model a far superior modus operandi for the next generation.

I look at Ikeda Sensei traveling all over setting up cross style and organizational "Bridge" Seminars and I ask myself, "why do we need to wait for someone like him to do this?" We should be doing this! We simply do not need to wait for someone senior to initiate positive change. It is our job to do so, starting right away.

When one of the giants like Sugano Sensei passes away, if people have to cast about ion their minds for who could fill those shoes, then we have not done our jobs. I do not mean whether the general membership has accepted someone as a future leader... I mean do we as those future leaders feel we ourselves could train another student to fill those shoes? If we do not feel we could do so, then the transmission is broken.

Most of us are getting to be around sixty now. We have perhaps 20 years, if we are lucky, to pass on what we know. If, in our questioning of ourselves we decide that we are not what we could or should have been, then we have only that twenty years to both take ourselves up to that level AND pass it on to another generation. We need to step up to the plate and become the leaders we have been trained to be. If we start now, perhaps we will actually be ready when there are no more uchi deshi left to fall back on and it is entirely up to us.

Every time we lose another treasure like Sugano Sensei, a greater burden of responsibility falls on us. We need to make sure we measure up and we need to make sure we are in position to pass it on. If we are not, then we need to do something about it, right now, not later. Later is too late.

Aikido - The Theory of Limits (Part1)

2009-12-18T13:49:00.000-08:00

One of my students a while back gave me a book on the Theory of Limits. Suffice it to say that a) it was totally and completely over my head after about four chapters or so and b) it totally changed how I thought about the process of teaching and training.

Without getting too technical, what the book said was that, in a complex system like a factory, in order to increase output it is essential to analyze the different factors that went into production and arrive at which is the "limiting factor". Resources can be devoted to all of the other factors with little or no increase in the out, hence the "limiting factor.

If one treats the acquisition of Aikido skills as just such a complex system, with increase in skill level being the "output" desired, one can see how the theory of limits would be a useful way to think about ones training or how one would teach.

If most people were asked what the limiting factor was in their training, I think that most would reply "time". Most folks simply do not have the time to train as they would like. If they only could train more, then they would really be able to take their training to a higher level... But is time REALLY the true limiting factor. Most of the time I would say not.

I believe that the limiting factors for most Aikido folks fall into one of several categories. These all have to do with very basic and fundamental factors which means that they represent true "limiting factors" which, if not corrected make any progress impossible.

A few years ago, Ushiro Kenji Sensei, the Karate teacher was asked what one single thing would he point to that would, if addressed, make Aikido better. He didn't hesitate a second before replying "the attacks". I think that he is absolutely right and I would like to talk about the various issues with our attacks that make them the "limiting factor" for most Aikido practitioners.

While the overly formalistic structure of Aikido attacks could be seen as an issue, I personally do not think that is what Ushiro Sensei was referring to. Aikido attacks have three general issues which can be present all together or individually in a person's training. First is the fact that most Aikido attacks are slow. Slow to the point of a skilled martial artist practically dozing while waiting for the attack to arrive. The time lag between when the attacker "decides" to attack and when he actually starts moving is so great that I can normally enter and strike two or three times before the attack has been able to from itself properly.

I once had a young man ask me how I was "so fast" after we had trained during a class at Summer Camp. I replied that I wasn't fast, he was slow. This young man was half my weight and in far better physical condition than I was. I'm the "super tanker" when compared to these young folks in their twenties. I told him that the reason I was faster than he was had to do with the fact that I was more relaxed and had put a lot of attention on how to move my large mass rapidly. Most of my insights in this are came from attacking Saotome Sensei with the sword. Unlike some ukes, who see their job as delivering an attack designed to allow Sensei to show whatever it is he is wishing to show at the time, I attack him with a 100% committed intention to strike him if I can. It took me years of trying to get to the point at which I can actually succeed once in a while. But the trying taught me a lot about the mechanics of moving which no one ever showed me in class.

I think that the lack of competition in most Aikido is responsible for this lack of speed. If one looks at the Tomiki Aikido folks, who actually do have competition, the one place where they absolutely stand out is their blazing speed. In most Aikido schools there is simply no incentive to develop that kind of speed, in fact, in many schools there is a disincentive because training with that kind of speed points out the inability of the practitioners to "enter" properly and results in a large number of technical failures, embarrassing and painful. So folks attack at their slow "full speed" and receive at their slow "full speed" and because everyone is equally slow, they all feel that they are training "all out". I call this "mutually compensating dysfunction".

Another related problem is that the mechanics of the strikes are often wretched. Just watch the uke who delivers a tsuki with his back arm hanging out behind him like a flag in the breeze, weight totally transferred to the front foot and back foot coming off the mat, all this before the nage has actually done anything. You could sneeze and this guy would fall over. If one compromises ones own structure during an attack, the nage doesn't need to do anything properly to successfully throw the uke.

Most Aikido ukemi that I see is really designed to make the teacher look good, rather than make any sense martially. The uke should be attempting to maintain his or her postural integrity and if it is compromised, regain it as quickly as possible. Instead ukes are taught to maintain a kind of tension that allows them to be easily shaped by the nage into whatever form he wishes.

When the attacks are so un-integrated, nage simply doesn't have to execute a technique properly to have it "work" since 90% of what was required was done for him by the attacker. Also, the tension that causes so much of the lack of speed in Aikido also results in strikes which simply lack the power to have much of an effect on the nage or even if they have some power, they are too slow to actually strike anyone who didn't wish to be struck. So lack of power is the second issue with most Aikido attacks. It is related to the lack of speed but is not identical to it.

The third issue with Aikido attacks is also related but needs to be discussed on its own. Most Aikido folks either have no intention behind their attacks or entirely misunderstand what that intent is supposed to do. Almost no where I travel are the ukes really trying to strike the nage. On those rare occasions on which the nage is struck, it is a often a big shock to everyone on the mat, resulting in all the students pausing to see what has happened. One student I knew, after clocking an instructor with a shomen strike, was told that it was his job "not to strike the instructor"...

So, not only are the attacks slow, but even when they have some pop, they are not actually intended to strike. This changes the maai, it totally changes the experience on the nage's side. Most students who fail to achieve an good entry on an attack did so because they couldn't stand in front of the column of force that precedes a powerful attack with intention. They bail long before they actually get struck. Unless the student actually practices with partners who strike with speed and intention, they can never learn to really do "irimi". "Irimi" is so fundamental to Aikido that everything rests on it. Thirty years of daily training are a complete waste if "irimi" isn't understood.

Even the grabs of Aikido have almost nothing to do with sensible martial arts. The Aikido world has seemingly split in to two groups of folks. The first group is serious about their martial training and has somehow come to believe that a grab is supposed to stop an opponent from moving. So they attack with tremendous muscular tension and make themselves into dead weights that their partners are somehow supposed to move. Who ever heard of winning a fight by turning your opponent's hand purple? Often, these attacks are accompanied by a lot of holding of breath and grunting, letting everyone concerned know that this is a "committed" attack. Basically this is bad martial arts. A grab should be able to move the defender, neutralize his ability to counter attack, and create an opening in which you can strike and he can't defend. Squishing someone's wrist does not do this. Nor does pushing his arm powerfully into his body (another favorite of mine). When you grab an arm and then push it into the nage's body you are presenting yourself to his counter strike in a way that is completely unnecessary.

If the attack is a grab to the body, the intention is to use that grab to unbalance the defender, not to hold on and make oneself immovable. Uke's garb should make it difficult to throw atemi with either the arms or legs. It should be designed to disturb the structure of the nage as a set up for a throw or a strike or both.

The other camp has decided that, despite the art being fundamentally about the study of connection, we don't actually want to make a true connection. So the uke disconnects his own arm from his own center and runs forth to grab the wrist or gi of his partner with absolutely no idea how to connect to that partner's center. The grabbing attack they deliver will not effect the balance of the nage, it will not restrict his ability to move, it will not prevent him from delivering a counter strike if he chooses... in point of fact, the grab has no function at all.

Practice then devolves to an attack is delivered which is not really intended to connect, if it does, it doesn't connect to the nage's center, it is avoided by a nage who moves to escape from the attack (despite the fact that, if they didn't move, the partner wouldn't actually strike them anyway), the uke, as yet unaffected by anything nage has done, compromises his own balance chasing an arm he doesn't need to chase, and is so off balance after the process that nage can do whatever technique he or she wishes, without ever actually connecting to the uke's center.

So, in my mind, fixing the attacks in Aikido involves addressing a number of sub issues such as relaxation vs tension, center to center connection vs surface connection or no connection at all. It should involve the practice of the standard strikes to develop both speed and power and the students MUST develop a strong intention to go with these physical skills. Training will not result in any real benefit without this being corrected.

So, you read all this patiently and then decided that at your dojo, none of these is a problem. The ukes are fast and have power. They understand how to attack properly, they try to stay balanced and correct their alignment when it's broken, and the regularly clock their partners with their strikes. Assuming that your dojo actually has some students left after you have been training this way, what is likely to be the next "limiting factor" at work?

End of Part 1

The Limiting Factor in a Student's Training

2009-12-14T12:16:00.000-08:00

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.

The Art of Racing in the Rain

2009-11-20T10:04:00.000-08:00

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?

Managing Change in Aikido

2009-10-27T15:21:00.000-07:00

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.

Aikido - Martial Arts - Fighting

2009-09-09T18:39:00.000-07:00

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.

The Body Has a Mind of Its Own

2009-09-09T16:29:00.000-07:00

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

Daito Ryu Roppokai

2009-08-18T16:29:00.000-07:00

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.

Kihon Waza DVD

2009-08-09T00:25:00.000-07:00

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

True Self Defense

2009-08-09T00:20:00.000-07:00

This was first published in 2005...

True Self Defense

Let us look at the nature of “Self Defense”. There are two kinds of self defense and one is merely a distortion of the other. The first Self Defense is authentic. It is the evolutionary, biological right of any animal to defend its life and those of its family or social group. With humans this involves the development of certain skills coupled with the addition of technical development. The skills and technology of True Self Defense are simply an extension of those developed for survival over hundreds of thousands of years. So True Self Defense is the defense of the physical body when under some threat.

The distorted form of Self Defense is not authentic and is the result of illusion. It is based on the instinct for self preservation on which authentic Self Defense is founded but it is distorted by the illusion of self identity under which most people operate. In other words from the time of our birth we develop a series of self images which we put forward as “who we are.” These self images or “primary selves” are who we consciously believe we are and reflect the ways in which we have learned through our personal experience to exist in the world.

The problem is that this is not really who we are. There is a whole series of “disowned selves” who from infancy we have learned to put away from our consciousness. The more we identify with these “primary selves” the more energy it takes to maintain that incomplete self image, that illusion of who we are.

So what we do as human beings is to devote most of our energy to trying to maintain our false, conditioned construction of ourselves. Anything that threatens that sense of identity feels like a threat to our very survival (whereas it is only a threat to the survival of the false identity). We seek out companions and experiences that support our false sense of self and yet at the same time there is a counter drive for us to look inward towards our deeper nature.

All aggressive behavior that is not True Self Defense is the result of this false identification with the mental constructs that create our “primary selves” and the fundamental reluctance and fear we have to recognizing that we are not who we maintain we are. We will distance from, attack, divorce, etc. anyone who threatens our fundamental sense of who we are and we tend to seek out people and activities that reinforce the identity we put forth to the world (and ourselves). To have this sense of self threatened is experienced as a survival issue by the conditioned self.

So most of what we see as “Self Defense” is the distorted use of aggression in defense of false notions of who we are. This can lead to personal violence or it can manifest as violence between social groups, fighting to maintain their collective self illusions.

So the only way that we can be sure that we engage only in “True Self Defense” is to get in touch with our True Selves, the unconditioned essential Identity that underlies all these “primary” and “disowned” selves. Only when we cease falsely identifying with our illusions of who we are can we be free of the need to “defend” the false self.

O-Sensei’s vision of what Aikido should be is just this. He looked to create the true “Spiritual Warrior.” He stated that “True victory is Self victory.” This victory is nothing less than experiencing who we really are, not as separate little identities which require constant defense to maintain but as our True Selves which are an integral part of the undifferentiated Universe.

Aikido practice is designed to teach “True Self Defense” while it simultaneously seeks the cessation of the distorted False Self Defense. It can only do that if there is an internal component to the practice.

Students can not, as most tend to do, seek out training that merely acts as a reinforcement of who they already think they are. Many dojos are nothing more than mutual admiration societies which allow like minded individuals to not experience the discomfort that comes with the need to let go of the false self images that we al carry. At the same time other dojos are merely places in which fearful people mutually develop an illusion of strength through tough martial practice but never confront the fundamental need to let go of these defense in order to make fundamental change.

So even as we study the techniques of True Self Defense we must simultaneously be putting our attention on developing the direct experience of our True Natures. Until the time at which all human beings have experienced their true selves there will be a need for the martial techniques of True Self Defense but it is only as Spiritual Warriors who have done battle with their own internal demons that we can operate on this level which is the “Spirit of Loving Protection” of which the Founder spoke.

- George Ledyard

The Use of Atemi (Striking) in Aikido

2009-08-08T00:40:00.000-07:00

This article has appeared a few times in various places but I thought I'd put it up on the Blog for folks who haven't read it before...

Atemi in Aikido

The use of striking in the performance of Aikido waza or applied technique is not well documented and is even the source of quite a bit of conflicting information. Saotome Sensei has made it quite clear that O-Sensei taught that atemi in Aikido was at the heart of the practice. Yet other instructors have been known to say there are no strikes in Aikido. A number of practitioners believe that Aikido’s peaceful intent is lost when atemi is used yet those who have worked to preserve the martial integrity of the art know from experience that any experienced attacker will defeat Aikido techniques if there is no use of atemi. Even those who feel that use of atemi is perfectly appropriate in Aikido waza may not have considered in any systematic manner the various ways in which it is actually utilized in the art.

The use of strikes in Aikido manifests itself in three main ways (Each of these can be further broken down into more precise description.)

A Strike as a Technique in Itself

A Strike as a Means to Facilitate Another Technique

The "Not Striking of Striking"

The use of atemi as techniques in themselves, in other words to end the confrontation without need for any other additional application, is as a means of creating physical dysfunction. This can range from strikes which attack the vital organs and are designed to kill to strikes which are targeted at specific limbs and can end an attack by making it impossible for the attacker to continue. This could include crippling blows or strikes which are meant to deliver enough impact to render an attacker unconscious. The use of atemi alone to end a confrontation is not generally studied by aikidoka of the post-war styles and most of the practitioners who have a working knowledge of this aspect of the art acquired their knowledge by way of training in some other striking oriented art. The use of strikes in this manner is generally considered the option of last resort in Aikido because of the emphasis on non-violence. The Aikido ideal is to end a confrontation without inflicting serious injury on the attacker. So this area of study is, for better or for worse, de-emphasized in most Aikido training.

When strikes are used as a means to accomplish a different non-impact technique it can be executed in two different manners. In the first case an atemi can be applied in order to cause intense pain and therefore create a shift in the resistive energy of the attacker (this could be accomplished with or without injury based on what type of strike were used and at which of the above targets). The moment the attacker shifts his attention and therefore his Ki to the site of the pain his resistance to the main technique being attempted tends to diminish drastically. This use of atemi is generally considered by most Aikido practitioners to be the proper one if strikes will be used at all. The drawback is that techniques that rely solely on pain are quite unreliable. A seriously motivated attacker simply doesn’t notice and that means that there is no shift of attention. So choosing to target atemi to non-injurious vital points can increase the risk of failure in a self-defense situation.

Another way in which impact can be used as a means to accomplish a different technique is by using strikes not for injury or pain, although those might possibly be a by-product, but to change the physical alignment of a resistant attacker. Frequently when an opponent has stopped a technique, it is close enough to success that switching to a variation is not necessary. The simple application of impact, such as a knee strike to the back of the upper thigh when an attacker resists a kokyunage, can change the alignment of the attacker sufficiently to free up the blocked energy of the technique. No pain or dysfunction is necessary in this type of impact delivery. It simply alters the structure.

The final aspect of the use of atemi in Aikido falls within what I call the "not striking of striking". This is the use of a strike with no necessity or expectation (on the part of the person delivering the atemi) that the strike actually make contact. This is the type of atemi which many Aikidoka favor while not understanding that for effective use of this atemi to be made, mastery of the actual impact techniques previously described needs to be attained. This is the "energetic " use of atemi and the attacker must really believe that the true strike were being delivered and feel the necessity of putting his attention on it.

Imagine that you are standing behind a perfectly clear sheet of Plexiglas and someone throws a baseball at your head. If the throw were done powerfully, with speed you would cringe and duck even if you knew the Plexiglas were there. If the throw were done by simply lofting the ball you would probably not react at all. The "not striking" use of atemi must have all the energy and potential of a real strike or it will not create the effect on the partner, which it is designed to accomplish. The weak atemi thrown by many Aikido practitioners will simply have no effect on a motivated and trained attacker.

The "not striking of striking" atemi can be used as a distraction technique in the manner described previously. To accomplish distraction and its attendant shift in resistive energy it is only necessary that the attacker shift his attention. This might come about because the strike connected and caused pain enough to register in his consciousness or it might occur when the attacker uses a block to deal with the strike and prevent impact.

Anyone who has had occasion to apply Aikido techniques on a really resistant subject as in police application knows how hard it actually is to get a technique on someone intent on countering it. We train to maintain connection but a real attacker will attempt to break with you the instant that he doesn’t feel things are going his way. It is necessary to get the attacker to create an opening for establishing connection by delivering an atemi, which forces the attacker to block. The Aikido technique can then possibly be run on the blocking arm rather than on the arm or leg, which had delivered the primary attack. Once again, it is possible that the atemi will hit but it is often not required, as it is much easier to get a connection with some part of an attacker’s body when they commit to defense than when they are throwing an attack.

Finally, the aspect of striking, which is most misunderstood outside of Aikido circles, is the so-called "touchless throw". Every interaction in Aikido contains many different possibilities. Most of the time in Aikido practice the strikes are implicit rather than explicit. One can do a whole class and not see any overt strikes. This is because, if well trained, both partners know where the strikes could be and do not do anything within the interaction, which would require that, the hidden strikes become manifest. But in the "touchless throw" we see the "not striking of striking" used in its most artful guise. This is accomplished by subtly changing the timing of a strike. The strike needs to be just fast enough that the attacker can not avoid or block it but is just slow enough that the attacker can respond to it by breaking his posture and taking a fall in order not to be hit. The emphasis on this type of interaction is unique to Aikido. It is actually a valid martial interaction in a type of coded form. An uke trained in the use of strikes as throws will be airborne the instant the strike is perceived.

This can give an onlooker the impression that the attacker is throwing him self. At that point he either decides what he is seeing is bogus and involves the cooperation of both partners or, if mystically inclined, he believes that he is seeing people being thrown energetically, without the need for actual physical contact or force. In fact on one level each of these points of view is true but not for the reasons they would think. The point is that here we are looking at a form of Aikido interaction which doesn’t normally exist outside of the dojo. If one tried to throw an untrained partner without touching him it would merely manifest itself as a strike which hit. The partner would not understand that the agreement exists that I run the strike in just such a way that there is just one "out", to take the fall.

There are probably other, more subtle ways in which Aikido utilizes atemi but the main ones are covered here. If one expands the definition of atemi from striking to include anything which nage does to catch the mind of the partner for a split second, then a whole new area of discussion opens up. One of my dear Aikido friends was fond of planting a big kiss on your cheek just before hurling you with her iriminage. It is indicative of the varied approaches to Aikido practice that many students seem to pick only certain of these aspects to incorporate in their technical repertoire. But as soon as one is interested in application of the Aikido techniques outside the controlled environment of the dojo it is necessary to put some emphasis on understanding each of these applications.

The End

ASU DC Summer Camp 2009

2009-07-27T21:27:00.000-07:00

My good friend Dr. Donna Winslow wrote an article about the ASU Summer camp held in Washington, DC. She very kindly allowed me to publish the article on my blog.
- George

ASU DC Summer Camp

When Hiroshi Ikeda Sensei asked me to write a report on the weapons intensive summer camp in DC my anthropological training kicked in and, instead of writing a résumé of what happened, I decided to interview the people who were there to find out what they thought of camp. In total, I talked to 61 people in addition to Saotome Sensei and Ikeda Sensei. They ranged in rank from 6th kyu to 6th dan and although the interviews were very informal they were structured by two questions: what do you think the theme of the camp is, and what will you take home with you. It is difficult to convey how rewarding the interview process was for me. Instead of seeing the camp from my own point of view and from where I am in my own training, I saw it from multiple perspectives – each one unique - and yet there was a consistency in the message that the students received from the instructors.

The theme of the camp was set by Saotome Sensei through his emphasis on developing our own attitude, warrior spirit, “to be or not to be”. Sensei told us, “This can be accomplished through the integration of what O’Sensei called the three souls: the mind, the heart and the guts. With all three together comes strength. Using only your head is not enough.” One young black belt said, “Enter, keeping your body, mind and spirit together.” And in a similar vein someone who has been training for only two and a half years told me, “I need to work on my center and learn how to put my mind and body together.”

How to discover this alignment of the three souls is the key that one must cultivate, forge, discover, in oneself. This is the source of the "attitude" that Saotome Sensei is talking about but the challenge is in discovering this for yourself, it cannot be spoon fed. There is no magic answer - the hard work is in understanding the details in your own body, mind and spirit and diligently training them, on and off the mat. For Saotome Sensei each of us must realize that aikido is a martial art, not a game, not play. It is hard work. He told us that we all need to train to a high moral standard, to be humble as we train and to not show off, exhibit control and train intensely, with “attitude”. Every second counts - on and off the mat. We must conduct ourselves with honor; otherwise our aikido life has no meaning.

Ikeda Sensei expressed this integration as “unity” and he told us that before you could achieve unity with the other person you had to have unity within yourself. Before you control others you must be able to control yourself. Connection within yourself is as important as connection with your partner. You had to move as one unit, and it is this unity which moves the partner. You don’t just move your partner. As one senior student remarked, “People are forced to re-center and rethink their self unity. I have to center myself first and then through moving myself my partner goes with me”. We must all develop this inner unity and power in our own practice. The challenge is to let go of speed and force, which we all know is difficult to do and hard to understand by logical analysis. As several students remarked, they are taking home the focus on their own center from Ikeda Sensei’s classes, “It’s about how you control your center, and really move your partner’s center without using your strength.”

Yet faced with this challenge, many of us fall back on our habitual physical responses. And I can only imagine how disappointing this can be to our teachers who are watching us struggle. One Rokudan expressed the following sentiment, “People who have been training for twenty years are still not paying attention. Part of Sensei’s frustration is that he knows what he demonstrates and then watches people go off to their corners and do their own thing.” But I am also reminded of a camp locker room discussion where we agreed that yes it may be important to repeat a movement a thousand times but sometimes you need to hear it or see it a thousand times before it really sinks in. Another Rokudan summed it up this way: “I’ve heard a lot of this before but every time Saotome Sensei says it, it has a little more meaning for me.” So thank you Sensei, for having the patience to repeat important messages.

The Rokudans also explored integration, each through their own lens, but the message was clear: you need to be attentive to and affect changes in yourself in order to design an effect in your partner. They told us that this can be done through your own body – mind connection; an awareness of where you place your attention and intention; standing in your own space without creating a sense of opposition in uke; shifting people without letting them know they have been affected; fixing yourself before you worry about any one else; maintaining your own posture and integrity; subtle movements in nage can elicit a response in uke; the need to minutely adjust your own form so you don’t give feedback to uke; expanding without creating a sense of opposition. If you try to manipulate uke he or she will adjust. You have to affect uke without giving him or her something to fight against.

The intensity that Saotome Sensei asks of us is of course brought out in the weapons training. This does not mean using more physical force. When I asked Saotome Sensei why weapon training was so important, he said “It is more severe. Empty hand sometimes looks like a dance. When you develop strong concentration with weapons, your empty hand becomes stronger. O’Sensei taught weapons often and we keep traditional O’Sensei instruction – this is our mission.” Saotome Sensei went on to say that the sword allowed you to “study your dignity, your awesome nature, perfect your structure, to be. Martial arts’ training is not only technique, it is about expressing yourself”. One student said, “We need a lot more work on posture, relaxation and trust in that posture. So posture is much more, it is how you are, “to be”. It is not a technique. It’s about the value we take into our lives, how to be, how to incorporate what Sensei teaches into our every day life. It is pretty powerful stuff”.

It goes without saying that the weapon training is why we were all there in the first place. For some beginners it was the first time they saw the connection between weapons and empty hand training. For others it was the first time they did two sword training, for which people were particularly thankful. “We were there because we enjoy weapons work and this was a chance to learn from the master himself”. Saotome Sensei is an ongoing inspiration for many: “It’s about his heart” “He took my practice to a higher level” “I got so much inspiration from this camp” “It filled my cup” “It was like a reboot” “His timing is impeccable”. And for future camp goers - a word to the wise “Don’t blink when Saotome Sensei is demonstrating something or you will miss it”.

When I asked Saotome Sensei what he thought the main message of camp was for him he told me that he was proud that the Rokudans were not copies of Saotome Sensei – not his “clones” as he would say. He told me, “No one is my copy. It is the same principles but in different interpretations. The principles are translated into each individual expression. ASU is not a style. I see O’Sensei’s instruction blossoming in each individual instructor. This is ASU”. And this was part of the richness of the camp - although each instructor approached their class based upon their own personality and training, more than in other camps, they seemed to be consistent in exploring certain subtleties of aiki principles, in particular the theme of working on yourself rather than trying to “do” something to uke.

There was little doubt that the quality of instruction was nourishing for ongoing study. There were many so things that people told me they would be taking with them to work on in their home dojo that I mention only a few as illustrations of the main points people expressed to me: getting underneath uke’s center; controlling my center; the mobility of my center; moving your partner’s center without using your strength; posture especially with a bokken; more patience and less ego; work on myself and how I am reacting to each situation; the importance of weapon training; putting my mind and body together; be a grounded connected uke.

But ongoing study is also where people expressed their greatest concern – how to continue to work on the lessons of camp in a consistent manner. For example, “How do I work on weapons when they play such a small role in my home dojo?” “How do I work on subtle principles when I am caught up teaching basics to beginners?” “How do I work on these principles when no one else from my dojo is here?” “The challenge for me as a teacher is to transmit such important internal things.” “How do I balance training speed and agility with a more internal practice?” Ultimately we are left with the theme of the camp – you can only work this out for yourself. Every student, regardless of their level, needs to claim ownership of their own training. As one Rokudan concluded, “We have to embrace what the Senseis are showing us and work on it in our daily practice. This is not dependent on a mat or someone attacking you. We are ultimately working it out for ourselves under their guidance.”

Finally, the success of the camp was also a result of the hard work that went into the organization of the camp itself which was seamless. In short Shobukan does it better every year. Catholic University supplied excellent training facilities, the social on the 4th of July allowed people to come together as family, eat good food and network. Some people felt that the shorter, condensed five day instead of seven day format brought out the best instruction. Because of the shorter time frame, there was very little down time which seemed to encourage the instructors to go for the essence, “get to the heart of the matter”. A few felt that the pace was too fast, that there was barely enough time to work on one technique before we were onto another.

This said the five day format pleased many people I interviewed for a variety of reasons. Because of the intensity of the training some felt that by the end of the 5th day something had actually “stuck”. Others believed they were less tired and therefore able to be more attentive at the end of the seminar. For one person who had only been training for three months it felt like a total immersion, an opportunity to get into a more spiritual mind set which was simply not possible in regular classes at home. I conclude with a quote from one member of Shobukan dojo: “Amidst huzzahs and acclamation, it was universally agreed that this was the best weapons camp ever, except for next year’s camp which will be even better of course.”

Japanese Aikido Teachers - Translation

2009-07-06T08:21:00.000-07:00

Some friends and I were joking about the idea of having someone do simultaneous translation for the Japanese teachers we train with. Between the English as a second language issue, the Japanese tendency to be oblique rather than direct, and the lack of Japanese language understanding on the part of most of the students, much instruction is murky at best and often the point is missed entirely.

As an example... Ikeda Sensei will say "now, make them light". What he means is to get them up off their base, to disconnect them from their grounding. When compared to the level of detail offered 15 years ago or so this is a great improvement. We went over a decade in which we were told to "just catch it". Then Sensei would show us. Over and over, he'd show us. But for most of us, it just didn't sink in. He kept getting better, more subtle, smaller and smaller movement, and it got harder and harder to "see" what he was doing.

So when we were joking about having simultaneous translation we decided that one of us would sit off to the side and "translate" what was said into more concrete terms. For instance, when Ikeda Sensei would say "make them light", I might say "what Sensei means to say is: reach in and touch their spine with your energy, now relax and receive the energy of the connection into your spine, run your energy up your back side to make them light and turn your hips to move them. Ok Sensei, please proceed..."

Some teachers simply don't explain. Some won't even show you more than once. O-Sensei was like that. You are expected to figure it out based on the combination of
observation (by watching) and feel (by taking ukemi). I think the success of this level of transmission is self evident based on the large numbers of people who mastered the principles at the level of the Founder. (That's a joke, son, aah say, that's a joke).

But even when many Japanese teachers try to break out of how they, themselves, were trained, you often find that people who trained largely on the intuitive model are not very good at breaking things down, at least verbally. My own teacher, Saotome Sensei, sees things holistically. When he tries to be helpful, he'll give you an instruction which I might recognize as having five or six different components, all of which are crucial to the successful execution of the technique in question, but which most folks simply won't understand.

It's not just in the technical arena that there is the "translation gap". We were at a seminar once at which testing took place. One person's weapons work was particularly abyssal. I mean, really truly, off the charts bad. I would have flunked him and read his teacher the riot act. But often, in these situations, the whole Japanese "group cohesion" thing kicks in. No one wants to embarrass the student, his teacher, cast a negative pall over the event, etc. So Sensei got up after the test and took the katana off the shomen and proceeded to give a twenty minute lecture...

"Japanese sword, so beautiful, but so deadly. Life and death so close together..." etc. Now, I got the point of the lecture, but it was clear that most of the folks present were completely mystified. If I had been able to translate I would have said, "What Sensei means to say is that your sword work was truly awful, you should go out on the parking lot and commit seppuku and if any teacher here EVER sends someone to test in front of me who is this unprepared again, I'll send that teacher back to the kyu ranks...."

Or the time when Sensei stopped everyone right in the middle of a technique and delivered another long lecture on "makoto". The cause of this was a complete lack of intention in the attacks on the part of most of the participants. He went on at length on the subject. The problem was that most of the folks either didn't know what "makoto" was at all, or they only understood the term in its narrow form translated as "sincerity". It was a truly amazing lecture I must say... but only the most senior folks understood what he was getting at and they weren't the big offenders. Had I been able to translate for him, I might have said "Your attacks are completely lacking in intention, they have no power or function, energetically they are completely false. Training with you when you attack that way is not only not beneficial for your partner but it is actively detrimental." That was pretty much the gist of what Sensei meant with his lecture but it went right over most folks heads. I over heard one fairly experienced person comment afterwords that he felt that he didn't understand why Sensei thought people didn't care about what they were doing... The larger meaning of "makoto" as single minded, clear intention, commitment, etc escaped hhim. And he was one of the worst offenders in terms of delivering what we fondly refer to as "shomen no uchi" style attacks.

Then there is the misunderstanding about what is meant when Sensei smiles or looks disgusted and harangues you. Most folks like it when Sensei comes by and smiles and moves on. "Hah! I must have it right..." They really hated it when Sensei gets on their case about something. "Oh, I am a total screwup... I'll never get this..." They go home happy when Sensei seems happy and they feel incompetent when Sensei comes down on them for something.

In fact what is often happening is that when the teacher doesn't correct you, it means that he has given up on you. You have been relegated to the category of hopeless. So he smiles and wonders to himself why the kami have sent him such incompetents as students? When the Sensei decides to actually take notice of you and rain all over your technique, questioning your competence, commitment, ability, and perhaps suggesting that quitting might be a less painful path for both you and him, he is actually thinking that there might be some kernel of hope that you will turn out ok and you are worth his effort.

Since it is pretty much out of the question for the "simultaneous translation" thing to actually happen, students really need to take responsibility for their owqn understanding of what is being taught. If you don't think you got it, ask someone who did. Try to read as widely as possible so that you have a broader understanding of what the Japanese terms mean. Read everything Peter Goldsbury Sensei has written about how the Japanese process things. Assume Sensei is talking about you when he is lecturing. Find someone with good technical and verbal skills to break down what the teacher is saying for you. Grab these seniors after class and ask them to explain, don't just walk off in a haze. Between language issues, different models of what constitutes "teaching", and a tendency towards making things oblique rather than clear, folks are missing out of an awful of instruction that is being put forth but not connecting with the intended target. And in the Japanes model, that's your problem, not theirs.

Attention & Intention - Receiving and Projecting

2009-06-27T17:13:00.000-07:00

Once a student starts to understand that alignment is the key to being able to take the muscle tension put of his technique, it is important that he or she begin to connect the physical side of the practice with the mental. While there is some terminology which describes this aspect of practice in the classical Japanese arts which then made it into modern arts like kendo in an attenuated form, Aikido has largely not had any standardized way of talking about these principles.

In an effort to start understanding these issues myself and then being able to pass along that understanding to my students I have been developing my own English based terminology to describe these principles. I have also endeavored to connect these explanations with the older Japanese terms when ever possible. Many students have, through their readings, encountered these terms without necessarily being able to connect their meanings with actual experience on the mat, leaving their understanding of the terms murky at best.

I was lucky in my own Aikido to have had as my teacher a man who functioned on this level in his waza. Standing 8 feet away I could feel him effecting me. I would experience a tangible feeling inside me as he would shift the quality of his intention. There are plenty of folks around, even with high numbers after their names, who have no idea about this side of the art. Of course Aikido without this element is pretty much devoid of actual "aiki" so students of these teachers have little or no experience of the principles in action. Those who have experienced teachers who do function on this level are fortunate because they at least know that there is something there to be sought after in ones training.

In recent years there has begun to be a change. Starting with the first Aiki Expo back in 2002 hosted by Stan Pranin Aikido teachers made various connections amongst themselves which has allowed a far greater exchange of knowledge than had taken place previously. Additionally, a channel was opened up for an infusion of information from outside of Aikido proper from high level teachers of other arts which utilize the principles which could be considered "aiki" but might have different descriptive terminology or outer form. In my opinion, twenty years from now these events will be considered seminal events in the development of Aikido.

Anyway, I have started working with these concepts based on my own incomplete understanding. This is a "work in progress" which I find changing continuously as I work with various teachers and arts within and without Aikido. The challenge is to take principles which others may manifest in certain forms and connect them to our own forms.

The "Attention"

I would define the "attention" as the placing of consciousness somewhere, or on something. This would be related to, but distinct from, "awareness" which would be the condition of receptivity of ones consciousness. So we say "paying attention", "escaped ones attention", "lack of attention", etc. There is an aspect of volition to this. Ones Mind acts to place or focus the attention.

Human beings are basically programmed to feel the attention of another conscious being when it is directed at them. Snipers and security personnel at the highest levels know not to concentrate their attention on a subject as it can give away their presence. Almost everyone has had the experience of feeling someones presence and looking around to find a person looking at them.

A key component of higher level technique is an understanding that "connection" takes place well before physical contact is made. One effects and changes his partner's structure both externally and internally before they ever touch. One can often feel this taking place when one takes ukemi for someone at this level but the real goal is to do this without the other person even knowing you have done it until contact is made and its too late to change the attack.

So what is the aspect of the "attention" that changes in order to create change in ones partner? Essentially, this can all be talked about as "vibration", which would have really been how the Founder would have related to the concepts. The Kototama is the study of this vibration and how it functions to create the Universe and our experience of it. Since that is such an arcane and complex subject, most modern students of Aikido do not find explanations couched in terms of the Kototama especially helpful in advancing their training on a concrete level. So I will use another term to describe the aspects of the "attention" that can vary to produce different effects in the partner.

Intention

Intention describes the placement, power and quality of the attention. For instance, if I place my intention on your front and correct my posture to project, you will experience this as a sort of "push". You might feel as if you don't want to come into my space or even that you cannot. On the other hand, if I place my attention behind you, making you feel "included" in my attention, you will be aware of this fact but will not experience any resistance to coming into my space.

A basic exercise to play with this would be the following:
Stand with three or four people around you in a semi circle. Ask them to relax completely and simply be receptive to any feeling of change between you. While they are doing this you should stand looking at the floor. Try to actually think about some detail on the floor so that your attention isn't drifting to the folks standing around you. First, simply look up and place your attention in a big arc behind them so your awareness includes them but is not ON any of them. Ask the folks around you to note how that felt. Then repeat the exercise but this time when you look up, put your attention in front of them, as if your mind wee touching their chests. This time see if you can change the quality of intention to actually push them outwards. Try to feel as if your mind had filled the space and was continuing to expand. Once again, ask your partners to note how that felt different from the first exercise. I have never had anyone who couldn't feel the difference, although some were more sensitive than others. One time I did this at a seminar and a very relaxed beginner actually went backwards off balance as if he had been physically pushed.

So changing the intention determines how the partner experiences the mental aspect of connection. It is a crucial part of Aikido work. I was at a camp in which my teacher harangued the students present because they had no idea how to project their intention. Looking around the room, I could see he was correct. You could "see" that most of the folks in the room had managed to get their energy into their hans but nothing in their swords. In other words their attention stopped at the linit of their physical bodies. Others, had managed to get their attention out to the tip of their swords. If you had pushed on the sword tip, you would have felt the outward flow of energy. But standing 8 feet in front of them, you felt nothing. They had no idea how to project that attention out beyond their physical reach.

In my opinion, it is a problem with the transmission to have a room full of yudansha who need to have this corrected. This should be taught from day one. This should be taught right from the start as you teach the beginners proper physical posture. In fact, the ability to project effectively is directly related to having an integrated posture. All of the elements of physical structure as related to "internal power", discussed at length on the forums, related directly to the ability to project ones attention and effect the partner at a distance. They are not separate issues although one might have developed some internal power and not chosen to spend much time working on the mental aspect.

The people who had the good fortune to work with Ushiro Kenji Sensei on one of his visits to the US could see these principles at work. He would have you stand in a strong, integrated posture and push on you to no effect. Then he would use his intention to disorganize your structure and push you over with two fingers. He could form his intention into a barrier into which you felt you couldn't advance. He'd simply advance and back you up until you had no more room to retreat.

This whole issue of the mental connection changes everything in Aikido. The Mind precedes the body. The body doesn't move without a signal from the mind. The usual process for most folks involves the use of the five senses, but primarily sight, touch, and sound. Their senses perceive an action or an opening. That perception registers in the brain, the brain sends a signal for action to the body and the body responds. If one is a beginner, there is a certain amount of thinking involved before the signal is sent for the body to move. In advanced folks, the signal goes out faster than conscious thought.

The problem here is that this is a relatively slow process. The sixth sense or intuition functions faster than any of the other senses. The ability to connect with a partner on this mental or psychic level can change ones entire experience of time. Ushiro Sensei talks about action that takes place inside half a second. For most people, half a second is the time it takes to perceive something. process it, and initiate an action. The intuition allows one to complete ones action inside that half second.

Receiving vs Projecting
So here we have the other function of the attention. Not only can we effect the partner before physical contact by projecting ones attention and changing the quality of that intention but we can also "receive" information along the same channel.

The physical relaxation required to utilize aiki in ones technique is impossible to achieve in one is mentally tense. The body is a direct reflection of the mind and visa versa. If ones mind is tense (through fear, aggression, anger, whatever) one cannot "feel" the other person. There's just too much "noise" drowning out the info. (It's the same with physical tension... If you are tense, you are feeling you, not the partner.)

When one starts to relax the mind, one can place ones intention on the partner and begin to "feel" them make changes in their intention. It is possible to "feel" them make the decision to move. This is huge because that perception takes place before the information from any other sense can process.

An exercise to practice this involves the use of fukuro shinai for safety. It's a simple exercise. One person stand in gedan hasso (low position to the rear). The other simply stands in seigan no kamae (tip pointed at the eyes).

The person in gedan hasso attempts to initiate with a tsuki attack. The person in seigan no kamae does not attempt to "counter" this attack in any way. At the moment of perceiving that the decision to attack is forming, he slides forward about a foot. Unless the participants are wearing equipment, it is important that the person sliding forward not actually complete his entry with his own tsuki. Simply by sliding forward he owns the space and the tsuki is defeated.

The partner initiating, on the other hand, is attempting to feel when there is a break in the mental connection from the partner in seigan. Over time you will be able to "feel" when your partner's intention breaks or if he becomes resistant or stiff mentally thereby making him incapable of moving fast enough to beat your tsuki.

Another exercise, meant specifically to train this facility is to stand with swords in the same way described above. The person in seigan projects strongly towrds the other as if to helod them outside his space with his intention. The person initiating the tsuki simply stand in a relaxed but ready position with forward intention. Then,without changing anything else that might be visible, the person in seigan should shift his attention to something other than the partner. In my case I like to suddenly think about the tow on my back foot. The person doing the tsuki should be able to feel that shift of attention and execute the tsuki.

My wife, Genie, is a former national champion fencer. When I did this exercise with her,there was no discernible gap between when I shifted my attention and when she was moving. Three things need to be present to have this happen. First, there must be a mental connection between the two partners. They establish a sort of mutual resonance so that when one shifts anything, mentally or physically, the other perceives that shift instantly. Second, mental relaxation is required to "feel" what is going on. Physical relaxation is essential to being able to translate ones perception into action in that small gap of the partner's mental opening or suki. And third. the quality of the intention must be forward translating into a posture that is energized forward.

Imagine a drag race in which the lights are proceeding down towards green that signals "go". One car is burning the clutch, the only thing preventing movement is the brake. The other has his car in neutral. When the light changes the first car releases all that forward energy and is flying down the track. The other driver has to put the car in gear and then start accelerating. I am sure no one thinks that the second car has a chance against the first yet most folks in Aikido stand in kamae with a neutral intention. They think they will see the attack and respond whereas it is really all ready over before anyone moves.

Attacking with Ki
To really be able to take advantage of a mental opening that my last a fraction of a second, one must understand how to energize properly for an attack. A simple experiment on this would be the following:
Stand across from your partner. Both of you are in mae gedan (sword low in the front). Your partner will attempt to execute a tsuki attack at any time he thinks you might be "open".

Initially see if you can execute your own tsuki when you perceive that the attacker is coming. The one that takes the line first will be the one that gets the tsuki. If your partner is good at attacking (if not the exercise is rather moot), you will probably find that a) you are late and b) you will start creating tension trying to start earlier and move faster.

Then try this visualization: Place your attention on the partner's center (not their weapon). Try to feel that your are pressing on them a bit with your posture. Make sure you drop into your center so that your legs are "soft" and you are ready to release forward. (If you stand with weight back, you will be to late moving forward). Try to relax your mind so that you are "feeling" for a shift in the other partner's intention. Then, while streaming your intention out the tip of your sword, mentally feel as if you could connect your sword tip energetically to the partner's center. Try to feel as if your sword "wants" to be on that target and that you have but to release it and it will be there. Then have the partner try again. If you can do this successfully, you should find that the other person simply cannot get ahead of you. No matter how hard he tries to come in fast, with no warning, you feel as if you are "already" in before he even starts. This is the feeling you want in all of your Aikido. This is the Mind if Irimi. You may choose to trun, step back, move off the line, whatever... but this mind has to be present or no other movement works. Irimi precedes all other movement. Mental irimi precedes physical irimi.

Up to this point, we have basically been discussing the issue of attention and intention from the standpoint of what happens before physical contact. But this are of investigation is also central to what happens after contact is made. Placement of the attention is absolutely crucial in Aikido technique. Pete Trimmer Sensei used to say "Look for the instant in your technique when you attack the attack".

This is an important concept. If your attention goes "to the attack", you have virtually made the attack strong. It is essential that you actually "receive" the energy of the attack to your center (bring the power of the attack to your spine) while all the while keeping your attention "inside" the attack. This is another concept I got from Ushiro Sensei; the notion of "inside the attack" and "outside the attack".

An attacker has the ability to set his focal point for his power. If you meet him at this point, he is strong. If you try to escape, you will not effect him and he will continue attacking. If you attempt to deal with the attack itself, he will actually be empowered because you have bought into his focal point by putting your attention right where the energy of his attack is located.

On the other hand, if you place your attention "inside" the focal point of the attack, on some level his mind recognizes this fact and his structure starts to attempt to reorganize. You place your power "inside" of his. There are some simple exercises to demonstrate this but they really have to be felt. A verbal description wouldn't convey the meaning.

At recent seminar we hosted with Raso Hultgren Sensei from Missoula she talked about putting your energy "through the partner, not at the partner". That is a great way to describe this. Just remember that when someone talks about "energy" in this sense they are talking about placing the attention. The physical energy simply goes down the channel created.

One last exercise that can help to understand how to "give direction" to the attention when physical contact is made: Stand in hanmi or shizen tai... Have your partner grab with katatetori. Make sure you have a good, relaxed, extension in your arm so that it doesn't collapse if he pushes a bit. Then using your body, not your arm, start shifting progressively deeper inside the opponent's attack. Touch the wrist, touch the elbow, touch the shoulder, touch the far shoulder, touch the far hip, touch the far foot. If you have accomplished this they shouldn't be able to lift the back foot. You can try shifting to the front foot or the front hip; each creates a certain type of connection with the partner.

This is how technique is created. An attack is made, received, connection is made through the body and direction is given to the energy of that connection. For many people this is a radically different way of thinking about technique. Most folks are fundamentally dualistic about how they think about what they are doing. I am going to throw him. Unfortunately, this way of thinking virtually creates the intention of "no you are not" in the opponent. I think that anyone wishing to take his technique to a higher level needs to change this way of looking at things.

There is far more to this whole concept of "intention". It can transform the entire arena of striking. Ideas like "striking with zero power", "taking the intention out of the strike", even "striking with Love" all change our whole perception about delivering impact. But this is an area which I am not qualified to discuss. I have experienced strikes from people who utilize these ideas but I can't say that I understand them. So folks wil have to find that somewhere else. But just the ideas discussed here should give many people a lot to work on.

This is an area that can transform ones practice. It doesn't require changing ones "style", one can keep all the technique one wishes in any variation one wants. But starting to think about how these factors make technique work can completely change the experience of both givng and receiving technique in a dramatic way. I hope that his provides a bit of direction on the topic. I feel that I am operating at the level of Energy 101 yet my Aikido has been completely transformed by these concepts. I will keep refining my understanding with the help of folks who understand more than I do and I will continue to share what I find with any interested folks.

The Practice of Aikido

2009-06-19T17:13:00.000-07:00

As I have started to develop a sense of how the principles function in Aikido and the other "aiki" arts, it has become increasingly clear to me that Aikido is a personal practice that has little to do with practical self defense or fighting. Aikido is the study of connection. The Aikido dojo is a laboratory in which the student investigates the infinite interaction of consciousness with the material realm of the body.

Human beings are alive energy systems. Aikido not only allows one to integrate ones own system (mind, body, spirit unification) but provides a method for developing an intuitive understanding of how there is no real separation between all conscious beings. We are all part of Great Mind. It's not that we have to learn to be "connected". We are already connected and nothing can change that. It is the illusion of separateness that causes us to act "as if" we were.

The practice of Aikido provides us with an experience that constantly forces us to recognize that we are fundamentally not separate from those around them. When one forgets this fact and attempts to do act ON the partner as if there were an actor and one acted upon, only the grossest physical technique is possible. Practice at this level requires vastly superior physical strength and dominant intention to be successful. But when one starts to accept connection as the default setting in ones mind and body, one can begin to operate on an entirely different paradigm. When one accepts connection, one stops fighting, there is no more dispute. One starts to understand that all conscious beings resonate. As one starts to connect rather than fight, one begins to realize that we all resonate together. If I change my own resonance, my partner's resonance changes.

This first realized on the physical level as one relaxes completely during practice. One realizes that to accomplish a technique one changes oneself rather than trying to change the partner. As one progresses to higher level technique the practice moves increasingly from the physical to the energetic. One begins to change the relationship with the partner / attacker before physical contact is even made.

Eventually, one comes to an understanding that "aiki" is what happens when we stop believing we are separate and start relaxing our mind and body to the point at which we exist mostly in a state of potential, that the effort to accomplish technique is a tiny fraction of what we once thought it required. Technique eventually reaches a point at which it feels effortless to the practitioner and almost incomprehensible to the partner. One moves and isn't sure why it happened.

Whereas the principles operating in Aikido are the same as those operating in other "aiki" arts, Aikido practice has purposely been changed to remove the practice from practical application for fighting. The Founder rightly believed that a practice that focused on fighting, winning as an outcome, would necessarily reinforce dualistic notions of separateness. Aikido technique is about meeting conflict expansively rather than defensively. The martial paradigm is there to keep ones investigations grounded in reality but the practice should not be mistaken asz some kind of preparation for combat or practical self defense. That is simply not the point of the training. If ones trains correctly, however, some degree of ability to apply the principles practically is a natural byproduct of proper training. But it isn't the point or the prime focus. When individuals attempt to shape the practice around their own unresolved issues and fears the result is a distorted practice. Either a very poor fighting system or an ethereal dance results. Neither one og these is transformative but rather the practice becomes a way of maintaining ones illusion of separateness rather than breaking it down.

If people can let go of what they think they want Aikido to be and let the practice reveal what it is, it will naturally start to change them. Aikido practice is this process. it requires courage and determination. Accepting that we are not who we have told ourselves we are is not easy.

Aikido no Kokoro: The Heart of Aikido - DVD

2009-06-18T17:16:00.000-07:00

I recently acquired a new DVD put out by Aikido of Santa Cruz. It documents the training at the July 2007 Aikido Summer Retreat in Santa Cruz. The DVD highlights the instruction given by Motomichi Anno, 6th Dan from the Kumano Juku Dojo in Shingu Japan along with selections and interviews with Mary Heiny Sensei, Jack Wada Sensei and Linda Holiday Sensei, senior teachers who also trained in Shingu.

My first response to this video is that it would be a fine companion video for Sunadomari Sensei's book, Enlightenment Through Aikido. More than mere technical instruction the classes offered by all of these teachers focused on what Aikido should be, how we should feel about our training. Anno Sensei's classes emphasized the need to "open our Hearts" through our training. This was the central theme in Sunadomari Sensei's book as well.

What stands out in the work of all the teachers on this video is the feeling of joy associated with the practice. Beauty, expansiveness, clarity, flow, and effortless power characterized the technique of all of these fine teachers. Watching made me want to get right on the mat so, I too, could feel that flow.

There is interview footage interspersed throughout the DVD through which the American teachers shared their views about Aikido and their life long commitment to training.

The video is available from Aikido of Santa Cruz:
Aikido of Santa Cruz

Raso Hultgren Seminar Review

2009-06-16T08:20:00.000-07:00

Raso Hultgren Sensei, Chief Instructor of Aikido of Missoula, taught an incredible seminar this past weekend at Aikido Eastside. I have known Raso Sensei for 33 years. She was one of five yudansha to move to Washington DC back in 1975 to help Saotome Sensei open the new dojo. She was my first uke on my very first kyu test.

When one sees Raso Sensei it is immediately clear that one is looking at a teacher who has completely committed herself to the art. For her it's a life path, everything centers around her practice, everything is imbued with and informed by her art.

So many teachers hit a certain point in their training and plateau. They become dispensers of wisdom acquired in some distant past but have stepped off the path itself. With Raso Sensei it's clear that she is actively moving along the path of Aikido. Her technique gets deeper each time I see her. The ability to explain and pass on what she is doing gets better every year. I am not sure students understand just how fortunate they are to have a teacher who functions at such a level who can also transmit what she has learned effectively. There are students training with Raso Sensei who are functioning far "above their pay grade" so to speak.

Watching Raso Sensei I am reminded of the Aikido of Kisshomaru Ueshiba, the Nidai Doshu. Her Aikido is elegant, smooth as silk, expansive. She has the best movement of anyone I know. It's an absolute pleasure the watch and the ukes seemed to enjoy every second they worked with her.

There is a lot going on in Aikido right now. Various people are cross training and different currents are circulating around. All of this is just great. But someone has to develop and pass on Aikido with its essentials intact. In Raso Sensei's Aikido you can see the principles of aiki functioning at a deep level through her kihon waza. Elegant, beautiful, and expansive... Not to mention effortless. Her Aikido is an Aikido of quiet power within the larger sense of peacefulness.

This is a teacher whom I wish was better known. This is the kind of Aikido that folks need to experience. There are folks running around with numbers after their names far greater than Raso Sensei whose Aikido just doesn't hold a candle to what she is doing. It was a great honor to have her back at my school.

George's Short Guide to Cross Training

2009-06-11T08:12:00.000-07:00

There continues to be a lot of discussion about "internal power" on the Aikido forums. A number of names have come up frequently although I suspect that folks are quietly discovering teachers on their own from whom they can get these principles. But of the ones who seem to be exercising the most influence on the Aikido community in general, I thought I try to help people organize their thoughts on the subject with my take on it.

The major players influencing the Aikido community right now are as follows:

Ushiro Kenji from Japan - Head of Shindo Ryu Karate

Vladimir Vasiliev (Toronto) and Michael Ryabko (Moscow) of the Systema

Akuzawa Minoru - Head of the Aunkai

Dan Harden (USA) - major influence Daito Ryu

Mike Sigman (USA) - Chinese Martial Arts

Howard Popkin (USA) - Daito Ryu Roppokai

Of these teachers I have had some direct experience with all of them except Dan Harden. However, I have good friends training seriously with all of them so I get regular updates and insights.

Let me say, first and foremost that I believe that training with any of these teachers will drastically alter ones take on Aikido in a positive way. I would not voluntarily pass up any opportunity to train with one of them if I could help it.
But what you could expect to get from working with each of these teachers is drastically different even though some of the principles of structural training are shared. I'll try to break it down according to my own experience.

First of all, although ultimately you can't really separate the physical from the mental some of these teachers work far more on the mental or psychic side than others. So I'll start with the physical.

Each of these teachers has some system of exercises which are designed to condition the internal structure of the body, the ligaments, tendons, and fascia. All will focus on replacing strength via muscular tension with strength via proper body structure and muscular relaxation. Most of these exercises are right out of the Inquisition and definitely fall into the no pain, no gain category. The good news is that substantial benefit can be had for most Aikido folks from just moderate commitment to these exercises.

One of the key issues on the physical training side of things is that these teachers all come from backgrounds which have different outer forms than Aikido. So if you train with Mike Sigman, Akuzawa Minoru or Ushiro Kenji you'll get amazing structural training but you will have to do the work to translate what they do back to your Aikido. I have observed that many folks are not very good at making these connections. Because of that they either ignore training that they don't understand or they quit Aikido in order to pursue their new direction. I am hopeful that people will learn to connect what these teachers do to their own Aikido training. Each of the teachers mentioned has made some effort to show those connections to interested Aikido students.

The most radically different training paradigm is the Systema. All of the other systems teach from the standpoint of form. Systema has no form, they don't teach technique. I think it the hardest of all these approaches for an Aikido student to translate back in to basic or even intermediate Aikido. On the other hand, if one has higher level skill in Aikido where one has already started letting go of the strict forms of the basics, then Systema relates directly. Because it has no form itself, each individual can give it whatever outer form he wishes. But for beginners and intermediates I think you'll find that serious Systema training messes up your ability or even desire to do kihon waza. This can be problematical as that is what you are responsible for mastering at the early part of your training.

In my own opinion, because Daito Ryu is the parent art of Aikido, the training one would do with Howard Popkin in the Daito Ryu Roppokai or with Dan Harden in his system would require the least effort to translate back in to ones Aikido. One can easily see how the principles apply in Aikido waza even though the Daito Ryu is more direct and has far less movement than what we normally do.

Mike Sigman has some Aikido background and this makes it much easier to connect what he does to what we do since he can show you directly. Akuzawa Minoru and Ushiro Kenji are the farthest from what we do in outer form and so it requires a bit of skill at making connections between principles to benefit as much from training with them.

Whereas all of these teachers will teach you how to develop a structure capable of generating internal power there are some differences when it comes to elements like the breath or kokyu. Akuzawa Sensei doesn't really do much with breath as opposed to the Systema folks whose training is pretty much all about the breath, right from the start of your training. Most of the structural and breath training in Ushiro Kenji's system is done through kata work. These forms would be recognizable to any student of Okinawan Karate but Ushiro Sensei's take on them is often quite different from what one would get in a typical karate school. It takes some effort to see how these forms contain principles we would utilize in Aikido technique. The other teachers would have a varying mix of the physical along with breath training. Mike Sigman and Dan Harden have written extensively on this so I won't attempt to summarize their approaches. I know that in the Daito Ryu Roppokai achieving proper physical relaxation via various forms or exercises seems to take precedence at the beginning (my only level of experience) over trying to connect the principles to any complex system of breathing.

Where these systems really start to distinguish themselves is in the are of the relationship of the physical to the non-physical. The aspect of the Mind and what we might call psychic energy is a main component of the training one would do in the Systema or in Ushiro Sensei's system. It is no accident that Michael Ryabko and Ushiro Kenji became friends after meeting at the Aiki Expo. I think they recognized in each other a person operating at an entirely different level from most other folks.

This aspect of developing extreme levels of sensitivity on a psychic level really distinguishes these two systems. I think this is the level at which training in either of these systems would most easily benefit the average Aikido practitioner since the sensitivity side of things is beyond form so you don't have any trouble connecting it toyour Aikido.

This is not to say that the other teachers or systems mentioned don't have an energetic aspect to their training. It's just a matter of emphasis. The Systema and Shindo Ryu Karate systems place the greatest emphasis on this training right from the start of any system in have seen.

So, let me sum up here:

Physical Training for Internal Power - every one of these teachers or systems contains this aspect of training; they might have different approaches but after some substantial effort with any of these teachers, one would experience a drastically different sense of using ones body and an entirely different way of thinking about body mechanics.

Training most easily digested for Aikido folks:
Here I would have to say that Dan Harden's system or Howard Popkin's Daito Ryu Roppokai system are the easiest for the average Aikido student to relate to what he already does. However, that said, I would not hesitate to take advantage of any of these teachings as they were available.

Training the non-physical:
Here I would say that the Systema and the Shindo Ryu Karate systems offer training I have not seen anywhere else. However, this is totally dependent on the teacher. There are tons of folks doing systema in little study groups around the country and these are not the folks who can give you much of a take on this. Vladimir Vasiliev or one of his senior students can. And if you can catch a seminar with Michael Ryabko when he comes from Russia, he is the O-Sensei of their system.

Ushiro Sensei has a couple of American students who are working with him seriously but they are relatively new. To really get the goods one needs to train directly with Ushiro Kenji. This might take some effort because he isn't really inclined to teach Aikido folks so one would have to start seriously training in his system. On the other hand, someone like Hiroshi Ikeda Sensei has gone out of his way to work on many of the principles Ushiro Sensei taught when he was in the states and has, in a sense, predigested them for us. It may be the best way for most aikido folks to get access to Ushiro's work.

I think that in terms of pure accessibility Dan Harden and Mike Sigman may be the best to connect with in the sense that each has his own system, neither is beholden to anyone and can teach whatever and whomever he wishes, both are native English speakers and are extremely accomplished at offering systematic explanation of complex principles.

This is a very simplistic synopsis. Each of these teachers offers enough to keep any serious Aikido student busy for years. Each teaches things that are either absent from most Aikido or at least are not taught in any systematic form. The exposure to these teachers and systems is transforming Aikido in a positive manner and I eagerly await the time in a few more years when this exposure has had time to turn into something really deep.

Aiki Extensions

2009-06-09T16:37:00.000-07:00

I saw Bill Leicht this past weekend in New York. He is the current President of Aiki Extensions, an organization of which I have been a member since its inception, just about. Since I have been remiss about getting involved with any of there many projects, largely due to my own crazy schedule, I thought I'd try to help get the word out. These are really good folks trying to make a difference. I'm really better about investigating our art of Aikido within the dojo context but these folks are taking it "to the streets" so to speak. Please take some time to check them out...

Aiki Extensions Website

Raso Hultgren Sensei

2009-06-08T23:15:00.000-07:00

This coming weekend we'll host Raso Hultgren Sensei from Aikido of Missoula. She is one of my oldest Aikido friends. Back in 1975 she helped Saotome Sensei open the DC dojo where I enrolled as a new student. Raso has some of the most beautiful movement you will see anywhere. I am really looking forward to the weekend; should be great for everyone.

Info and On-line Registration

NY Seminar Update

2009-06-07T04:11:00.000-07:00

We're down to the final day... everyone has been doing well and they are all quite enthusiastic. We've had a couple of young teens attend and it was fun working with them. One id d a great job of demonstrating correct ukemi from iriminage... oh to have those knees back again. The other I called up in front and coached him through a static technique in which he absolutely collapsed his adult partner, a fellow twice his size.

We've been working on how to put power "inside" the partner, not outside where his strength is. This has involved trying to get the group to understand the relationship between how and where you place your "attention" and how that effects your partner's ability to feel what you are doing and resist by grounding out the energy. We got to the point at which we played just a bit with how one can start messing with the partner's structural integrity before physical contact is made.

This isn't a very senior group... the dojo just opened a couple of years ago. But the concepts weren't totally new to them which is due to their teacher starting on them from the very beginning of their training. I think that this will be a tremendous experiment to see what can happen when students are taught so-called advanced concepts right from the start of their training. Rather than let them train for years wrong and then, after decades of imprinting incorrect mental and physical responses, say "oh, and by the way, here's what's really going on..." these folks will be operating on a different basis right from the start. If they stick with it, they'll be an awesome group eventually.

Today should be great fun. We'll be working on ikkyo from the standpoint of these same principles. I've found that the best way to get at deep and complex principles is to start with exercises which are as simple as possible. When too much is going on, folks get too "ramped up" and miss the important stuff.

Teaching Methodology

2009-06-05T10:39:00.000-07:00

I think that Aikido should be taught completely differently from the way it is generally taught. The vast majority of the Aikido that I see out there suffers from two major problems:

a) People mistake harmonious movement for "aiki"

b) Technique is generally physical relying solely on muscle strength and good body mechanics

This was pretty much the state of my own Aikido for 25 years, despite the efforts of some of the best Aikido teachers in the world. It was the Aiki Expos which put my training on a different path altogether. It was there that I noticed that much of the best "aiki" was being done by teachers who weren't doing Aikido. When I went to the classes offered by these teachers, I found that they had systematic, principle based, body centered explanations for what they were doing. Not only could they do amazing technique, they could teach others to do so.

I came away with a new perspective about how to teach what we do. First of all, I think we have people trying to do technique too soon. I think that it makes far more sense to focus on getting a solid understanding of the principles of aiki both mental and physical using various simple exercises rather than attempt waza without any ability to do it with proper body mechanics and mental state.

Aikido training is essentially the reprogramming of the body and mind until the principles of aiki become ones default setting. It is far, far easier to do this from the start of someones training rather than after they have done years of practice and thousands of repetitions wrong. Undoing something wrong is much harder than teaching it right in the first place.

So what is it that needs to be taught that generally isn't? It's how one receives the energy of an attack into the body and how to give energy back to the partner without collision. There are mental or psychic elements to this process and there are very specific physical elements.

It's not that anyone is going to master all this immediately, regardless of how excellent the instruction. But a certain level of understanding should be present before any attempt to have speed or power into the training is made. Of course this is the exact opposite of the way I was trained. We grabbed each other as hard as we could, executed our strikes as forcefully as possible, stopped each others technique, etc. From the perspective of my current understanding virtually everything we were doing was wrong. We trained that way for decades, got very strong physically, developed a "go to the center" attitude and we had no idea what our teacher, Saotome Sensei was doing.

It's not that physical strength isn't important, it just needs to be the proper kind of strength. A strong, fearless spirit is essential to do our art. But it cannot be the spirit of fighting... it must be the spirit of "fudo shin" or immovable mind. Every element of training should be directed at getting the student to relax. Relax the body and relax the mind, these are the most important elements in "aiki". Most of the way folks train tends to make them "ramp up" emotionally as they train faster and harder. One of the things I most appreciate about Endo Sensei is that he insists that the uke and the nage are doing the same thing. He demands a continuous connection between the partners. He won't let people train wrong. He doesn't allow them to fall back on empty physicality, he won't allow the ukes to plant or shut down their partners. Over time, their bodies start to understand that it is relaxation that makes them safe, not contention.

In order to start developing the intuition that is the hallmark of really high level technique, it is necessary to quiet the mind. When the mind is excited or "noisy" you are feeling yourself, not the partner. As you quiet yourself down, you start to vibrate sympathetically with your partner. You begin to "feel" the change iin his intention that precedes a physical attack.

All of this is what "aiki" is about. There has been discussion on the forums that Aikido translated as "The Way of Harmony" is perhaps not the best translation. While I think that description is a good characterization of what the art is intended to be, it is a bad translation in terms of actually describing what the practitioner does. "joining" is a far better term for describing what we are trying to do in Aikido. We join psychically, we join physically. We establish "ittai-ka: or "single body" in which there is no separation between the two partners. We remove the mind of contention so that there is no conflict of intentions between the partners.

The training we do should focus almost exclusively on how to do these things until the student begins to have them imprinted in his mind and body. Then it makes sense to focus on technique because only then can each technique be learned using a correct foundation of "aiki" principle. I think it may take quite a bit longer for students to feel as if they can actually do their Aikido martially, under some pressure, freely applying various techniques, but when they do start to work on this, their waza will "work" and it won't need to be undone in order to get to the next level (there is always a next level).

Are People Really Training to Get Better?

2009-06-04T13:21:00.000-07:00

I taught up in Gibsons, BC last weekend. I have known their Chief Instructor since the 80's, since he was a white belt. He's always been serious about his training, trained hard, put what he could financially into it, traveled for seminars etc.

Now he has lost his sight. He's using a cane, learning braille, all the stuff that sighted folks have to do when they have to rework how they approach daily life.

What's really amazing is that he simply continues to teach and train as if nothing has happened. He's doing Aikido and Systema. The Systema training has become increasingly important because of the emphasis they place on developing the intuition. It's made his Aikido more responsive and he's actually more relaxed.

Anyway, it made me think about regular folks who don't face anything like the challenges he faces. He has no choice but to make deep level changes or quit. And he seems to be doing so. So why don't most folks do that? What prevents them from making the kind of progress that he is making? I guess the answer is that he doesn't have much choice and most folks do.

Since he is quite adequately demonstrating what kind of changes can be made if you really want to change, it begs the question why don't most folks want to do that? I think it has to do with the fundamental motivations people have for training in the first place. I actually don't think that most folks train with the thought that they will master the art. However, they clearly enjoy being associated with someone who has done so. It's also clear to me that the dojo social environment is central to what people are looking for rather than the depth of the training taking place.

Change is actually the enemy of the kind of stability and predictability that most folks seem to crave. I have repeatedly seen, over the years, the situation in which an established teacher decides to work on something new, investigate some different aspects of the art and their students leave. Everyone was tooling along quite happily when they knew what was expected and where they were headed and then suddenly, their teacher has shifted his focus.

This is especially true of the senior students who had established their positions as people of great importance in the dojo due to their clear ability to do what what was being taught better than the juniors. When the direction changes, now everyone is junior, everyone is a beginner again.

In a case like this, a teacher can find the seniors actively resisting the changes he is making. He often finds that it is the juniors who are the most receptive to the new direction he's taken.

Anyway, I think that Aikido practitioners should take a look at their training and ask themselves what is important to them. I have listened to my teacher, Saotome Sensei, telling people that he has seen them each year for over ten years and the training hasn't changed. They aren't really getting better. I don't think he is wrong about this. I used to blame it on the lack of good teaching methodology for much of post war Aikido. But then I met and trained with a number of teachers who could explain and teach what they were doing. And only a very small number of people took what they were showing and ran with it. Most of the folks seemed to stick with what they knew and changed little or nothing.

If people make a conscious choice to do what they have always been doing, then great. But if this resistance to change is unconscious, then it needs to be examined.

I recently worked with a student on a sophisticated principle in a certain technique. I walked him through it with very detailed, body centered instruction. At the end of the process he was successfully doing it on me. So here he was... he was successful, he had done it several times, he could repeat thye principles I had shown back to me. Yet he immediately got a puzzled look on his face as if he still didn't understand what I was teaching.

I called him on it. It was a "habit", a habit of not getting it. It was so much a part of his default setting that when he did get it, he still hung onto his habit of being confused. I asked him, now that he had done it, and I had seen him do it, what his excuse was going to be for not just doing it going forward? He could no longer claim he couldn't do it, he had done it, more than once. So what was preventing a feeling of understanding? I think it is the fear of change. I see many people training who choose not to progress because that would change them in some way and they wanted to hang on to who they have been.

So folks should take a look at what they want, ask themselves if they REALLY want it or are just pretending to themselves that they do. Then, if they do really want something, they need to ask if they are doing anything about it. Have they structured their lives or their training to achieve what they have told themselves they want. I think the answer to such an investigation would yield some surprising answers for many folks.

New Bedford, NY Seminar

2009-06-04T05:32:00.000-07:00

Well, I leave today for Marc Abram's dojo in New York. I'm really looking forward to this one. Marc has been training seriously with Ushiro Kenji Sensei and I hope to come away with some new insights of my own as well as teaching the seminar.

Howard Popkin Sensei said he'd try to get over to Marc's for part of the weekend as well, so I should pretty much be happy as can be all weekend with such friends around.

I'll be teaching some material which has been the source of my own investigations for some time now. We are going to do a lot of principle based, body centered instruction on how one receives the partner's power into ones center and how one puts power into the partner's center.

This will focus on complete relaxation and how one makes small changes internally in the body to give direction to the energy of connection. Also, how to use the neutral spaces in the partner interaction so that resistance isn't possible. Should be interesting for folks and it will be good for me to have some unfamiliar ukes to work with.

Last Night's Class

2009-05-30T07:25:00.000-07:00

I am up in Gibson's, BC at Allen Wynne's dojo. Friday night class went very well. It twas about center to center energy transfer. We covered the relationship between very concrete, tangible, body mechanics and the non-physical energetic connection between the partners.

The main theme of the class was complete relaxation of the arms so that power went from your own center to that of the partner without them feeling much of anything at the points of contact. In other words power passes "through the arms not from the arms".

We did exercises which were designed to isolate the importance of the pelvis and changing the angle by tucking the tail bone. This is how you give upward direction to the connection with the partner to "float" him off his base.

We also did exercises designed to isolate the importance of sliding the shoulder blades together in order to bring the partner's energy to the vertical axis of the spine.

By the end of class we took all those elements and put them together in ikkyo. First we did ikkyo with the partner simply standing with his arm out as if he were doing shomen uchi. The we did the same technique but the partner walked towards us as if they could walk right through us. Only at the end did we execute the technique from an attack with speed and power.

I was very happy with how the students, representing all experience levels, were able to access some very high level skills by giving them the step by step breakdown rather than by simply doing the technique holistically and then expecting them to intuit somehow what was going on. Personal experience would indicate that they can't, I certainly never did.

Change

2009-05-27T07:08:00.000-07:00

I've come to the conclusion that people generally don't like change. Oh, superficial change is great; keeps us from getting bored, adds spice to life, etc. But deeper, more fundamental change is frightening and is resisted tooth and nail.

Aikido folks are not different. Although most would tell you that they are training hard and trying to get better, if they've trained for a while, there is a set of parameters within which they work. Anything outside this envelope, outside their comfort zone, will be ignored or even actively resisted.

I first saw this when Stan Pranin did the three Aiki Expos. He brought in some of the finest aiki people in the world. Teachers who simply blew you away with their skills level. For some of us, this was a life changing set of events. My own Aikido changed 200% and continues to do so; all due to the exposure I had to these teachers.

I watch as Hiroshi Ikeda Sensei, al ready a very senior teacher, completely redid his own Aikido based on connections he made at the Expos (especially to Ushiro Kenji Sensei). What he is doing now has almost nothing to do with what he was doing ten years ago, except the outer form is still Aikido.

Yet many of the folks I knew who attended the very same events did not change. You mention Ushiro Sensei and the say "Yeah, I saw him at the Expo". And....? And...? But there is no "and". That was it. They saw him, didn't understand what he was doing... or thought they did, and then they went home and went right back to what they had always done.

I once taught a seminar which some nice folks attended. I pushed them quite a bit to put some "intention" into their training. They had developed a nice comfortable practice that was very user friendly and was never going to result in any substantial increase in their skills levels. The seniors had plateau-ed out, which of course automatically places limits on any juniors at the school.

Everyone was very receptive. They all tried to up their intensity, put some life into their attacks, etc. By Sunday afternoon they were doing some good work. I thought I had really "dons some good" with the seminar. But a friend from the dojo told me that he was very disappointed to see that Monday night they went right back to doing things exactly as before. Absolutely nothing changed.

Now, sometimes it's hard to know how you are changing. In the short term, changes can be gradual enough you have a hard time seeing them. But think back to five years ago. Can you do things now that you couldn't do then? Do you understand better what your teachers are doing or is it all still "magical"? Do you continuously put yourself in the way of new teachers and new training experiences or have you been doing the same program every year... two or three weekends with the same teachers and maybe one of the summer camps... over and over.

I think folks who REALLY want to attain some mastery of this art need to make sure that their own training isn't being held back by their own teachers. They need to keep changing all the time. If that means moving periodically to find a dojo at which the training is better, then so be it. If you can't keep going where you are, then change where you are or find ways of getting what you need outside of those normal channels. It is your life and your training. You cannot be dependent on others to bring you along. It has to be you, yourself. Others just help, you do the work.

Current Projects

2009-05-26T23:55:00.000-07:00

These are the things I am working on right now...

1) make clips of my instructional DVDs and post them to YouTube. Place the clips on my video store as samples of the titles for sale.

2) break the videos taken during the Daito Ryu Roppkai seminar and break them into clips for the study group class.

3) contact the local community college, BCC, looking for a video production student who might wish to work cheap as a way to build a resume and portfolio

4) travel to Gibsons, BC this coming weekend, then to New York the next, the following we host Raso Hultgren Sensei at our dojo

5) Take pictures of the Kids classes for the new Childrens Program Website www.aikidoforchildren.com

6) promote the new Facebook Groups for the Adults and Kids to the dojo membership

7) work on SEO for the dojo websites - I want to boost the organic listings. I have added links to our Facebook pages and my new Blog to our Homepages which should look good to the search engines

8) publish more about on-line promotion of Aikido dojos on this blog; most Aikido schools don't even coime close to taking adavantage of what is possible

New Music Idea

2009-05-26T20:28:00.000-07:00

George Song Idea 5

Just messing about and had a new idea...

Principles of Aiki

2009-05-26T12:51:00.000-07:00

There are three things I wish I had benn told when I started Aikido. First, there is no pushing or pulling in Aikido. The arm muscles normally associated with these actions do not fire in proper technique.

Two, the action of the pelvis, as controlled by tucking the tail bone, is central to causing a partner to "float" off his base.

Three, the ability to accept the energy of an attack and to join with it (ittai-ka or single body) physically is dependent on sliding the shoulder blades together without tensing the shoulders together.

These three elements should be the main focus of early training in the art. Acquisition of lots of techniques should take place only after theseprinciples are understood. George S Ledyard 425-802-3125 www.aikieast.com

Aikido Eastside Internet Presence

2009-05-25T19:30:00.000-07:00

Aikido Eastside now has substantial Internet presence:

Aikido Eastside Facebook Page

George Ledyard - Chief instructor Facebook Page

Aikido Eastside Adult Members Facebook Group

Aikido Eastside Young People - Facebook Group

Get the Upcoming Events sent to your device via RSS Feed
http://www.eventsbot.com/feeds/rss/org/6955

George Ledyard - Chief instructor Linkedin Profile

George Ledyard's All things Aikido - Blog

If you are on “Twitter” you can twitter George Ledyard as “gledyard”

Our websites:

www.aikieast.com the main dojo website for the Adult Programs

www.aikidoforchildren.com our new website for the Young People’s Programs

www.aikidodvds.com our new domain for the video store

Dojo Marketing

2009-05-25T09:24:00.000-07:00

Since the economy has tanked, keeping a dojo going is even more challenging. It seems that the demographics have changed with interest in traditional arts like Aikido being down as compared to the Mixed Martial Arts which appear nightly on prime time cable TV.

An Aikido school needs to do two things to capture those new students. First, any student already looking for an Aikido school needs to see your website when he or she searches on-line. That's a given. Their decision as to where to train will mostly be based on location. 95% of your students, especially the kids, will come from within a 20 minute travel time at rush hour.

The real prize is the potential students who don't know anything about martial arts and are just checking things out. It is imperative that your dojo's website appear when anyone searches for either Aikido, Martial arts, or Self Defense. These are the big three key words.

Since the organic listings are very competitive, meaning its not easy to optimize your website so that it appears on the first page of a search (if the search isn't locally targeted) a search engine marketing program can place your ads up front, even when the website itself is several pages down in the listings. This can drive potential students to your site.

We have programs with Google and Yahoo. They are Pay per click programs. For something like martial arts, these are relatively cheap as there simply aren't tons of folks who are searching for dojos.(the demographics say that only 1% of the population has any interest in doing martial arts at all). Just make sure that you target all of your searches locally. The search marketing programs all let you specify exactly where you want your ads displayed. You don't actually care of someone outside your local area sees your ads, in fact you'd prefer they don't so that you aren't paying for clicks that can't turn into students.

New Blog for George Ledyard

2009-05-25T08:59:00.000-07:00

I created this Blog as a central place where I could set down my thoghts about the art of Aikido, the challenges of running a dojo, various things I am doing both technically and in my business. I hope the Blog my be helpful to Aikido students and teachers.