Month: September 2017

Shall We Dance?

jenmichellemason

Our dojo recently enjoyed a spectacular, technically spot-on nikyu test—nikyu meaning 2nd rank below black belt shodan. No matter what level someone is going for, Durango Shin-Budo Kai always strives for high standards. Did the candidate know the vocabulary? Did he execute the correct technique? Did she demonstrate poise and focus in the present moment?

The answer to these questions is almost always a resounding YES!

One reason boils down to the extra hours classmates devote to one another for practice outside of class. Senior students (sempai) and peers (kohai) voluntarily help one other with technique tutelage, ukemi, encouragement, and more. The entire DSBK dojo works as a community to ensure the test taker’s demonstration of skill and knowledge is a definitive success.

From my shodan test in 2015.

And yet, despite all the support, every student I have ever seen prep for a test reaches that raw, volatile break point days before the big event. I include myself on the list. I can look back on nearly a decade of practice and recall many a teary meltdown.

I can’t do it! I don’t know any of this! I’m a hack! Clumsy. Sloppy. Hopeless.

 The negative self-judgment piles up thicker than autumn’s tree dandruff. The Japanese terms for the techniques, which I swear I once knew, stop making any sense. I could be so frazzled that, if asked, I doubt I could have translated ai, ki, or do.

And the recent test candidate was no exception. Three days ahead of the test, oddities crept into her techniques—extra steps in footwork, incorrect pins, slips and fumbles with handwork, none of which had been there before. The in-class review ended with hot tears and the candidate certain the test would be a complete disaster. Better to cancel the whole thing!

You’ll do great! Don’t worry! This is completely normal.

 Everyone chimes in with support and a hug. Far from voicing saccharine attaboys (or attagirls, in this case), we share the truth. The breakdown is normal.

But why?

“Katana” by Mark Vegas. Image CC.

For me, the experience has a lot do with aikido’s ties to budo, or the martial Way. In budo, the trainee experiences an inherent spiritual growth. This inescapable process is called seishin tanren, or spirit forging. Just as the katana has to be heated and hammered, so too does the aikidoka. So we who practice are, in every sense, testing the mettle of the soul’s metal.[i]

After decades of experience, I can say the process is very similar for writers. Each story, be it fiction or nonfiction, demands of me my serious attention, commitment, and integrity. But if the writer ever hopes to complete the story with its purest truth in tact on the page, she must grapple with the Duende.

20th century poet and writer, Frederico García Lorca believed the source of all creative drive stemmed from the struggle with that inner deamon he called the Duende. Where angels may shed light on ideas and the muses gift ingenious form, the Duende draws blood. Only it can. Angels and muses are external entities, but the Duende dwells within.

According to Lorca, the Duende chooses its battle with a creator—writer, artist, musician—the moment that person finds something worthy of creation. (Because I am a writer, I’ll stick with that frame.) The deamon awakes because it smells the potential for death. Specifically, the death of a misconception. Having pierced the false assumption, thereby wounding the writer, the Duende then initiates a miraculous healing. Out of that wound arises the pure, unprecedented, truly original artistic masterpiece.

Naturally, most people are averse to the Duende’s process. Who the heck wants to be cut through the heart? But the brave few who dance with this devil live immortal, their master works persisting against time’s erasure.

Many of us go our whole lives clutching our misconceptions, mistaking them for truths. Burdened thus, we embrace life in clumsy, fumbling motions. Fractured relationships. Timid, low-risk activities. Restricted explorations.

I believe both the writer and the aikidoka tangle with the same Duende. Why not? Both strive for the purest expression of their chosen art forms. The writer tells a perfect story. The aikidoka achieves what O’Sensei highlighted as the goal of budo: agatsu—the defeat of the self. [ii]

But that dance with the daemon leads to a similar break point. The I-quit-I-can’t-do-this moment. And the tears so many of us shed right then are true grief. After all, a misconception has died. It was with us for so long that it seems as though our self has died, but in reality, it was a false self. A guised version covering and restricting our true nature.

And so I applaud that test candidate and every person who seeks to make her art (and her very self and soul) into a pure, unprecedented, and truly original masterpiece.

[i] From The Aikido of Shin-Budo Kai: A Guide to Principles and Practice. Ed. Ralph Bryan. Samashi Press: 2013 (79).

[ii] Also from The Aikido of Shin-Budo Kai (3).

Which way is down?

natebrush

Which Way Is Down?

I’ve always been a bit clumsy. From bumping into walls to drawing surprised glances when I dance in public, I have always felt challenged by my lack of physical grace.

But even so, I’ve always believed I knew which way was down. It’s just right there; look at the floor. Toward the center of the earth. Gravity is pulling me there all the time. Easy, right?

Well, on this fresh new journey into the world of Aikido, I’m beginning to realize that locating “down” may be simple, but it’s not always easy. Not for me, anyway.

Don’t get me wrong: when I am serving as Uke, my sempai clearly show me where “down” is. I am led down again and again, so it would seem that my intellect would understand instantly.

And yet over the past inaugural year’s training, countless times I have been under the impression that I was leading my uke “down,” only to be shown that I was actually leading them in any number of other directions. Currently, in the process of learning katate tori ikkyo hantai tenkan, a technique requiring Nage to lead Uke around and down simultaneously in a corkscrew-like path, I am surprised how easily I forget where “down” is. I lead Uke toward this wall, that wall… across the room… or even at some cockeyed angle approaching the ceiling. But not down.

The challenge I’m facing, I believe, is my habitual tendency to run all teachings up into my head and through my intellect before committing to movement.

I am graciously reminded by my sempai that the body often knows how to do a technique, but the intellect wants to “check it out and make sure it’s correct” before allowing the body to move. The result: confusion, leading to breaks in flow and continuity. Or, more recently, leading me to stare at my own hand as if I had never seen it before. A few of us shared a good laugh over that one.

All of this became clearer to me the other day as I was participating in our dojo’s Kids Class. A new boy about 5 or 6 years old attended for the very first time with a big smile on his face, occasionally glancing back at his father for reassurance. I asked the kiddo to roll over backwards, and he immediately did a very impressive back roll without even thinking about it.

I offered what I thought would be helpful corrections, pointing out that whichever knee is up shows us which shoulder we roll back over.

After my feedback, the poor kid could no longer do a backward roll. In fact, all I had truly done was brought the boy’s awareness up into his head where his intellect tried to “make it perfect,” resulting in a partial back roll turning mid-way into a front roll/barrel roll flop.

Turns out this is all good news, because it’s leading me toward some key questions:

In this moment, how aware of my body’s position in space am I? Where are my arms? Where are my legs? Where are my hands and feet? In which direction(s) are they moving?

And, in the bigger picture: What intention am I setting today? How am I feeling? How will I respond to perceived challenges, conflict, and friction?

As I come back to the present moment, time and again throughout the day, perhaps the best question I can ask myself truly is, “which way is down?”

Exploring the Principles: Relax Completely Part 2

natebrush

I’ve been thinking more about the principle of relaxing completely.  It is inextricable from the other key principles, but it is one of the easiest to notice when I violate it. Oops, my shoulder popped up. Wow, I feel my bicep flexing. Dang, my hips are stiff and I can’t turn at all.

But what I’ve observed the past few weeks is the tension before uke even moves. “Get out of the way!” “This is going to hurt if you don’t block it!” “He’s stronger than you!”  That little voice re-framed my understanding of the principle and my exploration.
Relax the Mind Completely.
That’s the real pickle in training. So what are the characteristics of a relaxed mind? First, here are lists of my observations of slack and tense mind in myself.
SLACK MIND – disengage
– Nage: I can’t do this
– Nage: This is too hard
– Nage: He won’t really hit me
– Nage: I don’t need to know this yet
– Nage/Uke: Pull back, get away.
– Nage/Uke: Whatever, I don’t like this technique
– Nage/Uke: What’s that shiny thing over there?
TENSE MIND – resist
– Nage: I can’t do this
– Nage: This is too hard
– Nage: I’ll mess you up, puny weakling
– Nage: This is going to hurt
– Uke: I’m so grounded he can’t throw me.
My experience is that having mind in the wrong attitude makes me myopic on the attack or expected outcome. It locks me into one moment and puts too much consequence (or not enough) on the outcome. But we are training the mind as well as the body. We practice aikido so that our bodies and minds react well in conflict. I remind myself that during practice I am not getting jumped by thugs. I’m training to prepare for that sort of thing, but it isn’t happening from the men and women wearing gis. The list of relaxed mind’s attributes below are my current understanding after three years of practice.
RELAXED MIND – receptive
– I can do this.
– This isn’t too hard to learn.
– Here I am.
– Let’s see where this goes, together.
– I understand better now and am still learning.
There’s another quality that is hard to describe. When I’m centered and ready and unafraid, sometimes it is like there is no attack. Or the attack is inconsequential. If aikido is the way of harmonizing energy, when mind is relaxed, attack and response are all one blended note. It is a thing of beauty that I didn’t cause, but participated in.
For me relaxation depends largely on confidence. If I’m not confident that I can respond well to a punch to the gut, I’ll tense up. Then I won’t respond well. But instructors and senior students help by giving attacks at my level. And I help myself by telling myself, “Sure it’s new, but I can do this.” Pretend I’m confident and someday I might be. But if my attitude is “I can’t do this” I might as well be hitting myself.
I think the first uke is always the mind. On the days I can take the negative thoughts and set them aside and have an attitude of “Here I am, I can do this,” those are the days I learn. When I’m at work and something goes wrong and someone starts accusing, if I can take the attitude “Here I am. Let’s see where this goes, together,” then my ego disengages and we can focus on the end result we need to reach.
Those little harmonies, on and off the mat, are worth the hard training. I’m getting better at taking a breath and relaxing the mind. Better, and still improving.