New Year's Resolutions

Today is the last day of 2010 and so the madness and the mayhem, the jubilation and the joy, the anger and the anguish, the sense and the senselessness, the fears and the foolishness, the highs and the high-fives of the year are officially behind us. And we can breathe a sigh of relief and wonder and turn the corner to face the unknown road that lies ahead of us in 2011.

It is also traditionally the time to make New Year’s Resolutions – a commitment to do more of, to do differently, to know more and deeper and to be the change we want to see in the world – even if it is only in the immediate world we inhabit. It is the time we make our intentions for the coming year.

So in respect of our aikido training, here are some thoughts for the new year:

• · Two elements will deepen our practice: intent and intensity. On the mat, train as if your life depends on it; off the mat your life does depend on it. As a martial art, you need to train as if you intend to use your aikido someday to protect your life, or the life of a loved one. Do NOT train as if your life is currently threatened, but train as if it may someday be. Take your training seriously and with proper intent and intensity for practical real-world application.
• · As a spiritual discipline, you need to train as if your spiritual life depends on it. No matter what your partner does, you must uphold your own level of ethics and behaviour. One’s spiritual / personal development depends on sticking strictly to one’s work and progress. No-one can do it FOR anyone else. We can help our training partners, but we cannot do it for them.
• · We also need to train with intense intent. Intensity follows intent. If your intent is to spend some time socialising with your training partners, your training intensity will be minimal. If on the other hand, you intend to be able to apply your aikido either to defend yourself or to improve yourself, your seriousness and intensity will be higher.
• · Train consistently and persistently. Progress doesn’t just come; any skill needs consistent attendance and persistent practice to deepen.
• · O-Sensei also wanted us to train joyously and in a celebratory manner fully aware of the serious (and dangerous) martial art aikido is.
• · Train slowly and consciously. This means paying attention to the little details. The best way to progress quickly, is to progress slowly. Pay attention to the little things – inside and around you – and you will be able to make big changes.

Here's looking forward to training with you in 2011!!!

See you on the tatami

On Courage

I found a samurai in a rather unusual place... Reading a collection of writings and speeches by the late Steve Biko, I write what I like, I came across a piece that struck a chord with me....

A few months before his incarceration and eventual death in detention at age 30, Bantu Steve Biko was interviewed by an American businessman.

You are either alive or proud or you are dead, and when you are dead, you can’t care anyway. And your method of death can itself be a politicising thing. So you die in the riots. For a hell of a lot of them, in fact, there’s really nothing to lose – almost literally, given the kind of situations that they come from. So if you can overcome the personal fear for death, which is a highly irrational thing, you know, then you’re on the way.

And in interrogation the same sort of thing applies. I was talking to this policeman, and I told him, “If you want us to make any progress, the best thing is for us to talk. Don’t try any form of rough stuff, because it just won’t work.” And this is absolutely true also. For I just couldn’t see what they could do to me which would make me all of a sudden soften to them. If they talk to me, well I’m bound to be affected by them as human beings. But the moment they adopt rough stuff, they are imprinting in my mind that they are police. And I only understand one form of dealing with police, and that is to be as unhelpful as possible. So I button up. And I told them this: “It’s up to you.” We had a boxing match the first day I was arrested. Some guy tried to clout me with a club. I went into him like a bull. I think he was under instructions to take it so far and no further, and using open hands so that he doesn’t leave any marks on the face. And of course he said exactly what you were saying just now: “I will kill you”. He meant to intimidate. And my answer was: “How long is it going to take you?” Now of course they were observing my reaction. And they could see that I was completely unbothered. If they beat me up, it’s to my advantage. I can use it. They just killed somebody in jail – a friend of mine – about ten days before I was arrested. Now it would have been bloody useful evidence for them to assault me. At least it would indicate what kinds of possibilities were there, leading to this guy’s death.

So I wanted them to go ahead and do what they could do, so that I could use it. I wasn’t really afraid that their violence might lead me to make revelations I didn’t want to make, because I had nothing to reveal on this particular issue. I was operating from a very good position, and they were in a very weak position. My attitude is, I am not going to allow them to carry out their programme faithfully. If they want to beat me five times, they can only do so on condition that I allow them to beat me five times. If I react sharply, equally and oppositely to the first klap, they are not going to be able to systematically count the next four klaps, you see. It’s a fight. So if they had meant to give me so much of a beating, and not more, my idea is to make them go beyond what they wanted to give me and to give back as much as I can give so that it becomes an uncontrollable thing. You see the one problem the guy had with me: he couldn’t really fight with me because it meant he must hit back, like a man. But he was given instructions you see, on how to hit, and now these instructions were no longer applying because it was a fight. So he had to withdraw and get more instructions. So I said to them, “Listen, if you guys want to do this your way, you have got to handcuff me and bind my feet together, so that I can’t respond. If you allow me to respond I’m certainly going to respond. And I’m afraid you may have to kill me in the process even if it is not your intention”.

The interview with Steve Biko conjured up many thoughts for me, as I hope it will for you. Maybe it will help you think about your own courage as it did me. How many of us are willing to suffer –as he did – for what we believe in? How many of us “activists” are still prepared to do so; those of us who regale others who were not there with stories - many of them becoming embellished in the retelling- how many of us persist today, continue to stand up in the face of injustice and without fear or favour are able to speak unpalatable truth to overweaning power. How many of those who call ourselves “activists” or not are able to do that – especially with our friends. It is often a battle that is harder to do than with our enemies.

How many of us are in fact willing to sit with ourselves in integrity and speak unpalatable truth to power to ourselves when we utilise our power to wrong another?

Recently I had the misfortune to see, hear and feel the pain as a colleague who does amazing facilitation work had to confront the disjuncture between what he says and what he does. And face the prospect of the complete destruction of a meaningful relationship. I saw the physical and emotional torment the situation caused him. I know that well; I too have visited that place. In the end, he lost the battle within himself, choosing instead to retreat behind carefully crafted internal walls where no other person can touch him – and there in his solitude, far away from anyone else, he felt in (false) control.

Being a warrior is hard. More than fighting, it is also about being willing to die – and for death not to matter. Knowing what you stand for means you don’t fall for everything.

Our training on the tatami offers us the space for that kind of preparation. At a technical level, practice in irimi (entering with the body) in the face of an attack helps to clear away the impurities that stick like barnacles to our technique. At another level, training with full awareness and consciousness – even on the days we would rather not – helps to clarify for us our purpose and how we live that our in relation to others.

As we refine what it is we stand for, the challenge becomes to implement that in all aspects of our lives – how we work, how we play, how we relate to others, how we love. At that point the artificial distinctions cease because there is no difference between me the brother, son, colleague, facilitator, writer, teacher, seeker after insight, lover or friend. When those carefully crafted yet artificial distinctions we cherish inside us fall away, the true warrior, samurai (one who is in service [to humanity]) can step forward. That is perhaps Takemusu aiki – aikido (the spirit of harmony) without form.

While Steve Bantu Biko paid the ultimate price at the tender age of 30, each of us has the space to grapple with those self-same issues in less terminal circumstances. Thanks to the sacrifice of people like him.

Courage is the power to let go of the familiar... To step out from our comfort zones and to know and show what we stand for.

See you on the tatami...

On creating connection

Remember, you cannot hold bliss

in your fist;
You can hold bliss only in your open hand – OSHO

Much of the training this year has been about bringing softness to the hard edges in my technique…. Whereas last year the focus became about facing my fears and nurturing the ability to stand up, in the face of an attack (sometimes even on my integrity) without aggression, this year - 2010 – was about finding the softness within and without. And while last year was focused on body movements (tai no henko) and especially on practicing kaiten and irimi, this year the focus shifted to creating musubi or connection with your training partner (uke).

We create musubi in many ways:

When we start our training, the connection starts when uke grabs our hand or our shoulder. Here the focus is on the proper body placement in relation to uke.

Later it progresses to connecting when uke starts his or her shomen (overhead) or yokomen (lateral) strike or launches a tsuki (punch). This is a slightly higher level of training because it doesn’t rely on a physical touch but rather connected to uke in the moment the attack becomes expressed. The downside of this stage of practice, is that it can still remain reactive training, dependant on getting the timing right. Move too late and the strike connects. Move too early and uke has the opportunity to realign and to change the attack – and again the strike connects. At this level of training it is important to be at the right place at the right time.

The most difficult stage ( or rather the most challenging one) is yet to come… In this stage, one connects with uke’s intention – as expressed in many miniscule body movements (shifts in posture, state of the eyes, change in breathing even or a readying of the shoulders). This is the stage of sen-no-sen, of connection with uke as a human being, with his or her spirit and the moment of the possibility of transformation.

Not surprisingly, this stage requires us to still the noise within, to find the still-point that TS Eliot speaks of, where the dance is. The relaxed power to move, to truly connect and to flow can only come when we have let go of the fears, faced the doubts and when we choose to step forward and engage notwithstanding – into the uncertainty of what will happen in the next moment. It happens when we choose to reach out to the other person.

Over and over in my mind plays a throw-away comment many years ago by the late Shihan Ken Cottier that the essence of kokyu-nage (breath power throw), indeed the essence of Aikido lies in these three elements – body placement, timing and kokyu-rokyu (relaxed breathing).

This past year I have often struggled to get these three elements just right both on and off the mat; I have often found myself in opposition to uke, clashing (sometimes only subtly) with his/her attack or running into uke’s power. Always, and without exception, that has been because I have been in just the wrong position relative to the attack. Many times I have berated uke (in my mind) for an improper attack – yet, honestly, it is only my placement that is at issue. The attack is the attack. I was “killed” five times in demonstration in December for every time being in the wrong place along the arc of the bokken’s cut.

At other times, my timing’s been off. With practice, thankfully it has improved over the years. Yet as uke for Kubota Shihan, I was reminded that there was a tardiness in my attack and response. And while that may be hidden in my ordinary practice, when a 7^th dan holds up a mirror to you, those imperfections and areas of improvement are highlighted. And so I have to wonder also whether off the mat, how many opportunities that slight hesitation has lost me? So next year I will train more consciously exploring where the caution, where the hesitation lies….

And still the relaxation – and the power that comes from truly being relaxed – eludes me. Not always, mind you. And I am more aware now where and when it is absent. But still here too there is room for improvement.

And so, as I write these reflections perhaps the challenge in making a real connection starts to reveal itself:

Much of it lies in what I do (or say), how I place myself in relation to the other person. Do I assume a cold, dispassionate distance, do I open myself up completely (also to the possibility of being disappointed or hurt), do I subordinate myself completely enduring the strikes believing resolutely that there is no gain without pain? How do I blend with the other person, without giving up the essence of who I am, without losing myself in the process?

Nonetheless, one third of connecting with someone else is just turning up, being present; without being around there can be no connection. So it all begins with taking the decision to be there. And with that decision to be there, to relate, it is important to then be there fully to allow for the possibility of the connection.

Timing too is crucial. How much is too much, or too little, or too late? In moving, do we move together or to a different beat? Am I truly present or stuck in a distant and fading past or lost in the fluffy promise of a fuzzy future?

And lastly, the challenge of truly connecting to another human being lies in being relaxed, relaxed enough to be myself… What stops us from that state? What fears drive us to hide (parts of) ourselves, to clothe ourselves sometimes in garments of civility and friendship even without ever revealing ourselves to allow true intimacy?

And of course we choose how to connect.

Sometimes we get it right; sometimes we don’t and invariably then we get hurt – or worse still hurt the other person. In this practice called Life the only real mistake is to continue to make the same ones over and over.

So here’s to deepening our awareness, deepening our musubi, our connectedness to one another… And opening up to being transformed by the connection.

See you on the tatami in the New Year!