Enter the Dojo

At BudoJ ourneyMan, there was an interesting post about the difference between a gym and a dojo. An excerpt is below. The full article may be read here.

I don’t write this post lightly; this has been churning around in my head for some time now, a kind of gadfly burrowing into my brain, so please bear with me as I lay out my argument.

How it works with youngsters.

The best place to start is to consider how we attempt to introduce our kids to activities that may enrich their lives and open whole new worlds to them.

Opportunities for youngsters are presented like a buffet laid out before them by well-intentioned parents. The thinking tends to be; throw all these ‘opportunities’ at the wall and see which one sticks. A messy spaghetti smorgasbord of gym classes, hockey clubs, tennis, gymnastics, dance classes, football, etc, etc. Surely little Jenny or Johnny will find the one activity that floats their boat and allows their talents to rise?

It’s what all responsible parents do; the first steps towards the potential for human fulfilment.

For adults?

I don’t think that stops at childhood. Autonomous adults who no longer have their parent’s well-intended regime imposed upon them reach working age often find themselves searching around for that special ‘something’ that ticks all the boxes, frequently without any real idea of what those boxes are.

As an adult, if you decide to ‘take a class’ in martial arts, is it just that? Identical to taking an aerobics or yoga class?

You turn up, you pay your money, the instructor, with customer service at the back of his/her mind, greets you with a smile. Then, you might be flushed with initial excitement at the novelty (for it may well be novelty you are seeking?) and then just fade away and move on to something else.

The sad thing is that consumer culture has certain inevitable sets of rules and expectations; it’s all designed for you to dip in and dip out. Why should martial arts be any different?

Maybe there is more going on – things that don’t align with the consumer mindset?

If you decide to become involved with a traditional Japanese martial art, the system that you might have ‘dipped your toe into’ could easily be a different beast altogether. In this scenario it is possible that other priorities come to the fore that don’t fit easily with the buyer’s market of the aerobics or yoga classes.

To my mind, this begs the questions which are at the crux of where I am coming from; are you a consumer or a devotee? Are you a customer or a custodian? There is a difference.

For consumers, the aerobics/yoga classes are transactional arrangements. The instructor standing in front of you offers a service that you might want to avail yourself of, at least for a while, a bit like taste testing different cheeses at a newly-discovered deli. You are the buyer sampling the wares; the shopkeeper is hoping that you are going to become a dedicated customer.

However, underpinning the traditional martial arts there is the consideration of a timeline that not only reaches back into the past but also towards a theoretical future. Is it perhaps too extreme to describe this as the elephant in the room?

This is where Memes come in… to explain.

Martial arts as ‘Memes’, the Richard Dawkins version (not the coopted word that the Internet seems to have stolen).

Just to explain. In 1976 Richard Dawkins in his book, ‘The Selfish Gene’ coined the word ‘meme’ to mean how a concept, idea or system is spread (gene-like) generationally by imitation or tradition. This can include religion, philosophy, or even skills-based knowledge, of which I would include the older schools of the martial arts.

To get into the details and the structures of the martial arts, the ones that are passed down generationally; you could say that these traditions/memes can be gifted with blessings, or blighted by curses. To explain what those are is at the root of my argument here.

The blessings.

The accumulated practical knowledge acquired across the generations creates a storehouse of wisdom and experience that is hard-won. If these positive attributes originate from the ‘down and dirty’ skills of hardened battlefield veterans then their wisdom is immeasurably valuable to future generations.

Add to that, if they are passed through the hands of truly enlightened and experienced torch-bearers, who can systemise and supercharge these experiences in a way that can be handed down to a dedicated and eager body of students, then what you have is a stream/tradition/ryuha that has genuine value.

It would be remiss of me not to acknowledge that some of these older traditions cannot really be used as ‘the art of war’, particularly the ones involving antiquated weaponry; but, there is a greater depth involved, one that adds immeasurable value beyond mere mechanical practicality. Within the discipline lays a whole catalogue of principles, ethics, philosophies and the vehicle for human fulfilment.

 This is the upside – this is what happens when things are going well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Great Wave

Over at The Budo Journeyman, there was an article about one of the greatest Japanese artists, Hokusai Katsushika. Below is an excerpt. The full post, with some of Hokusai's greatest works, may be read here.

19^th century European painters have more than their fair share of Bohemians, wild boys (and girls), eccentrics and geniuses; but you don’t tend to think about that with the Japanese. Let me tell you, they are definitely there.

Hokusai was, in his generation, the best of the best. In fact, his sparkling and dramatic artworks have continued to ripple through time; very much like his iconic ‘Great Wave off Kanagawa’ (1831).

Hokusai Katsushika (1760 – 1849) lived a full, if not eccentric, life. The development of his artwork and continued influence moved diverse western artists like; Van Gogh and Monet. But his inspiration and very modern ways of working didn’t happen in a vacuum. It is said that very early on when he was beginning to cut his teeth as an artist he was exposed to French and Dutch copperplate engravings. I am certain that his experimentation with distance and perspective came out of the European tradition.

This is why the ‘Great Wave’ is so famous. Observe the way that mount Fuji viewed through the eye of the wave is diminished and shrunken under the massive movement of the water that appears to engulf it; the panicking boatmen there as a device for further scale references. The subtext is about the comparison of these various entities in size and distance. The earthbound Fuji is humbled by the might of a dramatic moving body of water; the ocean gets its revenge; Nature shakes her skirts.

 Note in ‘Great Wave’ the repeated major and minor spirals; the smaller ones as kinds of ‘claws’ in the water.

 

 

 

The Most Basic of Basics

Over at the Budo Bum blog, there is an excellent post on the most basic of basics, upon which all of our practices are founded. An excerpt is below. The full post may be read here.

Practice started without doing any kata. We didn’t even do kihon waza (basic techniques). I’ve long joked that the only things I really teach are how to breathe and how to walk. We haven’t been doing too much with this in practice lately because right now all of my students have been with me for at least a couple of years, and they’ve been through the breathing and walking stuff a few times. Lately though, I’ve been working on some new ideas.

I had a conversation with a Shinto Muso Ryu teacher last year that is rolling through my head like a snowball down a mountainside in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. We were talking about getting your arms aligned properly. He had some exercises he’d discovered in an interesting little book about improving your health and budo by swinging your arms properly. What he described and showed me aligned nicely with some things I was beginning to understand in my iaido practice about aligning the hands and shoulders. I’ve been playing with this since then.

I started out by trying to put my arms in good alignment. This was difficult, and as soon as I stopped thinking about it, my arms would roll back to where they normally sat. The point of this is not really about the arms though. The arms are just signalers for how well aligned the body’s central structure is. I started making progress when I stopped trying to get my arms to align with my centerline and swing straight, and instead dug back along the muscle chain. The real progress occurred when I started playing with the position of my shoulder blades. As soon as I moved those back and down, my arms and hands fell into alignment.

I’ve spent a lot of time as a jodo and iaido teacher trying to fix my students hand and arm positions. It’s been frustrating because I haven’t had much success in fixing things this way. I’d show people where their hands and arms should be, and they’d mimic the position for a while, but the next practice I’d be correcting the same thing. Then I started looking at the basics of movements.

When we move our hands, the movement isn’t based in our hands. We usually think of the arms moving the hands around. What I have realized (and forgive me taking so long to figure this out) is that all movement has a base, a foundation, and if that foundation is off, all movements originating there will be off. The base from which the arms move is the upper back; the spine, the scapulas, and the muscles connecting them. When I looked at my students, I realized that even when they put their arms in the right place, they weren’t getting them in place the right way. They were moving their arms around below their shoulders without changing the base that supports their arms. Those bases were all over the place, which explained why students couldn’t keep their arms in the right places without conscious effort.

I stopped trying to correct students' hand positions, and started working on changing the way they hold their upper backs. As soon as they focused on the position of their shoulder blades relative to their spine, their hands and arms magically corrected themselves. I noticed that if their backs were correct, they couldn’t hold their arms wrong. Once they fixed the movement's base, incorrect movement became difficult, and the correct movement became easy.

Whenyou follow the muscle chains far enough, you end up in the ball of the foot. I’ve understood that proper stance is important, but I’m just beginning to understand that it is almost everything. All the muscle chains, all the body’s structures, originate with the feet. Nothing can be correct if the feet aren’t right. So now I’m working on kihon for how to stand, and I’m thinking I haven’t done nearly enough work with my students on just standing, much less walking. I’m rebuilding my own structure from the ball of my foot up, and all sorts of interesting things are happening.

The kihon for jodo and iai are seemingly simple: swinging the sword, swinging the jo, blocking, receiving attacks, redirecting the opponent’s weapon. These are taught in the kihon waza. There are even more basic elements though, such as: How do you hold the sword? How do you hold the jo? How do you raise your arms? How do you breathe? How do you stand? These are just assumed in practice.

On this day we didn’t assume them. Practicing kihon cuts and strikes assumes that you are standing correctly, breathing correctly, and walking correctly. I’ve discovered it helps to break out these most fundamental of fundamentals and work on them without all the confusing and distracting activity that’s going on when doing kihon waza. Just standing in a proper, efficient, powerful structure takes a lot of mental focus and effort at first. We have all sorts of bad habits when it comes to posture, structure, and breathing. All of these have to be fixed before we can advance to the subtle and challenging art of holding the sword and the jo properly.

 

 

Regarding Aikido

 

You may find this video interesting.