Glimmerscape

Compassion and Dignity

Despite the reputation of Iwama Style Aikido as fiercely martial, Morihiro Saito Sensei, the developer of that style over the years following the Founder's death, was himself a very compassionate man.

Two teachers who spent a great deal of time with Saito Sensei, Dennis Tatoian Sensei and Hans Goto Sensei, both have stories about Saito Sensei that give us a glimpse of the scope of his compassion.

Tatoian Sensei tells of a visit to Iwama with a group of his students during the late 1980s. He says he was surprised during class with Saito Sensei that his old teacher corrected all of the young American students, but never corrected or criticized their teacher's technique in the slightest way. At one point, Tatoian Sensei remembers, "I even started doing things wrong on purpose, things that he always used to yell at me for, trying to see if he would correct me, but he never said a thing."

Later, Saito Sensei told his old student, "when you teach at other dojos never use the head instructor as your uke. This shows disrespect for both the teacher and his (or her) students. The students should never see their teacher thrown around on the mat or corrected during training." Just then Tatoian Sensei realized that Saito Sensei was telling him why he did not correct him in front of his students. It was a compassionate decision to preserve the dignity of his old student, now a senior Sensei in America.

Hans Goto Sensei has many stories about Saito Sensei from his time as uchi deshi at Iwama Dojo during the early 1970s. According to one of them, Saito Sensei had asked Goto Sensei, then a young black belt, to accompany him to a demonstration. At many Japanese Aikido demonstrations there was a great deal of talking first, while the students patiently sat in Seiza, a posture in which you sit back on your heels, your legs folded under you.

Goto Sensei sat quietly in seiza as other dignitaries and then Saito Sensei took long turns talking. As the talking continued Goto Sensei recalls that he began to feel his knees go numb and became unsure about his ability to get up. Of course, he was going to have to get up and attack Saito Sensei most forcefully at some point, and he began to feel apprehensive about whether he could do this. Not to get up and provide the asked for attack, or to do so awkwardly, would be to show disrespect for his teacher, and this worried the young American black belt.

Finally, the talking was over, and Saito Sensei turned and gestured at Goto Sensei to prepare to attack him. As he gestured and began to call out the attack, Goto says, Saito Sensei saw Goto shift awkwardly to ready himself. Immediately, the old japanese teacher smiled slightly, paused for a tiny moment, and then called out loudly, "we will start the demonstration with seated techniques!" Given this opportunity to begin from the seated position Goto Sensei had no trouble warming up, and the demonstration was a success.

Once again Saito Sensei had found a way to preserve the dignity of one of his students. Perhaps among the reasons why so many senior students of Saito Sensei all over the world remained so fiercely loyal to him, in addition to his having spent 23 years with the Founder, was his great capacity for compassion and the preservation of basic human dignity.

Go slow; smell the garbage

Today's training pace continued with the slow practice I've been doing for the past few weeks. It was like moving submerged in a big vat of honey. Slowing down this much is hard because of the concentration required, and also because it's so easy to just stop somewhere in the middle. Stopping the movement before it's complete is bad because then your partner stops. In Aikido this is not so good; better to keep the attacker moving, even if he's moving at a very slow pace.

I kept looking for bad footwork, dead hips, bent-over posture, rigid shoulders, and, because of the slow pace, I found lots of these, like little warts in my way of practicing that I usually just don't see. Noticing this ugly baggage is sort of humiliating, but if its there, it's there, and you might as well know it. Sensei sure does.

We practiced techniques that require a lot of movement: a two-handed grab of the forearm, morote dori, to which we applied kote-gaishi (wrist turn), and nikkyo ura (another painful wrist technique). The movements Sensei asked us to do involved turning and leading the attacker in his original direction, and then striking down and quickly spiraling in the other direction to extend the attacker for the throw.

My sore right wrist, injured about three weeks ago doing shiho-nage, was throbbing, and going slow allowed me to hang in with the pain when it was my turn to get thrown.

My partner and I resisted the temptation to speed up and smash each other around, and we kept being rewarded for this with little bits of learning.

After class we converged on the changing room with Sensei, and as we all put on our street clothes my partner remarked that going slow gave us a good view of the garbage we produce. Sensei smiled, as if to say, "at least now I'm not the only one seeing it."

It's all in the kokyu

Sunday morning class in the park is always a high point of the week. It's early and the morning sunlight slants across the park casting long shadows from the trees and showing little dew sparkles all over the grass.

It's getting cold and Sensei scolds me for sticking my hands under my armpits. "Use Ki!" he says, making the hand, wrist, and arm movement that denotes cultivation of kokyu. Of course, he can defrost a frozen turkey in about five minutes with this technique; me, I'm still trying to coax even the slightest flow.

We get out our jos and bow in to practice Kumi-Jo beginning with number 7. We practice the old way, that Saito Sensei taught during the 1970s. In this version the throw is executed by simply bringing the jo up the attacker's center, capturing his elbows as he raises to strike Yokomen. This is a little bit easier and produces fewer bruises than the new way, which involves sweeping the leg from the rear, buckling the attacker at the knees.

When my old friend and training partner Carmen and I began practicing the new way Sensei came over to watch. As Uke Tachi I got to do the throw, and as I came through under Carmen's strike to capture the back of his right knee Sensei stopped me. "You have to get both knees," he said, scooping up Carmen's legs from behind at the knees, folding him up neatly.

For the eight years I've been training with Sensei I've never seen him instruct us to sweep both knees. It's always been the right knee only. Immediately I remembered the story about O-Sensei yelling at Tohei's students to "do it the way I show you!" Which is not necessarily the way it has been done before. Carmen and I are used to changes like this and just began doing it the new way Sensei showed. We found that by moving the body through the attacker's center just as you scoop out the knees, both legs get crossed up and the attacker is completely upended. The body movement through the attacker's center turns out to be the same movement as with any Kokyu-Nage throw, but for some reason I'd never thought of doing it at the end of Kumi-Jo #7. Well, why not? Isn't there Kokyu in everything we do?

Once again I was reminded of Sensei's typical response to the question, "What is Aikido?" He just smiles and without any words at all, makes that turning, sinking movement with his body, arm, and wrist, spreading his fingers wide sort of like you would to turn a melon-sized door knob counter-clockwise with the right hand. In Aiki-body language this translates as, "it's the Kokyu."

Stories from Iwama

The Iwama Dojo, in Ibaraki Province north of Tokyo was O-Sensei's dojo, where he lived and taught for many years after the war, and where he accepted Morihiro Saito as a student in 1946. Saito Sensei's passing has occasioned some changes in the Saito family's relation to the dojo, where Saito Sensei himself had taught for nearly 35 years after the Founder's death.

Now the dojo is under the administration of Hombu Dojo, and Hitohiro Saito, Morihiro's son, does not teach there, but in his own dojo nearby. Here is a picture of the Iwama Dojo showing O-Sensei's house attached on the left.

Though I've never been to Iwama to train, I always listen when my teachers, who spent many years there during the 1970s, tell stories about Saito Sensei, the senior students like Shigemi Inagaki, and their own experiences of being Uchi Deshi in Iwama. Many oldtimers are a little sad at the way things have worked out between Hombu Dojo and the Saito family, and when we're lucky enough to get them together we always hear funny or interesting stories about the old days. Thanks to Pat Yarrow, many stories and photos of these and later times at Iwama under Saito Sensei are on the web at http://www.saitosensei.com/. More infomation and photos about Iwama dojo can be found here.

From time to time I'll post stories as I hear them from those who were there. A couple of these stories involve a very unique American aikidoka, David Alexander Sensei 6th Dan, who ended up training with Saito Sensei for many years.

One of these stories is about how Alexander Sensei first decided that he wanted to train at Iwama. As the story goes, he had arrived at the Iwama dojo in 1972 after several months at Hombu Dojo in Tokyo, and he dressed and came out on the mat to take a class. He partnered up with Shigemi Inagaki, a fierce senior student who had developed a reputation as a scary guy to train with. They were practicing Shiho-Nage, and right away Inagaki threw the American youngster so hard to the mat that he was knocked unconscious for a few seconds. When Alexander Sensei came to he got up and declared, "This is where I want to train!" To anyone who has ever taken a class from Alexander Sensei this story will make perfect sense.

As another story goes, one day at Iwama Dojo while Saito Sensei was instructing on a technique a visiting student did the unthinkable. He got up and began correcting Saito Sensei. Everyone was dumbstruck except for Alexander Sensei, who immediately arose, went to the guy and forcefully told him, "shut up and sit down, now!" The student did so, and others who were there credit Alexander Sensei with having saved someone's life that day.

One of my teachers, Dennis Tatoian Sensei, manages to capture in one sentence what it must have been like at Iwama Dojo studying with Saito Sensei: "Never forget that Aikido is a martial art."

Two Roads

After early weapons class this morning two students went out on the mat and began practicing one of the five paired sword forms, or Kumi Tachi, that we do in Iwama Style Aikido. Other students were waiting around watching, tying on hakama, and stretching in preparation for the next class.

One student, who had taken the earlier class, was standing next to me as the two who had just come on the mat went after each other with wooden swords. The early class had emphasized slow movements and staying connected with your partner, and the kyu-ranked student next to me had been asked to demonstrate these qualities for the class with her partner. They had done the 31 Kumi-Jo, and the mindfulness, awareness, and constant connection they demonstrated throughout the form was mesmerizing and beautiful.

Now, the two black belts we watched between classes were having a consensual testosterone party, as each in turn rushed at the other striking hard or parrying, the two swords banging loudly against one another. They were having a great time. The forms were performed pretty accurately, yet there was a quality in the rushing attack and borderline-desperate defense that contrasted greatly with the quality of slow, mindful moves we'd seen demonstrated in the prior class.

From this contrast were distinguished two roads, equally fun, depending on your mood, and probably each leading in its own crooked or straight path toward the promised land of Aiki we're all aiming at in our own way.

After the two had finished and Sensei was coming onto the mat, just before we turned to line up for the bow in, the student looked at me and said, "it seems like going slow is a better way to go fast than just going fast." I remembered that Saito Sensei, who really could go fast, had said pretty much the same thing.

Walk first, then run: Irimi-Nage

Those who study Aikido for any length of time develop a high tolerance for frustration and bewilderment. They have to accept that to do Aikido gracefully and effortlessly takes a long time. Some techniques are so beautiful when the senseis and senior students execute them, but for most students these same techniques breakdown painfully, either physically, aesthetically, or both.

One of the most frustratingly out-of-reach, apparently mockingly simple, techniques is Irimi-Nage. All you do is move behind the attacker, turn and face the attacker's direction, draw the attacker to your shoulder, and then strike through, cutting the attacker to the ground.

A large part of the problem is that we all want to do this technique just like the people who have been training for 30 years do it, all a blur of spiral movement culminating in a beautiful crescendo where the attacker's energy is turned finally back upon him, crumpling him inexorably to the mat. You can see it perfectly, but doing it is always just out of reach.

One strategy for making progress in learning advanced techniques is to focus repeatedly on the fundamentals of the technique, and then let it express more expertly from the basics as the technique soaks into the body. Of course this is what takes time. With Irimi-Nage, because the movement is so compelling, we often skip practicing a more basic form that features no big, swooping spiral movement, but just an overpowering strike through the attacker's body.

Saito Sensei would emphasize that to do Irimi-Nage you really have to get all the way behind the attacker, turn the attacker's direction, and assume the same hanmi, or foot position, as the attacker. On the left is a picture of O-Sensei demonstrating this. Interestingly, these details are almost always missing when we try to execute this technique, focusing instead as we do on getting to the spiral fun, so is it any wonder that we have meager success?

Saotome Sensei, at a seminar in Mill Valley some years ago, demonstrated a version of Irimi-Nage which he wanted us to do without the spiralling movement, but just with a strike through the attacker's center. He said, "enter and move behind the attacker, turn the attacker's direction assuming the same footwork, bring the attacker's head to your shoulder, and then strike through. No twirling!"

He gestured for us to try it, and the mat filled up with people doing Irimi-Nage in big, graceful spirals and swooping movements. It was beautiful, but not what Sensei had either asked for or demonstrated. He stopped the action and began yelling, "No twirling, just move behind, sink and turn their direction, then strike through!" He seemed impatient. We came back on the mat, but once again everyone did the same thing they always do, twirling and spiraling their attackers into the throw. Saotome stopped us again and yelled louder, "No twirling!!"

Eventually we moved on, but I was struck by how earnestly it seemed that so many students just lapsed into their usual ways of doing a technique, even when a visiting Shihan had demonstrated for them a different interpretation of it. I think everyone was really trying hard, but couldn't overcome the habits they had already put into their bodies.

My feeling was that Saotome Sensei wanted us to practice a more fundamental, basic way of doing Irimi-Nage, so that we could mark the necessary building blocks required for us to progress in learning it. Yet most of us, either through simple habit or deliberate arrogance, declined the invitation to try something different, and thus missed a chance to practice details that Saotome may have been passing down to us directly from the Founder himself.

Learning new moves: Part 2

Aikido is a Cybernetic activity.  In short, this means that in performing Aikido, one makes on-the-fly, real-time corrections or adjustments based on how the application of the technique is or isn't working out.   The ability to make such mid-course corrections shows that the person enacting them is cybernetic.

Cybernetics is the science of systems that can take corrective action in order to maintain some sort of control in their environment.  People are cybernetic, and so are bean sprouts.  People use their cybernetic abilities in things like riding a bike, making constant micro-shifts in balance and position to stay upright on the bike and to travel in the right direction.  Bean sprouts show off their cybernetic abilities in bending around obstacles to present their leaves to the sun.

To be cybernetic a system/organism only needs the following components.

• A perceptual function to monitor changes in the relevant environment
• A goal state of affairs that the system wants to maintain
• A computer to measure if there is a difference between the goal state and the aggregate environmental conditions the system perceives at any instant
• A capacity for behavior in the form of corrective action, just in case the computer returns an difference big enough to be important.

Additionally, it helps to have an appropriate ability to store memories, such as memories of how well or poorly the last corrective action worked, and of course, memory of the desired goal state.

Tie all the components together in a circular information circuit, program a goal state, and then set the thing in constant cycling motion.  Voila: a cybernetic system.  People and bean sprouts all have the parts wired up the right way for them to do cybernetics.

It may seem a trivial point to say that Aikido is cybernetic.  Well, of course it is; Aikido is an activity aimed at correcting a violent exchange by restoring peace. 

It's important to note that Aikido is not a response to the attack; this is a kind of thinking that we inherited from behaviorist psychologists that caught hold in popular thinking.  Rather, Aikido is an action taken to restore things to a goal state, that of peace.  This is not just a minor difference of words, but an important distinction with pragmatic consequences either way.  A good resource for exploring this distinction and other aspects of cybernetics is the work of William Powers. 

Even though people have the necessary and sufficient components and wiring to behave cybernetically, we sometimes elect not to do so.  I have posted here about doing Aikido without paying attention to uke or the unfolding technique, but just plowing through the motions, regardless of how much force is necessary to drive someone to the mat. 

One of the aspects of Aikido that make it beautiful to watch is the expression in motion of the cybernetic connection fully maintained.  Years ago I had the good luck to see an Aikido exercise performed in which two partners moved constantly to uproot the other.  The centers of gravity and balance of both were changing constantly as each one moved with the other's energy and momentum, looking for some small vulnerability.  Back and forth the exercise flowed like waves moving up and back on a beach.  You could feel the single-pointed focus of each partner on the other and the unfolding dynamics of the exercise.  Push-hands in Tai Chi is another demonstration of this kind of cybernetically live exchange.

As it turns out, social science researchers such as Chris Argyris have used this same cybernetic model to explain how and how we cause trouble in everyday speaking and listening despite our best intentions.  He and his colleagues have developed cybernetic exercises and practices aimed at helping people speak and communicate more effectively in everyday life to achieve the goals we espouse.

In Part 3 we'll begin to explore how Argyris's cybernetic theory of effective communication may show promise and avoid some common pitfalls of many leadership and conflict management methods.  Additionally, we'll look at some possible short-comings of Argyris's method that could be corrected by widening the bandwidth of communication to include assessments about mood.  Finally, somewhere down the road, I want to try to show how the Action Learning methodology, of which Argyris is an key architect, can be usefully seen as a kind of Aikido in speaking and listening.

Avoiding the Dark Side is hard work

Aikido espouses lofty aims: to promote peace, harmony, and resolution of conflict, among others. If asked, we all earnestly claim these values as our goal in training. Of course, a lot of the time we demonstrate the opposite of these goals in our training, exhibiting reliance on force, overly-violent strikes, and ludicrous contests of strength and will. Moreover, some partners seem to bring the testosterone out in one another.

There seems to be a moment of awareness for me, with certain partners who trigger my fighting instincts, at which I say to myself, "hey, welcome to the Dark Side, let's have some fun!" After all, we're consenting black belts, and somehow nobody seems to get hurt.

But in retrospect these partners and I often agree, at the end of the class, that we wasted our chance to learn Aikido by trying to beat each other up. The problem is that we go too fast through techniques and often get footwork and hip movements wrong, succeeding only by brute force. It's kind of fun, but not Aikido. Afterward, we always resolve to slow down with each other and not give in to the Dark side, no matter how tempting. Then, the next time we just do the same thing all over again.

Today was not like other days. An old friend with whom I've been training since I was 5th Kyu, and with whom I always seem to end up dancing on the Dark Side, showed up at the dojo. Sensei demonstrated Ushiro Ryokata Dori Ikkyo, a technique for neutralizing a two-handed attack from the rear. I bowed in to my old friend just as always before, but instead of the two of us commencing to smash each other into the mat, we recognized the pattern and agreed to something different.

We decided to resist the temptation and go slow, looking for the blend right from the start. We laughed about how hard it was not to just beat on each other like we always do. And it was hard.

But the payoff was that we actually practiced what Sensei was teaching to the best of our ability, and I'll be damned if I didn't learn something. It was nice for Sensei too, I'm sure, because he wasn't always clapping to sit us down just before someone got hurt.

Training log 11/21/04

As I walked out into the park where we do weapons practice on Sunday morning I couldn't help but notice what a perfect Autumn day it was in Northern California. I took in the details: gloriously clear sky with a few white clouds, a little cool breeze but not cold, and completely dry grass. The dry grass was especially welcome, and different from the usual wet ground that soaks up through my shoes in about the first 10 minutes of class. Another difference in the park today was that a layer of large brown Maple leaves had fallen all over, and walking through them made noise. I thought of how Saito Sensei would say to pick up your feet so that you wouldn't make little sliding noises on the mat.

There were a few new students and a couple of yudansha. Sensei decided that we would spend the class practicing basics: the 20 jo (staff) suburi, or fundamental building blocks on which all the jo forms are based.

Bill Witt Sensei tells us every time he visits that he spent three years doing only fundamental moves before Saito Sensei allowed him to do anything at all advanced. He says he still, after 40 years, mostly practices fundamentals. When I look at Witt Sensei's Aikido I only see precision and economy. If this is the result of focusing always on fundamentals, then sign me up.

One great thing about training in the park is that there are Pine trees. I picked out a tree, and found the end of a branch with three little shoots of pine needles sticking out at about head-level. This became my target for all the striking moves. I wanted to just contact the little shoots with the end four inches of my jo.

For me this is not as easy as one might think. I have pretty consistent success with straight shomen or yokomen cuts, but am less successful with the one-handed strikes where I am swinging the jo up through the target with my right hand. One of these has the jo follow a figure-eight pattern in which I target first the attacker's left temple, and then on the way back through, the right temple. The hip movements give the jo a kind of snap through each strike, and eventually I am able to nail my target with both strikes. On one of these two little nubs at the ends of the branch go flying off into the brown leaves that cover the ground.

Sensei had to leave a little early, and we continued on by ourselves, slowly going through some of the remaining suburi until it was time to shuffle back through the leaves, pack up our weapons, and get on with the rest of what was shaping up to be a gorgeous day.

Training log 11/19/04

Ice glazed the windows this morning as I set out for early weapons class in San Rafael. The dojo was cold and dark as I opened the door and turned on the lights. Somehow just illuminating the place transforms the dojo from a forbidding frost garden to a warm, comfortable place to train. Well, maybe on mornings like today, not exactly warm.

We spent the entire class practicing the 31-count jo partner practice that we've been working on in this class for the past year or so. Everyone pretty much knows the moves on both sides so we focus on polishing.

First there are questions about how to make a yokomen strike to the knee without swinging the jo laterally around like a baseball bat. Our teacher goes on at great length that you can make this strike while bringing the jo directly over the head by rotating the hips off-line. People are always mystified to find that it works.

The way we're learning this form is in keeping with the sequence Saito Sensei demonstrated starting around 1988, though we've recently brought in a few minor simplifications introduced by Hitohiro Saito more recently. The new moves are still not automatic, and we spent some time at the end of class focusing on one of them, a covering move where the jo is angled so as to protect the head and prepare for a quick yokomen strike. It seems that we have to open up the hips more as we step to the right and cover.

Starting next week we'll probably begin practicing some variations in the sequence, and for this purpose we'll probably return to doing the smaller segments--there are 7 of them--of the 31 kumijo. These segments are like little awase practices all their own, and a few of them have two or three ways of working out. We haven't looked much at these variations because it is already very confusing just trying to get through the whole 31 move main sequence. Adding in variations can substantially increase the confusion factor, so it's a good thing Aikido students have a high tolerance for bewilderment.

By the time class was over the sky was clear and the sun had burned off the fog. The dojo was warm with the light and energy of both the students who had just bowed-off and those dressing for the next class.

I couldn't stay. I had to beat it up the freeway to a gym where my daughter's first High School basketball JV tournament was about to get underway.