Glimmerscape

On the Road in Orange County

Spending the last three days in Orange County has reminded me of an adventure there 18 years ago involving a Tai Chi workout in a hotel parking lot, some SCUBA divers, the Orange County Sheriff, and some apparently concerned hotel staff.

I was in Irvine to attend a series of company meetings, and at the end of the second day of exhausting drudgery attending presentations and breathing hotel air I had to get out, even if it was only to the parking lot. It was late. I had changed into some comfortable sweats and sniffed around the parking lot for an out-of-the-way spot to do my 37 move Yang form.

As I did my warm-up exercises I felt new energy moving through my body. I'd avoided alcohol and was feeling sharp in the mild night air. The lights of surrounding buildings twinkled, but I had picked a spot facing a relatively dark empty expanse of graded land, so that the area directly in front of me as I began my form was mostly a curtain of blackness out of which emerged faint horizon light from developments up the coast.

As I finished my first set and began the form again a large bus pulled up about 20 feet driectly in front of me. There was at least 100 yards of empty parking lot space on either side of me, but the bus stopped and began unloading so that the people had to decide to go left or right to either side of me. What made things more complicated was the fact that everyone who got off also claimed a huge amount of heavy SCUBA gear from inside the cargo area of the bus and lugged it to a spot about ten feet to my right where there eventually arose a large mound of BCS jackets, wet suits, and other equipment. A hose was brought out from the building in back of me and people began washing their stuff off under the street lamps while I did my solo form about 20 feet away.

The Tai Chi had got me into an alpha state so massive that I just watched the show unfolding before me with a kind of detachment, as though it was a movie being projected all around me. I just kept doing my form, over and over, and in time the divers all drifted off with their equipment to their vehicles and the bus left.

Once again I was all alone in the parking lot. The lamps buzzed softly in their tall towers, shedding a kind of yellow-green light all over the expanse of asphalt. I just kept on moving deeper into the form, quietly exulting in having outlasted the noisy, complicated intrusion.

Suddenly I noticed some new lights moving across the darkness way off in the undeveloped area. There were a lot of colors and they were moving fast, gradually coming closer. I continued my practice and tracked the lights, some flashing some not. Finally it dawned on me that the lights were attached to approaching vehicles, police vehicles. There were about four cars, and I thought, "OK, here's something even more interesting than the last show. I'll just keep on with my form."

The police cars converged out of the dirt field beyond the parking lot and came to a stop together at the edge of the hotel property. Policemen emerged from the cars and began walking in my direction. Still, I just watched in a distracted way, waiting to see them veer off in one direction or another, as though I was invisible because of my Tai Chi. But they didn't veer off. When the officers were about 30 yards away from me I realized with a kind of sinking feeling that they were coming because they had some business with me. They stopped about 20 feet away and stood there, about 10 of them. I slowly came to rest and said "hello." Then, anticipating, in my super-calm state, some kind of confrontation, I added in my steadiest voice, "I'm a guest at this hotel, what do you want with me."

There was silence as the officers stared back. Then one of them stepped forward and stammered, "W-what are you doing?" I replied that I was doing a kind of Chinese calesthentics. I explained that it was a workout I do when away on business as I was that night. They considered this reply, and then the stammering officer continued, "We got a call that someone was out in the back of the parking lot on PCP." I said, "Well, I'm the only one here, I haven't seen anyone else except a bus full of divers that unloaded and went home about 20 minutes ago."

The officers looked at one another, had a short conference, and one of them said, "Well then, no problem, sorry to have bothered you." They turned, walked back to their cars, switched off the flashing lights and drove back into the dark area. I stood and watched their lights gradually receed and finally wink out. This was enough excitement in one night for me, and I turned and walked back into the hotel, went up to my room, took a shower and went to bed.

Later, back in San Francisco at Tai Chi class I told my teacher about the incident. He laughed and replied, "well, the way your form looks no wonder they thought you were on PCP." I had to laugh too, at how expertly he had nailed me. Then he clapped for class to begin.

Ken Tai Jo awase on a blustery Sunday

This morning a cold front blew into Northern California, and as I pulled into the parking lot at Cotati Hub Park the first rain drops of the day hit my windshield. The only other person out on this cold wet morning was my old training partner Carmen. We quickly decided to head over to our wet-weather alternate site, an outdoor venue sheltered by a concrete overhang.

Since nobody else showed up we were able to do anything we wanted to do. Quickly we decided to run through the full set of 12 Ken Tai Jo awase that we'd done some parts of with other students over the past few weeks. With just the two of us we were able to get through the entire set, going back and forth as attacker with the sword and defender with the jo a few times each.

Awase 11 and 12 are a little bit more complicated than the others. They involve the attacker grabbing the jo with the left hand, as a kind of panic move. These we did very slowly, since neither of us had ever had much practice at these. There was an additional awase related to these that Saito Sensei taught during the late 1980's but had abandoned by the mid 1990s. This one involved the defender with the jo stripping away both of the attacker's arms, one at a time, exposing his center for a thrust. We tried this just for the sake of the historical value and immediately saw why Saito Sensei probably abandoned it. The timing and complexity of capturing and peeling away both arms of the attacker was a little overwhelming, and probably would have been very frustrating for everyone in a big room full of students.

After an hour the wind had picked up and it was colder. Rain was coming down fitfully in little squalls. I had the feeling that there was probably no other person on earth besides Carmen who would have come out to practice Ken tai Jo with me today. I thanked him and we headed off in different directions to finish off the last day of the holiday weekend.

The Karate of no touching

When I was a karate student years ago it was all about violence and inflicting pain. This went both ways, and I often got taken down hard. But we were trying to learn to be dangerous, and showing no mercy in hand-to-hand training was part of the program. If you hurt someone, or if you got hurt there were no regrets, you just defended yourself.

My teacher used to say, "things will either go well for you, or they will go badly; and there you are." This reminded me that any martial situation was uncertain, and that anyone could get lucky, which meant I had a chance against people more experienced than I. But it also implied that you could be unlucky and get your clock cleaned.

One day near the end of class my teacher had told a bunch of us students to sit down on the mat. He seemed to want to talk to us a little before class was over. Most of us were orange, purple, and blue belts, which meant that we were roughly in the middle of the process of getting to black belt. In that dojo, the early belts up to purple were more focused on surfacing, even exulting in, aggression. At purple belt, though, our focus shifted to being more crafty and creative, and thinking sufficiently to match our response in a situation to the level of danger. This meant that we would get yelled at for employing a killing technique in a simulated encounter with a clumsy, annoying drunk. Our teacher would bellow, "are you going to just kill someone for being clumsy and stupid? No," he would explain, "you are probably going to make it safe without perhaps hurting him too badly, and this is a decision you are going to make in an instant with no possibility of undoing whatever action you take."

I thought about how much common sense he was making, and was a little scared by how ready we seemed to be to kick and strike someone into a lifeless pulp at the slightest provocation. This attitude was especially interesting given that we knew even the most skilled could be defeated.

As we gathered on the mat that night, all dripping sweat and feeling strong, our teacher said, "now I want to talk to you about the karate of no-touching." We all thought this was a kind of metaphor for something. No, he was talking about a kind of karate in which you never kicked, never punched, in fact, never touched anyone at all. He said it was the most effective form of martial arts, but one that you had to train for many years, even decades, to master.

Someone asked him how there could be a karate in which there was no physical contact. Our teacher explained, "when I walk into a room I make it safe by my very presence there. It's not that I'm trying to intimidate; that just draws out people's fighting instincts. What I'm doing is being present in a way that people who might want to fight begin to feel that they don't, but don't really know why." He continued, "if someone does want to fight I might try to distract them with engaging talk about something they may be interested in. It means I have to be very perceptive, and notice something about what they are concerned with or care about. "

"This is what the karate of no-touching is really about: listening so closely that you understand how to defuse a situation without ever making a fist."

Long after that class, and after I'd abandoned karate for Aikido, this speech by my old teacher continues to echo in my mind. Now and then I am reminded that even in Aikido, the art of reconciliation, we are sometimes seduced by the desire to show what we know, especially in situations seemingly warranting a brutal intervention. At times like these, if I am tempted, I hope to recall what my old teacher said about the karate of no-touching. Or perhaps I might remember Terry Dobson's famous story of how an old man dealt with a drunk on a Tokyo train, depriving Dobson of the pleasure of subduing the drunk with Aikido. In a fascinating bit of synchronicity, just as I was about to enter this post I did a Technorati search on "Aikido" just for the heck of it. About the fifth item returned was Dobson's train story.

End of year mischief and torture

The end of the year is such a fun place at my home dojo, Bay Marin Aikido. Today was the last day of regular training before the Christmas Holiday, and Goto Sensei seemed to have a twinkle in his eye.

I asked him to look at some footwork I'd been practicing with Happo Giri, the eight-direction sword strike form. He nodded encouragingly and then grabbed a jo and came out on the mat. Quicker than I could register what he was doing, he executed a full 360 degree turn while striking. Throughout the movement he maintained perfect footwork. I blinked, and sort of blurted, "what was that!?" He gave an impish smile and did it again just as gracefully. I tried it: klunk. Then it was time to bow in for class.

I'd forgotten that we were doing techniques to get out of grabs by lots of people. To me most of these are just torture. I don't have a clue how to do most of them, and I just end up trying to use force. But against two-to-four strong men the use of force ends up pathetically badly, every time. This was no different.

We started with two attackers and then right away, before I was at all comfortable dealing with two of them, Sensei had us defend against three attackers: one on each arm and the other grabbing the shoulders from behind. Sensei even showed it with four attackers, whirling out to safety via some sort of seam between the bodies that only he saw. That's him doing it in a blur in the photo above. They all fell down, and he beamed his mischievious smile.

Finally Sensei asked us to throw four people, two of whom have grabbed each arm. The throw, using a familiar kokyuho technique, involves sinking, turning, capturing, and throwing them two at a time. That's me below trying it out. Grabbing me were, left to right, Steve, Bob, Paul (obscured), and Kevin. I think they ended up winning that round.

At the end of class there was a lot of laughing and joking around, mostly out of relief that we were finally finished with the closest thing Aikido has to "Monkey in the Middle." It was a good reminder at year's end that no matter how good you might fancy you are at this, Sensei will find something you're absolutely abominable at, and make you do it for a whole week at the end of the year.

Meditation on Shiho-Nage

For the last day or two I've been watching videos of Saito Sensei doing Shiho-Nage. As a tall person training with mostly shorter ukes, I've found Shiho-Nage challenging because of how much I have to sink in the middle of the technique. And there's a lot going on, so I get confused and the whole thing breaks down. I was looking at Saito Sensei hoping for clues about how to make it simple. That's him on the left, adding the kokyu after stepping off 90 degrees.

When a friend named Brian came back from Iwama last year after a month of training with Hitohiro Sensei I noticed how his hips just came straight through and seemed to power the technique, leaving his arms to do very little beyond making a simple strike. That is, as simple as possible in the middle of doing a 180 degree turn.

Today at early morning class another friend, Jorge, showed up. It was the first time I'd seen him since his return from Iwama last month. Sure enough, Tatoian Sensei asked us to do katate-dori Shiho-Nage Omote, which is Shiho-Nage from a one-handed grab of the wrist.

I paired up with another student and then, out of the corner of my eye, watched Jorge do the technique. There it was: the hips just drive straight through, the body turns 180 degrees, the arms strike, all with impeccable footwork, and uke just folds up.

The hip movement was exactly the same as we use in the 8-direction sword form called Happo Giri. The hips drive through, the body turns, in hanmi, and the strike is executed. I marvelled at how far Jorge's hips were moving and how as he turned he resolved into perfect hanmi for a strike. So economical, so practical, so powerful.

I tried it, moving my hips through farther than I usually do, turn into hanmi, strike. Bingo, uke just folded up.

So now I'm going to add Happo-Giri to my daily routine. In the back of my mind I remember that the Happo-Giri diagram--like an eight-pointed star--is the logo of Hitohiro Sensei's new Aikido organization. It strikes me that this is no coincidence.

Ukemi just happens

Today, as I walked through the dojo door for noon class, I thought: "just go easy today and don't take any fancy falls." I wasn't feeling that well, and my body was stiff from too little stretching during my week of no Aikido.

I saw that Kevin was the only other student dressing for class. Kevin trains at an ASU dojo about 30 miles away and comes for noon class sometimes because his work is nearby. He is a good guy to train with because he's flexible, and because he tries to get it right.

I thought, "great, just the two of us."

Sensei decided to drag out some novelties at the end of the year, and today's oddity was Ninin-dori, a kokyuho technique for dealing with two people, each of whom have grabbed one of your arms. I have always had trouble with these techniques. The last time I practiced them was two years ago at Hitohiro Saito's Denver seminar. Since there were just three of us including Goto Sensei, he joined us in the rotation.

We did three variations. The second one involved sinking and bringing the grabbed arms into your center, then after capturing the center of each attacker, striking forward to throw them. If you do this right both attackers just roll away like twin bowling balls across the mat.

I remembered that I just wanted to do nice soft ukemi, and when it was Kevin's turn I waited until he had my center and threw me, then I just let my body roll away. Then it was Sensei's turn again, and Kevin and I both grabbed him really hard and pulled in opposite directions. It was fun to see how Sensei, who is about 5'6" and 150lbs, was going to deal with these hard grabs.

As he dropped he screwed his body up with a huge application of kokyu. I felt like I was falling into a hole, but then I felt a snapping feeling propagate up through my arms into my body and I became weightless. My body just rotated over an axis somewhere around my belt knot, as easily as coin might flip. I landed softly on my side and skittered a few inches away as Kevin was rolling, getting more distance than I. Normally, taking a high fall is something I at least realize I'm going to do before I'm already in the air. Not this time.

This reminds me that the Senseis can throw us any way they want to and we'll just fall softly regardless of distance and elevation. This isn't just an accident or good luck; its' something they do on purpose. Anyway, I managed to do just nice soft ukemi all day, even if every throw wasn't a nice, round roll.

Solo practice and guerilla Aikido

I've only made it to the dojo once this week, due to a combination of slight flu and many commitments, and it looks as though my first opportunity to get back on the mat will be next Monday.

During periods I am away from the dojo I find it's really important to stay flexible by stretching and doing solo weapons forms. This is also a time for Tai Chi, since I can always find 20 minutes to sneak away.

Today, in between other activities, I'm practicing my 12 Ken Tai Jo awase, or rather, the defender's side, using the jo. (The attacker's side is mostly always the same) As of now I can only remember about the first five or six of them before I have to peek at my script.

It was interesting to see that Saito Sensei had demonstrated these awase in a particular order during the late 1990s. Tatoian Sensei and Goto Sensei had always shown them in no particular order, and so I never thought of organizing them into a sequence. But setting them into an ordered progression enables me potentially to remember more of them at any given time.

Other little practices I do when away from the dojo include surreptitions tenkans which are possible when making way for two people to pass in opposite directions through a narrow space. I find I can swing my hips around as the person passes, making lots of room while remaining upright and not necessarily giving ground. It's different from the normal practice of just backing out of the way. I think of this as guerilla Aikido.

Another good practice involves the microwave oven. The practice is to wait until the timer counts all the way down to zero, and to resist the temptation to just stop the oven and yank out whatever is cooking before it's quite finished. Breathing and locating the mind at a particular spot in the body are good ways to fill those few seconds before the oven timer dings.

These little practices are easy to invent on the fly, depending on where one finds oneself. In about five minutes I'll have a chance to invent some techniques for the Aikido of cleaning up my car, so that a half a dozen high school basketball players can fit comfortably on the long drive up to a weekend tournament near Clear Lake.

Learning new moves: Part 3

The notion that learning is in doing, and that the intellectual component of learning has been vastly overemphasized, has been a central theme of this blog.

An exemplar of this practical truth is the art of Aikido, which you cannot learn from reading a book and looking at videos. No, you actually have to get out and do the physical practice, monitor the results of your physical movements, and make assessments about how to move more effectively based on those observations. Often we need help interpreting the training outcomes, and that is where teachers and fellow students come in.

But for all its value, I do not believe that we are able, in any robust way, to transfer the physical learning of Aikido, the blending with and taking care of our adversary, to the everyday world of speaking and listening. Instead, I believe that we begin to act petty, vindictive, manipulative, and controlling as soon as our interests and concerns appear threatened.

Chris Argyris declares that these reactions to threat are not to be considered mistakes or shortcomings, even though they may conflict with our espoused values of collaborativeness, fair play, and considering all sides of an issue. Instead, he says, these destructive responses are expert behavior, fully informed by and consistent with other long-established values we have habitually drawn on to actually drive behavior. These values, or principles, can include: "win, and do not lose," "own and control the field of play," "suppress negative feelings," and "always appear rational." That we are usually not aware of this does not, according to Argyris, absolve us of responsibility for the consequences of our actions.

Argyris's claim is that, consciously or not, most of our habitual problem solving actions, in stressful situations, are designed to enact one or more of these default values. The reason we are so expert at these behaviors, performing them flawlessly and without thought, is that we have already had so much practice. If Argyris is correct, then it is no wonder that these default habits are so hard to deselect, in favor of more collaborative actions drawing on new values such as: "propagate valid information" (don't lie), "don't manipulate people without their consent," and "let people choose for themselves."

The fact that these noble-seeming values are out of sync with our usual self-serving actions doesn't mean we're weak or bad, it just means, according to Argyris, that we're acting consistently with other values, in ways we have practiced all our lives. But it also means we're incompetent to enact the values we espouse, however sincerely; and moreover, we are unaware of this.

The graphic on the left shows an action system designed to act according to the value "own and control the process." Simply adopting a new value, "support collaborative decision-making," will not be sufficient to creating new behavior. If new actions are to become available, they must be practiced, just like the old ones have been.

For Aikido people wishing to act consistently with such values as, "see the other's perspective," "blend, don't fight," and "preserve the health and dignity of everyone in the loop," it may be important to realize that powerful behavioral habits designed to "own and control" the situation and "win at all costs," are already on-line, waiting to be triggered by some everyday life situation.

What's more, these default habits are so well practiced and in our bodies that we will probably not be able to eliminate them. But with conscious practice we can become competent with additional actions, actions consistent with new values more conducive to effective communication in complex situations.

In Aikido practice on the mat it often takes a few years to realize that applying strength to force a technique to completion results in bad technique, and sometimes injury. In such cases, our long-established practice to try and "win" in situations has taken over. In time and practice on the mat, however, we begin to trust that we can apply techniques in ways that do not force people to the ground, but simply use their energy to take them where they were already headed, and in a way that neither hurts nor awakens fighting instincts.

If it takes a long time to be able to create habits of non-fighting effectiveness in the relatively simple universe of the training mat, why wouldn't it take a similar amount of time and effort to learn new actions in the more complex world of everyday speaking and listening?

I think it does take time and effort. If my assumption is correct that we need to practice specific kinds of actions that embody collaborative values in the actual domains in which we will use them, then just studying Aikido on the mat will not help much out in the world. Other habitual behaviors for use in the world will just take over before we can even imagine doing anything different. If correct, then to act differently and more collaboratively in the world, we'll need to design learning methods and practices for situations we are actually likely to encounter out in the world.

Of course, this is how we learn Aikido. Someone punches or grabs you; you execute a technique. If everyday world encounters were full of punches and grabs, then Aikido would be perfectly good training. But the everyday world is mostly full of people speaking and not punching. Therefore, it makes sense that we might need to design different kinds of training to put Aikido values to use in the off-mat world of speaking and listening.

Finally, it makes sense to design the training methods themselves to embody the values that we intend the training to teach. This means, for instance, that methods of teaching that trick or manipulate people, denying them free and informed consent to the process, may be considered inconsistent with the values the teachers espouse, and therefore examples of the very kinds of actions we are trying to avoid.

Indeed, noticing inconsistencies between espoused values and observed actions is an important part of the new methodology. In part 4 I'll try to describe in more systematic detail a prototype methodology for teaching everyday skills of speaking and listening that will embody Aikido values out in the world, and that will be itself consistent with these values.

Behind the curtain with the Ken Tai Jo

My weekend spent practicing the Ken Tai Jo has rekindled my interest in these forms, a set of paired awase involving a jo defense against a sword attack.

After Sunday's class I came home and continued to review my videos of Saito Sensei, who developed these forms into their current sequence.  Unfortunately there is not a lot of video of the Ken Tai Jo easily available, and I had to dig further into the dojo library for some clips of Saito Sensei, Pat Hendricks Sensei, and some others who have demonstrated Ken Tai Jo over the years. 

From these sources I pieced together 12 different endings based on one or another of the three fundamental sequences: Tsuki Barai, Kaishi Barai, and Kaiten Barai.  There are another 2 endings that I found, that Saito Sensei had been teaching during the 1980s, but he seemed to have dropped them by 1997.  I added them to my list to bring the total awase to 14. 

I met Goto Sensei at the dojo for noon class today, and he told me some things about the Ken Tai Jo that I found fascinating.

In class Saturday he had explained how the Ken Tai Jo evolved in Aikido to be an art of blending the longer, blunt staff with the shorter, sharp sword.  Today he expanded on this explanation, opening up some very interesting doors.  He pointed out that the jo art in this form is to keep the sword close and cover it, almost like sticky hands.  This provides important control over the dangerous sword, and it leads to guiding the sword so as to allow only the openings the weilder of the jo wants to offer. There is nothing worse than a loose sword flailing around; it is much better to use the jo to cover and control it.  This is why, in the Ken Tai Jo, we don't just use the jo to wack the sword away.  Better to blend and keep it moderately close.

Sensei continued, "the whole idea of a jo art to defeat the sword is antithetical to the Japanese warrior ethos, in which the sword embodies the indomitable warrior spirit.  And I think this idea of evolving beyond the stark and deadly outcomes of sword encounters in favor of the potentially less harmful victory by the blunt, wooden jo was a conscious metaphor O-Sensei wanted to develop."  He continued, "if the jo overcomes the sword it is not necessary that someone would have to die or be seriously injured.  The jo can be used to throw and disarm, or even to knock an attacker unconscious, but these outcomes clearly involve less mayhem and destruction than sword on sword conflicts traditionally did."

Sensei summed up his conjecture this way. In offering a practice that demonstrated a blend against a sword attack that didn't necessarily end with death or maiming, O-Sensei may have designed a jo-on-sword practice as an evolutionary guide toward a purer budo, one consistent with his compassionate philosophy of Aikido.

Another cold morning in the park

Cold fog mantled the trees this morning in the Cotati park where we train weapons on Sundays. Eric and Carmen, a couple of veteran black belts were there, but nobody else, probably because Sensei was out of town.

Since we were on our own, the three of us decided to practice some out of the way things that we hadn't gone over for a while: the 13-count jo kata, and the three basic awase forms of Saito Sensei's ken tai jo. I was glad to get a chance to go over the ken tai jo, since I had spent a little time with it in San Rafael yesterday with Goto Sensei.

Tatoian Sensei likes to consolidate the 13 jo kata into four sections of 3, 3, 3, and 4 moves. He asks us to practice each section as though it were one move, reducing the 13 count kata into four moves. After doing the kata a few times as 13 moves we tried the 4 move version. It has a different flow, and it's tempting to speed up the separate moves to cram three of them into the time space where one used to be. Needless to say, this is a bad idea and one we resisted.

The hardest part of the 13 kata is the transition from move 4 to move 6. It requires a 180 degree turn while parrying with the jo, and then striking in the other direction. We spent some time focusing on this sequence, and then returned to the 3, 3, 3, 4 move consolidation.

About half-way through the hour an old man sat down at one of the picnic benches near our location, and settled in to watch. We often get spectators, people walking through the park early with dogs, or people heading to the nearby bus stop after a night of adventure in Cotati. Sometimes, people driving by in cars make loud kiais and other noises to entertain themselves on a Sunday morning.

After a while we got out both bokken and jo for some turns at the ken tai jo. Yesterday, after class, I'd gone home and watched some tapes of Saito Sensei demonstrating the various awase of the ken tai jo. I ended up listing 12 of them before I had to go do something else.

There are three basic awase practices around which most of these variations are structured, so we aimed today at just looking at the three basic forms, and maybe a few different ways to end them.

As I posted yesterday, the ken tai jo is all hip movement and footwork, masquerading as a defense with the jo against a sword attack. The very hardest thing is not to just use your arms to parry the sword, but to let the jo movement extend from the hips. We tried to let the jo be directed by the hips, all with varying success.

We made it through the first two basic awase, with one or two different endings, in which the attacker meets his proper fate, and got through the third and most difficult form, "kaiten barai," very slowly, but ran out of time for any of the gory endings.

As we stuffed our weapons back into their bags the old man got up from his bench and shuffled away. It was still cold and overcast as I got into the van and headed back down the freeway, just in time to see my daughter's basketball game.