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My persOnal insights on aikido, karate, macrobiotics and daily life applicaTions
Recently I conducted a Kahoot quiz in my online aikido class. One question was "What is the number 1, ultimate goal of aikido"? Not surprisingly, must students chose "self defence" as their answer. However, the correct answer as determined by me was "to live a happy life and be most effective in everything you do" (or something very similar to that).
Does this mean aikido is not useful for self defence? Quite the contrary - if you learn aikido properly, it will be VERY useful for self defence. Proper aikido will be more effective than anything else for self defence. See my other blog post "Aikido and Self Defence" for an explanation on this. However, the benefits of aikido certainly don't stop there. It goes much further than that. If self defence was the only goal, it wouldn't be worth devoting so much time to practising the art (unless you are likely to get into fights regularly because of your job or lifestyle). For most of us, we are not facing self defence situations regularly. We need those self defence skills just in case, but the art needs to provide you with more than this. While we may occasionally need self defence, or we may possibly never need it, we will definitely face plenty of other challenges in our lives. So let's not just practise only for something that we may or may not need. Let's practise also to increase our effectiveness in all of life's challenges. Let me repeat: proper learning of aikido will help you with self defence. But there is so much more to gain from aikido. HOW does aikido help you have a happy life and be most effective in everything you do? That is a deep topic, which I have addressed aspects of in previous blog posts and plan to address further in future posts. But here is a brief overview. Aikido helps develop a healthy condition in your body and mind. When you feel and healthy and you feel good, you enjoy your life more and perform better in both physical and mental tasks, and your relationships seem to just work better. Aikido trains you to find the most appropriate and effective response to every situation. You focus on finding your opponent's balance and openings in each different situation. This carries over to daily life, because rather than just acting out of habit, we develop deep awareness and an ability to look for the most effective response in each moment. Aikido develops focus and strong energy, while keeping a calm, relaxed, comfortable feeling. It develops effectiveness with harmony. Martial artists can often develop too much of a tense, fighting response. When carried over into daily life, this doesn't feel good for you or other people. Your relationships and interactions can be strained. A fighting approach means you create more arguments and conflict. On the contrary, aikido helps your daily life and relationships flow more happily and harmoniously. You learn to gain cooperation from other people, instead of creating resistance and conflict. This is because the way you practise aikido trains your mind/body to respond effectively and harmoniously, creating a relaxed and cooperative feeling. So while proper aikido does help with self defence, let's not stop there. Let's also work towards the higher goal of improving every aspect of our lives.
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An important universal truth we learn in aikido and especially in macrobiotics is that of yin and yang. Everything is made up of opposites. Sometimes people can get confused by this, with all these conflicting ideas. We need to remember that truth is paradoxical. Both sides are important.
In the martial arts, as in other areas of learning, there is often an approach which focuses on learning something through a lot of repetition so that you master it, then moving on to learning something else. When I trained in Genbukan Ninjutsu, this was the approach. Students of each grade would just work on the techniques for their grade level. This approach is good because it takes a lot of practice to learn to perform a technique correctly, and a lot of repetition to become confident with it. In a stressful, high pressure situation, like a real self defence situation, your body automatically responds with what you have practised. So if you haven't practised anything, you might freeze. Your body will only remember the techniques if you have practised them many hundreds of times. And will these techniques even be effective? That depends on how well you've focused on improving your technique during your practice. So there is a need for both repetition and constant focus on improvement. However, there is a downside to this method of practice. There are literally endless possibilities we might need to deal with in a self defence situation (and life in general). Aikido is not about techniques, but about developing the ability to respond most appropriately in every different situation. Performing a pre-set technique or response means that your response was not created to fit this very moment, and will not be the most effective response. Also, by focusing on mastering a limited amount of techniques instead ofpractising a wide variety, this limited set of techniques will not cover you for enough different situations. As an example, let's look at a fight I got into in high school. At one point, my opponent lost balance and turned away. I automatically performed a combination sequence of attacks which I had practised over and over again from my karate classes. It involved a kick followed by a couple of short range snapping backfist punches. Those punches ended up being very weak and having no effect. Why? Because they were designed for someone facing towards you, not away from you. They were designed to hit the weak targets of the nose and groin. But I was unable to adapt to the different situation. The other approach is to not focus on repeating and solidifying certain techniques, but to practise responding to many different variations. When I tried out the other main school of Ninjutsu (Bujinkan), their approach was like this. As mentioned earlier, aikido is about adapting to every situation most effectively. This is not pre-planned. It requires an awareness of the moment. However, the pitfall of training like this can be that you never deeply develop effective techniques. So what are we to do? The best approach is one that takes the best of both worlds. Like in the classes I attend on Saturdays. Each class, I feel like I'm doing something different that I've never done before, but at the same time within these different techniques there is something familiar. That's because we have a core set of techniques, but we practise applying them in different ways all the time. Then when we do freestyle practice, we respond automatically to our attacker, including their positioning etc. and the movements we perform do not necessarily always look like actual techniques. That's because aikido techniques are not about techniques - they are about teaching you to move effectively, to feel your opponent's energy and find the best response in each situation. My advice to you is this: we learn a particular way of doing something in each class. If you want to develop deep ability in what we learnt in a class, practise it many times on your own afterwards. Next class, we'll practise in a different way, so you can always be freely growing and developing, opening your mind to the endless possibilities this life offers. It is beneficial to practise a technique many times, because you can deeply develop certain skills. This is why we learn set techniques for gradings. Through practising them over and over again, while constantly thinking about how to improve, you deeply develop particular skills. However, don't become trapped in performing techniques a set way. Be open and free to change instantly and discover the most appropriate response in each moment. If you focus on just learning and memorising techniques in aikido and aiki karate, you will never develop the higher powers of these arts.
There is an excellent metaphor to illustrate the difference between techniques and the real goal of the art. Imagine someone is trying to show you the beautiful full moon one night. They point to the moon so that you may look in the direction they are pointing and see this beautiful sight. But you just go on looking at their finger. You miss all the beauty they were trying to show you. Techniques are the finger, aiki is the moon. Remember, "aiki" is complete harmony, oneness and coordination. Your whole body working together in the most effective way. Your body and mind working together wonderfully. And you joining completely with your opponent, so that their attacks are no longer a threat and there is no more conflict remaining. Techniques are a way for you to learn aiki. Too often, though, students of aikido just focus on copying the movements of a technique, and don't focus enough on what makes the technique actually work, or on what the technique is trying to teach you. This is like looking at the finger when someone is pointing to the moon. You can easily copy the movements of an aikido technique. To an untrained observer, it will look like you are performing the technique correctly. But when you try to apply it on a trained practitioner, it won't work, because you haven't developed aiki within the technique. So HOW can we develop the inner teachings of the technique instead of just copying the movements? How can we use the finger to help us look at the moon, instead of continuing to look only at the finger? When learning a technique, pay attention to the details as taught by your sensei. Think about what actually makes the technique work. Is it teaching you to drop and fall through your opponent's balance? To find the direction and point of balance where your partner will easily fall? To move out of the way of an attack so you are unharmed? To receive an attack without disturbing it? To find an opening? How do you move your whole body as one during the technique? How do you keep energy even throughout your whole body within this technique, without becoming too tight in one area? How take away your opponent's balance in this technique? How do you keep your own balance? How do you make your opponent relax and give up their will to fight? How do you join completely with your opponent's energy. Think about these kinds of things when practising a technique, and you will be on the path to learning the true power of aikido. The purpose of aikido is to harmonise with each situation. The current challenges we are going through with COVID and lockdown offer us an opportunity to practise and develop this ability.
Let's use the example of a fight and the physical application of aikido. Your opponent attacks you. You could prefer your opponent was not attacking you. You might prefer a different type of attack, because your better prepared to deal with it than the current attack. However, they are attacking you in this way in this moment. Wishing it was different won't help you. The situation demands that you deal with what is there. Really, you have a choice. You can go on trying to respond as if the attack was different, or try and go on as if the attack hadn't happened, but this means you will get hurt. To avoid getting hurt, you need to apply the most effective response to the attack your opponent has given you. And "given" is an appropriate term, because in the understanding of aikido, we see attacks as a gift. An attack is just energy coming your way. You can judge it as good or bad, or you can just use it to create the best possible outcome. How do we do this? We move in whatever direction we need to in order to be unharmed by this particular attack. Moving another way or staying still will lead to you getting hurt. Then, we join with the direction and energy of the attack, we absorb that energy, and then combine it with our own energy to create a wonderful, powerful movement (like a throw). In more of a karate sense, once we have moved out of the way, we look for our opponent's openings and strike them there. For example, the opponent's attack might have placed them in a position where it is easy for you to strike the back of their neck. How does this apply to our daily life? Like the attack, the situation you are in is providing you with the gift of a certain energy. Move out of the way metaphorically - don't take it personally and wish it wasn't happening, don't try and go on living the same way you were before this situation, trying to pretend it is not there. You will get hurt. Next, find the direction of the energy. What direction is it pushing you in? Go with this direction and use it. For example, lockdown might be giving you the opportunity to spend more time with your family and home. You can build these relationships and improve your home. Maybe it's giving you more time to yourself, to develop your hobbies and interests. Look for the openings. Like the points of your attacker's body that have suddenly presented as open to a strike (where they were previously out of reach), what opportunities has the current situation brought to you? Take those opportunities! We are all human. I have things I dislike about the current situation. But I don't dwell on them, because there is not point. On one level, we will still have these dislikes, and that's okay. But you will be better off if you shift your focus mainly to the opportunities of the current situation. And what a shame it would be to miss those opportunities while they're here and only realise later when it's too late. So let's let's strive to harmonise with every situation. I have a long story with karate. Putting it briefly, I fell in love with karate as my entry to the martial arts. I was obsessed with it. But once I found aikido, I realised I'd found something of a much higher level. Karate practice wasn't doing anything new for me anymore, so it felt like a waste of time. But over the years, my personal love for karate has nagged me, always there in the background, calling me back. When I'd try and go back to it, it always felt awkward, like I was going backwards. That is, until I had a realisation: instead of karate bringing me down, why don't I bring karate up? I had discovered the high level of aikido, and didn't want to be brought down from that. But karate was still something that resonated well with me, had a lot of attraction for me, and brought me joy in practice. So I started working on practising karate with the principles of aikido.
In this post, I'd like to introduce how karate can be practised with aiki - the principle of harmonising. Let's look at what pitfalls I found in karate, and see how I have addressed each. The first and most obvious one to me was karate's emphasis on tensing muscles. To be fair, you are generally told to relax right until the end of a technique, then tense, then relax again. But in practise, after being involved with aikido, coming back to karate the way I had been taught always made me feel too tense. This was an easy fix. I just practised the same techniques without excess tension. There's a feeling of focus, contraction and tone at certain points, but mostly a balanced, relaxed feeling where we do not unnaturally add tension. Secondly, karate focuses on hitting. In my understanding, aikido aims to protect the attacker as much as possible. Sometimes some degree of injury to the attacker is unavoidable, especially if they are very tense, dynamic and determined. Aikido techniques mean the attacker's energy comes back to them. But generally we try to be as soft and harmless as possible. Conversely, karate tends to focus on delivering the most powerful, debilitating blows possible. To rectify this, I have studied using karate strikes with the purpose of stopping the attacker from being a threat to you, while doing the least harm possible. Striking arts focus on hitting vital points on the opponent's body. Rather than choosing the vital points that lead to serious harm, in "aiki karate" we target the points that lead to reactions such as temporarily disabling or stunning the attacker. It also involves the way in which you strike these points. This gives us a chance to get away to safety or to hold and control the opponent, while having minimal lasting harmful effects. Finally, I would like to talk about clashing vs blending. In aikido, we aim to blend, to fit in completely with our opponent's movements. This dissolves resistance. In karate, there can be a tendency to fight back against the opponent, to clash with their movements. This creates an uncomfortable feeling and more resistance. By slight changes to existing karate movements, changing how they are applied and introducing changes in body movement and positioning, I have learnt to apply karate movements in a way that blends rather than clashes. Furthermore, instead of trying to force an attack, you find the openings and direct your attack there. But that is the topic for another blog post. There is much more to say about this topic, but this blog post is long enough. In my Aiki Karate Do online course, I go into more detail and show you how to apply these principles and more within karate techniques. |