Aikido Seminar, Part 2 – the Martial Life

This is the second part of my journal for the Aikido seminar from May 18-20th. I unfortunately wanted to go to my graduation ceremony on the 18th so I only went to two days. Fortunately I went to the “meaty” day – Saturday – which was when most of the material was taught. So here we go:

*Disclaimer: ALL information that will be written here is through my own translation. ALL material is credited under the martial art of Aikido and is credited to O’Sensei and my two Sensei JWS and NSS. They are the true masters with the knowledge and wisdom. I’m just the messenger boy. 

First off, techniques were not the focus here. In the two days that I was there we probably only did 6-8 techniques and one jo class. Now most of you who are Aikidoists are probably wondering “if not techniques, then what?”

We were actually being taught what O’Sensei – the founder of Aikido – wanted his students to learn. What was taught (by NSS) is known colloquially known as “O’Sensei’s Process”. As far to my knowledge goes I have yet to know any other teacher/shihan/dojo that does this.

Basically it’s not a technique or any form. Instead it’s a process…

…A process where one improves oneself through allowing the person to evolve into better human beings by allowing themselves to evolve into better levels of themselves through the creation of units where the one is in tune with one’s body with the mind and ego/I as a passenger.

~

How’s that for something different?

My translation: Basically O’Sensei’s message wasn’t the martial art itself – although that was a big part of his life. According to my sensei NSS, who was one of the few Caucasian (translation: White American) direct students of O’Sensei, his original intention was to transmit that it was not extreme practice or physical movement that made Aikido, Aikido. The fact that one has to actualize themselves by establishing a “unit” of themselves in order to execute something in their lives, be it a martial art movement or an activity.

Translation cont. Basically things don’t happen mentally. According to NSS, you can do a movement mentally as much as you want. In order to allow a movement to happen correct, properly, and genuinely (all three!), a practitioner must allow a new being to come into play, allow themselves to go up to a level that executes that movement.

There’s also dimensionality. Instead of learning the movement or learning about a situation mentally, one allows the body to learn the movement or situation as oppose to mental learn, which in fact makes learning for the person slower and far more cumbersome (and martial speaking; rigid, less flexible, and more hindering). In allowing the body, one obtains different levels of being and awareness.

~

God that was hard! Just typing that out makes my brain disintegrate from excitement (?). Didn’t think that so much brain power was taken to write that out. That and I know I am missing something and butchering O’Sensei’s message a little (only “a little” – I hope). The whole dimensionality aspect has caught on to the participants (~90 in total) and it got to the point that we were using the term as a pun for anything that we were having trouble with (enduring a colder than normal shower, finding out that something is heavy, etc.)

So in short, this process isn’t meant to improve your technique nor is it a technique – nor a trick. It’s a process; in order to improve in anything that you are doing, you have to improve yourself. As described by NSS many, many times throughout the 4 years that I’ve studied under him:

You can continually do something for many, many years and times. If you’re at the same small level of yourself, you’re not going to improve. (Paraphrased) ~ NSS

So yeah, that was the juste of what the seminar was about. There were no new techniques learned. There was one interesting class done by JWS where he took the class through a two-hand shihonage. His directions were to take the movement step by step; I believe his exact words were that he wanted to take the class back to pre-war (World War 2) Aikido. What made the lesson “pre-war Aikido” was he told us to do our movements in a step-by-step, “mechanical” way of executing the movement. For those of you who don’t know. Yoshinkan-style Aikido is known for its strong movements yet is not as “flow-ly” as the other Aikido styles out there – primarily in contrast to “Aikikai” style and Iwama-Ryu.

Lastly, a personal highlight for me was in the last full day there was a Q&A held by JWS and NSS regarding O’Sensei, his dimensionality work, and Aikido in general. Very enlightening to hear what they have to say. I know the dimensionality portion might be confusion and hard to grasp – when I mentioned that I’m trying to “walk the walk” instead of talk the talk, this portion of my training was what I was pertaining to. Hopefully I will follow this portion of my training well.

And that’s it; hope you guys enjoyed this portion of my training. In all this seminar was a blast! I got to meet old friends and make some new ones. Great times. Anyway, hope there will be great times ahead, till next time!

Aikido Seminar, Part 1 – the Martial Life

Spent the weekend up in Occidental, California for an O’Sensei workshop. This was organized by NSS and JWS and it turned out phenomenal! There was a bout 70 people who attended in all and although it was considered small seminar wise, the whole purpose of the workshop was the pass on what O’Sensei truly wanted to teach his students yet was only able to teach it to a selected few – in fact NSS was the only foreigner who accordingly understood what O’Sensei was doing. NSS was the one person who had spent a lot of personal time with the founder not only being with him on but also having been able to have the founder tell him what he believed to be the true purpose of Aikido and what he (Morihei Ueshiba O’Sensei) wanted to give to his students.

~

The place that the seminar was at was in beautiful Occidental, California. In the middle of wine country, nature is simply surrounding you. To give you a picture of how remote this place is; over 70% of the participants at the seminar did not have cell phone service – I was one of the lucky few who had it and even I only had one bar 50% of the time (the rest I had no bars at all!). The winding roads that dot this landscape are narrow, surrounded by mother nature. Just typing this post out in my room in suburbia California makes me miss the utter quiet and serenity of the Sonoma County forests.

For example: on the last day of the retreat (the 20th) myself and my companion Lee, a visiting Brit from London on a business trip to San Francisco, went into downtown Occidental for breakfast. My thoughts on the town went in this order: 1.) This is pretty nice and 2.) the mall that I work at is bigger than this street! It was that small.

However you really can’t beat the local food. I had my first Eggs Benedict here. Breakfast was so good I didn’t eat lunch!

Literally if any of you have seen pictures of the mining towns of the mid 1800s California. Simply take those pictures, add some cars, some electric poles, modern amenities and you have downtown Occidental.

There’s literally only a dozen buildings here. Other than the breakfast place that I went to Lee and I went to a bar on the second night and we found a very homey pub. The whole place probably is your average size Victorian house with the added pub touch. Apparently it used to a brothel back in the day! Gives a whole new meaning to bottoms up! *Grins*

~

The environment is very critical to how a seminar will go. It’s also crucial that not only are you very open to the material that’s being taught but also socially to the rest of your. I’ve been to seminars before, but this time around something felt different this time. This time I got the feeling that perhaps I should be more proactive in my social skills. So while I was here I went out of my way to say hi to people and to be more open to them. I just felt very good doing it, so I had no open problem shaking hands or having some small talk with my fellow Aikidoists who were here to learn the big “secret” of what O’Sensei wanted to teach his students and the world.

Speaking of environment, I stayed at a nearby dojo since I was on the independent plan. I was told before I arrived that I would be staying in the dojo, which happens to be a tent that is exposed to the elements because the walls and roof consist of tarp; meaning it’s not a closed-walled off structure. Fortunately the dojo-cho (dojo head) who owned the property had her house nearby that had a full functional guest room. Thus Lee, myself, and Allen (another practitioner from San Francisco) were able to sleep in proper house with heating, floors, rugs, and a bathroom. Unfortunately for me the couch was taken by Allen and I was regulate to sleep on the floor; which turned out to be on top of concrete! I did not sleep well my first night at the seminar!

Fortunately the second night was much better; I took the couch since Allen had left to go back to SF.

This is Part 1, in Part 2 I will get to what was actually taught at the seminar. I will warn you though this is some high level stuff that I don’t understand at all and am busy “walking the walk” as much as I can. I prefer it that way as oppose to revealing what is all intimately going on in my mind.

Actualization Time – the Martial Life

Don’t think! Feel. It is like a finger pointing a way to the moon. Don’t concentrate on the finger or you will miss all that heavenly glory.

~ Bruce Lee

Seems appropriate given the recent news of the “Bruce Lee” resolution that passed in the US Congress recently. But with all things Bruce Lee related, I’ve come to a conclusion in my recent weeks that this is the time of my life. I’ve come to realize that if I wished to do something that I should do it. It doesn’t sound like much, but everyday I’ve made it a point to keep my focus on my life.

One of my dilemmas in my life is that my education experience is different from my actual experience. My education experience (Master’s of Arts in Teaching) versus my actual experience – Aikido, my interest in martial arts, and writing.

It’s a dilemma that every young adult has to face, and a choice that we have to make. Where should I take my life? How should I get there? What do I have to do in order to get there?

Questions such as these fly through my head regularly. But not as much as they have been in the past month. I suppose I’m going through the one phase in life that most of my peers have already gone through:

The phase of embarking on your professional path.

Or “leaving the harbor” if you will. I feel that I have yet to leave the harbor. Due to circumstances that were beyond my control during my childhood, I wasn’t able to experience life as much as my peers. I am of course talking about my parents and how controlling they were (and still are to an extent) of what I experienced.

I feel that I can’t “make up” for what could have happened during my childhood – as much as I want to. In the past I’ve taken steps to “make up” for missed experiences. What I’ve discovered (after quite a few setbacks) was that I couldn’t “make up” for lost time, but simply be honest, present, in the moment, and truly express myself in any and every situation from here on out.  At least now is my chance to put into actualization of what I feel comes naturally to me. It is my hope that I am actually doing the things that will bring my future into fruition.

For writing, I’ve been writing in this blog and am writing for a Japanese culture blog currently. This is on top of my old martial arts blog as well as my experience writing for news publications since high school.

For martial arts – well this way of life for me is intertwined with exercise and fitness. I’ve never thought of exercise or fitness being a part of my life. It is unfortunate that this was not introduced to me earlier in life – physical exercise was looked down upon in my family (whatever reasons they provided then the reasoning’s now baffle me). Now exercise only provides positive energy for me; not to mention it’s a great release for the immense amount of energy I occasionally have. Aikido seemed to have provided a great release as well. Physically as uke I can thrust myself onto experiences nage – usually the black belts – so that I can improve as an uke and they as nage. This is in conjunction with the body/mind unity teachings in my dojo.

I find the coincidence cool that my journey and proclamation for the need of self-actualization now aligns with this years Asian-American month, the time of the year that has been historically for the past several decades dedicated to the preservation, continuation, celebration, and advancement of Americans of Asian descent. I’ve been involved with this kind of movement since college; it is my hope that I will play my part honestly and with vigor, righteous, and awesomeness!

~

Right now I’m packing for graduation ceremony tomorrow, as well as my retreat on Saturday and Sunday. I’m on the independent plan so since I’m not lodging at the campsite (yes, campsite!) I’m going to be lodging at one of the nearby dojos. “Nearby” is relative here, since I was told by that particular school’s dojo-cho that her dojo is near areas where there’s no cell phone coverage (no coverage = far away from civilization!). She also notified me that it’s going to be around 45 degrees at night (that’s around 7 degrees Celsius for the metric folks).

I will take this trip as a personal retreat of sorts, alongside its main purpose as a spiritual and martial retreat. I hope I don’t get attacked by raccoons! Wish me luck and till next time!

Graduation, Sickness, and Politics – Life Musing

My life is going through some funny changes as of late. Nothing bad, just interesting – perhaps I will update on a later date but first off

Graduation – So I’m set to graduate from my master’s program in a week! Finally two long years of craziness behind me! All I have to say is that it has been a wild ride and an interesting time. In all I feel that my studies have not prepared me for what they intended to prepare me for – to be a teacher. This is partial due to (what I later discovered to be) some mediocre professors and due to my own mental unpreparedness.

The second part is what made the most impact on me. The signs came when my teaching styles clashed with those of my second and third master teachers (for the non-teaching professionals, they would be considered my supervisors) and I had to leave. This happened during the end of September/beginning of October. This series of events made me rethink a lot of things: What am I doing in this program? What do I want out of this program? What is in this program for me?

What the hell is going on?

Haha, all of these things came up. It helped that I was not required to go to class for the rest of the semester. The time away from the hustle and bustle allowed to think and realign myself. Though even now my enthusiasm for my teaching career is minimal at best, at least my time away from the classroom for a short period (October  – December 2011), allowed me to consolidate what I really liked and want to explore deeper in my life:

Martial arts and writing

When that came to me, I realized I was in the wrong place. What the hell was I doing in a teaching program when exercise, martial arts, and writing were the things that made me come alive? It seemed that I was out of place, out of line, out of touch. A wolf in a pack of dogs.

But here I am, done with studying. At least I now I can use my degree to use in finding a job, so that hopefully I will be able to pursue what I really want.

As mentioned in the title, I have been sick recently, therefore my workout routine has been thrown off. I slept in my house yesterday for 3 hours (usually I stay out of my house as many hours as possible) because my headache was just making me tired and unable to concentrate. Now I’m typing this I feel a lot better, although there is still some pounding in the head here and there.

Finally, I found this article interesting. Tim Larkin, an ex-Navy SEAL and self defense instructor of the year (2011) by Black Belt Magazine was recently barred from entering the UK because the Home office (their equivalent of the State Department) believed that his tactics would be used by rioters and other people doing “such things” in light of the recent riots and social unrest.

I’m bringing this up because it sounds…trivial? I don’t much about Mr.Larkin, his part, his work, or his influence. But just thinking that someone can simply be barred for their work on grounds that it “might” incite violence is ludicrous – even if it is on the edgier side (He is ex-military after all). What concerns me is that, this ban was initially for all self defense instructors! Now a couple days after the incident it looks like Mr.Larkin was the only one affected. However, could any self defense instructor be affected? Seeing as how the term “self defense” can be used rather liberally this can be a problem for all martial artists. Could martial artists get caught up in politics and social upheavals? I believe certainly. Only time will tell.

Here is Mr. Larkin’s response to his situation.

That’s all for now. Next up I have my graduation ceremony and the Aikido seminar. Will update on that as soon as I finish enjoying what I was looking forward to for 2 months! Till next time.

May the 4th be with You – Bruce Lee edition

…belated by about 5 days I know. But still better late than never! And what a better way to celebrate the 4th than by a video of the great Bruce Lee wielding a lightsaber!

And speaking of Bruce Lee…

You’re welcome. Till next time!