Hear ye, hear ye!
I'm going to try ("No! Do, or Do Not! There is no try." Thank you, Yoda-sensei!) to resurrect this blog. Not because I have gained any great new insights. More just to preserve what few insights I've gained so far before impending senility and decrepitude steal them all away. And to at least do some kind of writing on a regular basis not related to work.
Speaking of work and by way of a disclaimer:
This site (blogger.com) automatically enables anonymous web traffic analysis using Google Analytics (GA). GA lets webmasters and page owners to see all kinds of nifty data about how their site/page is being used. The purpose of GA is to make the web experience better for users (which might include figuring out how to sell you shit, I mean, valuable goods and services you couldn't ordinarily live without.) It's purpose is NOT to track YOU personally in anyway.
So why am I telling you this? My new job is actually to write help and doc for GA, so I'm using this blog as a test site. I'll be adding GA tracking features from time to time, mostly just to see how they work but perhaps to actually improve this site. Again, none of this will gather your personally identifiable information (PII) and it should all be transparent to you.
(Now, having said all that, since at the moment I only have 4 followers and I know each of you personally, I can probably deduce your identity from things like your city. But if, say, 2 of my followers live in Santa Cruz, I wouldn't be able to distinguish which of the two was responsible for a page view on a given day, for example.)
If you want to opt-out of being tracked by GA here (or anywhere), you can install a browser add-on to do so: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Sayonara Sensei
I got a call yesterday from one of my oldest and dearest friends, the man who, as a teenager, gave me one of my very first karate lessons. He was a blue belt at the time, I a fresh faced, long haired kid with a stiff new white belt. He called to tell me our Sensei, Lou Correa, had died. We don't know how or why. We don't even know how old he was, though my guess is 67 or 68. Neither of us have seen Lou in decades and it's fair to say that we, at one time two of his most devoted students, have mixed feelings about our old Sensei. But his passing reminds me also of the great gifts he gave me, the most fundamental of which is having been there to help put my feet on the path of Karate-Do.
I was a skinny, nervous kid from suburban Southern California when I entered Berkeley High School in 1974. My parents were divorced and my mom moved my brother and I up from Santa Barbara to work on her Ph.D. at Cal. BHS was big (5,000 students), urban, interracial and scary to me. I knew no one and no one knew me. I'm sure I had anger issues stemming from the divorce, though I wouldn't have admitted that at the time. During my second week of school, I almost got in a fight with a kid several inches shorter than me. I was the one who backed down. Cursing my cowardice, I resolved to not let myself get pushed around. I don't know if it was before or after that, but I had learned there was a self-defense class at the school, part of the PE department. (I see now how amazing BHS was in those days, compared to the pathetic state of funding for our schools today, but that's another topic for another blog...). I signed up the next day and that's when I met Louis Correa.
Lou was big by my standards, 6'2" or so, maybe 190 lbs. I was 5'6" and 120 lbs. soaking wet. He was swarthy with long black hair cut in a kind of page boy style. Lou had a large strawberry birthmark on his face and that was practically the only thing I saw when I met him. It was huge and I thought he'd been in a fight and lost. Lou was not a pretty man, but he had the kind of full sensual Latin features that many women found they couldn't resist. (If I were to make a movie of Lou's life, I would cast Javier Bardem to play the lead. He has the same kind of face that seems to morph between ugly and beautiful in seconds.) Most of all, Lou had charisma. Although his external persona was that of a laid back hippy from Brooklyn, he exuded a barely contained strength, a proverbial animal magnetism and aura of potential ferocity, like a dragon or the Shotokan tiger was held captive inside his skin, just waiting for an excuse to explode out of him. For this practically fatherless boy, lost in a new world, he was irresistible.
From the moment I took my first lessons (one of which was given by my friend Antonio, whom I alluded to above), I was hooked on Karate. Within a few weeks, I had joined Lou's school, Samurai Dojo, in Oakland. While still a white or yellow belt, I remember telling a visiting karate-ka from Japan that I hoped to teach someday. He laughed at my hubris but I knew then that I never wanted to quit training. But as much as I really did love the art, what I was really hooked on was Lou and on the group I had joined. The instant I put on my first gi, I'd joined a new tribe, entered a new family. Lou was the head, the father. I had big brothers and sisters. I belonged. It wouldn't be a stretch to say that for some of us, Samurai Dojo was not so much a karate school as it was a cult. Our religion was martial arts, Lou was our leader and we followed him, almost unquestioningly. Lou used to joke that he was raising an army, but some of us probably would have followed him into battle. We read the Japanese martial arts classics: Book of Five Rings and Hagakure. We studied the history of the samurai and watched all the great historical films. We fancied that we were, in fact, modern samurai, and Lou was our daimyo, our lord. (We also identified more with the scruffy, half-outlaw ronin, masterless samurai than with the refined and proper gentry in those movies.)
Lou's training methods were harsh and traditional, though I realize he was taking it easy on us in comparison to how he was trained (as I came to learn when I read his memoir of studying with John Slocum in New York). He would often beat out the count for a our basic exercises with a wooden staff, stamping it on the floor in cadence. If our stances weren't low enough, he walked between the rows of sweating students, swinging that staff over his head, and woe to he or she who didn't drop a little lower. (To be honest, I don't think Sensei ever actually beaned anyone with that stick, but if he had, it would have been seen as an appropriate lesson for the student.) More than one student found themselves on the wrong side of Lou's temper, for one offense or another. The punishment for these transgressions was often facing everyone in the dojo for kumite, sparring. One by one, the students were called up to fight the guilty party until Lou was satisfied that justice had been served, the lesson learned or enough damage had been done.
The training at Samurai Dojo sounds brutal, and by today's standards it probably WAS brutal. But few of us suffered serious injuries, though there were plenty of broken toes, busted knuckles, occasional black eyes and bloody noses. We went through buckets of Tiger Balm and miles of surgical tape. I remember one sparring session where I faced a brown belt, a man much older, larger, stronger and faster than me. Each time the command "Hajime!" (begin) rang out, I ended up on my ass. It didn't matter what I did, the outcome was the same: he would sweep my feet, knock me down and "finish me off" with a reverse punch (he didn't actually hit me). It was humiliating but I got back up each time, determined to keep fighting. That was the spirit of Samurai Dojo. We wore uniforms with Daruma Taishi (Da Mo or Boddhidharma) stenciled on the back, with the old saying, "If you get knocked down 7 times, get up 8." I got knocked down a lot more than seven times. But I always got back up.
If harsh training methods were the only aspect of my relationship with Lou Correa, this would be a story no different from most other martial artists who trained in those days. That's how we did things then. But the dynamics of the people and the times and Lou's own character traits made things a lot more complicated. It was the 1970s and drugs were a big part of life in Berkeley and Oakland and they figure into this story as well. Some of Lou's top students lived in the same house with him and those relationships strained under the close quarters. I myself lived in the dojo for a time, after my mom moved to Providence to take up her new position as professor of comparative literature there. There were dojo romances between the students and Lou himself slept with some of his students. At one point, I found myself on the receiving end of the "trial by kumite" ritual. I perceived this as an act of personal retribution for expressing romantic interest in a student that Lou himself was involved with and so after the fight was done (I had held my own fairly well, I thought), I quit the dojo. I later found out the "offense" I'd committed was not being sufficiently respectful to one of the senior students, and so I returned. But my faith and unswerving loyalty to my Sensei and willingness to be part of his "army" had suffered. This disillusionment was painful, but I see now, totally necessary for my own growth.
Not long after this, Samurai Dojo closed it's doors forever. Lou moved back to the East Coast and I saw him only once more, almost 10 years later. I'd been training with my then new and still current Sensei Rod Sanford for a few years and I'm afraid I might have bragged a bit about my new style. I'm sorry, Sensei.
I did still call Lou "Sensei", and despite (and because of) everything I went through, Lou Correa will always be my Sensei. One of many teachers, to be sure, but he was the first. And of all the lessons I've learned from all my teachers, the main lesson Lou taught me, taught us all, is perhaps the most important one not only in the martial arts, but in life. It's the lesson of damashi. Spirit.
If you get knocked down seven times, get back up eight.
Domo arigato gozaimashita, Sensei.
Sayonara, Lou.
Ossu!
I was a skinny, nervous kid from suburban Southern California when I entered Berkeley High School in 1974. My parents were divorced and my mom moved my brother and I up from Santa Barbara to work on her Ph.D. at Cal. BHS was big (5,000 students), urban, interracial and scary to me. I knew no one and no one knew me. I'm sure I had anger issues stemming from the divorce, though I wouldn't have admitted that at the time. During my second week of school, I almost got in a fight with a kid several inches shorter than me. I was the one who backed down. Cursing my cowardice, I resolved to not let myself get pushed around. I don't know if it was before or after that, but I had learned there was a self-defense class at the school, part of the PE department. (I see now how amazing BHS was in those days, compared to the pathetic state of funding for our schools today, but that's another topic for another blog...). I signed up the next day and that's when I met Louis Correa.
Lou was big by my standards, 6'2" or so, maybe 190 lbs. I was 5'6" and 120 lbs. soaking wet. He was swarthy with long black hair cut in a kind of page boy style. Lou had a large strawberry birthmark on his face and that was practically the only thing I saw when I met him. It was huge and I thought he'd been in a fight and lost. Lou was not a pretty man, but he had the kind of full sensual Latin features that many women found they couldn't resist. (If I were to make a movie of Lou's life, I would cast Javier Bardem to play the lead. He has the same kind of face that seems to morph between ugly and beautiful in seconds.) Most of all, Lou had charisma. Although his external persona was that of a laid back hippy from Brooklyn, he exuded a barely contained strength, a proverbial animal magnetism and aura of potential ferocity, like a dragon or the Shotokan tiger was held captive inside his skin, just waiting for an excuse to explode out of him. For this practically fatherless boy, lost in a new world, he was irresistible.
From the moment I took my first lessons (one of which was given by my friend Antonio, whom I alluded to above), I was hooked on Karate. Within a few weeks, I had joined Lou's school, Samurai Dojo, in Oakland. While still a white or yellow belt, I remember telling a visiting karate-ka from Japan that I hoped to teach someday. He laughed at my hubris but I knew then that I never wanted to quit training. But as much as I really did love the art, what I was really hooked on was Lou and on the group I had joined. The instant I put on my first gi, I'd joined a new tribe, entered a new family. Lou was the head, the father. I had big brothers and sisters. I belonged. It wouldn't be a stretch to say that for some of us, Samurai Dojo was not so much a karate school as it was a cult. Our religion was martial arts, Lou was our leader and we followed him, almost unquestioningly. Lou used to joke that he was raising an army, but some of us probably would have followed him into battle. We read the Japanese martial arts classics: Book of Five Rings and Hagakure. We studied the history of the samurai and watched all the great historical films. We fancied that we were, in fact, modern samurai, and Lou was our daimyo, our lord. (We also identified more with the scruffy, half-outlaw ronin, masterless samurai than with the refined and proper gentry in those movies.)
Lou's training methods were harsh and traditional, though I realize he was taking it easy on us in comparison to how he was trained (as I came to learn when I read his memoir of studying with John Slocum in New York). He would often beat out the count for a our basic exercises with a wooden staff, stamping it on the floor in cadence. If our stances weren't low enough, he walked between the rows of sweating students, swinging that staff over his head, and woe to he or she who didn't drop a little lower. (To be honest, I don't think Sensei ever actually beaned anyone with that stick, but if he had, it would have been seen as an appropriate lesson for the student.) More than one student found themselves on the wrong side of Lou's temper, for one offense or another. The punishment for these transgressions was often facing everyone in the dojo for kumite, sparring. One by one, the students were called up to fight the guilty party until Lou was satisfied that justice had been served, the lesson learned or enough damage had been done.
The training at Samurai Dojo sounds brutal, and by today's standards it probably WAS brutal. But few of us suffered serious injuries, though there were plenty of broken toes, busted knuckles, occasional black eyes and bloody noses. We went through buckets of Tiger Balm and miles of surgical tape. I remember one sparring session where I faced a brown belt, a man much older, larger, stronger and faster than me. Each time the command "Hajime!" (begin) rang out, I ended up on my ass. It didn't matter what I did, the outcome was the same: he would sweep my feet, knock me down and "finish me off" with a reverse punch (he didn't actually hit me). It was humiliating but I got back up each time, determined to keep fighting. That was the spirit of Samurai Dojo. We wore uniforms with Daruma Taishi (Da Mo or Boddhidharma) stenciled on the back, with the old saying, "If you get knocked down 7 times, get up 8." I got knocked down a lot more than seven times. But I always got back up.
If harsh training methods were the only aspect of my relationship with Lou Correa, this would be a story no different from most other martial artists who trained in those days. That's how we did things then. But the dynamics of the people and the times and Lou's own character traits made things a lot more complicated. It was the 1970s and drugs were a big part of life in Berkeley and Oakland and they figure into this story as well. Some of Lou's top students lived in the same house with him and those relationships strained under the close quarters. I myself lived in the dojo for a time, after my mom moved to Providence to take up her new position as professor of comparative literature there. There were dojo romances between the students and Lou himself slept with some of his students. At one point, I found myself on the receiving end of the "trial by kumite" ritual. I perceived this as an act of personal retribution for expressing romantic interest in a student that Lou himself was involved with and so after the fight was done (I had held my own fairly well, I thought), I quit the dojo. I later found out the "offense" I'd committed was not being sufficiently respectful to one of the senior students, and so I returned. But my faith and unswerving loyalty to my Sensei and willingness to be part of his "army" had suffered. This disillusionment was painful, but I see now, totally necessary for my own growth.
Not long after this, Samurai Dojo closed it's doors forever. Lou moved back to the East Coast and I saw him only once more, almost 10 years later. I'd been training with my then new and still current Sensei Rod Sanford for a few years and I'm afraid I might have bragged a bit about my new style. I'm sorry, Sensei.
I did still call Lou "Sensei", and despite (and because of) everything I went through, Lou Correa will always be my Sensei. One of many teachers, to be sure, but he was the first. And of all the lessons I've learned from all my teachers, the main lesson Lou taught me, taught us all, is perhaps the most important one not only in the martial arts, but in life. It's the lesson of damashi. Spirit.
If you get knocked down seven times, get back up eight.
Domo arigato gozaimashita, Sensei.
Sayonara, Lou.
Ossu!
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Root on the Front Foot
Tonight in class we worked on "push body."
Tai Chi practitioners are familiar with "push hands," an exercise where two people try to push each other off balance. It takes a lot of relaxation and skill to do this without using the upper body and the muscles of the arms. Doing so makes one vulnerable to getting pushed: it creates "kyo" (opening).
(The term "push hands" is a bit of a misnomer; a more accurate description would be "sensing hands." But that's for another time...)
"Push body" is a kind of training device for push hands (amongst other things). Instead of pushing against each other's arms, you press your body against your partner and just use your legs and hips to try and uproot the other, or to resist the other. You aren't supposed to grab or pull with the hands; instead, you extend your arms under or over your partner's arms. It looks like a cross between slam ballroom dancing and sumo wrestling.
This is a great exercise on many levels. It helps you develop your stance, your ability to root, to drop your center below that of your opponent. Done properly, you learn how to relax the upper body, root with the feet, power with the legs, give direction with the hips. You learn how to be receptive to your partner's energy and intention, how to harmonize with his or her "attack."
But, as with all great lessons, it operated for me on an entirely different level. Sensei pointed out something that instantly resonated with me as relevant to my life outside the dojo. This meta-lesson goes something like this:
I am not bad at rooting on my back foot. Stretched out in zenkutsudachi (front stance), my rear foot can plant into the ground like a Masai spear, waiting for the lion to pounce. You can push and push and I see my back foot ploughing a trench in the floor, if you can budge me at all. I won't give up an inch without a fight. But that doesn't help me move forward. It only keeps me from slipping further back. But under a strong enough attack, I'm bound to slide a little.
And there are lots of people, lots of things in life that are stronger than me. Time. Circumstance. Nature. Trying to stand still against these forces is the same as moving backwards. They will always win. Digging in, remaining immovable, holding to the status quo--those are all losing strategies. It's not enough to stand still. I need to move forward.
To move forward, one must root on the front foot. Sensei demonstrated, allowing himself to be pushed back and back and back and then, at the right instant, when his partner gave him an opening, he drove his front foot into the mat, dropped his hips and fed back the energy his partner had just given him in his push and wham! Back the other direction they went. Sensei's uke (partner), not being as skillful, had no chance to recover.
This is what I need to do in my life: not to dig in, hold on to the ground I've already gained, which is the same as holding on to the past, but rather, to root with my front foot, to relax and sense the opening of Life before me, then take all that energy and return it. I will use my intention, flowing through my mind and my hands, out my fingertips, to point in the direction I want to go. Open myself to the power that is flowing into me. Then drive forward into the future, into possibility, into new ground.
Tai Chi practitioners are familiar with "push hands," an exercise where two people try to push each other off balance. It takes a lot of relaxation and skill to do this without using the upper body and the muscles of the arms. Doing so makes one vulnerable to getting pushed: it creates "kyo" (opening).
(The term "push hands" is a bit of a misnomer; a more accurate description would be "sensing hands." But that's for another time...)
"Push body" is a kind of training device for push hands (amongst other things). Instead of pushing against each other's arms, you press your body against your partner and just use your legs and hips to try and uproot the other, or to resist the other. You aren't supposed to grab or pull with the hands; instead, you extend your arms under or over your partner's arms. It looks like a cross between slam ballroom dancing and sumo wrestling.
This is a great exercise on many levels. It helps you develop your stance, your ability to root, to drop your center below that of your opponent. Done properly, you learn how to relax the upper body, root with the feet, power with the legs, give direction with the hips. You learn how to be receptive to your partner's energy and intention, how to harmonize with his or her "attack."
But, as with all great lessons, it operated for me on an entirely different level. Sensei pointed out something that instantly resonated with me as relevant to my life outside the dojo. This meta-lesson goes something like this:
I am not bad at rooting on my back foot. Stretched out in zenkutsudachi (front stance), my rear foot can plant into the ground like a Masai spear, waiting for the lion to pounce. You can push and push and I see my back foot ploughing a trench in the floor, if you can budge me at all. I won't give up an inch without a fight. But that doesn't help me move forward. It only keeps me from slipping further back. But under a strong enough attack, I'm bound to slide a little.
And there are lots of people, lots of things in life that are stronger than me. Time. Circumstance. Nature. Trying to stand still against these forces is the same as moving backwards. They will always win. Digging in, remaining immovable, holding to the status quo--those are all losing strategies. It's not enough to stand still. I need to move forward.
To move forward, one must root on the front foot. Sensei demonstrated, allowing himself to be pushed back and back and back and then, at the right instant, when his partner gave him an opening, he drove his front foot into the mat, dropped his hips and fed back the energy his partner had just given him in his push and wham! Back the other direction they went. Sensei's uke (partner), not being as skillful, had no chance to recover.
This is what I need to do in my life: not to dig in, hold on to the ground I've already gained, which is the same as holding on to the past, but rather, to root with my front foot, to relax and sense the opening of Life before me, then take all that energy and return it. I will use my intention, flowing through my mind and my hands, out my fingertips, to point in the direction I want to go. Open myself to the power that is flowing into me. Then drive forward into the future, into possibility, into new ground.
Monday, June 14, 2010
Dropping into the Void
Ok first of all, I know. I suck at this blogging thing. At least from any kind of regularity standpoint. (It's not just this blog; my own personal diary has gaps of years or more.) I like to think that it's because I only write when I really have something to say. But maybe if I wrote more, I'd have more to say...
But really, I should let that go. I should let a lot of things go. Writer's guilt. This tension in my shoulders. My old comic book collection. That stupid thing I said to my girlfriend when I was 17.
"Oh oh," you are probably saying. "I thought I was going to read about karate, and instead, he's writing about some psychological mumbo jumbo!"
But I'm not! Really. I swear. No, no, no!
Well, maybe a little.
Actually, what I want to write about is yoga. And karate. And the similarities between them. And about letting go. Which is the main similarity between the two. Well, and the breathing. And the fact that both were inspired by the movements and postures of animals.
See what happens when I don't write often enough? I have too much to say...
Onwards.
A wise guru defined yoga as the art of letting go. Interestingly, this teacher called this the warrior's way.
When faced with difficulty, the warrior knows she has four choices. Three are instinctive; we are born knowing these responses: to run, to fight or to freeze. If we run, we avoid the threat temporarily, but we will more than likely face it again. If we fight, with tooth and claw and strength, we may vanquish or be vanquished, but we will not learn how to succeed except through fighting others. It is unlikely we will learn much about ourselves. And if we freeze, we become the deer in the headlights. Maybe the danger will pass and we will live our dumb life another day. Maybe we end up as road kill.
The warrior knows there is a fourth option. To face the difficulty, the threat, the blockage, the challenge. To breathe. And to let go. Only then will the warrior actually conquer, because that which is conquered is herself.
The physical application of yoga is just that. Create a difficulty, in the form of a pose. Then face it head on. (Or rather, heart on). Breathe. Focus on what is holding one back from achieving comfort. And then let it go.
Ok... so WTF does this have to do with karate, you ask? Everything.
The other night in the dojo, we were doing our "footwork drill." In another age, I called this "circle fight." One person stands in the middle of a circle of opponents. At random and rather quickly, each opponent rushes in, trying to push the defender in the center. The defender must use their footwork to evade the simulated attack, by spinning out of the way. I observed that only a few students were doing their footwork correctly. Some were spinning but were off balance, raising their center of gravity too high. If they were caught by the push, most resisted, fighting back, even if only for a moment, allowing themselves to be knocked out of the center of the ring.
Apparently, my sensei saw the same thing, for the very next drill we did was "dropping into the void." This is a partner exercise: one person stands with their back to the other. That person taps the first one on the shoulder. The correct response is to "drop into the void," then spin out of the way and give the tapping person a little push. It is a very simple exercise, but extremely important.
So what is "dropping into the void?" It is this: rooting, relaxing, sinking, pressurizing the lower body. Mostly, it is letting go.
Physically, dropping into the void is like sitting back on a table. You put your hands behind you, bend your knees and drop your butt, as if you had a table behind you. Internally, you sink your tail bone, as if you had a tail to rest on. You relax your shoulders and let all your upper body tension sink down through your legs into the floor. Since every action has an equal and opposite reaction, you now have energy (pressure) in your legs. Like compressing a spring, when you release the pressure, your body can move quickly. The more relaxed you are, the easier you will move. Direct your feet and hands properly, and you can spin quickly out of the way of your "attacker" and deflect their weapon (that tap on the shoulder could be a grab, or the point of a knife or barrel of a gun). Finally, the little push you give is powered by the legs, not the arms. It's just a symbol of what you could do ("if you can push, you can hit", OSensei used to say).
For this technique to work, you really have to let go. If someone has a real gun to your head, you only have one chance, but if you try to run, freeze or struggle (i.e. fixate on the outcome), you will probably end up "suffering from a permanent condition called death." Your only hope is let go, relax, breathe and face the threat.
Just as in yoga, the technique is important: posture, body alignment, footwork. But those are secondary to the main goal, not the goal themselves. The main goal is to find the challenge in oneself and face it with grace and the ability and willingness to let it all go. I used to think karate was superior, because as a martial artist, I'm taught that I'm overcoming the ultimate fear: the fear of Death. But I have had to face fears and sorrows and resentments and other character flaws in yoga that have seemed every bit as difficult to let go of. Gradually, with breath and dropping them into the void, I'm whittling them away.
Now, if I can just let go of that comic collection. And that stupid thing I said when I was 17.
But really, I should let that go. I should let a lot of things go. Writer's guilt. This tension in my shoulders. My old comic book collection. That stupid thing I said to my girlfriend when I was 17.
"Oh oh," you are probably saying. "I thought I was going to read about karate, and instead, he's writing about some psychological mumbo jumbo!"
But I'm not! Really. I swear. No, no, no!
Well, maybe a little.
Actually, what I want to write about is yoga. And karate. And the similarities between them. And about letting go. Which is the main similarity between the two. Well, and the breathing. And the fact that both were inspired by the movements and postures of animals.
See what happens when I don't write often enough? I have too much to say...
Onwards.
A wise guru defined yoga as the art of letting go. Interestingly, this teacher called this the warrior's way.
When faced with difficulty, the warrior knows she has four choices. Three are instinctive; we are born knowing these responses: to run, to fight or to freeze. If we run, we avoid the threat temporarily, but we will more than likely face it again. If we fight, with tooth and claw and strength, we may vanquish or be vanquished, but we will not learn how to succeed except through fighting others. It is unlikely we will learn much about ourselves. And if we freeze, we become the deer in the headlights. Maybe the danger will pass and we will live our dumb life another day. Maybe we end up as road kill.
The warrior knows there is a fourth option. To face the difficulty, the threat, the blockage, the challenge. To breathe. And to let go. Only then will the warrior actually conquer, because that which is conquered is herself.
The physical application of yoga is just that. Create a difficulty, in the form of a pose. Then face it head on. (Or rather, heart on). Breathe. Focus on what is holding one back from achieving comfort. And then let it go.
Ok... so WTF does this have to do with karate, you ask? Everything.
The other night in the dojo, we were doing our "footwork drill." In another age, I called this "circle fight." One person stands in the middle of a circle of opponents. At random and rather quickly, each opponent rushes in, trying to push the defender in the center. The defender must use their footwork to evade the simulated attack, by spinning out of the way. I observed that only a few students were doing their footwork correctly. Some were spinning but were off balance, raising their center of gravity too high. If they were caught by the push, most resisted, fighting back, even if only for a moment, allowing themselves to be knocked out of the center of the ring.
Apparently, my sensei saw the same thing, for the very next drill we did was "dropping into the void." This is a partner exercise: one person stands with their back to the other. That person taps the first one on the shoulder. The correct response is to "drop into the void," then spin out of the way and give the tapping person a little push. It is a very simple exercise, but extremely important.
So what is "dropping into the void?" It is this: rooting, relaxing, sinking, pressurizing the lower body. Mostly, it is letting go.
Physically, dropping into the void is like sitting back on a table. You put your hands behind you, bend your knees and drop your butt, as if you had a table behind you. Internally, you sink your tail bone, as if you had a tail to rest on. You relax your shoulders and let all your upper body tension sink down through your legs into the floor. Since every action has an equal and opposite reaction, you now have energy (pressure) in your legs. Like compressing a spring, when you release the pressure, your body can move quickly. The more relaxed you are, the easier you will move. Direct your feet and hands properly, and you can spin quickly out of the way of your "attacker" and deflect their weapon (that tap on the shoulder could be a grab, or the point of a knife or barrel of a gun). Finally, the little push you give is powered by the legs, not the arms. It's just a symbol of what you could do ("if you can push, you can hit", OSensei used to say).
For this technique to work, you really have to let go. If someone has a real gun to your head, you only have one chance, but if you try to run, freeze or struggle (i.e. fixate on the outcome), you will probably end up "suffering from a permanent condition called death." Your only hope is let go, relax, breathe and face the threat.
Just as in yoga, the technique is important: posture, body alignment, footwork. But those are secondary to the main goal, not the goal themselves. The main goal is to find the challenge in oneself and face it with grace and the ability and willingness to let it all go. I used to think karate was superior, because as a martial artist, I'm taught that I'm overcoming the ultimate fear: the fear of Death. But I have had to face fears and sorrows and resentments and other character flaws in yoga that have seemed every bit as difficult to let go of. Gradually, with breath and dropping them into the void, I'm whittling them away.
Now, if I can just let go of that comic collection. And that stupid thing I said when I was 17.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Pain Sensei
Most people would say that pain is something bad, something to be avoided. Most of the time, I'd agree with them. But in the Martial Arts, pain can be a constant companion. When I first began training in Shotokan Karate-Do, we just about made pain our fetish, our religion.
"If it doesn't hurt, you're not doing it right!" my sensei (teacher) would yell, as we stretched and strained and endured the harsh trainings he would dish out. He had a smile on on his face but he was more than half serious.
In those days, it seems like I always had something bumped, bruised or occasionally broken. It was a badge of honor to have some blood on your gi (uniform). We all went through miles of surgical tape for ripped callouses and busted fingers and toes. The smell of Tiger Balm (a kind of Chinese Ben-Gay ointment) suffused the air, dulling our aches as well as hiding the stink of our sweat.
Ah, the good old days!
At least in my dojo now, times have changed. We are a kinder, gentler brand of Martial Arts dojo. Even the "tough" schools today don't really match the levels of physical brutality I went through (or is that just the rosey glow of impending senility making things in the past seem more real than the present?). And what I went through back in the day paled compared to what my sensei went through. And so on, back into the days of mortal combat as the supreme test of a Martial Artist's skills.
For the most part, this is a good thing. At it's peak, my first dojo had maybe 50 active students; most classes had about 15 or 20. My dojo today has possibly 500 active students. Classes of 30, 40 or more are common. Many of them are youths, and I doubt their parents would stand by while senior students beat the snot out of them on a daily basis. (Not that the instructors don't think about from time to time. For that matter, maybe a few parents would pay extra for that... but I digress).
The new philosophy is: if it hurts, you're doing something wrong. Pain is your body's way of saying "Stop! Listen to me!" We strive for more natural, easy movement. And if you're injured, you can't train at 100%. We are also looking at Martial Arts as a way of life, and at a lifespan considerably longer than the warriors who developed the various fighting arts. It's one thing to train for a kill-or-be-killed world where anyone older than about 50 years of age represented the cream of the crop, the baddest of the bad. If you made it that far, you probably could retire to a monastery or command an army of bodyguards. It's quite another to reasonably expect to live a healthy life into your 70s and still expect to have the full use of your limbs and not need reconstructive surgery.
And that is a good thing, too. But pain still has it's place in my training. Pain can be a very good teacher. I call it "Pain Sensei." It's my wake up call and my reminder of the reality of the Art I'm practicing.
Tonight, in class, we were doing an exercise somewhere between prearranged sparring (yakusoku kumite) and free sparring (jiyuu kumite). We were going slow, we knew what to expect, though we had the freedom to try different maneuvers to get behind our opponent. I was trying to be soft, yielding, sensing my opponent's tension and movement. I didn't have much of a plan. Without thinking much about it, I tried for a leg sweep and BAM! my shin collided with my partner's knee, which he was lifting to try his own leg technique. I managed to hit the EXACT right spot, a nerve bundle just to the inside of the tibia about 2/3rds of the way up. My toes went numb and the pain shot up my thigh into my stomach. Pain Sensei was on the mat.
The first lesson Pain Sensei taught me was:
When shin meets knee, shin loses.
Ok, not a very deep lesson, I know. But sometimes it's good to be reminded of the basics.
I hopped around a bit and someone got me an ice pack. After a few minutes, I was able to continue training. (In the good old days, my sensei would have said, "What? It's not broken, you're not bleeding to death. Get back out there!" To which I would have replied "Hai, Sensei!" and hobbled back out, no matter the long term damage. There is value there, too, to know that one can transcend pain. But there's also value in getting ice on your owie quickly.)
The second thing Pain Sensei taught me was:
Have a plan.
When I attempted my leg sweep, I had no clear picture of what I was really going to do. I saw my opponent's leg, I'd already launched an attack high, so I went low. But I wasn't visualizing the end result.
My sensei today often says, "You have to see how your opponent is going to die."
He is quick to point out that that doesn't mean physically killing him, but rather, how you are going to defeat him. He also says,
"If you put your hands on someone, you had better have a plan for what you are going to do with him when you have him." (Claire's attacker didn't have much of a plan, apparently, and look what it got him).
Pain Sensei taught me that those words apply to feet (and shins) as well. Maybe someday, I won't need pain to be my wake up call. But I'm not overly optimistic about that, so today, I bow to Pain Sensei.
Now, where's my ice?
"If it doesn't hurt, you're not doing it right!" my sensei (teacher) would yell, as we stretched and strained and endured the harsh trainings he would dish out. He had a smile on on his face but he was more than half serious.
In those days, it seems like I always had something bumped, bruised or occasionally broken. It was a badge of honor to have some blood on your gi (uniform). We all went through miles of surgical tape for ripped callouses and busted fingers and toes. The smell of Tiger Balm (a kind of Chinese Ben-Gay ointment) suffused the air, dulling our aches as well as hiding the stink of our sweat.
Ah, the good old days!
At least in my dojo now, times have changed. We are a kinder, gentler brand of Martial Arts dojo. Even the "tough" schools today don't really match the levels of physical brutality I went through (or is that just the rosey glow of impending senility making things in the past seem more real than the present?). And what I went through back in the day paled compared to what my sensei went through. And so on, back into the days of mortal combat as the supreme test of a Martial Artist's skills.
For the most part, this is a good thing. At it's peak, my first dojo had maybe 50 active students; most classes had about 15 or 20. My dojo today has possibly 500 active students. Classes of 30, 40 or more are common. Many of them are youths, and I doubt their parents would stand by while senior students beat the snot out of them on a daily basis. (Not that the instructors don't think about from time to time. For that matter, maybe a few parents would pay extra for that... but I digress).
The new philosophy is: if it hurts, you're doing something wrong. Pain is your body's way of saying "Stop! Listen to me!" We strive for more natural, easy movement. And if you're injured, you can't train at 100%. We are also looking at Martial Arts as a way of life, and at a lifespan considerably longer than the warriors who developed the various fighting arts. It's one thing to train for a kill-or-be-killed world where anyone older than about 50 years of age represented the cream of the crop, the baddest of the bad. If you made it that far, you probably could retire to a monastery or command an army of bodyguards. It's quite another to reasonably expect to live a healthy life into your 70s and still expect to have the full use of your limbs and not need reconstructive surgery.
And that is a good thing, too. But pain still has it's place in my training. Pain can be a very good teacher. I call it "Pain Sensei." It's my wake up call and my reminder of the reality of the Art I'm practicing.
Tonight, in class, we were doing an exercise somewhere between prearranged sparring (yakusoku kumite) and free sparring (jiyuu kumite). We were going slow, we knew what to expect, though we had the freedom to try different maneuvers to get behind our opponent. I was trying to be soft, yielding, sensing my opponent's tension and movement. I didn't have much of a plan. Without thinking much about it, I tried for a leg sweep and BAM! my shin collided with my partner's knee, which he was lifting to try his own leg technique. I managed to hit the EXACT right spot, a nerve bundle just to the inside of the tibia about 2/3rds of the way up. My toes went numb and the pain shot up my thigh into my stomach. Pain Sensei was on the mat.
The first lesson Pain Sensei taught me was:
When shin meets knee, shin loses.
Ok, not a very deep lesson, I know. But sometimes it's good to be reminded of the basics.
I hopped around a bit and someone got me an ice pack. After a few minutes, I was able to continue training. (In the good old days, my sensei would have said, "What? It's not broken, you're not bleeding to death. Get back out there!" To which I would have replied "Hai, Sensei!" and hobbled back out, no matter the long term damage. There is value there, too, to know that one can transcend pain. But there's also value in getting ice on your owie quickly.)
The second thing Pain Sensei taught me was:
Have a plan.
When I attempted my leg sweep, I had no clear picture of what I was really going to do. I saw my opponent's leg, I'd already launched an attack high, so I went low. But I wasn't visualizing the end result.
My sensei today often says, "You have to see how your opponent is going to die."
He is quick to point out that that doesn't mean physically killing him, but rather, how you are going to defeat him. He also says,
"If you put your hands on someone, you had better have a plan for what you are going to do with him when you have him." (Claire's attacker didn't have much of a plan, apparently, and look what it got him).
Pain Sensei taught me that those words apply to feet (and shins) as well. Maybe someday, I won't need pain to be my wake up call. But I'm not overly optimistic about that, so today, I bow to Pain Sensei.
Now, where's my ice?
Monday, March 1, 2010
Year of the Tiger
I've been thinking about keeping a diary of my martial arts training for some time now. A long time, actually. Ok, a really long time. At first, I thought: "I'm just a beginner. I don't have anything special to say." (I now find even beginners, or maybe especially beginners, can have very insightful things to say. But I thought I was being humble.) Then, before I knew it, I'd been training for 35 years. Where would I begin? (Of course, when I began training, there was no world wide web, and even cheap personal computers were almost a decade off. So publishing anything would have been a challenge).
But here it is, 2010, and everyone from kids to grandmothers has their own blog. Hell, people's dogs have blogs, for Pete's sake. So I guess it's my turn at last. And, perhaps ironically, I'm going to start not with myself at all, but with my wife, Claire.
Claire has been training in Karate-Do herself for almost 20 years. Over the years, as just about every martial artist does at one point or another, Claire wondered if her training was really effective. She is small but has a fierce spirit. She is, in fact, a Tiger in the Chinese calendar. But she was never totally convinced that she'd be able to defend herself if she had to. (I'm sure all Martial Artists have had fighting dreams, nightmares where our techniques are futile, punches land like a tap with a soft pillow, our legs as effective as columns of Jell-O. Claire has had her share.)
Today, she got to find out if her training was worth anything.
She was crossing a busy street in broad daylight, in a normal commercial part of town. She noticed a couple of people in the area and cataloged them in her mind as potential threats. One was a "creepy" guy at a bus stop. The other was a single man in a jacket and hooded sweatshirt walking on the sidewalk she was approaching, coming in her direction.
(At this point, I would stop and say her training was already showing its worth. Many people walk (or drive) around in their own little bubbles, paying little attention to the world around them. We have been taught a system of awareness and vigilance when out in the world, and Claire's awareness was kicking in automatically.)
She reached the other side of the street and noted the guy in the hooded sweatshirt still coming her way. She altered her path slightly to walk along a building so she'd have a wall on one side, away from the street. She turned her head for just an instant, and that's when she felt the hand on her shoulder. She wonders now if she even was touched or just felt his intention, but she began to turn to face whatever was there, and that's when his hand grabbed her left wrist. It was the hooded sweatshirt guy.
Claire said he was about 6' tall and somewhat large. Now, Claire is 5'4" and weighs all of 100 lbs. Just about ANYBODY looks large compared with her. The man didn't say anything, just grabbed her with his right hand on her left wrist. His left hand was in his jacket pocket. Claire didn't think. She didn't have time for fear. She didn't suffer the feeling of unreality that often overwhelms people in crisis situations. She just did what she has trained to do. She dropped her body weight down, pressurizing her legs and, connecting her arm to her hip, pulled her hand free from the man's grasp. (This is the first thing we teach the kids at their introductory class, how to escape a simple one handed grip.) This unbalanced her attacker and he bent forward a little. Claire uncoiled all the pressure she'd built up in her legs and intended to smack the guy in the head with a back knuckle strike. But the guy was bending down and so her elbow caught him in the jaw instead. 100 lbs moving quickly with a hard point at the end. F=MA.
And he dropped. Out cold.
He was still out when the police arrived a few minutes later. A bystander had called from her cell phone. When they heard what had happened, one cop glanced at his partner, then at Claire and said, "You did that?"
We don't know what the assailant was after. Claire thinks maybe he mistook her cell phone pouch for a purse and was going for that.
As far as the physical effectiveness of Claire's response, there can be little doubt. She did exactly what she has trained to do, pictured in her mind for years and did it without fear or hesitation. That is the essence of physical kata (form). But to me, the real proof that her training has been effective was how Claire reacted to the incident.
After the initial adrenaline rush (she said she felt like she could have knocked out 5 more people!) she began to think, "I've hurt someone. Could I have done something different?" We talked about it, and yes, there are other techniques we practice that might have let her control her attacker without clobbering him in the kisser. But those are not without risk. She could have found herself rolling around on the sidewalk with a crazy man, armed with a knife, with traffic roaring by a few feet away. She might have broken his wrist, or he could have hit his head, not to mention all the bumps and bruises she could sustain, even if she won a tussling match with a guy 6" taller and 100 lbs. heavier.
"Maybe I could have just escaped the hold then run away. I didn't have to hit him."
Maybe. She had about .5 seconds to make that decision. Long enough to notice the hand in the pocket. Holding what? Nothing? A pack of gum? A gun? When the cops searched him, they found a knife in his left pocket. Was he going to use on Claire? Would he use it on someone else if Claire got away? These are the kinds of questions no one can answer. But the fact she even asks herself these questions says volumes about the true spirit of the Martial Arts and Claire's mastery of that essence.
The bottom line is: Claire wasn't hurt (though her elbow is sore). The attacker wasn't seriously hurt (though he will have a painful jaw and will have to explain to his cell mates how a whisp of a girl knocked him out cold with one blow). And maybe this will change his life for the better.
There's no question in my mind Claire has learned the best that the Martial Arts has to teach. The Path is endless, but for her, today, her training was good enough.
So I start my own karate diary by bowing to my wife, classmate and former student.
But here it is, 2010, and everyone from kids to grandmothers has their own blog. Hell, people's dogs have blogs, for Pete's sake. So I guess it's my turn at last. And, perhaps ironically, I'm going to start not with myself at all, but with my wife, Claire.
Claire has been training in Karate-Do herself for almost 20 years. Over the years, as just about every martial artist does at one point or another, Claire wondered if her training was really effective. She is small but has a fierce spirit. She is, in fact, a Tiger in the Chinese calendar. But she was never totally convinced that she'd be able to defend herself if she had to. (I'm sure all Martial Artists have had fighting dreams, nightmares where our techniques are futile, punches land like a tap with a soft pillow, our legs as effective as columns of Jell-O. Claire has had her share.)
Today, she got to find out if her training was worth anything.
She was crossing a busy street in broad daylight, in a normal commercial part of town. She noticed a couple of people in the area and cataloged them in her mind as potential threats. One was a "creepy" guy at a bus stop. The other was a single man in a jacket and hooded sweatshirt walking on the sidewalk she was approaching, coming in her direction.
(At this point, I would stop and say her training was already showing its worth. Many people walk (or drive) around in their own little bubbles, paying little attention to the world around them. We have been taught a system of awareness and vigilance when out in the world, and Claire's awareness was kicking in automatically.)
She reached the other side of the street and noted the guy in the hooded sweatshirt still coming her way. She altered her path slightly to walk along a building so she'd have a wall on one side, away from the street. She turned her head for just an instant, and that's when she felt the hand on her shoulder. She wonders now if she even was touched or just felt his intention, but she began to turn to face whatever was there, and that's when his hand grabbed her left wrist. It was the hooded sweatshirt guy.
Claire said he was about 6' tall and somewhat large. Now, Claire is 5'4" and weighs all of 100 lbs. Just about ANYBODY looks large compared with her. The man didn't say anything, just grabbed her with his right hand on her left wrist. His left hand was in his jacket pocket. Claire didn't think. She didn't have time for fear. She didn't suffer the feeling of unreality that often overwhelms people in crisis situations. She just did what she has trained to do. She dropped her body weight down, pressurizing her legs and, connecting her arm to her hip, pulled her hand free from the man's grasp. (This is the first thing we teach the kids at their introductory class, how to escape a simple one handed grip.) This unbalanced her attacker and he bent forward a little. Claire uncoiled all the pressure she'd built up in her legs and intended to smack the guy in the head with a back knuckle strike. But the guy was bending down and so her elbow caught him in the jaw instead. 100 lbs moving quickly with a hard point at the end. F=MA.
And he dropped. Out cold.
He was still out when the police arrived a few minutes later. A bystander had called from her cell phone. When they heard what had happened, one cop glanced at his partner, then at Claire and said, "You did that?"
We don't know what the assailant was after. Claire thinks maybe he mistook her cell phone pouch for a purse and was going for that.
As far as the physical effectiveness of Claire's response, there can be little doubt. She did exactly what she has trained to do, pictured in her mind for years and did it without fear or hesitation. That is the essence of physical kata (form). But to me, the real proof that her training has been effective was how Claire reacted to the incident.
After the initial adrenaline rush (she said she felt like she could have knocked out 5 more people!) she began to think, "I've hurt someone. Could I have done something different?" We talked about it, and yes, there are other techniques we practice that might have let her control her attacker without clobbering him in the kisser. But those are not without risk. She could have found herself rolling around on the sidewalk with a crazy man, armed with a knife, with traffic roaring by a few feet away. She might have broken his wrist, or he could have hit his head, not to mention all the bumps and bruises she could sustain, even if she won a tussling match with a guy 6" taller and 100 lbs. heavier.
"Maybe I could have just escaped the hold then run away. I didn't have to hit him."
Maybe. She had about .5 seconds to make that decision. Long enough to notice the hand in the pocket. Holding what? Nothing? A pack of gum? A gun? When the cops searched him, they found a knife in his left pocket. Was he going to use on Claire? Would he use it on someone else if Claire got away? These are the kinds of questions no one can answer. But the fact she even asks herself these questions says volumes about the true spirit of the Martial Arts and Claire's mastery of that essence.
The bottom line is: Claire wasn't hurt (though her elbow is sore). The attacker wasn't seriously hurt (though he will have a painful jaw and will have to explain to his cell mates how a whisp of a girl knocked him out cold with one blow). And maybe this will change his life for the better.
There's no question in my mind Claire has learned the best that the Martial Arts has to teach. The Path is endless, but for her, today, her training was good enough.
So I start my own karate diary by bowing to my wife, classmate and former student.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
