Duke Classes start up soon, and I?ll be teaching martial arts there in their PhyEd department (been there maybe 8 years now ? holy moley!). I?ve only been teaching aikido on and off as an assistant instructor for a few years now? But there?s something insidious about Aikido, and martial arts practice in general, that I?ve been watching for some time in myself and others. It?s the peace ninja.
Some background. So I started serious (4-7 times a week) martial arts practice when I was around 8 or 9. This was the 80s, so I?m sure I had ninja turtle aspirations at the time. But I don?t remember being particularly motivated by that idea during practice ? I really valued my martial arts instructor, Master Ron Huntley, and thrived on the ethical questions we talked about in class. Training was meditative and therapeutic, and great for when home life, and less so school life, was trying. I think I wandered into my previous martial art, Tang Soo Do, just because my mother signed my brother and I up and I was engaged in the practice.
But I came to Aikido, dangerously, through ideas, not practice, and that makes a difference. I?d been Korean punching/kicking styles at Duke for a few years, and continuing reading Buddhism and martial arts texts for any clues to ?the big secret of the universe? that I felt I was studying with all the spare time I had?when I wasn?t watching save-the-world type martial arts movies. That?s when I came across The Art of Peace by Aikido?s founder. I was sure that whoever had written that book had the answer to the big secret.
Now this is played up some, but not much. After reading and reading that book a hundred times or so, I finally aligned my life for serious practice and gave up my daily training in my previous art. I was an engineer, but I wanted to help people. I was a computer scientist, but I loved human services. I wanted to be engaged in the world. And I thought that meant dropping my previous life. And so I scrapped what I was doing and got an internship in Albuquerque, NM, working with Hogares, Inc., at a residential treatment center for youth, often in the foster and adoption systems, with drug dependencies or emotional challenges. And I trained every day that summer for 2 hours at Albuquerque Aikikai with T. S. Okuyama sensei.
But something remained in me from that time that I still work on, consciously now, and see in other people. It?s the peace ninja. Here?s what I mean by that.
See, I had this thing for the sheer awesomeness of martial arts. The power, the control, the ferociousness (in my mind). One dangerous thing with the practice of martial arts, to me, is that without a lot of competition, an ego can quickly get out of hand. And an out of hand ego physically changes your body in visible ways ? and not to the improvement of technique.
Aikido?s a special bird here. With someone like me, in love with helping people and martial arts training? what could be more compelling than using martial arts for good? Lots of modern day stories in anime and TV and movies celebrate that model. Aikido, dangerously so, represents in many ways the pinnacle of peaceful martial arts-dom. I could finally be, in my mind, the peace ninja.
But the idea of greatness, of ?about to do something AWESOME? changes your aikido, changes your body no matter what you do actually. I?ve been teaching martial arts now, regularly, for about 8 years? and I feel this is very true. The symptoms? Still, unnatural postures ?before and after? a technique. Even the sense of ?beginning? frequently becomes a sort of ?get-ready? GO!? type flow, which weirds out the uke. I certainly have found this to be true in myself, and I?ve talked about it in classes when I?ve seen folks seemingly in love with their own awesomeness holding funny, Bruce Lee type postures before and after throws.
In my body, and in my limited teaching experience, one of the worst things for technique moving from very beginner to ? practicing actual technique is how the idea of a technique frequently substitutes for sensitively learning the actual feel, the substance of the technique. I certainly have this to work on, too? I?m not really sure I know the answer here, but I think inflated, unnatural ideas of the self or the practice itself really get in the way of natural practice. Whether practicing to transform yourself into some mythological warrior for peace, an undefeatable monster, or an intense and mysterious swordsman?. Or even just make your life a little better, careful that the idea of practice doesn?t get in the way of the practice itself.
Come the start of Duke?s PE Classes (where I?m teaching Aikido, Aiki-jo and Chen Tai Chi) I?m not quite sure how I?m going to advocate attitudes of practice? but it?s certainly on my radar. I think one great way that I?ll start working on now is my own attitude: celebrating the real and natural benefits of practice (and there are many, I feel) while not ignoring the challenging and frustrating realities of serious practice.
Labels: aikido, duke pe classes
