The (Un)Realities of the Aikido “Sword”

Some students of O Sensei had a very in-depth and involved relationship with the Japanese sword.  Their experience has been passed down in specific associations, but not in the larger Art.  Tachi-dori is still a required test element for black belts, but one that has been allowed to lapse generally and might not even get asked for.

The definition of Tachi-Dori is tied to the definition of the Bokken:

1.       A single edge

2.       A single point that extends from the cutting edge

3.       No tsuba or hand guard

4.       No weaponized handle (ie skull crusher pommel or additional spikes)

5.       Roughly uniform length

6.       Curved

7.       Deployed with the right hand forward and the left hand towards the pommel

8.       No flexible or distracting elements

9.       No hidden weapons

10.   No scabbard

11.   No paired weapons

12.   No surprise attacks

13.   Handle less than a foot long

14.   Only three basic cutting movements allowed

15.   Both hands are on the handle at all times

Exceptions exist to EVERYTHING on this list.  We still train the way we train.

As we train mostly with wooden weapons now, the major difference is in the weight.  A metal sword blade is much heavier than the handle.  It falls into your hands as you swing it.  When you make a Bokken out of a single piece of wood, the handle is wider and fatter and therefore has more mass at the handle than the tip.  The balance feels very different. 

The same weight discrepancy is true of a Shinai.  The Shinai can be a fun training tool, because you can get hit with one and not get much of an injury.  I prefer a Bokken because at least with a Bokken we can tell where the edge supposedly is.  The Shinai is also a little to flexible to represent a sword.

I came across a paperback book from years ago that said the Bokken could be “more deadly than the Katana.”  Dead is dead.  You cannot be “more dead.”  A sharpened katana can kill more efficiently with less effort.  Yes, you can break bones and skulls with a Bokken – the same way you can with a baseball bat.

The length of the handle is almost inconsequential – I myself prefer to use a Bokken with more distance between my hands than a standard handle allows.  With no blade and no hand guard, it really doesn’t matter how or where I hold the Bokken.  The distinction between the real sword blade and the handle is - sharp.  (groan)

The single edge is a good, standard design.  Even in Japan it isn’t the only design.  The Ninja-To is straight, with both sides sharpened.  The hand guard is often depicted as square, with edges to the guard that could presumably be used to catch or cause trauma. 

The Japanese Shikomizue (think Zatoichi) is straight, but often (not always) only sharpened on one edge, no tsuba and often held in the reverse grip and employed with one hand with the scabbard being used to block or strike. 

Many other different names for swords become a statement on the length – only the samurai class was allowed to have the long sword, but merchants could be allowed to carry wakizachi which were of intermediate length.  Law Enforcement officers were allowed jutte (deployed often in the left hand, and wielded single handedly) and in Okinawa the law enforcement officials carried Sai (wielded in pairs).  With no hand guard, grabbing movements that could control the handle or weapons that could catch on the hand guard now run the risk of just slipping down the blade.

The sword is one of the world’s oldest weapons.  Nearly every culture developed some variation on a long blade.  The definition of the sword has a wide range of expressions tolerated within Japan, and many variations exist from other cultures. 

We take the idea of a sword being “razor sharp” as a given.  Apparently, this is not true all around the world.  A friend of mine who studies the German long sword notes a number of techniques using the left hand to grab about a foot away from the tip to make a strong brace or to improve accuracy and power with a stabbing motion on an armoured opponent.

We expect the sword to be a venerated object.  We further try to venerate our ethical response to our attacker and therefore try to elevate our technique.  This can interfere with the idea of a graduated response to an armed attacker.  We do suspect movements that might endanger us in an effort to show proper respect to the 2x2 piece of lumber.  We forgo antisocial movements that might give us a higher chance of success.  We do not appear to be doing this to learn strategies to take out an armed attacker, but rather as a tie to our historical roots.

No one carries a sword anymore.  Immediately post WWII, I think any sword training was discouraged and that has resonated through the decades since - even seniors instructors will claim to know little of the sword.

Why do Tachidori?  What advantages do Aikido people get from this practice?

Bokken Returning Etiquette

http://youtu.be/zAMlWKiXNGU

Check out the return of the weapon at 48 seconds.

While I was taught to treat the bokken as a sword; it isn't one.  I have had many loud lectures given to me by many people over the years about what was the correct way to hand a bokken back.  I have had outraged low ranked people stop the entire class so that they could lecture on what they had seen on TV, in a movie, in a Kendo or Judo or Karate or Kenjitsu or Iaido class.

This is Hitohiro Saito, the son of Mirohiro Saito.  Saito senior was the longest serving direct uchi-deshi of O Sensei, and he became the world's most recognizable Aikido sword expert as the author of Aiki Ken.

This is not how I was trained, and I teach in a way that respects my teacher and I try to not offend anyone.  But, for anyone who wants to get hyper and pick a fight over sword returning etiquette - this is the clip I think of when I tell them to settle down.

How to (not) roast garlic in a toaster oven

Dear Diary.

Today I was making some pasta fagioli and I decided to roast the garlic.  I remember before squeezing the garlic out of the peel as it became luscious and soft.  The part I forgot is that when my sister showed me this, she cut the top off the cloves...

I went outside for a few minutes with the cloves toasting for five minutes.  At five minutes, I returned and the kitchen smelled wonderful!  

Then I heard a pop.  My long-suffering wife commented, "What was that?  I've heard a few pops already!?"  

No, there was no drive-by shooting.  Nothing that easy.

The garlic cloves exploded in the toaster oven.  Burnt garlic coating the oven.  And my hungry wife glaring at me.

So, please feel free to roast garlic in a toaster oven with a piece of tin foil underneath, and SCORE the cloves, or wrap them fully in the tin foil.  It could save your life.

Honey, I love you and I am so sorry that your bagel smells like garlic.

Turtle Kung Fu - lost in the Martial Metaphor

Turtle Style Kung Fu.  One of the 12 animals of Xingyiquan, the oldest of the three major internal martial arts of China.

I heard of it years before I saw a demo.  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was prominent on TV, and so the toys were everywhere.  Little kids yelling, "Cowabunga!" on the school yard, trying to be super acrobatic gnarly ninjas?

Or maybe, the reference was to a turtle shell.  A form of Iron Shirt Qi gong that would make a student impervious to any attack?  One of these "Hit-my-testicles-with-a-2-by-4-and-watch-the-board-break kinda fighting styles?

Maybe snapping turtles?  Tiger Claw type ripping and tearing?

I definitely had an image of slow, of the race between the tortoise and the hare teaching perseverance, of a defensive approach.  Heavy, solid.

So, when I was told it looked like Cloud Hands, I didn't get it.  Light, fast circular movements.  Turtle?!?

http://youtu.be/vKIOFsFQoD8

Eventually I learned the inspiration was the SEA TURTLE.  Swimming movements.  Smooth circular deflections, open hand strikes and wrapping motions.  Some zig zag motions.

Not turtle soup, no eggs laid in the sand, no herringbone walking pattern, no invulnerability, no pizza.  Suddenly the metaphor and inspiration made sense.  It also made sense that this animal style has a few names other names like Lizard.  People who lived inland before YouTube probably didn't immediately picture a swimming turtle.

I guess the whole point for me is that there are so many Japanese words or translated Chinese names that I don't put this much effort into understanding.  All the stuff I never even tried to think about, research or understand - because I already figured I understood it - maybe there is more to understand. 

Grasping at Clouds

I had been told that the Taiji movement Cloud Hands meant leaving the hands light and cottony soft.  If a person attacked you, they would magically fly across the room while never feeling any more resistance than a cloud.  The movement is rather vague, but gets repeated more than any other in the Yang Long Form.  I was told the repetition is because this movement is more important and has more possible applications.  However vague and unclear the applications were...

I saw a Jujitsu technique called, “Ashes In The Eyes” which looked like a possible application – but I was still pretty sure Cloud Hands wasn’t about “poor visibility.”  I was also pretty sure it could be used for variations on Sokumen Iriminage or even an O-Goshi, or a Kaitenage.  I did this once with a karate friend and I ended up in a perfect Kosa Dori Ikkyo.  Punches, elbow strikes, palm strikes to a variety of heights, several throws, a wide variety of locks seem possible with a huge amount of "artistic license."

The Wu/Hao system does the movement front weighted or back weighted.  The Chen Style I learned did several variations on footwork with multiple segments of repetition – shifting each foot moving forward, expressing Fa Jin each time but staying in place, step in front, step behind, step backwards.  The Yang system just seems to shuffle from sideways, but movements like the Yang “Part Horses’ Mane” are the same arm movement, just walking forward.

I was shown a Shotokan Kata called Unsu, or “Cloud Hands” in Japanese.  Piecing together a few translations and embellishing on them:

-  Clouds undergo “Incessant Changes.”

-

-  Clouds can adopt any shape.  In the eye of the beholder, clouds can become dragons, monsters,religious images or long dead loved ones.  Awe, fear, love can be inspired, or indifference.

-  Clouds can produce lightning, thunder, snow, sleet, rain, hoar frost, mist, steam, fog, hail, dew and many other things in nature.  Smoke always finds a path upward, or when confined smoke causes spontaneous combustion.  Fog settles and leaves the dew.

-  Clouds can leave you sweating, or freezing, or instantly dead.

-

   Clouds can be virtually unnoticable, or they can black out the sun.

-  Clouds can be enveloping and close, or miles away. You can look down on the clouds, or they can hug the ground, or be in the highest reaches of the atmosphere.

-  Clouds can be seen moving and changing rapidly, or so slowly as to appear completely still.

There are some pretty amazing performances out there, but this is from a direct student of Gichin Funakoshi, Nakayama Sensei, who was the leader of the Japanese Karate Association for years and a 9thDan.http://youtu.be/9gNTc283kAg

  

So, these martial art metaphors from centuries past, and thousands of miles away, from a culture I don’t share, developed by people who faced threats that I never have; and who lived in an environment that my inland northern prairie home did not resemble – these metaphors do not always speak to me.

I have come to see the Cloud Hands movement as more of a state of mind than a posture.  That's why there are so many variations and applications, while the movement remains so vague.  There is no one "right" definition, because that is the whole point.  Clouds are abundant possibility and endless variation.

If I had never looked at other martial arts, if I had never allowed someone else's perspective to inform my practice, I would still be lost.  

Ender's Game - still a great book.

Ender's Game was published in the 80s.  While I didn't see it at the time, when I went back to the book later I noticed what I see as a comment on technology and warfare.

Security meant:  Supermax fortresses with massive amounts of barb wire, fences, guns, ditches, drawbridges, high ground, burning moats and projectile weapons.

Strategy to take a fortified position was to overwhelm it.  Throw lots of bodies at the defences until they crumble.  So, thicker and higher walls, with more and bigger guys, armed with more and bigger weapons, travelling around in more and bigger vehicles.  After the Second World War, we competed and fought over bigger armies, bigger bombs, bigger planes, bigger ships, bigger submarines, bigger fortifications in better locations.  This was true pretty much until the 1980s, the pinnacle of the Arms Race. 

What happened around the 1980s was that home computers were getting common.  We were forced into a new paradigm of war.  While the discovery of atomic energy was as much a game changer as the discovery of gun powder, this was getting overshadowed by a new threat the current militaries weren't ready for.

Security now is less about how many pushups someone can do in a minute, or how accurate a shot they are: A huge portion of security these days is how many words you can type in a minute, and how accurate you are with a mouse.  Like Q says to James Bond in Skyfall:  "I can do more damage to the entire world from my laptop in bed than you ever could with your pistol and martial arts."  (Don't have the script in front of me, I am sure the quote is wrong but not the intention.)  Suffice it to say, we as a planet have more to fear from the tech savy than we do from Conan the Barbarian. The person who steals your identity remotely can do you and the world more harm than the person who pulls a gun and demands your wallet.

This is really what I was looking for in Ender's Game, and what I was thinking when I was reading.  Suddenly, thrust into a war where "Up" does not exist.  Every type of formation on the ground or at sea - counted on there being ground, and sea.  Air combat focused on relationship to the ground.  Take away gravity and ground?  Air has also usually played a support role, however devastating.  What to do when we only fly in combat?  How do you force aircraft down - when there is no "Down?"  Nothing can actually "Fall."  The adults want a new general for this new type of war, and they select Ender.  Ender learns to think in zero gravity the way a generation learned to think in computer. 

Most of the actual battles are never described in the book.  How to describe a battle we can't understand and make us understand it?  The genius of Ender is his ability to grasp what we can't, but we want a movie we can grasp.  We have an orgy of CGI.  The airless and soundless space is full of loud fiery explosions, and the endless black is full of colour and sound. 

Ender is raised to be a tool, while the adults decide to do all the thinking.  The adults in Ender's Game say:  Achieve the objective we tell you to achieve.  We don't know how to do this, so you figure that out for yourself.  We'll be doing all the contemplating for you.  All the moral anguish?  Leave that to us.  You're going to be smarter than us and better adapted to this new world and new style of war.  Just remember we have the finger on your trigger, you don't pull it yourself.  Never ask why.  Never question.  Never develop a moral compass or conscience as that would be inconvenient for us.  We'll use you when we want to, and then villify you and discard you when we chose.  The rules are what we tell you the rules are, right is what we tell you it is.  Trust us implicitly, and never ask if we are worthy of that trust.  Be morally and mentally flexible, but we expect you to be rigidly and unquestioningly loyal.

The adults lie to Ender, and manipulate him and trick him into being the Xenocide - the killer of an entire species.  He destroys the enemy homeworld in a game, knowing that when the game is over he is done with this game and these people.  He wants to go home to his sister, and he's I think really striking out at the adults in the room by wrecking their little game.  Only, it was never a game.  He was betrayed.  At eleven years old, he is the killer of billions of sentient life forms.  He had trusted the adults too much.  He is discarded, and portrayed as a murderous sociopath with no place in the world he saved.  And then, the weapon the adults forged to do what they can't, in the war of means that they don't understand, against a threat they can't comprehend - answers to his heart.  Ender undoes the efforts of the generation he answered to.

Change the technology and the battlefield, change the threat and the means to neutralize it.  When the leaders don't understand the objectives, nor how they are attained, then eventually the leaders are no longer in control.  They can't even see where and when they lost control.  As martial artists, what happens when the world and warfare change too quickly for us to understand, when we're not even aware of the threat or how to respond to it?  Maybe one of the most interesting things for me, is how I think really the book predicts Edward Snowden - a new breed of soldier in a type of war few understand where everything we thought we knew about being dangerous is useless and meaningless.  And, we're really not in control.

 

Sweep the Lotus: Thoughts on training with limitations for martial effectiveness

Old or injured people shouldn’t have to feel bad about how they train, nor should they be trying for the impossible.  “Know yourself, Do your best, Make a little progress every day, Don’t overdo it.”  I never met Master Jou, but I see the wisdom in his training advice.  This post is about the confusion of athletic and martial/real practice.

Close to the end of most solo long empty hand Taiji forms is a movement called Sweep the Lotus.

·         Stand on your right leg and move your left leg in a clockwise circle (Outside In).

·         Turn your body in a full circle

·         Shift your weight to your left leg

·         Move your right leg in a clockwise circle (Inside Out)

·         Your arms move together in the opposite direction of the feet

Some teachers do this form full speed and full power.  Their hands loudly make contact with their feet.  As this is by far the most dramatic movement in Taiji, this group of instructors talks about “Ending the Demo with a Bang!”  The application for Sweep the Lotus for these teachers follows Dr Yang Jwing Ming's book on Taiji application:  grab the attacker's face and kick them in the back of the head.  Most students think of doing this once, Dr Yang shows kicking the attacker's skull twice. 

To my roommate’s initial amusement, I bought in to this idea.  I started to practice turning off the lights with high kicks to work on my accuracy and height.  I hit the floor many times, then started to make a mess of the wall and broke the kitchen light switch before my roommate angrily reminded me I did, in fact, still have fingers better suited for the light switch.

Most of the big name teachers do this movement slowly, fluidly, and with less height.  The Two Person San Shou that I learned shows this Inside Out crescent kick at kidney height.  A similar movement in Heian Godan shows the crescent kick moving Outside In to the solar plexus.  Ultimately, I started to practice a slower kick because it was harder practice and it did not matter so much if I changed my clothes first or warmed up.  I noticed I developed a little more range of motion in my hip while not kicking as high or as quickly.

I think another realization was when I started to train with saber and sword – I had bought myself a very heavy and sharpened saber and I genuinely nervous for my feet.  I started to see someone could just slightly deflect my blade as I swung…

I remember the elderly and injured people who loved to practice always skipped the movement altogether, or they looked embarrassed or ashamed that they could not perform the high kick.  Instead of getting this close to the end of the long form as the culmination of their practice, often times this movement seemed to prove to some people that “Taiji is too difficult to do.”  People would see this movement and decide, “I can never do Taiji for real.” 

One Chen Taiji teacher showed me a video of a Grandmaster doing his form.  "Look, Crescent Kick to the Head!"  The 80 something year old gentleman in the video (now long deceased) brought his knee up to waist height slowly and never extended his leg further as he slowly circled his hands.  "He got too old to practice his Taiji form.  He was still undefeatable though."  The student was judging the teacher by his aesthetic qualities, while admitting there was something much more going on.  I learned about the difference between pretty technique and real technique.

I mentioned Shotokan Karate forms earlier as other examples of feet and hands moving together.  Soon after passing your first test, a new student starts to learn Heian Nidan.  The fifth or so movement in, you do a side kick and a back fist at the same time to “punch and kick someone at the same time.”  Legs are longer than arms.  The higher the kick, the more I lean to one side – giving my arm even less reach and less chance of hitting a target.  I tried to strike posts like this, but I never was able to use my hands and feet simultaneously in this fashion.

This type of movement appears many times in the various Shotokan kata.  Eventually I was told I could grab an attacker’s hand and then kick while pulling them into the strike for increased damage.  Difficult to do, and easier if they are grabbing me instead.  It also requires a modification of the kata in application.

A direct student of Funakoshi was teaching a local seminar, and I went.  He was commenting on Nijushiho, but I could see the idea carried into other kata.  Today, the open hand technique was accompanied by a high side kick to the chest or head.  When he was a student, it was taught as grab an elbow, shoulder or head and stomp downward on a foot or knee.  The high chambered knee could be used to strike up before the foot struck downward.  Kata were specifically changed to be made more physically challenging when the idea became perfection physical and spiritual challenge instead of combat effectiveness.

There is nothing wrong with the variation I was made to practice.  Pull someone into a kick, and the resulting force on the target area is increased.  Another theory was that a more difficult movement when practiced makes an easier movement even more easy.  Technical drift is expected in a fight, so train for greater difficulty.  Nothing wrong with the movement, nor the method of training.  It just requires greater balance, greater flexibility and more years of training to even attempt.  Women looking for self defence need to pay attention to their footwear – stomping in heels is easier than a high thrust kick.  This exclusive high kick practice sets a reflex to attempt what maybe should not be attempted.  On slippery or uneven ground, even a senior student would find this difficult.  Maai must be perfect.  Timing must be perfect, and somehow the initial grabbing movement must not telegraph the finishing kick.

I then had a chance to study some Judo briefly.  The hand and leg coordinated work in Judo showed me how these movements can easily be throws and sweeps.  The thing is, to do these sweeping movements your feet are supposed to be close to the ground. 

So, all you people with arthritis, back pain, knee and hip replacements, challenges to your balance:  if you need a martial justification of a movement that keeps your foot closer to the ground, check out these excellent teaching bits from Windsong Dojo.  I especially found the part enlightening that trying to lift the foot higher is not only unnecessary but often weaker than keeping the foot sliding along the ground.  

Outside in

http://youtu.be/bEmHtft-CgU

Inside out

http://youtu.be/h8MCHo11JqI

I encourage people trying to train despite limitations to really think about what “martial” is.  In these days of CGI, trick photography and stuntmen on every TV and movie screen, we can become jaded and bored with real technique.  We are told the elite, improbable and impossible is the standard, and then we discourage ourselves.  We stop training because we aren’t fantastical creatures but rather merely human.  The only way to lose the benefit of training - is to stop training.  Get out there and even if your feet are just skimming the ground, or you are just raising your knee and stomping instead of kicking, remember: 

You are doing real martial art.

 Thank you again to the remarkable martial artists who have their images on line for me to find.  I am not doubting nor questioning your impressive ability - I am just wanting to show that options exist for the rest of us.

A functional definition of Qi/Chi/Ki

Qigong is an Asian-based practice that focuses on using the mind and body to improve health and overall functioning.  It is a practice of aligning movement, awareness and intention for exercise, healing, and meditation.  At the core of Chinese internal arts is a statement found in the Taiji Classics:  “The Mind leads the Body and the Qi follows.” 

The first problem many have with Qigong is Qi.  Qi is often defined as the mystical energy force that is present in all things and unifying us all.  It is simply the definition of magic - mysterious powers that inspire everything from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon to Star Wars Jedi Mind Tricks.  The inability to scientifically prove the existence of Qi is the reason that western science and eastern healing methods have been at odds.  Everything from acupuncture to Reiki to qigong is predicated on the existence of Qi – if Qi does not exist, then all of these things are perhaps called into question. 

The character below is the Chinese character for Qi.  This is the character for “Chi” in Tai Chi Chuan, as well as the "Ki" in Aikido.  The symbol depicts a stove with a fire burning inside.  A pot with rice is sitting on top of the stove and the lid is lifting up.  Very mysterious and not easily explainable centuries ago, but a given fact that the rice put in a pot with water over heat will change.  Therefore, a possible definition of Qi is Steam.  Other possible definitions of Qi are Air and Breath.

 

It is true that several cultures have developed theories similar to Qi.  The Yogic Prana in India or the Ki in Japanese arts are examples.  This does not help to prove the existence of Qi, but I believe it shows that the concept has been useful across many cultures and centuries.

Science cannot prove the existence of an invisible, intangible, magical/mystical energy field.  However, the so-called "Ki Society Aikido" calls themselves Shin Shin Toitsu Do or Aikido with Mind and Body Integrated.  Other examples of the Japanese use of Ki in language (from Kisshomaru Doshu of Aikikai):

Courage:  Shi-Ki

Will power:  I-Ki

Vigor:  Gen-Ki

Bravery:  Yu-Ki

Equanimity:  Hei-Ki

Conserving Energy:  Shu-Ki

Prolonged Breathing:  Ki-Soku

These concepts are not magical.  Far from it.  These words speak to Mind and Body interaction, and the interaction of our logical mind and our emotional mind.  Most of us accept the influence of our Mind on our Body as factual.

The idea of Qi I use in my classes at the Duke Cancer Center is straightforward.  I am not introducing anything magical, mystical or religious.  Simply:  how we think and feel affects how we move, breathe, and live.  How we move, breathe, and live affects how we think and feel.  We can learn how the Mind can positively influence the Body, and how the Body can positively influence the Mind.  For this Art, I always start with the Mind.

We feel, see, smell, touch, and taste everything with our brain.  Our brain is our gateway to reality.  Anxiety, stress, or Type “A” constant driven desires to succeed are associated with a number of chronic and acute health problems.  Grief, depression, distraction, and anger cause changes in our sleeping and eating patterns, our bowel habits, our ability to perform tasks that might otherwise be very familiar to us.  Panic, rage, and fear cause our heart and lungs to work faster and more forcefully.  Fear makes the experience of pain worse.  Doubt makes us less likely to succeed.  Most areas of medicine make use of psychology, acknowledging of the importance of addressing the mind while helping the body. 

If you attend one of my classes, it does not matter if you believe in an energy field.  You do not need to challenge any belief systems, religious or otherwise.  You only need to accept that the mind and body are connected.  Internal arts use this idea to improve balance, functional strength and coordination in a low stress, low impact training method.  When the Mind leads and interacts with the Body, the two together can do much more than the sum of their parts.  This notion of Qi is common sense, and I teach Qigong that is heavily grounded in psychology and kinesthiology.  

The exercises I teach in the Duke Cancer Center Quiet Room are from Li Family Baguazhang, a martial art.  This is not a class in combat.  There is no fighting.  My hope is that students will have some fun and feel better during, and at the end of class.  These exercises can be easily modified – when in doubt, what you are doing in your mind matters more than what you are doing with your body!  For this art, a mental practice without movement is better than empty, mindless movement.  A relaxed mind is clear and easily focused.  A relaxed body starts with a relaxed mind.  Healthy movement starts with relaxed, mindful structure.  

I am grateful to the Duke Cancer Center for the opportunity to teach this Art.  The support I have received from my managers, patients and coworkers has been exciting and amazing.  It was in part for this class that I am the recipient of the Duke Cancer Center Superstar Award for patient care this year.  It was humbling to stand in front of so many of my coworkers at the 3rd anniversary of the Duke Cancer Institute - I work with many amazing people, and they all go the extra mile.  

I also want to express my gratitude to the teachers before me:  Shifu John Painter has made it his life's work to clarify the mystery around the Internal Arts.  I am a better student and practitioner today thanks to his efforts. It is his methods that I am introducing in the Duke Cancer Center's Quiet Room.

Without the efforts of Kristy Everette Sartin, the Oncology Recreation Therapist whose efforts led to this class, none of this would have ever happened.  Thank you.

As always, thank you to my wife who would define Qi as the most useful word in the history of Scrabble.

Martial Art training for health?

Training for health is not something Aikido people tend to do - we get thrown all class long, every class  and we keep attacking each other, so the martial, however questionable it sometimes can be, is present.

Taiji and Baguazhang students have self practice as the primary training method.  Many people in Taiji in particular will avoid any mention of martial art.  If you don't like to touch other people or don't like to be touched, you can just say so and never do any push hands or applications.  Training for "health" can be code for training with no intention, no structure, no understanding of the movement (or of movement in general.). I like to insist on some martial theory in my classes.  Martial is often confused/equated with MMA and shouldn't be.  I just look at effective, biomechanically sound movement.

Martial is about good body structure.  Yes, this was first about "How do I hit someone harder?"  But it can be so much more.  How you walk throughout the day, how you close a door, how you carry a bag of groceries or lift up a small child from the ground can be informed by your internal arts practice.  You can become functionally stronger, feel less fatigue, be better balanced and generally become much less likely to be injured in your daily life.  So, I call that healthy.  I tell students, "No one ever taught you to walk.  One day you stood up and didn't fall on your face as you moved your feet.  That's what you probably did for the rest of your life.  There is a better way."

So, I encourage you to explore martial ideas and find out about kinesthiology.  "Lift with your legs, not with your back," is used extensively in Taiji form work.  There's a corridor in front of your body where your arms and legs are much more effective, and your movements are much healthier if you stay in the corridor generally.  Do you know where it is?

Another piece of confusion around training for health has come from competition form work.  When the Chinese government commissioned a form for practice, there was a very specific definition of what a movement would look like.  I get students who try to emulate that form despite their injuries or the pain they are in.  Stances become a certain length despite any discomfort, injury, neurological dysfunction or potential harm.  Students tend to be uncomfortable, then they quit and they don't practice.  Worse yet, they might make their injuries worse if they do train regularly!  Students might feel they can't do their practice anymore, because they don't look like a picture in a book or a poster on a wall or a movie clip.

Martially, a movement can be very small or very large.  It can be performed at a different height.  The body movement can change dramatically.  The stances and waist movements are very fluid, and likely to change depending on need.  There is no one single way to use something like Single Whip, and there are many different variations out there that all focus on a slightly different application.

Competition forms demand one version.  You are expected to resemble a picture of Single Whip as closely as possible.

If I have students who have muscle injuries, or deconditioning or lymph edema concerns, I can adjust what I am teaching.  People with arthritis can practice, so can people in wheelchairs.  Martially, I know I am respecting the original form, and I am teaching something real.  Competition form work would say I was not.  Combat forms allow a variety of expression, and this means healthy movement and healthy practice for everyone.

The teacher who tells you a movement can only be practiced one way is not giving you a physical therapy oriented/inspired practice, and maybe not the practice that serves your health needs.  The teacher who tells you, "this is just for health, there is no wrong way to move"  is not giving you the tools for a more healthy and effective daily life.

So, bring a little martial to your health practice.  You just might find you get healthier for it.

Leg locks in Aikido?

First off, leg locks are not a good idea generally.  It can be an effective tactic, but arms are the primary tools to be concerned about.  You can damage a leg and that will prevent an attacker running after you, but I prefer control over pain compliance and I like the option to not damage.  Also, I can use tools while holding a nikyo or ikkyo pin and a number of leg locks would be difficult for me to do this. Maybe this just reflects my comfort level and amount of practice with these techniques.  The few times I had to do a leg lock in real life, I quickly learned legs are more muscular than arms generally, so I needed to use both arms on a stronger leg.  

 

Modern soldiers will have knives and guns.  Don't restrict the arm movement, get cut or shot.  A number of classical leg locks often leave your own leg within reach of your attacker, particularly if you apply it face on.  So, in the real life situations above, I was part of a team and the arms were controlled while I controlled the legs.  I might need to deal with the legs to get to the arms.  Or, someone else has taken the arms and the legs are thrashing and so I take the leg.  Leg locks are no substitute for our arm controls.

Legs do not have the same control or range of motion as arms - so, hips, knees and ankles cannot tolerate the same pressures and torque as shoulder, elbow and wrist.  Toes are not as flexible as fingers.  Ankles less flexible than wrists.  Hip joints less than shoulders.  As the hip and ankle don't move as freely as the wrist and shoulder, the knee can be traumatized more easily than the elbow.

UFC #1 was won by a toe lock.  For all that, most people today wear shoes and boots.  A toe lock on someone wearing steel toes is probably not a good idea.  A wrenched ankle is far more likely, and really even then I'd be using the ankle's range of motion to damage the knee.

 

All the increased risk of joint injury from less range of motion, and now couple that with your legs will be supporting your body weight.  Jamming an ankle or a knee means changing your hip and spinal alignment for the fall.  Landing directly in the knee cap, etc can leave you needing major surgery - from a practice!  Even people with good ukemi skills find these types of falls more difficult.

 

I take this to mean that joint locks to the leg need to be practiced more cooperatively and slowly.  I believe Judo has struck most leg locks from competition.

 

We do not have weight and height classes.  Sometimes, you take what body part you can reach.  You can't always effectively attack a target above the waist.  Sometimes legs are the more effective target.

 

For O Sensei in wartime, soldiers were fighting on uneven ground, on staircases and amid rubble; storming trenches and barracades, climbing ramparts, slipping and falling and responding from the ground.  Sometimes they were standing in mud or in the trench and couldn't move as freely as we do on smooth mats.  Sometimes pinning or giving aid to one person, and forced to respond to a new threat.  Crouching behind cover, deficating, sleeping, eating and now surprised and forced to act to save their lives.  All of this, and still needing to train for taller, stronger opponents with better mobility and reach.  Hanmi Handachi has a lot of interesting and applicable lessons to teach.

Kawahara Sensei still told us that for the kata katate-dori kaitenage hanmi handachi the actual attack was grab the wrist and kick the abdomen - so we were always reminded to not allow uke to walk up in front of us directly and grab the hand.  Uke needed to come from the side, but really Nage was supposed to control that in theory.

 

While hanmi handachi has roots in Daito Ryu and the old samurai arts, we kept this while not keeping flower arranging, the tea ceremony, or Daito Ryu umbrella retention techniques.  The old arts taught many things we didn't keep, and we treat this as important.

Somehow despite the role Hanmi Handachi can play and the lessons it teaches us, in Aikido we often only attack the pectoral girdle and the neck.  No matter how we are attacked, we seem to respond by attacking Uke above the nipple line.  Lots of classical techniques do this.

So do our leg attacks not exist?  

From Budo, published by Kodansha (the Noma dojo photo shoot).  Admittedly, seven pictures for the entire book does not make these movements common (though there are only four on Tanto Dori, and this did become a common practice).

The movements also still have Nage looking mobile, able to use tools, able to use atemi and aware of the larger environment.  One of these looks like a transition between a leg control and our more familiar arm controls.  The first one looks like an atemi to the ankle to sweep the leg away.  Some of the pins, O Sensei looks to be kneeling or stepping on his partner's spine or hip.  I like the Nikyo lock done while stepping on Uke's foot.

How close are we to the day that an Aikido instructor would say, "Who is this goofball and what is that crap he is doing?  That's not Aikido!"  Some would say closer than we should be.  O Sensei does not have to be the only way to do Aikido, but he should be studied and given his due.  As Stanley Pranin has said, "He was pretty good at what he did!"

Aikido Sacrifice Throws?

This remains one of the most interesting Aikido videos for me ever.  I had developed a very exacting idea of what the different basic kata were supposed to look like as a Nikyu when I saw this for the first time.  Of course, while I was focused on "Correct," Morihei Ueshiba was doing things differently.  I can process what I see here, and I can't always with his later video work.


Why refer to it today?

There are no sacrifice throws in Aikido, or Aikikai proper apparently. In doing some kaeshi-waza the other day, I finished the roll and did a nice, lazy, smooth yoko sutemi. I throw this young student, and he looks me in the eye. "That was straight-up Judo. That's not Aikido, is it?"
 

I wonder when that happened?  It used to be that a martial arts master had a particular favourite skill, or maybe had to answer to the boundaries set by their environment and times.  Knowledge was kept from rivals; knowledge was not refused.  This vision of proprietory skills and information and dogmatic refusal to learn anything outside of a narrow world view has nothing to do with our history, nor the history of any martial art.  As we in Aikido train to work with multiple attackers, any technique that involves reducing our mobility is undesirable.  That does not mean that we never lose balance, never fall down or never find ourselves working from a disadvantage.  Warriors developed new variations of a technique to answer to their circumstances and give themselves a slight advantage.

 

In the CAF, Kawahara Sensei had shown sutemi on a number of ocassions. Not every seminar, but about once a year he would throw some out for us to see.  Maybe it was partly that we had icy or muddy streets for 7 months of the year or more. I learned these were seldom used, and did not leave you in a desirable position. This was never an opening move, but rather a belated response to being thrown. This was Kaeshi-waza, or reversals. Kaeshi-waza was for senior students, and not a required element until Ikkyu.  Reversals could happen at any number of points during a kata, and being this late was not the goal but rather a reality we might need to acknowledge. 

Fun cool fact:  We don't need to learn anything different.  Any of our traditional ukemi is the platform for a number of throws, locks and strikes from the ground.  We just need to focus on maai and kuzushi.  Above all, we need to be receptive to the movement being applied to us so that we can best use this incoming force.

Morihei Ueshiba was a Judo student for admittedly only around a year, but he never did much of anything halfway - a year for him was probably more than 3 years worth of hours in training for any of us. I don't know what his rank was when he moved.  Several of his students were also students of Kano Jigoro, so he would have been well exposed to the theories and techniques of Judo and other arts.  Aikido Journal and Youtube have some brilliant clips of Aikido Sutemi-waza in schools descended from students of both Kano Jigoro and Morihei Ueshiba. 

This one clip of O Sensei in his 50s shows him doing a version of a sacrifice throw around 2:42. He is pulled out of seiza, and throws from on his back.  The Noma dojo photo shoot shows the same technique.  This is not a Judo technique to my knowledge.

If you look up the dictionary definition of a sacrifice throw, "putting oneself in a disadvantageous position to throw someone, LIKE falling (I read that as not necessarily falling)" then all of this dropping to one or both knees which seems to be much more popular these days starts to sound like a sacrifice throw. All of the multiple attacker work, all of the disarming an armed individual, all the hanmi handachi - isn't this all putting ourselves at a disadvantage and going forward anyway?  A way of deliberately forcing ourselves into a disadvantageous position and taking advantage of a disadvantage?

Snake Creeps Wayyyyyy, Wayyyyyyyyy Down - what is "martial?"

Yang Chen Fu, third generation Yang Style Taiji master doing Snake Creeps Down

Chen Man'Ching, most noted for his short form and his years spent teaching Taiji in the USA, also doing Snake Creeps Down.

Eventually, "good technique" seems to involve straighter legs and a lower butt.

I don't know who this is.  This is also the same posture, and this gentleman's flexibility is very impressive.  

When I hear someone talking about wanting to do a "more martial Taiji," this last picture is what they seem to be referring to.  The thing is, no one fights like this.  This last posture is for extreme stretching, which can aid martial ability, but is not for combat.  The last picture has more in common with Yoga and dance than combat.  A number of other martial arts like Aikido and Karate have adopted a more extreme Wu Shu type approach to form work - lower, wider stances, higher kicks, more jumping, more aerobics and gymnastics.

Most of the actual applications of Snake Creeps Down have more to do with Judo type throws, or a drop step.  Some will resemble sacrifice throws:

While the movement in the form has a person stand up, this application has someone stay on the ground.

Chinna is possible with the handwork.  You can lock the arm, or legs, or neck.

Just throwing this out there for people who want an actual martial idea of this movement.  How come all the Judo pics?  Any Taiji person who talked to me about these applications only described them to me - no one ever did this in push hands to me.  This is how I have come to understand this movement.  

More extreme postures can lend themselves to developing an aspect of martial ability, but that doesn't make them martial.  People who actually used and discovered these applications were often wearing armor and on a variety of surfaces like mud or ice or uneven ground.  The posture is now judged for it's aesthetic appeal, not for how the application would work.

Thanks to all the impressive martial artists who posted these pictures online.