An Outsider's History of Kenji Tomiki, the Founder of Shodokan Aikido

Most Aikido people know about Judo, and have some sense of Brazilian Jiu-jitsu.  Most Aikido students know that we do not compete, and that is seen as the primary difference between Judo and Aikido.

There is also a difference of a generation.  Morihei Ueshiba Sensei was born in 1883, Kano Jigoro was born in 1860.  Kenji Tomiki, a student of both of these men, was born in 1900.  Kodokan Judo was invented one year before Ueshiba Sensei was born.  There is evidence that Morihei Ueshiba trained in Judo as well as other jujutsu styles as a teenager.  He moved to Hokkaido where he met Sokaku Takeda and became a student of Daito Ryu in 1912.

The founder of Judo, Jigoro Kano Sensei was rigorously methodical and logical in his approach.  He made extensive use of anatomy, physics, and psychology in his system.  He had studied with many teachers, but rather than regurgitate a laundry list of techniques he wanted something better:  the underlying principle:  “the most efficient use of mental and physical energy.”  He subjected each technique to scientific study.  Then, in codifying the techniques, he developed a system whereby he believed his knowledge could be clearly transmitted to future generations.  Kano Sensei openly admitted he had changed and discarded much of what he had learned if it was not in accordance with the principle he decided was going to guide his own martial art.  The clarification, codification and organization of Judo was part of Kano Sensei’s plan to ensure the survival of Japanese Budo. 

During this time, Kano Sensei was also an educator:  The director of Primary Education for the Ministry of Education for Japan, as well as the president of the Tokyo Higher Normal School.  This stands in sharp contrast to the tales of O Sensei as a teacher:  described as a saint and a genius, most of his students openly admit they did not follow much of what he said.  Kano Sensei was someone who took pride in being able to teach well, and he subjected Judo instruction to the standards of conveying information that we expect and demand of our formal education system.

There is one famous incident where Kano Sensei saw O Sensei, the eventual founder of Aikido give a demo.  Apparently, after the demo, Kano Sensei said, “this is the ideal Budo, true Judo.”  Jigoro Kano had been working for years on collecting the history and techniques of Japanese Jiujitsu, refining and codifying them and leaving them intact as a legacy to future generations.  He had studied several arts previously.  He was now getting older and more famous as a teacher and not in a position to be a student of a new teacher himself.  Ueshiba Sensei was also around 23 years his junior.

Knowing his legacy was already secured and that he wanted to add Ueshiba's art to this legacy, Kano Sensei did the next best thing.  He asked/deployed some top students to study with and learn from Morihei Ueshiba.  It is not surprising that the Judo masters that were sent to learn from Morihei Ueshiba continued to have some Judo influence on their techniques and their mindset.  

I have had to update this section - while I first read the story as a ringing endorsement of Aikido by Kano Sensei, this actually isn't true by the timeline.  Kano Sensei would have never seen a demonstration of an art called Aikido, as he died four years before the name Aikido was coined.  It is not clear to me when the demo took place, but Tomiki Sensei arrived to study with Ueshiba Sensei after the demo happened presumably.  (Addendum:  Per a comment below, the demo did happen in 1930, which still means Kano Sensei was watching a demo by a top Daito Ryu student, but then means Tomiki was already studying with Ueshiba before Kano deployed students?). Tomiki Sensei started his studies with Ueshiba Sensei in 1925.  Morihei Ueshiba remained a student of Daito Ryu until 1937.  The actual name Aikido did not come into use until 1942 - the year Ueshiba Sensei left his position as a military trainer.  Was the mythic compliment and Tomiki Sensei's mission to acquire this "ideal Budo" really aimed at Daito Ryu and Takeda Sensei's top student as opposed to Ueshiba as a master in his own right?

For Kano Sensei, competitive wrestling was a way to bring people together in a fun endeavour, a way to attract students and probably also no small part of the scientific process of seeing what would genuinely work.  This lead to Judo competitions.  Competitive Judo was also part of a larger dream to span cultures for Kano Sensei – he was actually travelling from an IOC meeting in Cairo when he died in 1938 at 77 years old.  The Olympics in Berlin were 2 years prior.  Despite Kano Sensei’s efforts, Judo did not enter the Olympic Games until 1964.  Judo became the first Japanese sport to gain widespread international recognition.

Japan had invaded China in 1931, about 7 years prior to Kano's death in 1938.  Germany invaded Poland in 1939.  O Sensei’s first enlightenment (“Budo is Love”) was in 1925, his second (“Aikido is a spiritual practice”) was in 1940, his third (“Competition is a terrible mistake”) was in 1942 during the worst fighting in World War Two.  I do not know what O Sensei’s views on competition were before this time. 

In the 1920s and 30s, Ueshiba O Sensei was still teaching Aikijujutsu under Sokaku Takeda.  The Daito Ryu ledgers show him to be a very active student of Takeda’s until 1937.  He had ties to Omoto Kyo, (Morihei Ueshiba had met Deguchi in 1919, and had travelled to Mongolia in 1924) but the influence on his system was still not quite as evident as it would become.  In 1925, the year of O Sensei’s first enlightenment and two years before O Sensei moved to Tokyo to build his first dojo, Kenji Tomiki Sensei joined Morihei Ueshiba Sensei as a student.  Tomiki Sensei received his Godan (5^th degree black belt) in Judo the same year.  Judo was an openly competitive art, and I do not know what O Sensei’s views on this were at the time.

Given the dates, Tomiki Sensei was a Daito Ryu student, in contact with O Sensei’s Daito-Ryu teacher, Takeda Sensei, before O Sensei broke ties with Takeda Sensei.  I have nothing on how this breakup would have been viewed by Tomiki Sensei or Kano Sensei.  O Sensei’s breaking ties presumably had much to do with his religious beliefs, of which there is little evidence that Tomiki Sensei or Kano Sensei shared. 

While still studying with O Sensei, Tomiki represented the Miyagi Prefecture in the first Judo competition held in front of the Emperor in 1929.  This competition came to be the All Japan Judo Tournament.  Stanley Pranin writes that Kenji Tomiki was one of several men considered by the Founder to marry his daughter and become a possible successor to Aiki Budo, an honour that was eventually (briefly) given to a Kendo master named Nakakura in 1932.  

In 1936, two years before Kano Sensei’s death and six years before O Sensei’s anticompetition enlightenment, Tomiki Sensei moved to Manchuria and began teaching Aikibudo (the name Aikido was still not in use yet) to the Kanton Army and the Imperial Household Agency.  Tomiki Sensei is credited with being awarded the first 8^th Dan in Aikido in 1940 (though, again the name Aikido was not in use yet at the time the rank was awarded).  Kisshomaru Ueshiba (the second Doshu) did not start training with his father until 1937.  Gozo Shioda Sensei (Founder of Yoshinkan) started to train in 1932.  So, Shioda Sensei would have studied alongside Tomiki Sensei.  Kisshomaru Doshu did not start training until after Tomiki Sensei had left Japan, around the time O Sensei broke ties with Daito Ryu.

As I am a big fan of Jet Li’s Fearless, the Founder of Jing Wu died in 1910 and Jet Li’s (and Bruce Lee’s) other movie about the aftermath of those events, Fist of Legend (Fists of Fury), presumably is still set before Tomiki’s arrival in Manchuria. 

The Manchurian Incident (the Japanese Invasion and Occupation of a portion of mainland China) happened in 1931, five years before Tomiki Sensei’s arrival.  It is interesting for me that the start of World War 2 officially was 9 years later. I wonder what would have happened if the attack on Pearl Harbour had not gone ahead.  The actual US response to Japanese incursions was tepid at best until that point, with Americans still shipping oil to Japan while offering war loan supplies to the Republic of China in 1940.  Shipments of airplanes, machine parts, and airplane fuel from the US to Japan continued until 1940 with the Japanese incursions into French Indochina.

I digress.  I believe Tomiki Sensei was not the inspiration for the villainous Japanese generals and Japanese martial artists in those movies mentioned above.  Still, opening a Japanese martial arts school in occupied China sounds BALLSY.  Both the Chinese civilians and the Japanese soldiers he was training likely tested him harshly.  Most Aikido schools today would not even consider training for military applications (nor would the military consider us for their uses).

Tomiki Sensei remained at his post until the end of WWII, at which point the Russians captured him.  He was incarcerated for three years before returning to Japan in 1948.  There are anecdotes saying that his ongoing development of his Budo continued while incarcerated in Siberia and the movements of Shodokan Aikido were influenced by the confines of his cell.

The Founder of Yoshinkan Aikido, Gozo Shioda, only just started teaching in 1950.  O Sensei was in Iwama farming before the the war ended, apparently in retirement.  The Founder of Shin Shin Toitsu Do (Ki Society Aikido), Koichi Tohei, only repatriated to Japan himself in 1946.  Kisshomaru Ueshiba Sensei was running the Tokyo Dojo, but working on the side to pay the bills and sometimes in Iwama himself.  The art was in a shambles with no clear organization when Tomiki returned to Japan.  Aikido itself was still illegal to practice when Tomiki was repatriated, and remained so from 1945 until 1949.

Tomiki took a position as a professor of the physical education department at Waseda University.  He was also trained as a teacher, like his first Sensei Kano Jigoro.  In 1953, the same year that Tohei Sensei started travelling to Hawaii; Tomiki Sensei was part of a delegation teaching Judo to American servicemen in 15 states.  He was a prolific writer, with some of his books on Aikido and Judo being published in English and French.  Tomiki Sensei was credited with having an influence on the Judo Goshin Jutsu Kata which was created in 1956 and presumably disseminated amongst the American troops.  

O Sensei's enlightenment that was the base of his dislike of competition happened in 1942.  O Sensei then left teaching openly altogether and I have little sense of how this would have been viewed by the Japanese forces - either the leadership or the rank and file that had trained under him.  Tomiki Sensei returned home in 1948 following years spent in a Russian concentration camp after a decade of trying to establish an Imperial Army presence in Manchuria with O Sensei's full support - only to be told Ueshiba Sensei had changed his mind about the whole mission and now condemned it.  The religious views that Tomiki Sensei possibly didn't share were now firmly entrenched in O Sensei's Aikido.  

From the Aikido Journal website, in 1958 Tomiki Sensei started to formalize his competition system.  From all appearances, O Sensei had retired from teaching.  Judo was less than a decade away from becoming an Olympic sport, and Judo was the vehicle that Tomiki Sensei was using to meet and train American soldiers.  Kano Sensei's vision of the world coming together in peaceful competition no doubt looked to be bearing fruit.  

Tomiki was ordered to stop using the name Aikido, or stop competition.  O Sensei himself may have weighed in.  By all accounts, O Sensei was not known for being tactful or diplomatic, and had a volatile temper. I imagine the rhetoric quickly degenerated. 

The orders may well have come from his junior, Kisshomaru Ueshiba - who never started training before Tomiki left for Mongolia and was never in military service as he didn't pass the physical exam, had only emptied the dojo of refugees and quit a second job to pay the bills a handful of years before.

Koichi Tohei, the now head instructor who was also greatly Tomiki's junior and had spent far less time studying with O Sensei, would have had some influence. (Tohei's own breakaway Ki Aikido system would develop competition during Tomiki's lifetime.) Regardless of who gave the order, Tomiki refused. 

In 1954, in the lead up to Tomiki being forced to leave over competition in Aikido, Gozo Shioda Won an Award for Most Outstanding Demonstration in the All Japan Kobudo event that launched his career and the Yoshinkan school. Shioda stayed on good terms with the Aikikai despite competing for a demonstration award. Four years after Shioda's award, Tomiki was out. (It is worth noting that the competitions in Ki Aikido and Yoshinkan are more like a pairs figure skating competition - cooperative and not focused on defeating an opponent. The competitions in Tomiki's Shodokan Aikido are more like a Judo competition.)

The implications of demanding he stop teaching his art as Aikido was to demand he make a choice between Ueshiba or Kano.  As Kano had also been the driving force behind Tomiki and others getting credentials in Aikido, to stop using the name Aikido would have meant Tomiki had failed his original teacher's request, and would have to stop teaching what he had been taught.  Tomiki would have been disrespecting Kano Sensei.  

He was also the highest ranked Aiki-Budo student in the world, and the harshest tested at this point, and probably one of the longest serving.  The name change from Aiki-Budo to Aikido may have served to undermine his authority as he would have trained in a "different art."  

The ironically highly competitive acrimony in the far more junior Tokyo Hombu dojo instructors would only become more apparent in time.  Having lived through the events with Ueshiba Sensei's separation from Daito-Ryu and probably having faced criticism from the military due to O Sensei's association with Deguchi during the unpatriotic protests of the Omoto-Kyo sect while Tomiki was serving the military, Tomiki would have seen a very human side to Morihei Ueshiba.  

Morihei Ueshiba died in 1969.  Tohei Sensei was promoted to the rank of 10^th Dan, which he received after O Sensei’s death in 1970.  Tomiki Sensei had been teaching sporadically in the Tokyo Hombu Dojo, but was not a successor to the lineage and the Aikikai Chief Instructor, Tohei Sensei, now outranked him.  The founder of Yoshinkan Aikido, Gozo Shioda Sensei received his 9^th Dan in 1961.  Tomiki Sensei by comparison was not promoted in Aikido from 1940 onward.  O Sensei’s son, Kisshomaru Ueshiba, inherited the title of Doshu. 

In 1971, Koichi Tohei was ordered not to teach his system inside Hombu Dojo, which lead to him creating an organization for outside the Hombu Dojo and the Aikikai Umbrella, Ki No Kenkyukai.  Eventually, Tohei Sensei resigned and cut ties with Aikikai in 1974.  No version of events makes the Hombu Dojo sound like a stable, happy, thriving and harmonious environment immediately after O Sensei’s death.  All students owe a debt of gratitude to his son, Kisshomaru Ueshiba Doshu, that the Art of Aikido under the Aikikai is still around today.

While Tomiki Sensei’s theories and research into competitive Aikido would have been in the works for years prior to O Sensei’s death, the first major open Aikido tournament did not happen until 1970.  This public break from his teacher did not happen until after his Sensei had died.  1970 is also the year that Tomiki Sensei retired from life as a professor at 70 years old.  He received his 8^th Dan in Judo in 1971.  Tomiki Sensei created the Japan Aikido Association to support the growth for his own vision of Aikido in 1974, the same year that Koichi Tohei severed ties.  Tomiki Sensei passed away on December 25th, 1979.

I was born in 1970 in Canada.  I could have never met O Sensei; I was born after his death.  From some people I talked to who were there in Hombu after O Sensei’s death, there was a very real concern that Aikido was collapsing and in danger of vanishing.  Instead, our Art has seen phenomenal growth.  Only the love and respect for O Sensei had been enough to keep these disparate groups together.  That love of the Art we all share was enough to keep Aikido moving forward, in all its different variations and directions.

I am not a Tomiki Aikido student.  Stanley Pranin writes about Tomiki Sensei’s decisions in 1958 making him unwelcome in the Tokyo Hombu Dojo.  When asked once about Tomiki Aikido, my Sensei stopped the conversation immediately and refused to comment or even have us comment.  I have always kept an open mind for my own research, and I think there are technical merits to what Tomiki Sensei has taught.  I am not suggesting competition, though I know many students are, of course, competing on the mat informally and asking for “less compliant uke.”  The flavour of Judo Kata, which is the flavour of Shodokan Aikido Kata, is not the flavour I bring to my own practice.  But, I respect what I see and read about Tomiki Sensei’s creation.  I think many Aikido students would, if we ever reconcile the differences.  Many students will never make the time to learn outside their dojo and lineage out of loyalty.

Our Art has become politically fractured, and the third and fourth generation of Aikido students and instructors has a choice if they want to rise above the politics alone that decide what techniques we are allowed to call “Aikido.”  This essay will hopefully give some basis for future essays I hope to submit here. 

This is my whole thesis in a nutshell - historically, when we in Aikikai decide we do not like a person we throw out all their teachings and pretend they never existed, never had anything of value to offer us.  When we modify and throw information away, we do not do it because of our philosophy or a desire to better express a physical priniciple.  We judge the teacher and the teachings as one and the same.  While this refusal to reconcile our differences does not sound like Aikido, there is also maybe not enough questioning about what we have now lost in technical information out of stubborness and protocol.  This generation has no reason to be as emotionally hurt as our predecessors, and no reason to keep this quiet feud personal.

I do continue to hold my Sensei in the highest regard, and I continue to respect the Doshu and I hope my comments will not be construed otherwise.

My initial personal experiences with Tomiki Aikido are covered in The Ballad of Bob.

"Mostly Harmless." Or, Atemi in Aikido.

I had been a Shotokan Karate student in the 6^th grade, and briefly in the Canadian Rockies.  Now I was living in a town with a large, well thought of Shotokan School just 20 minutes from my house.  I had recently passed my Shodan test in Aikido, and I wanted to know more about Atemi. 

 

During a Karate seminar (I cannot remember who was teaching) I was shown a wide variety of what was possible to achieve with a strike.  Then, the teacher said, “Locks are for only if you don’t want to hurt the person.”  Interestingly enough, the “lock” he showed involved pulled the arm straight and doing a palm strike to the elbow.  He would have broken the elbow if he had used any force, and it looked more like a strike than a lock.  The teacher’s thesis was both inaccurate and poorly demonstrated.  To hear this “Locks are Harmless” one-note assessment of the majority of Aikido techniques had me shaking my head at how uninformed the karate students were.  But, their knowledge of what could be done with a strike was still opening completely new doors to my understanding.

On the one hand, of course the teacher was right.  We don’t routinely get broken elbows and necks in our classes.  We modify our techniques for safe practice, and no one gets hurt.  We try not injure people whenever we have a choice.  But, Shotokan students are not routinely killed either and also modify their techniques for safety.  They also preach a graded response to violence.  Not all strikes automatically have to kill the attacker, not all strikes to the eyes automatically leave someone permanently blind.

 

I was a contentious student in too many ways.  I never emptied my cup or forgot what I already knew.  I would raise my eyebrows when told this movement was to block a kick to my knee,

and had no relationship to this movement: 

In hindsight, I do owe them an apology for being puffed up and full of myself, and I owe them gratitude for their patience with me.

Today, with Boxing, Wrestling, Fencing, Tae Kwon Do, Kendo, Judo, Kick Boxing - we want the one art to have one strategy, one skill set.  Rules for competition set the restrictions in the other Arts, but we don't compete.  Aikido was never meant to be only the “wrist lock Art,” nor was Karate meant to be the “striking only Art.”  I needed to realize that for each Art to express its skill set well, teachers who were better informed than I was giving them credit for were deliberately restricting the students.  So, for Karate students, to learn to kill with a single blow, every motion was practiced as a strike.  For Aikido students, we were learning to lock and throw - practicing striking distracted beginners from this.

 

From "The Bubishi, the Bible of Karate," (paraphrased and added to by me) there are different types of effects one can have on an attacker with strikes:

1. Pain

2. Paralysis/impaired function

- weakness to numbness to joint destruction

3. Knock out/impaired consciousness

- dizziness to out cold

4. Impaired sensory function

- temporary to permanent

5. Organ trauma

6. Impaired respiratory function

- yes, the lungs are organs but we need air uniquely enough that this deserves its’ own category, plus I can affect someone's breathing without touching their chest (hitting the mouth, throat, nose, etc)

7. Interrupted circulation

- from bruising to massive trauma, from a knockout to internal hemorrhage

8. Impaired balance

9. Death

- immediate to imminent  (There is a big difference between instant death and dead in minutes in terms of counter attack.)

10. Distraction

- I was also told to strike to the face whenever entering the center.  Putting the hand up in front of uke’s face gives me some options even if I don’t hit.

11. Illicit a reflex/create movement

 

Of course, we can cause multiple effects with the same movement.  A light tap on someone's nose can make their eyes water and cause a reflexive movement at the same time, a harder one will do the same thing but interfere with breathing to an extent, and a harder one yet will maybe cause the attacker to stumble and turn their head away as well or raise their arm to block.

 

Not all targets listed in the Bubishi are lethal.  Stamping on the outer edge of the foot is one example that will not kill someone but will impair the attacker’s ability to fight.  Some targets in the Bubishi would be better struck with a bladed weapon, some would be better hit with an impact weapon, some of these targets are best (in my opinion) “struck” (damaged) by having the attacker fall on them. 

 

Can't the same effects on an attacker listed above happen with our own core techniques?  A choke can suffocate and render someone unconscious; a lock on the neck can break it and cause death or permanent paralysis.  We can cause pain, or we can sprain, dislocate, or shatter a joint.  Locks can make breathing impossible, or cause internal bruising.  Higikime and Udekimenage can break elbows.  People have had skulls and necks broken by Shihonage, Iriminage, Kaitenage and Ikkyo.  Our techniques aren't the reason we take the moral highroad.  Our philosophy can be expressed in our movements when we are mindful.

 

Hearing someone else talk about the limited utility of locks had me thinking about some Aikido teachers (not Sensei) who said the only purpose of our atemi was a distraction, and that we should never even make contact.  Atemi maybe add so much more than just that.  I had heard Aikido refer to striking arts as "low-brow" but my exposure to Karate was showing me this absolutely wasn't true.

 

All of our techniques depend on unbalancing the opponent, either physically or mentally.  Why not use a strike to achieve this?  Some say, "It's less harmonious and compassionate.”  Like all of our locking and throwing techniques, our atemi can make for a graduated response.  I would sooner stun someone, make him or her blink, or knock the wind out of them rather than break their elbows.  Stamping on someone’s foot and running away is arguably more compassionate than a throw that might cause serious injury to a person who doesn’t know how to fall. 

 

Kawahara Sensei had some very powerful and solid atemi, and he showed them frequently in his seminars but never actually struck his uke with force or speed.  I had no doubt in my mind even feeling the light contact of his fists on my ribs that my bones would crumble whenever he chose. 

                 

I learned about several variations of a single technique from Sensei.  He would show things that were harmlessly controlling, or extremely painful.  He would explain how a particular  joint could be traumatized, or broken.  Very rarely, he would discuss how killing or crippling was possible.  Ikkyo could be solid or flowing, or a platform for koshinage, higikime, atemi and kubishime.  I had seen things demonstrated that make me cringe to remember them.  And, they weren’t all “mostly harmless.”  When he did discuss more violent applications, it was often so that we could practice more safely.  Sometimes, he was not going to let a philsophical mandate prevent him from teaching his students to be safe in the larger world.

 

The one stipulation I use for Aikido atemi is that they should be a part of our kata. Our strikes should work well with our techniques, not be completely divorced and distracting from the core technique. I realized with this understanding that training in Shotokan was not going to improve my Aikido atemi. The solid rooted stances were not meshing well with my desire to keep mobile. MMA was the biggest wakeup call the traditional martial arts teachers had in the last few decades, and tried to bring striking and grappling arts back together as they were intended to be. The final result bears no resemblance to Aikido with Atemi in my opinion.  Arts like Taijiquan will show effective ways to combine a strike, lock and a throw in a single motion.  With a little inspiration, I could see that in what we practice in Aikido as well. 

 

O Sensei's first rule for practice: "Never forget that the techniques we are practicing can kill. Respect your teachers and this fact and pay attention."  We were told by him that we were not learning harmless movements.  We learn a graded response.  Atemi can play a role in that graded response without violating our philosophical mandate.  Atemi might actually be safer and kinder to use than many of our throws and locks.

Creative/Tools

There are many exercises in Aikido and other martial arts that are used for developing skills.  I have heard these skills referred to as tools, and rightly so.  I remember Sensei once saying while showing a unusual type of footwork, "this method of stepping will feel ackward and will be slow at first.   But, if you don't learn it, you will never acquire True Speed."  (When he spoke, you could hear the Capital Letters in his words.)

I did some stained glass in the past. To work with the copper, lead and solder I needed to learn skills that I saw plumbers had. To cut glass, I had to learn the skills of a glazier. But, to be a stained glass artist I had to learn the skills of someone who could fix my hot water heater and someone who could replace a broken windshield and make something special and indescribable.  The skills to be a painter and the skills to paint house are much the same.  The skills to carve wood and the skills to be a carpenter are the same; the tools are the same.  The tools are the path to the creation, not the creation itself.

Like a poet trying to write without any knowledge of the ABCs or a novelist trying to make a book without grammer, skills are the tools for self expression.  e.e.cummings was not ignorant of the English language; he worked beyond the rules of grammer.  He made a choice.

While each tool must be understood and mastered to be expressed in the depth and breadth possible, an artist must do something more. If I painted the house, I am not automatically on the same level as a Monet or a DaVinci just because I understand the technical work of paint and brushes.  Yet, even Monet and DaVinci had to learn what a circle was at some point in their careers.  Picasso was not ignorant of painting technique, he worked beyond realism and made a choice.

I have experienced having a desire to create something memorable and beautiful and attempted it and found afterwards that my physical skills could not allow the translation and transmission of the creation.  In the same way, I have been stopped cold in a project for lack of inspiration even with the tools ready to go.  The act of creation is about both elements.

I remember the first Karate Kid movie and Miyagi Sensei is having Ralph Macchio trim a banzai tree.  "Miyagi Sensei, what if I make a mistake?"  The young man was paralyzed with concern.  "If it comes from inside you, no mistake." 

It sounded nice and deep, but I learned without sufficient technique and understanding, my creation was not going to come from inside me without something being lost.  The beautiful image in my mind wasn't going to magically come out my unpracticed fingers on unfamilar materials - if I cared about the final creation, I had some work to do.

I wanted to do a Stained Glass of a Ted Harrison painting - my mundane glass skills were not up to it. But, even if they were, to take a Ted Harrison and copy it? What is the artistic skill in that? I am not creating but merely recreating. A master forger versus a master artist - who do I give higher credit to?  I would be making a bad copy.  Mr Harrison on the other hand talks about how he looks at another's art and learns things he adds to his own to create something even more unique.

The cook who can follow a recipe, or the one who can make a variation on a recipe or the one who creates the recipe? Who is the greater chef?  I give credit to the last one, as the creativity is the key for me.  The skills of cooking are still important.  The chef who imagines a new recipe but can't execute it is the one who makes the food I would least like to eat.  If a someone imagines a beautiful meal but can't use a stove properly, the food and the creation will suffer.  On the other hand, the chef who learns good knife work is not less of a chef.  Following the exercises of the basics, they don't become less creative.  They gain the skills to take the creation from in their mind and their heart and place them in the real world.

A person who can cook fish, but choses to serve raw fish can claim a certain artistic license in their choice and creation.  Picasso could claim artistic license in his paintings, and e.e. cummings in his poetry.

A person who claims artistic license in serving raw fish but really has no idea how to cook fish is maybe not really answering to some deep sense of artistry but rather to the limitations of their ability.  Some abstracts I made exactly as I wanted, expressing what I wanted to.  Some abstracts I made were accidents; failed projects that I decided I could live with or decided I wasn't going to work on futher because I wanted nothing more to do with them.  Even when they were respected as art, I knew better inside.

In Aikido, we are taught a handful of types of movements:

In Front

Behind

Front to Front

Back to Back

Front to Back

Back to Front

High

Middle

Low

Linear

Circular

Triangular

Controlling

Throwing

Small

Medium

Large

Solid

Flowing

Inside the Center

Outside the Center

Leading

Blending

Entering

Each of these types of movements can be combined in any particular combination with practice.  I like to lead down, but I found doing this exclusively caused a problem with circling.  My creativity was stunted.  Circles don't just go downward, they lead out and then rise again, then lead further only to fall once more.

I was studying while working in Mental Health and Young Offenders. I had decided that I needed to know pins.  Throws are dangerous for people that don't know how to fall; especially with chairs, stairs, tables, hard floors.  My ability to throw did not keep pace with my ability to control.  I didn't practice high falls much - I wanted to be pinned and locked myself in my free practice.  I specialized - and while I got very good at one thing, my overall practice suffered.

I learned more by being led by my teachers to study types of movements I didn't spontaneously do.  I wasn't immediately in love with certain movements that I learned the most from.  I needed to revisit and reexamine material I thought I instantly understood because I worked on it less.  In coming to understand what I didn't, I realized I had gaps in my knowledge of what I thought I had already acquired.

I came to believe in a structured teaching method.  I make a plan before I teach a class, and I think about what I want to teach well in advance of my having a chance to teach.  I still don't confuse a tool or an exercise with a creation.  I became something of an art critic by learning more about art.  In the same way, as an example I see that people who don't understand Chudan (middle) techniques are more at risk for shoulder and back injuries.  The exercises to learn Chudan are important, but are they creative spontaneous Takemuso Aiki?  They aren't even techniques in any useful sense of the word.  I started to see the beginner exercises and rote memorization with no soul, and the uninformed poorly expressed creative impulses that could be so much more powerful/healthy/effective with basic training.

I remember Sensei once saying that only Yudansha were even students.  This was a statement on his curriculuum and not a dismissing of the white belts.  People who had gone through all the white belt testing were thought to have the minimum of understanding to even begin to consistently and spontaneously move correctly without thought in any situation - Aikido.

The white belt ranks were for learning the tools, the black belt ranks were there to analyze, synthesize and learn from what they had already been taught.  "White belts do it this way or this way;  Yudansha do what you will."  Sometimes Sensei would say this; sometimes he would be very clear that he didn't think we were ready to explore no matter what colour belt we wore.  But, it was always aimed at our growth and development.

The Shodan test was really about did you already have the tools to teach yourself.  There was tons of learning earlier on, but it was mostly memorization.  Until the basic skills are acquired the learning is lopsided.  You can't delve deeply into a type of movement you haven't actually studied or practiced.

Past a point, all the advanced work is the basics reimagined and spontaneously recreated.  Having tools is an important first step - but it is only a first step of a very, very long path.  Some students resist the idea of the tools because they want the final product.  The final product is the result of the tools.

Choking on Bitter

“Eating Bitter” is a phrase that refers to students being willing to go through whatever their teachers tell them to do.  In Japanese arts, the word “Oos” means “go beyond.”  How much pain will my teacher ask me to endure?  I will go beyond!  How much effort?  I’ll go beyond that!  There are many ways to Eat Bitter, but I was caught up in the macho ones.

I was 26, and I moved to Lake Louise.  There were only two other Aikido people there, and one (the lowest ranked) was obsessed with Aikido politics over actual training.  The school never got off the ground.  I wanted to keep training and there was a Taekwondo group.  I got excited because I was going to learn to be more flexible.  I was determined to distinguish myself in this group with my drive and ability to eat bitter, work through the pain and give more effort than any of them.  If nothing else, I was going to do this to better represent my art and my Sensei.  I was going to give a good account of Sensei.

Every class started with high kick warm-ups (completely foreign to me), then we went into aggressive partner stretches.  Sit in the butterfly position with someone standing on my knees with someone pushing on my back with all their body weight.  Sitting on the floor with my legs spread wide, with someone grabbing my belt and pulling me forward as they spread their legs against my knees while someone put their whole body weight on my back.  Classes were very painful, and went for two hours or longer.  After the aggressive stretches, we did sparring then went back to aggressive stretches after we were warmed up.  I had seen Van Damme movies where he gained super flexibility in a five minute montague by having his legs ripped apart by ropes.  I think I actually thought this was possible, or at least a good idea.

I was genuinely surprised when I found after a month of regular training that I was less flexible.  I wasn’t going as high with my kicks.  Also, everything hurt.  All.The.Time.  I wasn’t able to hike much during the beautiful summer, both from the altitude and my legs couldn’t move up the mountain side anymore.  I needed to find a flat place to walk, and the Canadian Rockies don’t have that.

I finally asked the teacher one day to show me what the stretches looked like when he did them.  He was always having to be the one to put the extra weight on us and talking us through the workout.  He declined.

In turns out, his hip now pathologically dislocated.  He had several muscles that had been torn in his hip joint, and even attempting to do certain kicks with power could leave him unable to stand for a couple of days.  Despite his rank, he had not been the teacher for the school – the teacher had been killed in an accident recently.  The man leading the class had little experience in teaching.  The Taekwondo school folded within weeks of him telling this to the class.  I decided that I would rate my next teacher in this way:  if the art was to give someone a long, healthy life then the teacher who best represented that would be an older but very healthy person.  30 year old cripples would teach me to be crippled before I was 30.  If this Taekwondo student knew how to train to be healthy, why would he chose not to be!  I started to realize how good my Sensei had really been.

I found a karate teacher in Banff who was very impressive in his abilities.  He was a paragon of health, very quick in his movements.  His training was difficult but I could see that health was a bigger focus for him.  He showed me how he could break rocks with his hands.  (I still have a piece of one of the rocks)  His advice to me to get better at my punches was to find a small tree and wrap my jacket around it, then punch it many times.  I was inspired and I did it.  I cut my hands on the tree bark through my jacket and got blood on my jacket.  My knuckles would be bruised and torn, then I would return to the kitchen where I was working unable to hold a knife and vaguely concerned I would get blood in someone’s food – but taking time off work was not an option.

I finally thought finding a balanced approach was maybe a better idea.  I started to think for myself, and I evaluated all the training advice I was given instead of blindly following it.  Along the way, I did get a couple of hernias, a torn hamstring, a badly broken left arm and bad knees and toes.  I am the 40-year-old cripple I never wanted to be.  I did Eat Bitter – and I had eaten it until I metaphorically vomited.  There was something that my healthy Aikido teachers and healthy Taiji teachers had been trying to show me that I had missed.

I had a process of reevaluation and self-evaluation that was unpleasant.  I became a worse student in some ways.  Instead of being the example to the rest of the class of a student who put out more effort and ignored more pain, I allowed myself to get more precise and slow down.  When the teacher showed something that was painful, I modified it.

The correct posture for power is actually not excessive.  In Yoga, we study excessive postures to make the everyday posture more relaxed and comfortable.  In martial arts like Aikido, the posture we should use is not excessive, but rather a very relaxed and neutral platform for possibilities to build on.  It felt uncomfortable at first, probably because it had become unnatural for me.  In time, it became the posture that I tried to live in. 

There were more insights gained from this.  Past a point, the posture should stop being painful.  Pain is a warning signal from your body.  I started to learn this martial art as a way of life hoping to have a longer, healthier lifestyle.  If I chased the pain, I would get injured.  A small injury can be laughed off, but eventually small injuries became chronic injuries or permanent ones.  Chasing the Pain is not Eating Bitter!

From there, the problem became chasing the Effort.  A blend and neutralization is supposed to feel like nothing happened, to both the Uke and the Nage.  I learned I didn’t strive for feeling nothing if I had it in my head that this is supposed to feel difficult:  I started chasing the effort instead of the soft, relaxed power.  Soft and relaxed started to feel wrong, so I “corrected” away from this by making things feel more hard and difficult.  Often, this meant “correcting” to a more excessive posture.

I learned falls are supposed to protect your body, and as your muscles adapt and your structure improves the fall should become easy to do.  If you want to chase the pain and effort, you “correct” yourself into doing harsher falls.  I learned not to get frustrated if a roll didn’t rattle my teeth.  I stopped telling myself on the ground I felt good, therefore I was being lazy.  I learned to stop saying to myself, “Damn, I came here to get a workout and this is too easy!  Gotta ramp things up!”  I had to learn that things were not supposed to feel painful and full of effort - which meant that I never corrected something that felt painful and full of effort.  I corrected easy to be more painful, more difficult.

I learned Uke does not take proper ukemi if they think they are supposed to make this hard for Nage – they resist in a strange way that might get them hurt and in a fashion that they never could if training at full speed with a committed attack.  Resistance makes something else very easy and creates an opening that Uke does not recognize because they are trying to make this “hard.”

This resisting ukemi also only works when Nage is working in a kata – when the kata is relaxed and Nage can do freestyle, Uke has not learned to follow but only resist.  If Nage moves well, Uke is in grave danger.  For example, Uke is pressing down, hoping to make it hard for me to go up.  The movement then becomes slower for Uke, and their brain can process the fall.  What if they push down, expecting me to push up, but instead I accelerate them at the ground?  Now Uke is surprised, probably stiffens up further before impact and has no time to process what is about to happen.  They never created a learned reflex to follow the movement, because they never learned to follow when they had the chance to learn.  Uke’s technique gets insidiously worse until they get injured someday.  Uke can make a kata impossible, but the goal isn’t the kata.  The kata is there to teach the reflexes that should always be present.

If Nage plays this game, they feel for the resistance, and apply force against Uke’s strength.  Using the above example, Uke presses down and my reflex becomes to try to lift up directly against them.  Force on force.  This is me, chasing the effort, instead of learning to do the technique with the minimum of force.  My technique gets worse.  I need to be where Uke is not, and feel for their openings.  In Chasing the Effort, I am constantly bashing into a brick wall.  Maybe I could walk through the door, but smashing through the wall feels like the right thing to do so I do that instead.  Chasing the Effort is not Eating Bitter.

In chasing effort and pain, my postures become inappropriately larger, putting my body at more risk and making my technique weaker.  I start to lean more, straighten my arms, hunch my shoulders, lock out the knees or bend them too much because this is what my idiot brain has decided is what “power” feels like.

I stopped trying to do my flexibility, strength and cardio training in the dojo.  Excessive flexibility is something to work on outside of class.  When the stabilizing muscles for a joint are too lax, the joint is prone to injury.  There is no reason to make excessive stretching part of a warm up or a workout, and for power there is actually a lot of reason not to.  Strength is not something to train when I am trying to not use strength.  Feeling I need to work on my strength makes me use my muscle power more.  Muscles that have gotten fatigued, stiff and tight are more prone to injury.  Cardio training is supposed to be an effort – but proper technique should not be full of effort.

I try to now keep my precise, relaxed technical training separate and apart from these other things.

I remember Sensei’s lessons now.  He would have me practice extra slow and smooth sword cuts when he saw me trying to do 1000 at full speed.  When I would run and strain, he taught me to stand relaxed.  He was unassailable, but calm and relaxed.  His structure was perfect, and his power was amazing.  He was trying to teach me these insights all along.  His senior students that could all throw with more power and train for longer than me - they knew it too.

In putting my appetite for bitter aside, I have become a more contentious student and a bit of a headache for my teachers.  But, I am now starting to realize power.  Maybe in becoming a bad student I am becoming a better one.

 

2012 9100 Gingerbread

I was crushed when the 9100 holiday committee decided (in a meeting I was not present for) that there would be no more raffle for Christmas.  I still wanted to bake anyway.  I had one coworker who wanted an assembled, undecorated house to decorate with her children, and another coworker who had requested one for her two kids last year when I was finished decorating.  A third coworker's marriage recently ended and a messy custody battle is starting and I had left over dough with her kids in mind.

I hadn't done much with my baked on sugar cookie last year, so this year, the shingles, the candy canes, all the miniture trees - I cut and baked them all on the gingerbread pieces before assembly.

 

An example of the house wall.

And then the second project, which went together quickly and had a lot of inspiration going for it

I have done these in the past with a stack of oreo cookies.  I bought some, and the oreos fell apart.  They used to take some skill to open, but they've made them much easier - it was harder to keep them together than to open them.  So, I took leftover dough and made a stack of cookies of my own.

I made little sugar cookie anchors for the candy canes.

And taking inspiration from some "Pinata Cookie" idea I saw online (these are so amazingly impressive):

http://www.sheknows.com/food-and-recipes/articles/958083/cinco-de-mayo-pinata-cookies

I did something much, much simpler.  The reindeer on top is three separate cookies with the tails cut off except for the middle, and the legs and antlers cut off the middle cookie. 

Best piece of news yet, the Recreation Therapy Department has asked if I would bake for them if the Holiday Committee doesn't want a house.  So, I'm back and making money for the comfort of my patients during the holidays next year! 

Thanks everyone for your support and interest.  I know I was a little brief this time, but if you have any questions about the techniques, icing, dough, whatever, I am happy to answer those questions.  The box kits are getting bigger and fancier every year, but I know you can do this too.

 

Aiki-Ninjabread Cookies

I can't be the only one out there who got these cookie cutters this year.  I got two sets - one from an old girlfriend and one from Mom.  "John, I saw these and I just thought of you!" 

I'm not a ninja.  I've done Aikido since 1990, Taiji (Yang style since 1990, Chen since 2000, and Wu Hao since 2005), and I have orange belts in Shotokan Karate and Judo that predate my ever moving to the USA.  I started Nine Dragon Baguazhang in 2005, and now I am a certified teacher.  But no Ninjitsu.

Using my sugar cookie on sugar cookie technique, this:

Became this:

So, a perfect gift afterall.  Even if I'm not a ninja.

 

Meditation on the Heaven Gua

Heaven Palm was my first palm that I studied.  I had the most difficulty with it.  Of course, I was still trying to learn the idea of a palm at the same time as learning what it meant to be Heaven.

Heaven is the Father Palm, the pure Yang gua.  That had a number of negative connotations for me, but mostly because I didn’t understand what Heaven was.  Would Heaven even be appropriate in a hospital setting?

Heaven is a used frequently in a Judeo-Christian sense, but this is not Heaven Palm. 

The one translation is Sky Palm, but the cold, unobtainable and ultimately intangible and colourless sky did not give me a helpful image to work with. 

The linear, domineering tactical attitude of Heaven is also something I hadn’t really been drawn to Baguazhang for.  I wanted to spiral and twist and dodge and be as hard to grab as smoke.

There is no animal or image from nature to look at and call, “Heaven.”  I spent hours looking at bonfires and candles when I studied Fire.  I can remember Kingsmere Lake during a hurricane, and many summers on the Churchill River for Lake Palm.  I can’t do something similar to point the way to Heaven.

Pure Yang.  This means the Male attitude.  Women can be Heaven, but does this mean that they have to act male?  I remember a friend finishing his PhD in Engineering, getting a keg and drinking most of it himself.  He drank until he vomited, then in a blind stupor used his wife’s toothbrush to get rid of the vomit taste in his mouth.  I remember his wife so clearly pissed at him saying, “That is so…MALE!!!!”  Maybe so, but not Heaven-ly.

I have heard thugs and bullies being referred to as having too much “Yang” energy.  Dogs that need to be put down for the good of society.  Not Heaven.

Little yappy dogs wrapping their legs around anything and everything and rutting on it – maybe an excess of Yang, but not Heaven.

Incoherant, brainless rage and power, like the Incredible Hulk or a Viking berserker?  Out of control mindless destruction that is a danger to everyone around – very Yang, but not Heaven either.

The guy from nearly every cop movie ever made whose role is to be loudly wrong-headed at every turn, looking like a testosterone overdosed idiot who makes life exasperating for the hero of the movie and probably provides most of the comic relief or a minor disgustingly pathetic villain...Yang, but not Heaven either.

I was told that reading the iChing is not the answer to understanding the palm, but it worked for me reading up on several Fire translations.  So, here is my interpretation of a synthesis of several iChing translations on Heaven.

The one translation calls the Heaven Hexagram, “Creative Power.”  Creativity is associated with artistry, and not immediately thought of as Yang.  But, the foundation of Creativity is the belief that I can create something that deserves to be made, something that deserves to exist, that I can make something better than it currently is and maybe even better than it appears in nature.  For a health care professional, it starts with faith in one’s diagnostic skills and one’s ability to help.  It starts with, “I can improve this, I am the right person with the right skills at the right time and the right place to make this better.”

In the change lines, Creativity and power are not embraced for their own sake.  There is a time and place for Heaven.  Heaven is perceptive, and self aware.  Heaven assesses the situation with constant unrelenting Honesty to myself and others at all times.  Heaven sees the need to be proactive, and sometimes the need to stay still.  Heaven clearly sees the cost of acting or not acting, and is very mindful.  Heaven, even when it does nothing, even when it waits, its being firm and decisive.

Dominance is not embraced just for the sake of dominance.  If I came across someone whose heart had stopped, I would answer to the Cardiologist but take over from the family member who hasn’t learned CPR, and still be expressing Heaven.  Heaven accepts that the best course of action might be combining efforts or implementing the ideas of others, or it might demand that one leads.  Heaven has a vision, and a goal and a diamond hard focused intent.  Heaven has wisdom, perception and intelligence with its decisiveness, drive and inspiration. 

The final change line explains Heaven the best to me.  Heaven is not about me.  Heaven is about having a balanced and well defined character, a moral fiber that doesn’t change with the tides of fortune.  Heaven wants to have a visible beneficial outcome in the world.  Heaven wants your life to be prominent and valuable to everyone around you and the entire world.