Welcome To The Next Level

So, in aikido I've been focusing a lot of energy on being thrown well. I've been trying hard to listen to what is actually happening and respond to that instead of checking out and either throwing myself or leaving myself behind. Particularly because I am newish, working from this point of view involves investing attention in the person I am working with and forgetting myself a bit.

The instant benefits I get from this focus are going to sound repetitive to the dedicated reader. In the process of getting a BFA and MFA and building an art career, you are expected to focus relentlessly on yourself and your vision, with no simultaneous humility-building activity like submitting to the rigors of a craft or technique. As a result, your ego can at first become swollen and distended, and eventually grow into a malignancy that blocks your sphere of action, and even your field of vision. Anyone, talented or mediocre, who leaves this system winds up having to either excise or embrace this massive ego-fortress that the MFA Industrial Complex has helped them build. Even though shrinking one's own ego feels nothing less than absolutely fucking impossible, I do honestly believe that most people* are going to find it easier to get over themselves than they are likely to find anything truly interesting for other people from within that deep space inside themselves.

I train because I really need to submit to a humility-building activity. I need to be wrong a lot, I need to be in an environment where rank is much more important than ideas. I need to be where you are a beginning student for many years. And in that environment, I need to organize myself around listening. That's my homework. It's good homework for me. I really do feel happier and more creative. I've stopped hating art because my ego can handle looking at it now. Who knows what lies on the horizon? Life is great!

So here's a new wrinkle. It turns out that the next thing to work on is this clear and understandable bias I have against me--what I am doing and what I need. Because of my homework, I tend to focus too much on accepting what is happening externally and working with that, even when it means that I am sacrificing my own learning and power. A couple of weeks ago I was training with someone who's all about generating power. And I like power and have this listening homework and it's really hard not to get all whooped up when I am training with someone who wants to go fast and hard. So I was getting super sloppy when it was my turn to do the throwing. I was a huge chemical reaction to the stimulation of being thrown hard. I kind of forgot that fifty percent of the time I'm supposed to be focusing on doing the best technique I can to him.

Ruth, a teacher that I slightly idolize who is in the video above, stopped me and said that if I need to slow down and understand the technique, he will adjust. And it was true, and it seems like such an easy thing, but it's a really difficult switch to flick! I listened for four turns, and reacted as cleanly and openly as possible to what he was doing, thinking about myself in terms of safely accepting it. In these four turns I got thrown so hard that all I wanted to do is throw him hard back. And then I stopped, took a breath, absorbed his first attack, which was intense and fast, and instead of reacting to that, tried as hard as I could to move slowly, put my mind on where my body should be

(in this case, sliding behind him so that I can see his shoulder blades)

and keeping my hands, which have his neck and his elbow, in front of me. And not thinking about him at all beyond that. Thinking about me. Where are my hips? Are my hands connected to them? Do my feet have a strong connection to the mat? Are my shoulders relaxed? Am I standing up straight?

Now, let me be clear that this is very easy to write and next to impossible to consistently do. I don't want to leave you thinking that I can enter some zen state when someone tries to punch me in which I calmly turn my focus to my own actions and allow the attacker to disappear. The founder of aikido said "not to look at the attacker, not to look at the weapon. You should be looking like you are looking at a faraway mountain." But there is video of one of my teachers who trained with O Sensei kind of snorting as he quotes this and saying that this is an attitude that develops over many years, that it's an attitude you develop manually.

This resonates with me because everything true I've ever learned I've learned with my hands and body. And while I emphatically did not manage to slow down this powerhouse partner, I did get this amazing glimpse into what I was doing. And I saw the fork in the road, and saw what I should be trying to do to move on to the next part of this journey or whatever. I didn't realize before this that I was entering practice on the attacker's terms. I was thinking about how fast he was coming at me, how hard he would be to throw, how hard I wanted to throw him because I desperately wanted to "listen," and v. 1.0 of "listening" meant "keeping up."

*Not all people! I've been looking a lot at Brody Condon's performance work lately. He operates like none other from the inside of this ego-fortress, and should keep doing the fucked up shit he's doing, even though it's sometimes kind of wrong.

Comments

[MBT Shoes]

It's so nice to have you do all of the research for us. It makes our decision making so much easier!! Thanks.

[canvas art prints]

Inspiring video, it makes me want to dance!

[Treatment of osteoarthritis]

Karate , Judo or other sports helps to save our life against the attacks on us by some intruder or thief. Moreover they are very good for entire body's health.

[Beijing Kungfu show]

There is always one true inner voice. Trust it. Sometimes it’s hard to know who you are and what you want and whom you likeand why you like that person.The answers change because you’re changing.