Teaching Aikido( Real Randori, the Void, and Handling Snakes)

The rule about teaching is that you aren't going to teach everything you know.  Let's say that the goal that you have for your students is that they become a better human being through the martial arts. To understand Budo.  This could entail a lot of things.  Mentally can they handle conflict with clarity.  Are they physically capable and able to handle themselves, and spiritually are they at ease with the world yet make a mark on it.  Call it simmering calmness. Call it detached kindness.  Call it I don't give a shit, but I do. The original Okie-do zen paradox. 

Let's say that Teacher A is a damned good teacher.  By showing up at the dojo puts about 50% of this into his or her students.  That means that 50% of budo a guy has to figure it out for himself. He may get it through years of practice, or epiphany, or he may get it from teacher B, C, and D. 

The problem with martial arts teaching is that it really just about teaching the methodology that some dude somewhere down the line says will get you there.   I'm talking kata, drills, exercises, randori, whatever.  If you get the kata right, that is it looks good, and its within the same range as the guy teaching it then you get certification.  You get a Shodan, Nidan, Sandan, whatever.   But are you a better human being?  Have you improved mentally, physically, and spiritually? .

Kata are just kata.  Do them over and over and you get better physically.  Do a little hard headed randori and you get stronger too.  If you are a good uke and let the other guy put his hands on you thousands of times, you get used to people being in your space.  Once you are okay with hands you get okay with a lot of things.  That's they real lesson of randori.  It has nothing to do with winning, and everything to do with falling and hands and dealing with it.    

Here is a  look at the new Randori out there.    I dig it, falling, hands and dealling with trouble.   
It's not that damn different than the Geis Line randori.  It's just faster, and competitive.  As a forty something I don't know if I could handle it, but it sure covers the physical.  And after a couple of rounds I'd be ready to slow down and do the soft stuff.  

Kata covers the mental.   Kata isn't about the sequence, or the actual techniques .   Its about the dark space between the techniques.  All the screw ups and discoveries.  The 17 kata just represent 17 ways for a guy to resist what you want to do to him.  Relax, step off line, and then see what happens.  Your dark spaces are not my dark spaces.  But they are a big part of the Budo hole, the missing 50%.   People usually leave or quit because nobody lets them find their dark spaces.  The last thing Musashi talked about was the Void.  The Void is pretty much the reason people stick with it.  When organizations remove the void, then you get the Aikido that we have today.  Standardized crap.  I know that a lot of folks split from the Original Fugakukai Organization.   Were they searching for the void, or did they just want a new brand of standardized crap?

I can't tell you  the spiritual, but I think it come's from handling snakes, from always being the guy on the shitty end of things.  In Jodo,  its a damned stick versus a big ass razor blade.   Aikido has a lot of dude versus weapon shit in it.  I had a epiphany the other day that the best randori in the Geis Line is an Aikido Player versus a Judo player.   It's very Jodo like.  I think that there should be one guy that can do some judo and one guy can't.   I think that Texhomiki Aikido should teach Judo techniques in relation to Tomiki Randori.  You teach the guy how to handle snakes and then maybe he can get to that Simmering Calmness someday.