My Aiki pal Pat Parker wrote a post on paranoia. I think its pretty damn good. The other day we had an Aiki get together over in Denton, and my other Aiki pal Eric Pearson said something like, " The unfortunate side effect of martial arts is that it makes you exercise." Which makes me think of this particular book about one man's Aikido Legacy. Click to see it.
My personal take is that the unfortunate side effect of the martial arts is Paranoia. I went through a phase at the start of my Tomiki Aikido love affair and relationship where I was a pretty angry person and didnt really know it. Anger is usually what happens after fear. Someone scares the shit out of you, then all the sudden you get pissed and want to come out swinging. Its the flight response clicking over to fight once the brain orients to a problem.
I changed basically because of a J.W. Bode clinic. He said something to me that was like one of those buddhist instant enlightenment things. He described a situation where some dude came into my home and did horrible things to me in my family in pretty specific detail, and said that the dude took a break in between horrible things, to sit at my kitchen table and calmy drink my beer. Then he paired that with the most brutal thing about the world is that the only thing I can control is myself. My feelings, my reactions, my mental noise.
What he actually did to me was get me to think about losing my family. And it made me want to cry, and what it did was physiologically loosen up my chest and neck muscles. We unforutnately live in a culture where a guy can't tear up every once in a while, so we vent off anger. And nothing really good comes from venting off anger. Learning to tear up when you need to is probably the best lesson ive learned as a man.
Anyway, this got me thinking about what Aikido actually did for me. I dropped my notions about self-defense, because I think most folks notions of self-defense come from Cloud KooKoo land. Rory Miller said that one of the big problems in the martial arts is that martial arts instructors set themselves up either intentionlly, or just from dipshit American cultural expectations to be experts with dealing with violence. So the first thing I did was quit expecting folks to have a clue on what to do when the shit hits the fan. And by the way, I also quit reading Rory Miller.
What I focused on was the fitness benefits, and that made things better. The by product of feeling better is that you start thinking better. But then I got kind of pissed off when people came to class with the idea of talking shit through, instead of sweating their problems out. I started using the analogy of shooting the basketball, when you miss the basket you dont take 15 minutes to talk about whats wrong. You shoot more baskets, any problem solving is done inside the act of actually shooting baskets. Martial arts, I hate to break it to you, is the same way.
The other thing is that I adjusted my diet. Tried to eat stuff that didnt make me think crazy. The few bits of advice I can give you is that we eat too damn much salt, any corn product outside of the garden is satan's tool, most of what actually makes us fat comes in liquid form, and fast food is pretty much the same as smoking crack, its addictive, and it takes only slightly longer to kill your ass.
Anyway, the other unfortunate side effect of my Aikido explorations is looking deeply at my own line of Aikido. Why it had this move slow, slow is good affliction. What I made up my mind about is that it was more about dojo control, one particular dudes dojo control than anything else. I can be a master of everything if I can slow it down to my liking.
I can tell you that folks in my line actually learn , for the most part from the study of Judo. Because Judo allows them to move and sweat their problems out. And eventually they know they are getting better because they sweat less.
The Aikido, I hate to tell you, is geniune straight out of horses ass grade A shit. Because it was engineered into a solve your problems with out the sweat model which is basically cloud kookoo thinking. The Aikido moves the way it does because once upon a time, one guy quit seeing the value of breaking a sweat and forced that outlook on everybody else.
Every person I have met who has struggled with the no sweat horseshit for ten years or so has realized this. This is why everybody has been forced to make it work for them, to make it serve some sort of purpose. They are all masters of problem solving. I can give you five or six high level aikido players in my line and tell you that their Aikido is all totally different, and definitely non-horseshit. Because they learned Aikido from a vastly different place then where most folks learn aikido. They had too.
But they didnt have a finger pointing to the moon thing. They had a finger poking in the eye to keep you from seeing the finger pointing at the moon. You have to get rid of the finger to see the finger to see the moon. Thats the zen riddle of horseshit.
The truth about the Tomiki Model of Aikido is you learn it through sweat. Your progress is measured by sweating less and less. You get better through the act of sucking at it over and over. You have to locate the horseshit either in doctrine, or within the system.
I realized that my line was pretty much the victim of angry, paranoid, erratic behavior from the top down. And that type of behavior seeks to control everything. Control is easy when you slip the world a mickey and make em slow down.
The Judo in my line is okay. Judo because of its sporting nature has to have a prove it to me nature about it. It has be sweated out. But the Aikido moves like a timid, abused, red headed step child. I cant say alot because I just dont know the particulars, I just see the splintering and the string of broken relationships with pretty much the same story.
The study of aikido is about connection and acceptance, it isnt about control, splintering, money, and paranoia. That's why I think the Aikido from our line starts out as horseshit, and then through each individual wading through the horseshit, finds something useful. Its the build your own aikido model.
That's why I am drawn more and more to the sporting side of Tomiki Aikido, because it isnt horseshit. It is what it is, and it doesnt try to pretend its anything else. What I mean is, to be Non-Horse shit you have to construct a Non-horseshit chamber first. Judo does this through rules, techniques that can be done safely, and a system of randori practice that allows you to sweat. Tomiki Aikido does the same thing. If its allowed to go there.
sweat is its own reward. You dont learn the hard lessons of maximum efficiency, minimal effort without sweat. Sweat also tends to get things out of your system that make you fearful, angry and paranoid. Randori sweat is the best kind. Because I know tons of neurotic runners, and I wonder what they get out of it.
I'm not a proponent of Shiai Aikido because I'm just too effing old for it. I am a proponent of honest aikido, movement based aikido to where the movements can be refined through real problems. There has to be some rules to define what you are looking for, and to keep folks safe. To promote mutual welfare and benefit that I have heard of, but never had to be taught because our Aikido doesnt ramp up enough for that lesson to fit into a teachable moment.
I can't tell you honestly what to do when you are jumped by a gang of teenagers, I can't tell what to do against a real knife. I'm not selling that, what I do want to be in the business of selling is problems solved through sweat. The less sweat, the better the solution. But you have to allow the sweat, and you have to practice Tomiki Aikido the way it was designed. Otherwise, you should discard the name of Tomiki Aikido and call it something else. Odds are you will still be the same person without the label, there are folks that I know that could rename what they do Wackojutsu and still be taken serious after five minutes.
Because you either know it or you dont, and a label, and a certificate with with the name of an angry, erratic bully on it who happened to be one of the many thousands of humans who studied Judo or Aikido in Japan, doesnt take away from that. Nobody gives a shit about that nowadays. I'm a facebook friend with guys who actually stood close enough to Nariyama and Shishida to hear them Fart.
You either know it or you dont. You've either solved the riddle of horseshit or you havent. You did the work, you invested the sweat. You own it, and don't owe anybody for it, unless they allow you to be you, then you owe them everything. Especially if they make you less afraid, less angry. Lessons learned from fearful, angry people arent worth remembering.
Sweat cures. The Bohdidharma had the take that you cant be spiritually strong if you weren't physically strong. That whole shaolin temple thing and all. Of course strength fails with age, and in steps Morty Youshiba. Who loved to sweat so much that he became physically immune to it. or so the story goes. He wasnt much into the fear and anger thing either.
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