He replied – “Well, later we can do some forms.”

We went to a shrine, where we prayed for a safe hike, and those who knew recited the heart sutra. It was then a short car drive to the trailhead, where we stretched, and the priest gave us advice for how to walk.

“Make sure you’re exercising your big toe. Step onto your left foot, push out with your left toe, step onto your right foot, pushout with your right toe. Each time you step, think ‘this is where I am, this is where I am.’ Stay centered. With every step, you can depress your centerline on the ground.”

We started out. The plan was to hike up the mountain, then purify ourselves at the waterfall.

All the way up the mountain, they blew on conch shells to focus their breathing. I learned that blowing on a conch shell requires a particular stance – a “hanmi,” where one foot is in front of the other, and the body is diagonal, yet all of one’s energy is facing forward. It’s the same stance that martial artists take to slim their profile, yet project all of their energy forward.

Partway up, we stopped at the waterfall where we would return for the purification ritual. The group stopped to pray, recite the heart sutra, and blow on conches. He reminded us how to walk. Left toe, right toe. “You don’t know what will happen this year – maybe an earthquake, maybe worse, and if corpses are burning in the streets, you will be tempted to panic. You must collect yourself – you must bring yourself back to your body. If you can do this by just walking, you will be ready for whatever comes.”

Since I was carrying my staff in one hand, and not using it for walking, concentrated on extending my feeling through it, feeling the tip as if it were the tip of my index finger. Every so often, I’d switch it to the other hand.

When we reached the top of the mountain, there was a view of Mt. Fuji. We sat to meditate. “Every day is a cycle, it has a beginning, a progression, and an end. So, too, with a lifetime. When you sit and meditate, think of today, think of how you are living this day. Think of how you would like it to end. When people make resolutions, they think about that they will do ‘this year’ – there is no ‘this year’ – there is only today, and how you live today, is how you live your life. Just as with walking, with each step, you thinking ‘this is where I am,’ so too with meditation, centering yourself on the moment.”

I worked through a staff form. The priest said that he knew Michio Hikitsuchi , and had asked him to teach him some staff forms. Hikitsuchi-sensei had said “You don’t need it! You’re already on the path with your shugendo!”

And it was at that point that I really understood that for Hikitsuchi-sensei and the Founder, Aikido was a spiritual path. The centering that came from movement and prayer were the same. The techniques were merely like songs in a hymnal. Someone once lamented Aikido as moving away from spirituality and toward techniques. Now I understood that he was lamenting it just as one might lament hymnals being performed because they’re good music, without thinking of the underlying meaning. The music is indeed good, but it was composed to be a path toward understanding. And, if the understanding is there, the music isn’t necessary.

We hiked down to the waterfall. People changed into swimwear, and had water moccasins. I had brought nothing, so I thought I’d watch from a distance as they entered the waterfall. I watched as people from the group climbed over mossy boulders and entered the waist-high pool at the foot of the waterfall. From their facial expressions, I could tell that the water was cold. After almost all the group was in, I decided to strip to my underwear and go in.

The water was cold. In a few moments, I was shivering. The group were lining up to go underneath the waterfall to receive an incantation from the priest. The priest had told me that the incantation was passed to Japan through China, but I didn’t understand the words. I performed what I knew: “Funakogi” a spiritual ritual that synchronizes prayer, movement, and breathing, that is performed a some dojos before practice – it’s still performed in an abbreviated form at the Aikikai Headquarters Dojo in Shinjuku. Halfway through, the shivering stopped, and I felt the cold only on my skin. After finishing, I bowed to the waterfall, but started shivering soon after, so I decided to step out without venturing underneath the spray.

I’ve reached a new level of understanding today – performing staff forms on the mountain, being reminded of the founder’s understanding of Aikido, and performing the Funakogi in the waterfall pool.

And my body, hours after emerging from the pool, is still hot from the cold water having raised my metabolism.

You whirl, building tempo, and dance!

Flowing hands, swaying sides,
Our hearts delight.

In the room there is only you.
So let the universe sing through your body,
In time with a tune from far away lands.

Flashed wrists, swayed hips,
Embodied electric time!

We connect with you to the soul of the world,
Share a knowing we had at the time of our birth,
When naked and new, we breathed, and cried for joy,
Now remembering across years in between.

Eyes soft and bright, twinkling,
For their light comes from within.

Sweat on your brow like evening dew.
Dance! That we know how to start anew.
Now! Our hearts in sync with the tune.
Ole! ‘Neath your skin, flowing sinews.

This song will end.
This night will pass.
Dance! Remind us we are Divine breath,
And there’s only to exult in what time we have left.

Today, I joined a construction work team to put up scaffolding around an apartment to be renovated. We had to climb the scaffolding and hand parts up so that the people at top could build it higher. My body feels good now, comparable to how it felt when I trained for seven hours – a full body exercise centering on core muscles. I wouldn’t have been able to do this if I hadn’t been training all summer. All the people working were healthy and fit. The job demands it – they would immediately face the consequences if they let their health slide.

I’m much healthier now than I was when I worked in the office. I would skimp on sleep and eat junk food, no doubt affecting the clarity of my thoughts. Desk work affords more leeway than manual labor, but one shouldn’t take advantage of it. I wonder how much more effective I’d be in the office if I managed my energy and health as well as I’m managing it now – getting good exercise, 6 to 8 hours of sleep, and eating nutritious food.

My journey out of this state of mind was given a push one morning at the Honbu Dojo, Yasuno Sensei spoke of projecting intent: Ki wo mae ni dasu!

In the execution of an Aikido technique, there is the nage -  the thrower – and the uke – the recipient. Techniques begin with the uke attacking, and the nage accepting the attack and changing its direction, ending with a throw or pin. Yasuno sensei advised us: “Do not wait for the attacker to come before parrying. Maintain control of the situation! Once the attacker moves, go out wholeheartedly to meet him. This includes counter-punching – during practice, your punches mustn’t land, of course, but you should think about punching as part of projecting your intent.” 「皆さんは待っているからうまく行かない。その状況を支配するには、まず相手が動き出したら、全心全力でぶつけていく。当て身の意味も考え直してもらいた い…. 」

This sort of internal shift in feeling made the remainder of practice very different. My partner would come to strike from the side, which I invited, and then I stepped forward decisively to meet and parry, unbalancing my attacker, and while maintaining my balance, redirecting her attack. Though I could not clearly visualize the finish of the throw, I was able to lead the situation. My partner started practicing the same way, too, and the difference was just as noticeable.

A dramatic change in practice, simply as a result of a shift in thought, and it occurs to me that this is the kind of stance we should always take even if we don’t know what the end result will be, because it gives us the ability to lead the action as we see things unfolding.

We invest an incredible amount of time toward acheiving goals because we think that attaining them will make us happy. Yet, by and large, acheiving goals does not seem to make us happy. Have you ever bought something, and then forgotten about it or realized it wasn’t what you wanted? One of my friends is shopping for a BMW, investing a considerable amount of time and energy, and when he decides, money, over this decision. Yet, I’m fairly certain that after he buys it, he will not be significantly happier than he is now. This is confirmed by one of my friends, who is a Lexus car salesman – she says that people are most happy just before they buy the car, as well as by the research of psychologist Dan Gilbert.

The Aftermath of Achieving a Goal

Many of us have already experienced or can understand this predicament as it relates to material things, but it was my shock and surprise last year when I realized that it also applies to acheivements in general. One interesting comment some friends once made to me is that love is most fun and exciting during the pursuit phase. When people are officially “dating” things become mundane. You should think about this, too, because if you set a goal and have a plan for achieving it, sooner or later, it will happen, and then what will you do? When I graduated, I had set for myself the following goals:

Then, after my best year ever at the company, I found myself in a position where I had acheived all of these goals. Life was comfortable, I had friends at work, and had a good routine. But then, I was beset by a certain anxiety – is this as good as it gets? Because I could see that I would only continue to set more goals, achieve those, and set even more goals.

So are we doomed forever to pursue goals, but not be happy when we attain them? Is life a never-ending pursuit of receding fulfillment?

I thought long and hard about this, and thought – what’s the point? So, I transitioned my responsibilities, quit my job, and went on a one-year sabbatical. I resolved to have a good time – one of the original purposes of a sabbatical year in the old testament is to stop working and devote as much time to study and reflection as possible. Last summer, I went to the outdoor pool in my neighborhood four times a week, Aikido twice a week, then I went traveling with friends in Japan for a month, then started training Aikido more intensively in the winter, and now I train five or six days a week.

No More Excuses

Without any goals imposed upon me, suddenly I had no more excuses for things that I had always wanted to do – I started eating breakfast every day and keeping my apartment very clean. I learned to eat lunch very slowly – at first counting the number of times I chewed my food, but then doing it automatically, and I was really surprised when I met some working friends for lunch, and they finished before I’d eaten half. Realizing I wasn’t getting any closer to my goal of being a published author, I started writing more in this blog… I realized ways in which I’d made work an excuse not to do things.

Yet, enjoyable though all this was, I felt a lack. I distrusted goal setting, yet felt unfulfilled without having goals. The answer to this dilemma came to me through Aikido. Aikido has no competitions, and progress is gauged through passing tests to gain rank. The goal of ascending in rank gives direction to practice. Yet, the vast majority of people are not in Aikido to get rank. Rather, they like going to practice, and this is the way goals should be – they should direct our activities, thereby freeing us to enjoy our daily progress toward them. Goals should direct us, because without direction, we don’t know where we will end up, and we should not base our happiness on acheiving them, but rather the journey. I have rediscovered the principle that life is a journey, and not a destination.

Philosopher Alain de Botton wrote that one of the joys of work is to know how one’s actions that day fit into a larger plan of the week, of months, of quarterly, and annual goals, and that one of the joys of work is to relieve us of having to think of bigger questions, like “what is the meaning of life?” I have certainly benefitted from work in this way, and had fun. Yet, I saw people using it as a crutch – people who didn’t have satisfying personal lives, relying on work completely for their intellectual stimulation, sense of status, and socializing. We are encouraged to search for a “calling” that we can lose ourselves in. But this is very hard – we are complete human beings, able to access the entire range of human experience. Rare is the job that allows us to fully express all the aspects of our humanity.

I do not know the meaning of life, but having clarified my relationship to goals, and placed a few new ones on the horizon, I am ready to go back to working at a company again, in a more balanced and effective way.

I was later reflecting on my morning practice with a fellow dojo member. “I practiced this morning with someone who didn’t grab or pull at all. I learned a lot.”

He looked at me incredulously. “That was Hino-sensei.”

Oh. “I knew something was different.”

Do you remember as a kid running on the playground or park, marveling at how your body responds, testing to see how fast your legs could take you? Or that feeling of freedom when you’d just learned how to ride a bike? That’s the way practicing Aikido feels after you’ve gotten the basics down – every practice session is learning to move with greater freedom.

I simply joined the Honbu Dojo, and thereafter gradually increased the number of practice sessions I went to. I did this without telling anyone outside of Honbu Dojo that I was planning on doing this. In hindsight, this was a good thing, because after doing so, I told some friends and got some friendly jabs about my excessive enthusiasm. These might have deterred me before I had developed the habit-force required to attend morning classes. When I spoke with some people who knew me before I started practicing this much they had some fun with it – which I was surprised by, since it didn’t even occur to me that it was odd that I practiced this much. But these jabs hurt a little. I felt, like, well, a freak. Let’s change the subject.

Within Honbu Dojo, what I’m doing is completely normal. My behavior is “average” – among my peers, many train five or six days a week at the Honbu, then once or twice at a local dojo, and some even attend several classes a day at the Honbu.

Once, before the 7am basics class, I knelt lined up with other students before class waiting for the instructor to come. One woman came in and looked to the man at my left, smiled, and said “I couldn’t stay away!” It emerged that a group of people from the dojo had gone drinking after practice the previous evening until past 11pm, and here they were at morning practice! Habitforce!

So, when making changes and installing new habits

1. it’s probably best not to tell anyone. They might discourage you, or they might make you feel good before you’ve actually done anything. Better to wait until after you’ve already done it
2. find a group of people for whom what you’re about to take up is normal behavior. They already have the value system and habits that you will need in order to succeed.

Aikido is a martial art, and as such, it’s meant to be experienced. I wish we had spent more time doing Aikido basics, instead of talking about principles and how they worked, but there were certain eureka moments.

A Eureka Moment

A first-timer and I took turns with this technique, but using a wooden knife.

After a few rounds I did a variation. As he thrust the knife forward with his left hand, instead of evading to the side, I evaded diagonally back and to my right. I grasped the knife-wielding hand with my right hand. I explained, “And then, supposing your partner pushes, you can use it to throw like this.” I twisted his hand as I stepped back, and forced him to the ground.

He smiled in a glow of understanding.

“There are a lot of possible variations.”

“And you can adapt what you do depending on the situation.” he said.

“Right.”

—

If I were to structure this class, I would have had the students practice a lot more basic moves in isolation, then built them up, culminating in the combination of moves above.

We did do footwork, but skipped some steps, so I fear that it was not immediately apparent to the students how everything connected together.

Had we gone step-by-step, sensei would not have had to verbally explain as much.

Starting position: Extend right hand vertically or palm-up. Partner grabs your wrist with his left hand. Extend left hand above. Partner grabs your left wrist with his right hand. You are now in gyaku hanmi stance. Your elbows are are in front of the plane of your chest. They will never move behind this plane.

Irimi: Step to your right and slightly forward with your right foot. Your back foot follows, maintaining hanmi. You are now completely off of your partner’s line of attack (his sagittal plane), with your center of balance between your two feet, while having taken your partner’s balance.

If your partner resists your irimi by pushing with his lower hand: Push back, then change direction of force. There is a “sweet spot” that is akin to the sweet spot in a sumi-otoshi, such that downward force on his front foot will prevent him from being able to step with that foot, and there is an angle where you can apply body weight against the strength of his arm, pushing his hand out. As you do this, turn your palm down. You are now completely off of your partner’s line of attack, with your center of balance between your two feet, while having taken your partner’s balance.

Keeping both top and bottom elbows in front of the plane of your chest, step forward with your back foot, while cutting down thumb-down with the top hand. End in hanmi stance, with your weight mostly on the front foot.

Alternative from ai-hanmi stance: Extend right hand, pulling foot back as partner grabs. Extend left hand above. Partner grabs left wrist. You are now in left ai-hanmi stance.

Irimi: bring back foot out and to the back of your partner’s front foot. Tenkan slightly when it is in place. You are now completely off of your partner’s line of attack, with your center of balance between your two feet, while having taken your partner’s balance.

attitude of positive expectation – this is the means by which the inevitable failure are converted into learning experiences. The appropriate self-talk is not “why am I getting it wrong?” – to which the mind will provide dozens of reasons why you’re getting it wrong. This stops learning and movement. Rather, one should say “oops. that’s interesting,” and continue to course-correct.

The steps in training for mastery are as follows:

1. right-brained engagement (unconscious competence). Observe with all of your senses, and try to duplicate. If you’re using your eyes, don’t look at one point, but instead, slightly defocus so you can see the big picture. Use your other senses in an analogous way. At this point, trying to concentrate on any one aspect will put cognitive filters on, actually reducing the amount of information you’re taking in. Most models of learning start with what they call “unconscious incompetence” but I have found that the right-brain is remarkably competent.

My own experience with tennis lessons is that I can hit the ball reasonably well, if I’m not thinking too much. Once I start thinking too much, I lose the feel and my return of the ball deteriorates. The same goes with my experience in Aikido. With languages, I find that the best pronunciation results from listening to a native or a recording of a native, and then repeating as he does, before I start to read any grammar or notes.

This can be said to be imitation of form.

2. left-brain engagement (conscious competence) – a master in any subject has conscious access to his knowledge. The right brain is very pliable, but that is why it must be supplemented with the more rigid right brain. The left brain comes up with reasons that reinforce right-brained learning. In languages, after one has developed a feel for the rhythm and sound of sentences, one must learn the vocabulary and grammar. Music is a similar analog – once one has developed a feel for assonance, timber, and rhythm, one must consciously understand why the music feels a certain way, in order to create or compose it. In Aikido, it is the understanding of what steps and movements must be done in order to properly take someone’s balance.

This can be explained as “after internalizing form, learn why it works.”

3. unification (wholistic competence) – In reality, things happen too fast for the left-brained linguistic mind to process it. Next one must rehearse the reflexes while consciously thinking of the actions being performed. This can be reciting sentences after one has learned the grammar and vocabulary, or in Aikido performing the form – partly relying on “feel” and partly relying on one’s conscious understanding of how it’s “supposed” to be (right foot stepping toward the opponent’s armpit, etc.) In tennis, it is the unifying of feel and theory that allows one to aim the ball.

This process of unification is what makes for non-linear progress. When trying to both “feel” and “think,” one runs into things that before, one was able to effortlessly pull off, but now, because of “thinking,” one has lost the “feeling.” Inwardly, the learning is taking place, but outwardly, progress appears inconsistent. It may be necessary go to a purely “feeling” mode or “thinking” mode as necessary in order to pull it off.

4. entrainment (unconscious competence) – after learning both the feel and the theory to a task, the next step is to rehearse it so that it comes up to speed. The rehearsal is what allows both the left and the right brain to “chunk” information into certain gestalt divisions. In languages, this means that one’s speed improves with rehearsal of spoken utterances, and the internalization of grammatical frameworks allows one to make longer and more complex utterances. To use an Aikido analogy, an “irimi” becomes a gestalt term that allows one to learn other forms that feature it, rather than a complex “step forward off of the opponent’s line of attack while keeping one’s own line of attack facing the opponent,” which is how a beginner might learn it.

Too often, approaches to learning lean one way or the other. The way languages are taught in Japan is purely left-brained: all grammar and vocab without any actual speaking. I also once met a college student studying rhetoric who said the students never gave speeches in class – “That’s too advanced. We only study theory.” The only way to learn how to do something is to actually do it, my friend.

Also, the Suzuki music method over-emphasizes the right brain. It teaches one to “feel” a melody through listening and imitation, but I went through six years of training and never properly learned how to read music – something which I am making up for now by reading a book on music theory.

Criticisms

I have given people advice on learning which has been dismissed as not applicable, because I have an “analytic” mind, my client will say. But I don’t think this is true – I always start with “feel” first. Only after I have a feel do I analyze, and I analyze not for analysis’ sake, but to be able to consciously access why something “feels right” or “feels wrong.”

The method I used to master some 2000 chinese characters in two years is also a both-brained approach. I describe it in more detail on http://www.genetickanji.com. I started out with a purely right-brained approach – writing characters purely based on shape or feel – and my recall rate was about 50% on a week-to-week basis. But unless I continued to develop “feel” by continuously rehearsing the characters through writing, I would continue to forget. I also tried copying verses of poetry – this gave me more practice writing, and started to give me better mental access to how characters were formed by allowing me to think of writing them in the context of other characters, but this allowed me to learn only as many characters as I could remember in poems.

The approach I finally arrived at was one that gave me intentional access to my writing reflexes. I learned small components – which were easy to learn to write reflexively, and I learned more complex characters as combinations of these components. Thus, most complex characters ended up being simply two characters combined together, rather than an amalgamation of strokes.

What I’m excited about

I am so excited about this learning process recently because of my progress in Aikido. After about four months of almost daily practice, with teachers of different styles of explanation (right-brain, left-brain). Which I unified and entrained over the course of many training sessions, I can now look at a video of a new technique and imagine myself inside of it performing the technique. Before – I needed to have a partner to learn any new techniques.