Zanshin Art

GIFTS

2009-10-01T23:26:00.000-07:00

I posted a training-related essay tonight on the main blog
http://northleftcoastblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/gifts.html

MODEST GOALS

2009-09-02T21:23:00.000-07:00

I've posted my essay that was on aikiweb in August at
http://northleftcoastblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/modest-goals.html

ON RANDORI

2009-07-14T17:53:00.000-07:00

http://northleftcoastblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/welcome-come-on-in.html
A new aikido related posting

HERE COMES THE SUMMER!

2009-06-18T14:34:00.000-07:00

New martial arts related posting at http://northleftcoastblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/here-comes-summer.html

New aikido post on my other blog

2009-05-12T21:00:00.000-07:00

http://northleftcoastblog.blogspot.com/

MOVE IT ON OVER

2009-04-19T02:09:00.000-07:00

I started this blog in August 2007mostly as a place to explore thoughts on visual and martial arts.

A lot has happened, in the world and in my little corner of it, in the nearly two years since then.

I didn't know that a scant 6 months later I'd be starting a blog to document my move to a small town. What I do know know is that it's all one life: gardening, aikido, cats, painting, family, sewing. So one blog is enough. I decided to keep the other one as the active one for the simple and lazy reason that the layout/colors are what I prefer over there. This will stay here so any of us can reference it.

I thank all of you who have stopped by, with or without comments, and invite you to bookmark or follow me at http://northleftcoastblog.blogspot.com/

A FEW BUSINESS NOTES....

2009-04-12T20:12:00.000-07:00

It's been a month since I blogged here, during which time I've not returned to the landscapes I started in March. A couple of custom sewing jobs and early spring gardening, plus some family stuff, have kept me from the easel. Between family stuff and a couple of migraines, I also lost some dojo time.

The good news is the sewing has been going very well and the last of the current orders is going to the post office tomorrow, AND I'm back at the dojo and physical complaints notwithstanding feeling very good about training.

I'm thinking that the time may be coming to merge my two blogs - this one and northleftcoastblog - into one. My life doesn't feel compartmentalized, so I'm not sure why my blogs should be.

In order to concentrate on custom sewing, the Nishoku line of premade bags has been marked down to the same price as a basic bag, $46, and with free shipping in the USA. Three new fabrics, pictured here, have been added to the color swatches page for embellishing custom bags.

BACK IN THE STUDIO

2009-03-11T21:22:00.000-07:00

The new studio is working well. The painting corner is a compact space (the carpet remnant that defines the area is 6x10 feet) but it is part of a spacious, airy room, and I made sure to site it by the large sliding glass doors that open to the courtyard.

After not painting for almost two years, it is hard to figure out "where to go." It seemed like the best way to start would be to pick up where I last was: landscape paintings based on my reference photos. The pictures here show my working method: a color print, a black and white print (for gridding and tonality), and my first pass at underpainting. I have had three more sessions since taking this photograph; the sky and distant mountains are done and the rest is beginning to get definition.

The process is interesting in many ways. For one thing, I'm rediscovering what works/doesn't work for me in terms of paint handling. For another, I'm not sure landscape is what I'll stay with once I get back into the groove. Finally, I now have a studio that accommodates having painting and sewing projects going simultaneously....and last week I got a powerful yen to make some skirts! Jo and I were running around downtown Petaluma Sunday, and there was one of those clothing stores where (if money was no object) I could outfit my entire closet. I ended up intensely studying the cut and construction of one skirt. I've shopped locally for the fabrics and trims I want, and drafted a flat pattern. So...tomorrow I have a few hours...shall I paint or shall I cut fabric?

Things are so much more straightforward in aikido: class is at a certain time, I show up and train....

RANKING

2009-02-18T21:38:00.000-08:00

I had the pleasure of watching, and taking a bit of ukemi for, several rankings last week at our dojo. It's interesting to note how different dojo cultures are reflected in this process.

In terms of the "testing" aspect, it really varies. At one extreme, I've seen organizations in which real testing for rank never seems to stop: folks who are up for even advanced yudansha ranking are challenged and may well not pass. At the opposite pole, what is done is essentially a demonstration that celebrates the assumption of the next rank, with the uke preselected and no surprises. The most interesting to watch fall somewhere in between: the person is well prepared but things are not scripted or choreographed. My own tests, done so far in three different dojos over the years, have fallen into this category, and managed to be simultaneously challenging and fun. Kind of like aikido in general.

Another difference is in the expectations of how techniques are done. One of the neat things about watching people doing tests for the same rank is how what are nominally the same techniques manifest based on a range of factors (size, age, gender, personality to name just a few). Its sort of like when I worked as an artist's model and loved walking around the studio during breaks to see all the different ways in which painters were interpreting me. At a dojo where I trained some years ago, the instructor was very concerned that everybody do the technique just how his shihan did it. This didn't make much sense to me. So it was nice last week to see peoples' individual natural styles not only tolerated but appreciated.

The thing that was very new to me was that after each person was awarded his or her new rank by the chief instructor, there was an opportunity for every other person on the mat to make a comment. They were very insightful and the cumulative effect was incredibly moving, "It takes a village" indeed.

We have four new first kyu students, and a week later I still smile thinking about that evening.

THOUGHTS ON UKEMI

2009-02-08T18:05:00.000-08:00

There's always an ongoing discussion somewhere in the aikido world about the "proper" role of uke; that is, the role that involves attacking a partner and, usually in most dojos, staying in that role to have the technique applied and accepting the fall or pin that results.

What is most often derided (well, after the really cruddy attacks you see in some dojos) is the practice of "tanking," of being so into playing the role that you go through it pro forma and roll or fall regardless of what your partner does. The funny thing is, I've been in dojos that will remain nameless that decry the practice while engaging in it, at least when the person applying the technique wears a black belt. Anyhow, it does seem to be widely recognized, if only in lip service sometimes, that unless you are with a real beginner, nobody learns if uke tanks.

The problem is, if you are not tanking, what ARE you doing?

I've practiced with partners who seem to think the proper non-tanking ukemi is active resistance, muscling back at their partners. There are others who, having delivered their initial attack, simply hang on and root themselves. In my opinion, they miss the point of the type of training we are doing.

Peter "the Budo Bum" Boylan and I have been having a back and forth about the role of kata for some time. Like him, I believe that the kind of partnered practice most aikido dojos use outside of kiyuwaza or randori is really a kata: an attack and a technique are specified, and two people, each with a predestined role, do their best to deliver it.

Viewed in this light, the role of uke is to deliver and keep delivering a committed attack,one that isn't so fast or hard as to overwhelm the skills level of the partner, but one that is continually aimed at the partner's center and continues the attacking energy as long as possible. This allows the partner to move appropriately, connect with uke, find the technique, and let it happen.

I also agree with a thought Jun Akiyama articulated many years ago: "nage, uke, same, same;" that is, it shouldn't matter which role you are in, the principles apply. So if the person doing the technique to uke is not supposed to be muscling or rooting, why would it be considered apt to incorporate such non-aiki principles in one's ukemi?

My own ukemi is a work in progress. It's limited by inability to move swiftly in some directions, certain actual disabilities and certain lingering fears. But I'm striving to find what I believe is the middle path, finding the "aiki" in the role: giving a sincere attack and, once it establishes a connection with my partner, being as committed as she is to staying connected. With a beginner I aim to let my body assume to shape of an idealized ukemi. But with others, I aim to relax and let my body reflect accurately what it is my partner is actually doing.

TEMPORARY SETBACKS

2009-01-28T21:13:00.000-08:00

It's been a hectic couple of weeks. I had to miss two aikido classes, one due to being on pain meds, one to celebrating a birthday. I'd hoped to at least keep up on practicing weapons at home, but with a three day trip to San Francisco, starting a twice-weekly Spanish class, and it being too cold to train outdoors in the few daylight hours that would be available, that fell by the wayside. And the art studio still doesn't have a carpet remnant down (nor shelves, bulletin boards and pegboards, but I can start painting without those).

So no painting, no weapons...at least I'm maintaining the little bit of stationery biking and Pilates I do in order to keep from falling apart, and have made it back to the dojo (although my hands gave out before the class did Monday night).

The good news is, we are going to buy AND put down the carpet remnant tomorrow before I go to the dojo for evening class. Other chores may have to wait, but this will be done. And I think this weekend will be the start of a planned prescheduled weapons practice, because if I don't treat it that way, it won't happen.

Having so many things one cannot just stop doing is difficult.

A TIME TO MAKE, A TIME TO SELL

2009-01-18T20:59:00.000-08:00

The need to have a part time day job (plus making time for martial arts and marital arts and miscellaneous interests) has always meant that there have to be compromises made. Over the past twenty five years I've tended to alternate between periods of mostly sewing or mostly painting. For the past four years, between making custom aikido goods and playing with costumes and corsets, the balance was very much towards sewing. When I was in between custom orders and had some really cool new Japanese prints to play with, I'd make up fancy looking weapons bags. That led to presenting a line of premade bags under the line Nishoku.

The pull is now very much towards painting again. A year after setting up a new home, I'm finally organizing the painting section of the studio. So in order to make time to paint, sewing is going to be purely on a custom basis again, and I'm clearing out the premade bags at a good sale price. There are only six of them, and when they go, they are gone. So if you can use a good deal on a well made weapons bag and want something a little different, check out the Nishoku final sale.

LET'S TRY IT AGAIN, THIS WAY

2009-01-14T21:11:00.000-08:00

I've worked with a variety of metaphors to help me better understand the aikido principle that in every tenkan there is an irimi (how one turns without a hint of "moving back." I've started with the New York u-turn into a parking space across the street and tried to translate that into hip movement. I've played with weighting and pointing and a bunch of things. My understanding improves but my doing it invariable lags behind (bodies are soooo uncooperative).

The other evening, a different approach was presented to this problem. The teacher clearly knew what she was aiming for us to try, and she was presenting it pretty clearly, but most of us were having trouble embodying it. I don't think it was a weakness in the teaching; rather, for those of us who did "get it" in our heads, we were having trouble getting it from our heads to our bodies.

I finally had the "aha' mental moment in which I could reduce it to a simple mantra for how to move. I still couldn't do it well, certainly couldn't do it with a person attached to me who I should throw, because it felt so different that it took all my concentration to just get my center, hips, and feet working together the way the teacher was suggesting.

Coincidentally, I was planning all day to write on this subject tonight, and just before sitting down to write I went over to check my friend, the budo bum's, blog and found his posting on the question of kata. I commented: "Personally, the kata that have the most meaning for me are those that comprise the movements that constitute the most basic building blocks of the art. It lets all from newbie to master to have a base to which to return for reality testing, muscle memory, polishing, refinement."

Having written that, I realized as I clicked over here to write, that what would serve best with this new teaching is for me to treat it as a solo kata, working on it alone at home, so I can internalize the movement. Then I can try incorporating it into technique at the dojo.

REHEARSALS

2009-01-01T20:47:00.000-08:00

Fives years into my aikido training, I had an enforced two year hiatus due to knee injury, surgery, and rehab. During that time, I often experienced what I called "waking dreams" about aikido. Driving the car, taking a shower, walking down the street, the "back burner" of my mind would begin doing techniques to the degree that I was aware of feeling nerve-muscle connections firing even though there was no gross motor response (in other words, I wasn't making a public spectacle of myself). Sometimes when walking past an inviting lawn or traversing a large open space like inside San Francisco City Hall, I'd get an overwhelming urge to do a forward roll, and could almost visualize and somaticize doing so.

When I returned to training, it seemed to me that experiencing these phenomenon, as well as continuing to watch class from time to time, had been invaluable in keeping aikido "in my body." I was out of shape, but had not lost any technical competence in the art. Articles I've read about sports training in the years since then seems to validate this.

It has now been over a year since I've set up my palette and done any painting. But the half of my studio allocated for painting is coming together, and as I walk around town or drive through the hills of the Coast Range, my eyes and brain have begun to see differently again, in the simultaneously open and analyzing way of a painter. I'm not painting. But I'm certainly getting ready to.

KITCHEN KOTEGAESHI

2008-12-16T22:11:00.000-08:00

I was looking at a recipe online today, jotting a couple of notes and calculations, and out of the blue had to chuckle. I’d also been looking at aikiweb and yet another discussion started by somebody wanting to know “the right way” to do kotegaeshi. By my reckoning I’ve been shown at least five right ways. But what does this have to do with recipes?

Several years ago it became imperative to get more whole grains and flax seed meal into our morning routine. I looked over a bunch of recipes for cookies and quick sweet breads and figured out substitutions: non fat yogurt, applesauce, and either honey, molasses, or maple syrup in lieu of butter and refined sugar; whole wheat or spelt flour with oats and flax seed meal instead of white flour. But the whole grains made things heavier and the flax seed meal, a solid, actually added some moist oil to the finished product. So I played on paper with various calculations and substitutions and pretty much every recipe has turned out delicious on the first try: peanut butter cookies, spice cookies, sesame cookies, filled coffee cake, date nut loaf, gingerbread, honey tahini cake, maple pecan loaf.

For tonight I wanted to bake a non-sweet quick bread, probably a variant of an Irish soda bread, to accompany split pea soup. Since my morning recipes already have the grains we need, it was a matter of getting rid of the sweet parts without throwing off the wet/dry ingredient balance or making it tasteless. So this morning I jotted down my basic coffee cake recipe and brought it to work with me. On a break, I looked up some Irish soda bread recipes and compared their proportions of wet and dry to that of my coffee cake. I did a little math (whoever says algebra isn’t a real life skill has never tried to cook, bake, sew or build anything!) and jotted down a recipe.

So what’s the right way to make a cake? Well, first let’s talk about the right ways I’ve been taught kotegaeshi. In most of them, you enter to the attackers side, lining up alongside him. But how do you get there? One way is to simply turn and pivot but another insists on a full tenkan. One has you follow that up with a step forward and then another pivot; another has you step back to make space; a third has you do another full tenkan so you are momentarily back to back with the attacker (and then there’s the reverse kotegaeshi where you don’t enter at all).

Then what happens? The first way I learned was that you use both of your hands on the attacker’s hand and wrist, applying an uncomfortable stretch as your hips turn, so the attacker is projected away. Another dojo taught me to use both of your hands the same way, but to aim the stretch into the attacker’s center so he goes straight down. At a third dojo, you don’t crank at all but simply hold the attacker’s hand and wrist unit in the proper shape with one or two hands at your stable center as you step back. And where I train now, we use one hand to secure the proper shape and the other hand on the attacker’s forearm in order to guide his fall straight down and then, in a continuous movement, to face down (and then there’s the reverse kotegaeshi where you just keep pivoting).

Each of these is immediately recognizable to any aikido student as some kind of kotegaeshi because the underlying principle is the same. Each is “right” in its own dojo, within a larger defined (if implicit) relationship between training partners, with its own conventions for what constitutes a proper attack, how technique is supposed to unfold, and what the norms are for how an attacker engages, connects, resists, or disengages.

So what is the right way to make a quick bread? It depends on what role it will play: dessert? something to melt cheese on? dunk in soup or in coffee? The basic elements are the same. The baker understand the role that each ingredient plays and has a general sense of their relative proportions. If it baked up as a quick bread and it fulfills its role, it was the right way to make it. If your kotegaeshi embodied fundamental aikido principles and resulted in your attacker being taken down safely, it was the right way to do it.

MISOGI

2008-12-10T21:22:00.000-08:00

(This essay was originally written 2005, and was published in the Iaido Journal/EJMAS sometime after)

Several New Years ago I received invitations to participate in two different misogi. One was under the auspices of the dojo at which I trained at the time, the other of a dojo that I visited from time to time. While the two are of different affiliations, with somewhat different approaches to the art, the misogi have in common immersion in very cold water and chanting; in one instance while doing bokken cuts and in the other while ringing bells.

My immediate response to each was a polite declination. If prodded for further explanation, I joked about not liking getting up early and getting wet. However, my real problem goes much deeper and has to do with two beliefs I see as implicit in the practice: that artificially created suffering is good for personal growth and that humans need ritual purification.

Life is hard. This is not stated as a complaint; rather as a given. For 35 years, as an activist and as a nurse, I have worked to alleviate pain and suffering. I cannot get my head around the concept of purposefully creating a situation that is uncomfortable or painful, merely in order to be able to rise above it. Real life, with it’s attendant illnesses, natural disasters and weird accidents, offers ample opportunity for such testing. If your’s doesn’t, then you are unusually lucky.

Misogi is often described as a “cleansing” or “purification.” In this sense, it’s connected to such religious-based rites as the ritual cleansing of Orthodox Jewish woman in a mikvah (communal bathhouse) and the medieval Christian practice of self-flagellation. This need to “cleanse” stems from a religious or cultural belief that one had become “soiled,” sinful.

I suppose it’s the atheist in me, but I just don’t get it. It seems to me that most of us muddle through the best we can, apologize like grownups for our errors, and try to be better today than we were yesterday. Any world view that defines the baseline condition of humanity as inherently impure is abhorrent to me.

If the goal is to “test” oneself, there are certainly ample activities that are physically and morally challenging while being a lot more socially useful. I mean, unless you are taking pledges for each minute you stay in the cold water, or are carrying somebody’s dirty clothes in with you to pound on the rocks, what actual benefit accrues? If the goal is to “clear” or “rebalance” oneself, or to reflect on one’s failings, why can’t this as easily be done at a civilized hour and while the body is comfortable?

With this in mind, I suggest a new tradition in New Years misogi, based on the principles that life is hard, and that the best way to clear oneself is to relax and feel good: First, go out and spend some time and money, maybe more than you’d actually like to, doing something to directly benefit somebody in worse straits than yours. Then have a nice long soak in a tub of warm water by candlelight while listening to John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme.” Feel free to chant along, swing a sword or ring bells if it makes you feel better.

FLOW & JOY

2008-11-26T17:27:00.000-08:00

A couple of times recently, after warming up and weapons, we paired up for "eight basics" (see note below). Nage was told to focus on flow and keeping it light (which I played with as not feeling like you are pushing down into your partner but letting an up energy serve as an imbalancing). We were asked in the uke role to also keep a flow going, to make the attacks continuous both in terms of getting up and into the next attack and in terms of making sure to keep the attacking energy throughout the technique.

I was reminded both nights on how much I really enjoy the role of uke. It is a wonderful training in so many ways:
how to project energy
how to keep connection
how to be a mirror for nage, giving somatic feedback
how to protect myself

Doing it as a continuous exercise, rather than stopping in between techniques, was was a good exercise in breathing and conservation of energy. I was able to go through basic eight, left and right, irimi and tenkan versions when we do them, and only wanted a one to two minute breather before moving into the nage role.

Perhaps the neatest thing about the continuous attack and focus on flow is that we ended up with huge grins. It felt like having the spirit of OSensei when he advised to train joyously.

Basic eight: katatori ikkyo, katatori nikkyo, yokomenuchi shihonage, shomenuchi kokyunage (iriminage for Aikikai dojo), tsuki kotegaishe, ushiro kokyunage, ushiro sankyo, kokyudosa

ALWAYS IRIMI, SOMEHOW

2008-11-12T20:53:00.000-08:00

Last night we were working on variations from ryotetori (your left and right wrist are both grabbed in the attack). There are a number of possible opening responses. Even though we were doing it from a static grab, it was clear that the opening we were practicing assumes a strong incoming attack: The instructor described it as withdrawing a shoulder/foot while doing a rising shomen block. I recognized it energetically as that wonderful aikido conundrum of being receptive while entering, or as I'd written in a column early in 2005, finding the irimi inherent in tenkan or in tenshin.

I find there is value in considering all the available metaphors when working on these things. So one day I may consider it as a kinesthetic issue and focus on which hip is initiating movement and how weight shifts from foot to foot, working on form. Another day I may look at it as an energetic issue and focus on reading my partner and on extending ki. A third day I may play with the idea of the attack as a spacial disturbance and how the space around me needs to respond....

Understanding improves but I still don't "get it" and that's ok.

COLORS OF THE SEASON

2008-10-29T17:22:00.000-07:00

Kitigawa Utamaro: Dragonfly & poppies

"This dragonfly has dyed his body autumn"
--Bakasui

I wake up in the dark and reach for corduroys and knits in shades of green and rust.

A partly pieced quilt top starts in pale yellows and runs through the earth tones to end in deep forest green.

I look up, close my eyes, sniff the wind. Change is in the air. It is a good season, somehow, for weapons kata. May my strikes be as crisp as the Arkansas Black apples that spill from my basket.

MAKE YOUR CHOICES

2008-10-22T18:24:00.000-07:00

If I use the shovel too much, I cannot use the jo or the bokken.
If I walk too far, I cannot do aiki taiso.
If I sew too much, I cannot grasp or pin.

If I do too much, I have to take meds, and cannot train.
If I think too much, I get a migraine and cannot train.

When I can keep things in balance, I get to do some of everything every week.

TAKING RESPONSIBILITY

2008-10-10T20:43:00.000-07:00

I'm used to teaching informally; it's been part of every nursing job I've ever had. I've enjoyed teaching beginning painting in small classes or for individual students, and have mentored a particularly talented and hardworking sewing student (who is now a costume intern at ACT!)

But it's been several years since I've been part of an aikido community in which I really had a role to play in the sempai/kohai relationship, that Japanese tradition in which students (or employees, in any given setting) at each level have a responsibility to support and teach those junior to them. As Rocky Izumai points out, it serves many useful purposes in the aikido dojo. For me, it contributes to mindfulness in a couple of ways.

The first is that there is a general awareness that I'm expected to be a role model. So besides working on my technique when I train, there is a greater sense of polishing my attitude: how am I interacting with everybody? how well am I carrying out what is asked? One thing I'm working on now is not overtly revealing my frustration when my hands can't quite do something "the right way;" instead, being calm so I'm not a disruptive presence and so I'm receptive to what the instructor is suggesting.

The second is that it calls for taking a wider view - maybe both a little more zanshin and a little more "distant mountains" gaze - seeing the larger picture of what the dojo needs. For instance, last night after class, Sensei asked a teenaged student to please fold the hakama of one of our black belts. He went over to do so, but grumbling slightly about not knowing how. I asked Sensei if she'd like me to offer to show him, and she said yes. As it happened, I ended up as kohai getting clarification on which folding method is preferred, and as sempai, demonstrating it start to finish for my kohei. It felt very satisfying.

Which may be one of the most enriching parts of the sempai-kohei relationship (in a healthy dojo culture): it provides a concrete albeit changing role for each dojo member, building true community.

KATA REDUX: THE LURE OF THE FAMILIAR FORM

2008-09-24T20:11:00.000-07:00

I have never really wanted, in any serious way, to be wealthy (there are always the little conversations one has when, having sprung for a lottery ticket, for a few hours you MIGHT be a winner; those are mostly centered on the joys of philanthropy and don't count).

The only time I have any regrets about opting for my way of life is when a really good art show opens on the other side of the country. There was Cezanne in Philly in 1996, Vermeer in DC in 1995...the list goes on. Currently I'm ruing not being able to see the Giorgio Morandi exhibit at the Met in NY.

It was in the early 1990s that Larry Morace introduced me to Morandi's work, telling me about him and his still life paintings during a conversation while Larry was gallery sitting at the SF Open Studio's show. He was so enthusiastic that I couldn't wait to get home and look it up!

Morandi is kind of an "artist's artist." There is handling of surface and medium that is at once painterly and austere, a really admirable achievement hit time and again. But what a lot of us are really attracted to is his large body of work comprising still lives done in his studio using the same small grouping of simple objects in varying relationships to each other.

Peter Schjeldahl, writing in the New Yorker, notes "It’s as if he had set out, time and again, to nail down the whatness of his objects but couldn’t get beyond the preliminary matter of their whereness." I don't normally like Schjedahl's writing, but his essay on this exhibit is superb; for me he nails what is so special about Morandi. Holland Cotter's piece for the NY Times is also worth reading (Is it a measure of the art that it brings out the best in the critical writing?).

It struck me, contemplating anew Morandi's work, that he had essentially created a kata for himself. By setting the limits, he could devote himself to refining and polishing his technique while exploring the possibilities inherent in the problem he had defined.

I'm not sure why I think this is wonderful, but I do.

SEMPAI

2008-09-05T20:43:00.000-07:00

Something came up. I was asked to stay the last half hour of the class, me and two high school age students, then close up for the night. Work on their yokomenuchi shihonage. And also on shomenuchi kokyunage (iriminage in an aikikai dojo): they are going backwards when they lead the turn.

They are young, a bit gawky and loose-limbed, with great "can do" attitudes. And I wear a brown belt and have around forty years on them, so they are willing to go into our half hour with open ears and eyes and full of trust.

I start by demonstrating shihonage on each of them, then receive technique from each of them and give some pointers, then sit back and watch them practice together. One can feel he is not taking uke's balance. His form looks good, but he's right. I show them how sensei likes us to do a wheel-like rotation by uke's elbow, rather than the lateral stretch some instructors use. I do that, then swing under into shihonage, and stand there, him on his tiptoes and a huge grin as he realizes I totally have his balance and haven't thrown him. Ain't aikido grand? They practice just the elbow thing for a couple of minutes, then integrate it into the technique.

They are too young to know it firsthand, so I describe the guy on the cover of Grateful Dead album with the ice cream cone plastered to his forehead. They laugh at the idea, and I tell them if they treat uke's hand like that ice cream cone, uke will never throw them backwards. I let my invisible ice cream cone get behind my head and one of the kids obligingly throws me backwards.

Fifteen minutes up. Time to move on. Kokyunage (maybe your iriminage). How to explain in a shorthand things I've explored for years on how to maintain forward energy while receiving, on how to find the irimi in a tenkan? Things I can't do consistently.

I try a combination of somatic exercise and then in-the-technique physics: We stand in a line and I have them do a simple tenshi stepping back with the focus on, yep, stepping back. What does it feel like? Like going backwards... Then I ask them to focus on the back leg and to imagine/feel that hip moving forward and, as that side of the body shifts forward in space, to simply allow the front leg to swing back. I suggest that, to me, it feels very much like I've entered towards the front, even though my formerly front foot has stepped back and I'm "off the line." They try it a few times. I don't know if it makes any sense to them.

I demo the technique on each of them, then have them each do it to me, then watch them. They are going backwards. I demo going backwards and they nod sagely.

We parse it out: Enter, get lined up properly: facing the same direction as uke, in shikaku. Don't know if they know shikaku, the blind spot. Demo how easy it is to imbalance uke a bunch of ways. Nice place to be. Be there before you move on to the next anything.

How to move forward when your whole body tells you you are kicking backwards? Extend the lead hand and, as sensei says, actually point your finger forward. I take it a little further, tell them extend forward. Even though that foot is going to feel like its going back, shift your weight onto the inside (back) foot, and let that become a weighted, forward oriented center while the front foot just kind of gets out of the way.

For the next few minutes, it works. All we can ask. We bow out and it feels like all of our "thank you"s are sincere.

MIND AND/OR BODY

2008-08-26T08:58:00.000-07:00

I've never been one of those dualists (though as a child enamored of Zorro, I briefly considered being a duellist). For one thing, a lot of the idea behind it seemed to be "mind good and noble, flesh dirty and base," and I was rather fond of and, so to speak, attached to my flesh, thank you very much. For another I'm one of those folks born sensitive to the workings of my body - able to isolate and move one muscle instead of another, feeling at once the difference between an injury to an organ versus connective tissue; hence, as a young person, it never actually occurred to me until reading about it that anybody would posit a split between mind and body.

So why is it that some nights at the dojo, given but a minor variation in focus and movement, I'm able to (1) visually see the nuances, (2) describe them verbally both concretely and metaphorically, (3) experience them done correctly to me when I attack, and, again, relate that somatic experience into a visual and verbal description of what was being done to me, yet my body is incapable of integrating all that "knowledge" into the set of postures and movements I intend to make?

(sigh)

I know its a matter of "practice, practice, practice."

But why can't the body and mind I believe are one system actually TALK TO EACH OTHER more effectively?

CREATION

2008-08-12T20:55:00.000-07:00

To create, according to the online Merriam-Webster dictionary:

1: to bring into existence created the heaven and the earth — Genesis 1:1(Authorized Version)>2 a: to invest with a new form, office, or rank created a lieutenant> b: to produce or bring about by a course of action or behavior created a terrible fuss> <create new jobs>3: cause, occasion creates high food prices>4 a: to produce through imaginative skill <create a painting> b: design <creates dresses>...

I have drawn pictures since I could hold a crayon or pencil, sitting on the floor or at any available surface, happy with a number 2 pencil and a stack of old stationery. When I was a pre-teenager, my mother taught me the basics of houseplant care, pruning, and transplanting at the kitchen table of our tiny Brooklyn apartment (where she also taught me to dissect a fetal pig, but that's another story...). With a lot of help from a high school friend, I sewed my first garment, shaping two dimensional cloth into a new three dimensional form. A few months ago, I brought forth from soil and sun my first humble crop of radishes, lettuce, and basil.

I am rarely happier than when I am making something.

The exigencies of life (having, alas, to earn a living - although attenuated by being able to do work I enjoy and find meaning in) mean it is very difficult to make time to both paint and sew. When we moved north, I had no choice: there were orders for aikido gear waiting, so the studio space had to be set up quickly to accommodate efficient sewing. It has actually been well over a year since I've painted and I'm getting the urge (there is also a show coming up, but too quickly to do new work for it; it is likely they will want a series that I did a dozen years ago).

Conveniently, the studio needs a new sliding glass door put in where it faces the courtyard. This gives me both the opportunity and a timeline for reconfiguring the space so that there are discrete areas for painting and sewing (a luxury I never had in San Francisco) plus the option of, in temperate seasons, moving the easel and table out into the courtyard itself.

It will be interesting to see what space and what art will be created.