I’ve
been trying to make sense of a transition in my life that’s taken place since
2011. After more than three decades of practicing
Aikido, I now study taiji and qiqong.
I've
documented much of my Aikido journey elsewhere; here's a relevant overview. I began training in 1980, in a college club
under the guidance of Hreha Sensei and Saotome Sensei. There and in subsequent dojos, I learned the
fundamentals as well as the magic of the art.
When a blend or a throw worked, most of it was due to the physics of
motion and neurological reaction times and lots of repetitive practice. However, there was also an energetic,
nonphysical component. It was mysterious;
I assumed it was the manifestation of the “ki” or “spirit” of Aikido[1].
I treated it as something to notice, but
not to understand or consciously pursue.
Feeling ki was often masked by the dynamics of hard training and the
anxiety of figuring out how to throw or fall correctly and safely.
By
1990, I'd moved to California and started studying under Pat Hendricks
Sensei. This was fortunate. The close instruction in her Iwama-style dojo
deepened my practice immensely. This
approach fit with how I learn, and the dojo’s high standards suited my predisposition
to internal competition. Aikido became a
deeply ingrained part of my persona.
It's what I did most nights and weekends. I traveled nationally and internationally for
seminars. I had a whole bin full of
smelly gis and lots of battered wooden weapons.
My training partners and Sensei became important parts of my network of
support and friends. They saw me through
several difficult transitions in my life.
Iwama
Aikido is very technical. There’s
generally a right and a wrong way to do techniques, with some tolerance for
individual ability. Most of our training
focused on continually polishing our skills.
There was also talk about Aikido’s spiritual aspects, but this was
rarely part of practice. I kept noticing
presence of ki. Throws sometimes worked
without my conscious guidance or effort, beyond the apparent capacities of proprioception
and muscle memory. I continued to trust
that this was something I was learning occultly. It gave my practice more meaning to know it
was there.
Aikido
was never sufficient to keep me in satisfactory (to me at least) physical
condition. While I’ve never been a
competitive athlete, I'd realized in my teens that if I was physically healthy,
I slept better, felt better, and studied and worked more effectively. So, in addition to training, I ran long
distances, lifted weights, and hiked. I
practiced yoga, sometimes taking classes, often by myself.
By
2009, I'd reached godan rank and was one of the senior students at my
dojo. I taught frequently there and elsewhere. I considered myself an intermediate student,
and I assumed I'd take the rest of my training life to keep advancing. I was a “lifer”. As I wrote in my godan essay: “It is clear to me that there is no end to
improvement as an Aikido student. There’s just more broadening from the
concrete to numinous. This is regularly humbling: never a bad thing. I look
forward to being on the mat for the remainder of my life.”
This
changed. Now I practice taiji. What happened?
Four
background elements were the main part of my evolution. First: aging; the inevitable maturing of my body. This manifested in decreased resilience and
longer recovery times after hard training.
High falls hurt more; the dojo’s firm mat seemed harder. I had more frequent lower back pain; the
result of a 1990 training accident. Taking
falls began to make me suffer for progressively longer periods. I hated these limits; I missed the fun of
hard workouts. The dojo got older
too. Pat Sensei's reputation grew, and
we became a sort of graduate school dojo; students and teachers from all over
the world came to train and polish for a test, or to receive the deep training
of a long apprenticeship. There were fewer
beginners and classes got smaller. In
addition to the dojo’s maturation, this reflected a change in “fashionable”
martial arts. Fighting arts like Brazilian
jujitsu, and MMA had grown rapidly and attracted all the young competitive
types. The physical dojo aged too; the hard
mat – which was never replaced - may have discouraged new students.
Second:
sometime after being promoted to sandan
in 1998, my Aikido learning style was changed I felt less attention from
Sensei. Eventually, I figured out that
implicitly I had been given responsibility for my own progress. It was a matter of deepening understanding
through my own observation and constant refinement. Maybe this was the Iwama-style or Japanese
way of doing things, it was never expressed directly. I understood this intellectually, but the
transition took several years and was confusing and frustrating.
Teaching
myself manifested in my yondan and godan demonstrations. A typical demonstration shows standard
techniques, basically following the rubric of “attack hard and throw hard”. I wasn’t interested in this. For yondan, I experimented and showed a whole
variety of techniques that I’d never been taught. I also explored and added variations to
standard material – combinations of attacks, counters, and throws that were also
new to me. I'm sure I didn't invent
anything, but this creativity was novel.
Five years later, for godan, I used a wide variety of partners; big and
small, young/fast vs. “older”, etc. I
did more original work, such as unusual combinations of weapons
techniques. In the formal post-demo
analysis, I kept saying, well, I did this or that because I thought it would be
fun. This surprised me; I hadn’t thought
about fun when I was planning my demonstration.
Reflecting later, I realized that fun meant being both creative and
following my curiosity wherever it led me.
Third:
I began to have training experiences,
both randomly and intentionally, which deepened my desire to work with ki. This interest had never flagged. Perhaps with my increased competency; I just
had more capacity to notice that this was always present. Here are two examples. First, I attended a Kato Sensei seminar. As part of the class, he threw everybody
maybe a dozen times in a row. He seemed
to be having great fun. When it was my
turn, I attacked hard and fast, and then abruptly found myself lying on the mat
with no transition of falling. I never touched
him, and that he never touched me, nor I did not simply fall in anticipation of
his attack. I think he used only the
expansion of his ki to throw me. Second,
I started fooling around with ki, using it to complete techniques. This was very hard. I had little basis for judging effectiveness;
this wasn't part of my education and none of my peers were interested in this approach. It was also difficult to work on with lower
ranking students; they assumed, consciously or unconsciously, that they were
supposed to fall when I threw them. So,
I muddled around. Example: I started a multiple attacker practice in a
static position, being held by two people, one on each arm. I thought, hmm, relax my hands drop my
center. I did, and both attackers went
slightly off balance. I had control of
their centers. It was then easier to
throw them. This was a clue. I kept trying this. Sometimes it worked, often it failed.
Fourth:
I began to explore qigong and
taiji. I took a medical qigong seminar
in 2003, and afterwards did its simple practices. It was a good way to start the day and take
breaks at work. Later, I attended a
series of qigong classes with a different master. They were worthless: he focused on his
high-level students. Then, in 2010, my
closest friend told me about a taiji class through the local recreation
department. I signed up. I immediately liked the instructor and the
style. We practiced a variety of qigong
and taiji forms, but the training was also informed by kung fu, bagua, and
hsing-i. It was well-explained. The people were really nice, and the
atmosphere was fun and welcoming. I
completed the class and made clear and wanted to keep practicing. The teacher took me on as a private
student. I also joined weekly
practices. I gradually learned a series
of qigong forms, standing meditation, the fundamental taiji form, and
eventually weapons.
Learning
taiji conflicted with Aikido training.
Coincidentally, I'd moved further away from the dojo, and closer to both
my gym and taiji venues. It was easier
to do more taiji, especially after I started a challenging new job. In addition, I started running marathons. The exhaustion and time commitment of
endurance training, particularly the multi-hour long runs, made it harder to
want to go to the dojo.
I
must acknowledge that politics and boredom may have been influences. As I became a senior student, I was
inevitably more exposed to power issues.
Much of this was drama external to my dojo. It was tiresome and saddening to have to hear
about pettiness, grudges and abusive situations. Advanced ability on the mat doesn’t correlate
with adult behavior. I'd also had an alienating
experience with the leaders of a dojo where I had taught regularly. Politics made training more bitter, but I tried
to accept it as part of the path. I also
found training to be increasingly tedious.
I understood the importance of repetition to learning and improvement,
but doing the same techniques became increasingly stale. Experimenting with ki was didn’t help with
boredom. There were too many
distractions and no one else was doing it.
So
perhaps I was not a surprise that I decided to take a break from Aikido. I imagined this would be temporary, and that
I'd return, informed by what I learned in taiji. However, the longer I have practiced taiji,
the more permanent this shift feels. Taiji
works directly with the mystery. I
initially had to learn whole new suites of movements, as well as unlearn some
of my Aikido habits, but now that I have these at least vaguely in hand, I am
working directly with the subtle energy I’ve felt since my first Aikido
class. This is satisfying, especially in
the “a-ha” moments when I recognize a sensation or a movement from my Aikido
training.
Learning
to use ki is challenging. For example, when
we practice push hands, trying to capture one another’s balance, we are standing
in place. The illusion of mastery that
comes with velocity or strength – doing a throw fast and with force– is removed. The delivery of energy that takes someone’s balance
in taiji is very powerful, but doesn’t correlate with movement. I barely understand this, and it’s hard to
put into words. It also defies a mental
model – it just is. I’ve experienced it
enough to know that it’s authentic. I
also trust that it’s learnable, because I’m improving with practice.
Where
this goes, I do not know. There is still
much qigong and taiji to learn (the saber – yeah) much less master. It’s as much a lifetime pursuit as was Aikido. Maybe I’ll visit the dojo someday, train and
see what’s transferred.
[1]
Based on my experiences, the “ki” of Aikido and the “qi” of qigong and taiji
are the same thing.
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