NEWS & VIEWS - SPRING 2003

Choosing Skillful Reponses in Troubling Times

-by Kimberly Richardson

As I write this newsletter introduction, I feel that the events of this past year have offered enough learning opportunities, both on and off the mat, to fill a book. Short of that, what stands out for me is the intensity of training that has been practiced on the TCA mat, the dedication students feel towards the community, and the unusual number of injuries that students have experienced this past year. On a more global level, I feel we are living in an extreme moment, a time when the citizens of the world are preoccupied by concerns about safety and peace-making. Non-violent resistance movements around the world are asking for peace and our government is fixated on the notion that only war can create peace.

These local and global realities each present us with powerful teachings of pain, accountability and acceptance. In my travels to Greece, Japan, and Washington DC over the past six months, I have witnessed people’s fears and uncertainties about the wobbly state of the world. As I attempt to move with the flow of what is unfolding around me, never before have I found it so imperative to practice maintaining a resilient center, an open heart and an engaged spirit. Thankfully, Aikido’s teachings keep providing answers when my faith in myself and humankind feels shaky. O’Sensei reminds us: “We need to learn to live in harmony with each other and with nature. If our heart is large enough to envelop our adversaries, we can see right through them and avoid their attacks. Once we envelop them, we will be able to guide them along a peaceful path indicated to us by heaven and earth. That is not just a dream, but a necessity.”

* * * * * *

Last summer, a number of Two Cranes’ students took part in Aikido Intensives, training with Anno, Linda and Mary Senseis in July and Saotome, Ikeda and Takeda Senseis in August. When we returned from these seminars, the level of training in the dojo increased both in versatility and resiliency. We soaked up fresh ideas and insights about practice and brought them home to the mat, such as new footwork and invitations to shape the techniques differently each time. And throughout our practice we faced the never-ending query, “Where is my center, anyway?”

Although the training was rigorous, most people came away unscathed. But as the fall unfolded, members of our community experienced injuries both on and off the mat. Every time a bone broke or a back seized up, I felt my own sense of helplessness and grief for their suffering. But as my sadness softened, I reflected on the deeper impact of the experience of injury. When we choose to engage passionately in any active practice, we risk getting hurt. Whether we like it or not, injuries offer a deep immersion into misogi (purification). If we stay with the experience of the discomfort, we will eventually witness moments of surrender and the sensations of our experience will shift.

The first time I was injured, I remember my complete disbelief that my foot was facing the wrong way. That awareness was followed by a distinct sensation of searing pain. I tried every day to get back on the mat, and for what seemed eternity, my foot said no. So I observed Ikeda Sensei’s class in that Boulder, Colorado high school gym in 1981, feeling discouraged most days.

Several injuries later, I have watched my patience increase. I have at times been content to sit on the cold bench and observe the lines people are running in the room. I have felt moved by a student’s delicate footwork or the effortless float of a nage’s arm around uke’s waist like they were best friends. At the same time I have felt compassion for how difficult it can be to graciously extend a hand towards our partner or gracefully relax our shoulders. And let me count the ways that we aikido practitioners try to avoid losing our tempers when the technique doesn’t work.

Our consideration of injury takes on another dimension when we extend our awareness of pain to the world at large. When our war campaign against Iraq began, I was in the mountain temples of Wakayama, Japan. Although far from newspapers and TV, I felt bombs burst in my body for several days in my dreams and in meditation. No escape. Aikido teaches us that our pain is not ours alone. Anno Sensei and the Head Abbot of Seiganto-ji Temple at Nachi, Japan emphasized that the love we have for ourselves and for each other is a profound statement of the active power of peace. Regardless of how we feel about defending our country against terrorism, none of us can escape the feeling that innocent people are dying now as they have throughout history. As our practice deepens, we come to see more clearly that just as love amplifies love so does hate beget hate.

I am reminded of a scene from one of my favorite movies, The Fifth Element. The (self-ordained) good guys are out to save the world from an evil ball-of-fire planet. Each time they bomb the fire enemy, it doubles in size. The more hate they pump into their enemy, the more the fireball quadruples in size until it expands into infinite space and obliterates everything in its path, including the good guys.

Whether we recognize them or not, we have choices about how to address our passions, our rages, and our hatreds. We can feel fortunate that we practice an art that emphasizes the power of polishing our spirits and actively cultivating compassion for ourselves and for each other. Though we may at this moment feel incapable of physically touching an aching heart halfway around the world, it’s a worthy practice to see if we can sense how our hearts are here on the mat and right there in the Middle East. Can we be open to all of it?

Contents

1. One Family

2. Studying with
Saotome Sensei

3. Preparing for   Black Belt: Two Views

4. Postcards from Summer Camp

5. Falling Down, Getting Back Up

One Family

So there I was trying to slow myself down, but for all my pushing with my back foot, there was no change in the shape of the turn. The snow was utterly unyielding, and my snowboard seemed intent upon the collision course before me. Twenty or more miles per hour, I just don’t know, but I was sure I didn’t want to wrap that tree. It seemed to take so much time: the decision to turn uphill from the tree to bleed off speed, but no…. then the realization that impact was imminent. I knew that somehow I must carry the line through topside, and that my feet must come along…so I pulled up on my snowboard as hard as I could in that last moment. My aikido training helped me understand and perhaps saved my life. I spun on impact, my snowboard coming along topside. I landed on my back, my leg fully broken. I tried to move but the pain was overwhelming. It took four hours before I arrived at the hospital feeling frightened and alone in the world.

The course of a life can be altered in a fraction of a moment; bones break, houses burn, and chaos ensues. Oftentimes, things in life are not how you perceive them. Love and support began to show up all around me, from the veritable garden that bloomed in my hospital room to the friends who held my hand. As a group we made quite an impression on the hospital staff. People opened their homes and their hearts. It’s times like this when you know the strength of those who love you. Those you have touched, some that you didn’t expect, come forward with their gifts. My friends wrapped around me like a blanket to catch my fall in what has surely been the most traumatic time of my life. I think this is what O’sensei had in mind when he said, “Be compassionate. If you do that mutually you will make harmony and be like a family.” This community has shown up for me more than any family I have known. To each and every one of you, my heartfelt gratitude goes out.

— Lynda Jean Freeman

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Studying  with   Saotome  Sensei

Mitsugi Saotome Shihan has devoted his entire adult life to the study and teaching of Aikido. He began as a student of the founder of Aikido, Ueshiba Morihei (O’ Sensei)
in 1955 and continued for 15 years until the founder's death in April of 1969. From 1960 until 1975 Master Saotome taught at the World Aikido Headquarters in Tokyo, Japan. In 1975 Saotome Sensei began teaching in the United States. His international association, Aikido Schools of Ueshiba includes more than 100 affiliated dojos. In addition to regularly scheduled seminars, both national and international, Saotome Sensei has given special seminars, including a U.S. Military Special Forces seminar, special training of the U.S. Security Forces in Washington, D.C. He has also spoken before the United Nations General Assembly on the role of Aikido in world peace efforts. This month he marked his 50-year anniversary of training with the Cherry Blossom Seminar in Washington D.C. My reflections from that event will be forthcoming.

- Kimberly Richardson

“ Students of Aiki must distinguish the training process vs. reality,” said Saotome Sensei as if reminding us why we had traveled to Missoula to train with him. “Training is practice. Reality is life and death. You must bring the conflict to an end in the first move. When you take over the center line—the war is over. The secret to taking the center is that it begins in your mind. When you see uke’s intent, adjust your angle and move in. War over.”

The Missoula Seminar featuring Saotome Sensei drew 100 Aikido students from as far away as Orlando, Florida and Santa Cruz, California. Though crowded, the training space felt intimate, and there was a sense of alertness in the air. My goal was to steal as many of Sensei’s secrets as I could in these three days of training. I had an almost palpable sense that a direct transmission of O’sensei’s teachings would happen through Saotome Sensei in this weekend training.

Although the martial art of Aikido has the appearance of a graceful dance, practitioners are trained to defeat an enemy with a mere touch,” Saotome Sensei said on that crisp fall morning. “We must understand that the touch that destroys a human being is the same touch that heals him. Once we are aware of the infinite vulnerable atemis [body points] located on our partners’ bodies and once we know that we can take a life with a turn of a thumb we are free to study the deeper astral and spiritual levels of the art of Aikido.”

After a morning of studying pressure points and foot sweeps from shomenuchi (strike to top of the head)and mentsuki (punch to the face) attacks, Sensei said, “Enough already. You know this material now and you understand how to protect your opponent. This information gives us the ability to resolve a conflict peacefully, where both the attacker and the one being attacked remain unharmed. The deeper teaching is this: it’s all about the energy.”

* * * * * * *

Saotome spoke of caring for O’sensei as uchideshi—attending to his every need, such as rubbing his feet and drawing his bath. In training, as well, he was expected to be ready day or night to pick up a sword and attack him, only to be informed that he was too slow. “O’sensei would execute multiple cuts in a quarter of a second,” Saotome Sensei said, smiling and shaking his head. “I couldn’t understand how he could achieve this speed.”

All weekend long, Saotome Sensei communicated as much with his elegant gestures as with his words. In a quiet voice he told us that he observed how O'sensei prayed in the morning and prayed at night. Having witnessed the carnage first hand of the Russu-Japanese war and the war against China, before WWII, O’sensei knew about the bottomless pit of suffering that accompanies war. Saotome described the combat conditions, specifically the mud and rocky terrain. “Sword fighting wasn’t so tidy when there was no tatami mat to glide your feet across. The old-style rifles were so heavy it sometimes took two to maneuver the weapon: a shooter and a buddy to hold the weapon straight.” He explained how men in battle slogged through the mud, filthy and hungry. One could understand the danger in planting one’s feet firmly. While laboring his way through the battlefield, O’sensei devoted any free moment to creating in his mind a vision of peace on earth.”

“In his lifetime, O’sensei mastered over 30 different martial arts. Sometimes he would master an art in one month of intensive training. Can you imagine?” Saotome smiled. “He was a genius. He created a revolution. Aikido is a revolutionary response to addressing our human aggression.”

O’sensei did not teach techniques to his students. He was interested in sharing more spiritual concerns. “In 20 years, O’sensei taught technique maybe five times… five times,” Saotome repeated, as if to say, “Can you believe that?” “It was a different world then, I know. The training was silent—throwing and falling, more throwing and falling. O’sensei would glance at me to attack. What attack he wanted I didn’t know. I just came up with something. I never knew what was going to happen. But sometimes in mid-flight I knew it was not the correct attack. I learned Aikido by taking ukemi. O’sensei never told us where to put our feet. He chanted and talked to the infinite kami [Gods] surrounding him. He said Aikido is the art of being awake to the infinite attackers and sacred kami surrounding us everywhere, left and right, back and front.”


“ Being with you today, I find I have flashbacks from my years of studying with O’sensei. In the 1950s and 60s, he taught classes for deshi [students]] and classes for uchideshi [selected senior students],” Saotome Sensei explained on Saturday morning. “Classes for uchideshi included what O’sensei considered to be the Secret Teachings. “’Now I am teaching my uchideshi today.’ He would say. “I teach you killing techniques because I trust you. You must use this knowledge ethically. Knowing how to kill someone consciously is a required skill of a practitioner of Budo. That skill assumes a paramount responsibility of using the information wisely.” Saotome spoke of the gates that the deshi stood behind, waiting to be admitted into the inner sanctuary to acquire more intensive teachings with O’sensei. “Only a few were welcome. Many were turned away. Towards the end of O’Sensei’s life, the line-up at the gate grew long. Back then, Aikido was an unknown art, and, as far as O’sensei was concerned, only those students who appeared awake and conscious members of society could practice Aikido. Only awake and conscious students could learn how to practice budo [Stop the spear!]”, learn how to kill so that you don’t need to kill, so that you can protect.”

Saotome Sensei spoke of how the role as a martial arts teacher is easily misunderstood in American culture. “When I travel on airplanes people ask me what I do,” he explained. “Shihan (master teacher) is not a reputable title in the United States. It doesn’t hold the weight or the honor that it has in Japan. When I answer that I am a martial artist, people begin shifting in their chairs and appear uneasy. It is so silly. I find the title ‘professor’ to be useful. ‘I teach philosophy, I say.’ That feels appropriate: educating students on the value of ethics, etiquette and courage.”

“Or perhaps what I do is like psychotherapy,” he continued. “Recently there was a young women outside the Washington DC dojo engaged in an altercation and crying repeatedly, ‘I hate you.’ I suggested that one of my students hand her a bokken (sword) and have her hit a bale of straw for 30 minutes while yelling, ‘I hate you, I hate you!’ After such time and 500 hundred strokes, she would be too tired to do more ‘I hate you.’ It’s easier to yell, ‘I love you.’ That will be 50 dollars, please, he laughed. “Sword work is wonderful for many things. You can’t be thinking about how you don’t feel loved, or how much money you don’t have, or how out of shape you are, and that you need to fix the plumbing, when someone is coming at you with a sword.”

“ As I travel across this country teaching Aikido, I cannot help notice how much we are groping for direction of some kind,” Saotome Sensei went on to say. “As Americans, we place emphasis on freedom and independence. Independence of what?” He spoke about the quality of our lives when we are in one big rush. “TV and radio dictate our creative thinking processes. Cell phones and computers act as our communicating vehicles. We don’t know who we are and we don’t know how to surrender ourselves to the feeling of joy and sadness. Most significantly, we have no idea what to do with our aggression. Our way of life removes many of us from our most prolific teacher—Nature. We don’t work the soil for survival. Many of us don’t know where our food comes from. We don’t sing and dance for spiritual expression. We have strayed too far from our roots as natural beings.”

“ We need to honor the posture we have advanced to,” he advised. We have shifted from operating on four legs to that of two legs. But for many of us, standing upright is difficult. Some of you have been training for 10, 20, 30 years. You know the techniques, but you need to deal with your manner of receiving the attack.” He described how our stances should be precise, our torsos vertical and our eyes looking out on the horizon. We need to extend our ki while we move in a centrifugal and centripetal motion. “Imagine that you are a ‘ki’ (energy) pump,” he said.


Saotome Sensei emphasized the necessity of sensing our connectedness. “The answer to our confusion about who we are and what we are doing here lays our ability to connect to ourselves and each other through with our hearts and spirits. We are unavoidably connected to everything. We float in a sea of molecular units of consciousness. Aikido practice/Aikido consciousness allows us to recognize this truth; it changes us from the inside out. Practice is purifying.”

In closing, Saotome Sensei invited the student body to reflect on the wisdom of one of O’sensei’s favorite sayings: ‘Masakatsu agatsu’ (True victory, self victory). “The true victory of our lives involves clearly seeing the truth in each moment of our life engagement. To see the truth is to recognize that we are constantly changing human beings, part of the natural world

As the Horizon jet took off for Seattle that Sunday afternoon, I leaned into the back of seat and reflected on the week-ends teaching jewels. For twenty plus years I have been training with Saotome Sensei. It appears to me that his understanding is always growing and as well his love of the art of Aikido. I appreciate his meticulous and elegant movement skill and I am awed by is ability as a teacher to combine a basic principles and an esoteric constructs of practice. But most significant to me is his emphasis on practice as a tool to understand the nature of reality and how crucial it is that we as students and as human beings learn to participate in our lives in a more centered, more balanced and more authentic manner. The future of our planet depends on it. 

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"the answer to our confusion about who we are and what we are doing here lies in our abiity to connect to ourselves and each other with our hearts and spirits."
- SAOTOME SENSEI

Preparing for Black Belt-Two Reflections on Sho Dan Ho

I JUST WANT TO KNOW WHAT YOU’RE THINKING

I’m thinking I could scream
Or maybe cry
Or maybe just say “NO,
I’m NOT going to do that”

I’m wondering why
Why do I do this?

I’m thinking I’ve done this before
I thought I had dealt with these things years ago
And now they’re back
Why do I stop here?
Is this OK with you?
Is this OK with him?
Is this OK with her?

I’m thinking this is a lot like music
A sonata form
It’s really about transformation
Theme – development of the theme
and then return of the theme
But now it is different and it stays itself

I’m thinking I am in the middle of the development
I’ve been working on the Moonlight sonata since I was 8
And I am still in the development
Will those diminished chords ever resolve?

I’m thinking this is a lot like drawing
Brush strokes, feathering, shadow
Add up to make a line
It’s like design
Form, shape, texture, contrast
Repetition, balance, sequence, and scale
Are the points that make up the line

I’m thinking the point is not the point
The point is the line
And the line continues where it will go
And I will go with it

I’m thinking “Is this OK with me?”
Maybe the resolution isn’t the point either
The line is the point

This is OK with me
Maybe I will learn something
Something about myself
Something about how to be myself

I’m thinking that it is time
To start looking at the line


- Sara Gerhart Snell

To be perfectly honest, I don’t like testing. Lots of long nights spent working my body until it’s so sore I can’t get out of bed in the morning. I can’t get to sleep at night and I’m sluggish during the day. Every spare moment is spent thinking and obsessing about some future date, which seems to hold my entire life in it. Throughout this struggle, I have the opportunity, again and again to ask myself, “Why am I doing this? What do I get out of it that makes it worth all this time and energy?”

I don’t know. But I can tell you that during the testing process, my community becomes very important to me. I am always amazed at how wonderful my Aikido community is. So many fellow students have stayed after class with me, and arranged meetings with Mary Sensei, and have just given their body to me, so I can use and abuse it. I am astounded at how generous everyone is. Under normal circumstances, I’m fairly self-sufficient, but in these times, I complete rely on my fellow compatriots. And they come through for me.

It gets better. This immense caring and support that I feel in my Aikido community actually extends far beyond it. I am so grateful to my co-workers. Perhaps more than anyone, they understand how grumpy and unpleasant I am to be around for the months preceding a test. There are days that I can barely make it up the stairs into work, and need caffeine and stimulants just to check my email. And they never complain. The usual ribbing even seems temporarily suspended just for this occasion. I am so grateful to have them.

My community extends even further than this, to my parents, my former sensei, my friends in California. All the people who influenced my life before I ever came to Two Cranes. And still, there are all the people whom I never meet and never learn the name of. The barista who makes my coffee in the morning, the bus driver who takes me safely to work and home again, and the countless people I come in contact with on a daily basis. These are the people who make my current life so much easier to bear.

Imagine all of the hundreds of people who make my life the glory it is today. Imagine all the people I see on the street, those I know and those I don’t. Those people who help me train and help me work and help me survive one more day. Imagine that for all the effect they have on me, I could have that kind of effect on them. Thai I could make someone’s life a bit easier if I smiled, or said, “Thank you,” or agreed to train after class. Imagine that by doing Aikido for me, it makes it easier for me to do something nice for someone else.

Imagine that.

                      -Taryn Sass

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Postcards from Summer Camp

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-by Jason Matsumoto, 2nd kyu student

SUMMER CAMP! For me those words summon up childhood memories of sleeping bags and log cabins, canoeing and chilly morning leaps into the Sound, hikes up hills and through the evergreens, rope courses, archery and macaroni arts and crafts. When I grew older I thought summer camp was something sadly left far behind. Fortunately, one of aikido’s many benefits is the many opportunity to train intensively at the myriad aikido summer camps around the country. This past year I had the chance to attend two of them: Santa Cruz summer camp and the Takeda seminar.

Santa Cruz summer camp, hosted by North Bay Aikido, was held in a fieldhouse on the UC-Santa Cruz campus, in the hills overlooking Monterey Bay. To hear others talk about Santa Cruz beforehand I almost felt I was headed to a family reunion, and that’s sort of what it was like once I got there. Many of those there knew each other from past summer camps, and those of us new to Santa Cruz felt welcomed like long lost cousins.

Training began every morning at 6:30AM. Each day there were three or four keiko, each taught by Mary Heiny Sensei, Linda Holliday Sensei, Jack Wada Sensei, or Motomichi Anno Sensei. It is four days of nonstop intense training. There were about one hundred and fifty people training during each session, and part of what made Santa Cruz so enjoyable was training with so many new people whose movement was flowing, energetic, and even familiar. Many of the aikidoka there seem to come from schools that like to move when taking ukemi and have embraced a very open style of aikido.

The most apt description, though, that I’ve found of what it was like to train at Santa Cruz comes from Thomas Mann’s novel, The Magic Mountain. The main character, Hans Castorp, is caught in an alpine snowstorm while skiing. Gradually succumbing to penetrating cold he dreams of wandering into a warm, earthly paradise full of vibrant, healthy people. For a time he watches them at play and he is struck most of all by:

Castorp’s vision quickly fades and he realizes it was just a dream. Similarly, last year’s camp was probably the last, and the vast friendliness of Santa Cruz summer camp may not come again.

The Takeda seminar was a very different experience from Santa Cruz. Driving east then north to Nelson, B.C., we reached the small, college town in the narrow, richly forested, Kootenay valley, were the seminar took place. The dojo was a small open building next to a small waterfall that doubled as the Kootenay Rod and Gun Club, which meant the mats and all the dojo decorations were entirely dismantled to make way for hunters and fishermen on the weekends. Despite this it was a lovely space to train in, the only drawback, which was often and widely cursed, was the granite and sandpaper-like quality of the mat surface itself.

Though the seminar wasn’t as harsh as a winter on the Russian steppes, it was somewhat grueling in an aiki way. The surface of the mat took its toll on all of us, scraping swaths of skin off feet, knees, and hands. The pace and physicality of the training was difficult also, as the constant up and down ukemi necessary for Takeda’s technique quickly sapped one’s energy in the August heat. Finally, there was the need to adjust to working with partners whose style of movement was very different from what some of us were used to.

Frankly, there were moments when I wondered what I was doing there, but there were moments off the mat that reminded me of why I had gone to Nelson. Summer camp wasn’t all forward rolls and kokyunage, there were group meals and rounds of golf, afternoons at the beach or on the boardwalk, and long evening of aikido talk. The chance to spend some time with other aikidoka traveling and having fun off the mat was as much a part of camp as the training itself.

In spite of the difficult training at Nelson I found that it had changed my waza without my realizing it. The training at Nelson was so different than anything I had experienced up to that point. It forced me to see that there is more than one way to do aikido, and some of those other ways are equally as valid as anything we do at Two Cranes.

Ultimately it was the variety and intensity of training that I got at both camp that I found most valuable to my waza. For me learning aikido hasn’t been particularly different than learning anything else. While it’s important to have a fundamental knowledge base, it’s really learning how to think and react in a particular way that is more important. Those changes comes mostly from the breadth and depth of the experiences and training that I undergo and that’s the fundamental value of the summer camps.  

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Falling Down, Getting Back Up