The Technique is the Teacher

Recently, while teaching a white belt a new technique, I think it was the seiken, these words came out of my mouth, “the technique will teach you how to do it”. That one sentence has lead me to another level of understanding.

The real teacher in karate is not the sensei but the particular technique itself. The sensei is vital and required for transmission but he is really a guide. I cannot teach a mae geri. The student learns the mae geri from repetition, examination and perseverance. The perfect form exists in an unreal state of imagination, never obtainable but always pursued.

The arts are ancient and sacred. Understanding of Karate form is transmitted as the Way is sought. The technique is the teacher. I can merely correct and adjust and help along a student on their path toward understanding. I am on that path myself. And I have learned more in the dojo by myself, late at night, working basic technique for hours than I have at many seminars.

There is no secret way, no hidden path toward mastery. The Way of Karate is long and hard and priceless and endless.

Solo training late summer nights

Solo training late summer nights

Eight Years and a Shodan

 

Thank You Sensei James McLain

This weekend, I will be tested for my Shodan. I began studying Karate almost eight years ago. I have taken short breaks in training. Usually the time was for a new baby being born or one of the two knee surgeries and rehab. Although, both years I had knee surgery, I still advanced one rank. I didn’t really stop training then.

I long ago abandoned any focus on the color of my obi. That external rating of my skill, my talent , my dedication and my spirit stays external. I use a fair amount of energy to not subscribe myself to the opinions or criticism of others, even my senior karate-ka. I appreciate praise but I try not to attach to it. I appreciate advice but I try to bounce that off my own inner wall for guidance. I greatly appreciate the recognition of a black belt but this is not why I train and this is not what i am after.

I train Karate to be a better human; to understand more fully this experience; to strengthen my spirit and improve my life. I hope my improvement and my efforts improves the quality of existence for other beings as well.

I will achieve a Shodan come this Saturday. Thank You Sensei McLain, Sensei Mike Awad. Thank You Mr Ezra Scott, Mr. Richard Garrett, Mr. Jason Tillman, Mr. Andy Moore, Mr. Nate England, Mr Hamman. I am humbled and gracious of this recognition and celebration. I am thankful for my forebears and respectful for  the honor to carry these teachings while this generation holds the time. But, things only begin here. In many ways I am closer to the beginner than ever before. And I hope I never lose that.

The Moment

One of the greatest gifts that martial arts training has to offer, awareness of the moment. The world does not enter the dojo. The time spent training is time apart and away from the world. In the dojo, as we train, there is no birth or death, no phone of computer. The concerns and follies of the world are held at bay.

Correct training necessarily involves tools that hold the mind, spirit and body firmly in the moment. The following tools aid in that end to fully exist in the moment.

Breath. Many spiritual disciplines teach the use and manipulation of breath. Control of the breath requires the mind to focus on the moment of respiration. Awareness of breathing patterns requires thoughts to remain in the moment. And when you are winded from sparring or kata or kihons or waza  or ippons or bags or stances or makiwara, or whatever, your mind cannot focus on the usual blathering. All distractions are outside. All concern is on hold.

Exertion. It is difficult to calm and quiet the mind when the body is comfortable, warm, safe and rested. When you are pushing the limits of your physical faculties, the present moment is all there is. There can be no thought of stopping. You cannot commit any energy to the pain or discomfort of the exercise or your likely to stop and rest.

Isolation. I don’t like to train at home. It is healthy to train away from anything not involved in training. When I train karate, I leave my house, go to the dojo, change clothes and go onto the mat. There evidence in all that process that the outside world remains outside. It waits while you train and you rejoin it afterwards when you put your clothes back on and drive home.

Method. I train Shuri-Ryu Karate. We all have styles and schools and ways to focus on. The mind can focus on perfection of technique. I foucs on the skill that is being worked and nothing else.

What circulates in the dojo is moments of consciousness. Training puts you in that moment.

Self Examination

Injuries are a part of training. After two knee surgeries, months and months of rehab under my (now) brown belt, I thought I had learned that standard. I believed myself to be at peace with the reality that my body has real limitations. But in late november two small things happened to remind me how to mentally deal with an injured body but continue training.

First, was the thumb. I took some contact to my left thumb during a sparring session. It hurt but I trained through it. Over days and weeks, each time i bumped my hand or flexed my hand the wrong way, the pain returned. Then while reaching for something under a car seat, I hit the center of the injured thumb on a piece of metal. I knew the next morning that my hand was out of order. I fashioned myself a thumb spica splint and decided to rest.

Second, came my aways relevant right knee. I work in an emergency room. I am often in charge of the emergency room. I pride myself on staying calm, relaxed and not easily getting excited. But one night I had a good reason to suddenly run down a long hall. I usually try to avoid running because since having a torn meniscus repaired, running hurts. This time was no exception. Just an hour after the run down the hall, I was noticing a need to limp and slow my stride.

I decided to take the month of December off from training. A body accustomed to exercise and a certain degree of violence does not like to go without it. Muscles get restless. The spirit gets frustrated without its usual physical outlet.

I think it is healthy to rest and I enjoyed having a break in the routine of training although I continued to mentally train my standards. I was forced to consider on a time when karate training is over. It is important to separate self from action. It is important to not have too much ego wrapped up in the identity of karate.

When you work at something for a long time it becomes easy to ask : well, if I don’t do that anymore then who am I?   What do I do?

This sort of self examination is very helpful. You have to get distance to see the whole picture. It is not fun or enjoyable or comfortable. But training in karate should not always be comfortable or fun or enjoyable.

Often we pause mid technique to examine our position correct our stance. My injuries and the time I spent healing gave me a pause to examine my stance, correct my position and make sure my emotional, spiritual and physical orientation was correct.

600 hours

In my Karate training, I have reached a milestone. I was recently promoted to Ik Kyu, 1st brown belt after seven years training. Last weekend I went to the dojo to train. While signing my school time card, I saw that I reached 600 hours. I am very proud of both these accomplishments.
My life has seen many developments since beginning training. I have become a father, my mother passed away, Sensei nearly died, I have had and ACL repaired twice. And through all of this, I trained. Even when I could barely walk, when I had only rehab exercises, when I worked night shift for two years, when the temperature was below freezing and when it was triple digits, I still found a way to train.

And I continue to train:
to improve my Karate,
to temper my spirit,
to discipline my mind and sharpen my body,
to be a better man, husband, father,
to touch the world through the expression of this art form.
I continue to train.

Seven years, 600 class hours and 1st Kyu have given me no deep insights into Karate-do. Insights come from commitment, passion, dedication and practice.

Kosho Tree

Rant on Competition

sparring

This time of year is for preparation in our dojo. Our annual tournament is approaching so we focus class time on sparing and kata. I have been working toward getting the kata perfected and committing the movements deep into my muscle memory. Go Pei Sho is my kata this year.

We also have been working on kumite. In our school, we practice continuous sparring kumite without scoring. Also, sparring drills where we work specific techniques back and forth. These are very helpful. We begin to ready ourselves for tournament competition by working on point sparring. The biggest difference to me is pace. In continuous sparring, we tend to wait for a point, circle distance and plan and attack or counter. But in non-continuous sparring, you can’t afford to wait to counter, or spend precious seconds circling to much.

The other day I worked with our Green Belt. We worked point sparring with the intention that there were only ten seconds left. It really helped with focused intensity and aggression. Though I have not been in many tournaments, most of the time, I find that two minute round is over in the blink of an eye. Before you are able to get comfortable, there is only a few seconds left and next point wins.

I find this kind of sparring frustrating. The question I understand it is important to practice techniques against a live opponent. Especially, working the techniques against someone who is trying to keep you from executing them.

What is the point in point sparring? Many karate techniques are too violent to actually execute on another person. Live combat would result in injury or death. But today’s point sparring is not an effective method to rate one skill. It is too subjective in scoring and to safe in combat.

Meditations on the Head Snap

Motobu Niahanch

 

Our style is Shuri Ryu. It is an american style adapted from Okinawan Karate. Our style has several points of emphasis. Among them is the obvious and definite head snap. In each kata and each form, the head snaps in the direction of each new attacker. This question: What is the head snap teaching us?

To Look: You must visualize the threat at hand. You must see what the immediate and relevant threat is. The head snap teaches the importance of seeing and identifying one’s opponent. Before you can attack or defend or take a stance or move out of the way, before any technique can be executed, the eyes must look and then see that which you are facing. And when you look, then turn and face the opponent with your full self.

To See: And when you look and see that which you face, then see the threat with more than your eyes. See with your whole self. In that instant of conscious comprehension, see and discover your adversary’s motives, strengths, weaknesses, position, emotions and know them as fully as possible. See all things, in all directions. You cannot defeat something that you are ignorant of. You cannot fight an enemy you do not fully know and understand. And you cannot know something unless you look deeply and deeply see. Using your mind and spirit, see in all directions.

To Face the opponent: By turning your face before the technique, we learn to fully face your opponent, not only with your shoulders or hips or head but with your full self. The head snap is a tool meant to get us to bring our full attention and full self and concern to each situation. Deliberate, decisive and purposeful  Execute each technique with the whole self. Live life facing each day, each task and each experience fully engaged with the world.

The President

 

Sacred Spiral

Our’s is a circular style. Within each movement there is a circle. Somewhere in every technique there is a circle. In Shuri Ryu, as I believe in most Okinawan styles, the hallmark technique is the Seiken Thrust, the Seiken Tsuki, also called the cork screw punch.

The technique is a highly effective and demonstrates of a universal principle.  The fastest way between a start and end is not a straight line, but a spiral or as seen from another point of view, a circle. Consider the Falcon. As the Peregrine Falcon sights its prey from above, it drops into a dive. According to the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the falcon has been clocked at over 200 mph or 322 kph. This is the fasted animal on the planet and it dives toward its prey in a spiral.

The spiral is the most efficient.

Pull the plug on a full tub of water. The fastest way for the water to move is to spiral down the drain.

As the Silver Maple sheds its seed pods, they don’t fall to the ground in a straight line. They grow into a wing shape, catch the wind and fall to the ground in a spiral.

The first organism to ever show movement did not go straight out and back. It moved in a circle.

So the straight line is not efficient in nature. In the world of natural organism, the world that we as humans inhabit. The circle, the sphere and the spiral are the most efficient.

In each and every technique, the is a circle, a spiral. Even in the straight techniques, the joints in the joints in the body behave in a circular fashion. And where there is not, we lack efficient execution. Move with the universe. The ways of the world are written everywhere we look. We are part of nature and we move in a spiral.

Same Way Each Time

Kosho Tree

Recently, Sensei went through all our Taezu Naru Waza’s. He brought out the book and we went from 1 to 10. Each one; movement by movement, technique by technique. It is important to get each of these techniques to perfection. It is vital that we as students accept what our Sensei has to teach us and to perfect the technique as taught.  It is necessary for the each of us, the entire school, every student do these techniques the same way every time.

Now, why is this so important?

Our responsibility as students and as karate-ka is to preserve and perfect that which our Sensei’s teaches.

Perfection of all techniques is essential. Everything is important. There is no part of any of this that doesn’t matter.  There is no technique that is unimportant.  Even if we don’t understand the “why” behind a technique; in fact, especially if we don’t understand the “why”, we must put forth the effort. The deeper meanings will be revealed though repetition, integration and constant practice. Secret or hidden movements become evident discovered over time.

These Kata’s and Waza’s and Ippon’s and Kihon’s are designed to teach us something at every level. Some are ancient. We honor our ancestors by devoting the time and passion to their mastery. We honor our school and we honor our Sensei by striving to obtain perfection in all our techniques. One cannot practice enough.

We are further obligated to learn our karate with perfection in mind. One day, with the blessings of our predecessors, we will teach the next generation of karate-ka. We must pass these teachings on purely. That means teach as you were taught. If we fail in this, if we pass on an interpretation or a modified Kata, if we change things, then the tradition is changed also. Now, in one generation this might not be such a big deal. The less observant practitioner might not even notice subtle changes. But, what happens when the next generation changes somthing too, and the next generation changes something too. In a few branches down the karate family tree a style might be totally unrecognizable.

In truth, this is really impossible. We are human beings. We are not perfect. So the way I teach will be different from Sensei’s. Just as Sensei teaches in his way and probably not the exact same as he was taught. But, we must make perfection our goal. We must strive to teach as we were taught.

This does not discourage free practice. One must take a Kata and try it all ways possible. Study all applications. Explore all adaptations. The same goes for Waza, Ippon, Kihon, and self defense. To truly master these things we must try them in all ways in any and all environments. Your imagination is your only limitation. But in the Dojo, don’t change it. Don’t alter anything. Don’t leave anything out. Teach what you were taught, unchanged, unfiltered and pure. This is to honor the Fathers of Karate. This is to honor Sensei.