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Show me what you have when there is nothing. When you are exhausted, when you suffer, when you cannot see.

During the Aikido workshop we trained for 20 minutes with blindfolds. It was amazing how the darkness changed into shape, direction, force and feelings. The other senses became sharper, the movements became more economic, softer and more effective. It seemed some of us doubled our skills in Aikido. Instantly.

If you want to gain you have to give. If you want to lead, you have to follow, if you want to see the truth, close your eyes.

Closing the eyes also directs our mind and attention from the future to the present. The eyes see, the weak mind wants. The eyes are closed the mind may rest.

Photo:http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/

When your technique or movement work at lower speed, be certain it will be devastating performed faster. But beware of switching too early into the mode of your teacher. He or she has plenty of years of experience. You and me too, we have done our first step. Thread softly. The path is dangerous but very beneficial. So pay respect to the tradition by enjoying every tiny movement. The slow training will provide a double benefit. The fast and inaccurately performed moves will throw you back.

An excellent way to train the slow but powerful movements is Tai Chi. I am going to write more on this fantastic martial art soon. The Supreme Ultimate Boxing is far more than the watered-down movements you perhaps see in parks performed by elderly people to enhance their health. Tai Chi is everything, healing and fighting, it will heal you and others and it is also capable to kill your adversary in a spit second. Interested? More is coming soon…

In the meantime I will write about the Aikido workshop I am attending right now.

Stupid question you say. It is essential for live. It is so important that the control of our breathing was shifted by nature into our subconsciousness. We do not think anymore :”Now I have to inhale and now I must exhale.” The crucial clock of our life is ticking without us. Time is running fast for the ones who do not pay attention to it. If you can transfer the breathing from your subconscious level to the conscious level “things” will begin to happen. With the appropriate Qi Gong training you will be able to feel the pulse and vibration of the heart in every bone. From your fingertips to your feet the life giving force will spread and nourish your bones, muscles and tendons, every cell of your body will be regenerated. You will be able to redirect your breathing into specific parts of your body and to your organs. You will really feel your liver, your lungs, kidneys, heart and spleen. After a long while you won’t have to perform fancy movements like in tai chi or yoga. ‘There is simply not enough lifetime to learn all the very good and healing forms of tai chi. I guess tai chi and such are at the very advanced level completely internal and all the movements of chi happen inside and are not visible in the outside world.

Aikido is meditation in movement. Also during a dynamic class when you perform for instance katate-dori shionage many many times there comes a point when you get into a “flow”. You have finally found the harmonious rhytm with the uke and you move as one. You feel as if you can go on for ever. Eventually you get tired because you switch roles with the uke and the attacker’s part is not that effective concerning the energy management as the aikido techniques. You also notice that after the 100 shionage you use less muscle strength, more tendon power, you use your energy less and more energy of the uke. This can happen because your body learned in the past 99 attempts all the mistakes and blocades of the energy.

Now let’s connect the breath and the flow of the movements. Two aspects which are almost invisible and very hard to convey but which are capable of generating an extreme amount of fighting power. The best part is that breathing and flowing are not connected to such aspects like old or young, tall all short, male or female, strong or weak. Everybody can breath and move. But few can benefit from the fact they can do these “simple” and “obvious” things.

So how can we get there? I am at the beginning of the way too. But the only way to achive this is to go the way, to train on the mat, as often as possible, as zealously as possible and with as much fun and happiness as possible. Sometimes it is hard to overcome the laziness, I know. The weather is bad, it’s raining and the wind is chilly, it’s dark outside and cold naahh I don’t feel like Aikido today. When you break this resistance and go to the training you will often be rewarded with the best classes ever. And you can see the small way to the dojo as a part of the bigger Way of Budo. Resistance must be broken. “Do not resist, take ukemi”, once Osensei said.

Some new aikido students start to resist a aikido technique, they start to hold they breath, to break the flow, to stand still. They stiffen their muscles and you as the tori stands there sometimes helplessly, because you neither want to stop the flow nor you want to continue the flow and do some heavy damage to the ignorant beginner, who wonders why Aikido is so ineffective. If the technique would be finished the uke would feel the effectiveness but he would also be ready for hospital, and that is not the final goal of Aikido. Aikido is the mirror of your inner self. It shows you your strengths and your flaws very brutally and directly. After some lessons you will probably be sitting in a corner, breathing fast, and thinking why the hell this oh so “easy” technique did not work. The uke resisted and you could do absolutely nothing against it. Firstly let me tell you there is always a solution. I was often like:”Here I am and now I see that Aikido is useless, I just cannot think how to resolve this situation.” But then on the way back home I have found literally dozens of possible solutions for the resisting uke, and have laughed to myself in what a great danger the uke was whole the time, thinking he was the “winner” and I the “looser”. As I already stated in What is the Goal? there is actually no real fight between the uke and the tori. In the very moment when the uke raises his hand his faith is determined. Sometimes one can forget this easily. Sometimes it is good to forget and start at the very beginning at the essence of the movement. A cold restart of thoughts. Just breath in and out when you meat a resisting uke. Bow to him in your thoughts and look forward to a possibility to finally improve your Aikido. All the advanced students are aware of the dangerous aikido movements and they flow with them to not be hurt. A resisting uke is a great reward. You have to distinguish between resisting ukes who are beginners and advanced students. The beginners resist because they feel fear. Fear to loose, fear to hit the ground to hard, their Ego fears to loose, they fear that someone may laugh at them and so Fear leads to Resistance, and Resistance leads to Pain. The advanced ukes will only resist to a specific point. To a point where you can improve and they can improve as well. Then when this point is reached and the Pain should start they perform the ukemi or get connected to the flow again.

The Ukemi is a great gift. Knowing the technique of safe ukemi we can travel to the borders of our knowledge and there go just one step further. The ukemi guarantees that we can come back sound and safe. And go even one step further the next time. Good ukemi is like standing in front of a deep canyon. You look down into the dark and jump. The miracle is that you do not hit the ground but you stand and the same place before you have jumped. But you have really jumped into the dark. You have lose the earth under your feet and come closer to the sky. But because in life there is always an equilibrium of energy, after you have flown you must land again. And again: try to breath during an ukemi fall. Holding the breath just tenses up the muscles and after a while it becomes exhausting. Enjoy the flight. There will be moments you think you are for many seconds in the air. The time begins to slow down when ukemi is performed well. Bad ukemi is over before you can think of it. During good ukemi you can think:”Oh my I have so much time before I hit the mat, let’s enjoy this one more time.” This can be accomplished by loosing up your muscles, and joints. Every stiff joint costs time. Every joint that is flexible and soft gives you additional seconds in the air. I do not mean “collapsing-to-the-ground relaxed”. You have to feel the center of your partner whole the time. When you loose it, you loose your orientation point. You loose the polar star.

Breath can change your Thoughts. Thoughts can change your Actions. Actions can change everything. There is so much potential in our breath. I am sure the modern medicine will some time uncover what the ancient cultures have known by instinct.

“The Breath is the horse, and your consciousness is the rider.” Frank Ostoff 5.Dan Akikai

What’s the point of being thrown? What’s the point of getting hit by an atemi? What’s the point of feeling pain in every muscle, in every tendon, in every bone?

But still, you go and I go, you train and I train. There must be something hidden that is worth it. Let’s try to find out what this may be.

Martial Arts as the Art of Live and Death

Budo is about living and about dying. Budo is live and death. That’s it. Simple and clear. That is why once started you get caught by the aspects taught during the training. It is all about live and death. A truly complete art. Budo can tell you how to live, how to preserve life, how to create life, how to enhance your life and the life of others. It will at the same time teach you how you can heal yourself, how you can heal others. By teaching how to help and heal others it will simultaneously whisper to you how to destroy others. That is the obvious purpose of martial arts but not the most advanced one and surely not the goal of the Way.

Of course the healing aspect is much more difficult to grasp than the clear fighting art. But because Aikido does not stress the destroying of your opponent, but blending with him, the “healing” is much more visible than in other so called hard martial arts. Budo teaches you how to regain the ability to move naturally. Yes you can walk and jump a bit. But a rabbit does this far better than you do. So you think you are moving well. But you do not. I can tell you from my own experience that during my first Aikido lesson I was feeling like a wood plank. I could not tell which hand was my right and which was left. The six space directions were mixed up. The lungs cried for air. The blood rushed through the veins, as if for the first time in my life. It was like a complete renewal. A new human being was born. I am Universe.

After the first enlightenment  the hard work begun. During many lessons the Ego made it very difficult to accept the teachings. Slowly the essence and true meaning of the techniques become clear. I won’t tell now what the true meaning and real application of the technique are. Find it out for yourself. For me the meaning changes every day. It changes when I change. The movements work not only on the uke, they work also on the one who executes them. When you had a hard day, had physical and psychical stress and you have to perform an Aikido technique in class, the technique has first to break your stiffness, has first to “heal” you, the tori, before it can be applied on the uke. That is the basic level of the healing. I think there is also a more advanced one, but that is another story.

What’s the point of the uke? Why do you attack knowing that you will loose? In the question lies the answer. Aikido is not about fighting. Aikido will not teach you how to fight. Fighting is aimless. Aikido applied with full intent, full force can only mean the end of the fight. Actually there was no “fight”. There was no “You hit me, I hit you, you hit me, I hit you again…”. Real Aikido is like “You try to hit me, and you are lying on the floor not injured, or slightly injured, or with broken bones and ripped tendons or dead.” How the fight will end lies not in the hands of the attacker, so there is no “fight” sitiuation ever. Do not be fooled by the beauty of the Aikido movements. They are beautiful because they are effective and they are effective because they emanate a beauty. It is the universal law of Nature to create only effectiveness. Every animal and plant is pure effectiveness. Would it be something other it would not exist. The whole system of the nature always tries to achieve a state of the lowest energy level. Effective movements cost less energy. What do you like more: to attack or to apply the aikido technique? What is less exhausting: being the uke for 20 minutes or being the tori for the same amount of time?

The uke in Aikido gives the energy. Without energy there is no movement. When you only hold tori’s hand without intent, he will think you are just shaking hands. But imagine you grap the hand of the tori, because you see a knife edge shining in the starlight in a dark corner of the forbidden town quarter. Your intent is different now. When you become more advanced you will learn counter attacks to the techniques. The advanced uke is always trying to find a weak spot, a moment when the balance of the tori can be broken. The part of the uke is as rich and true as of the tori. You can tell by the way how someone performs an attack what a character the person has. How he/she goes through life.

There we are again. The Art of Life. The true life. Is the attack performed seriously and wholehurtedly? Or is it only a fake. Would the hand really hit the aim, or would it only cut the air? The behavior in the dojo is the same when you leave it. You are afraid in the dojo? You mean you feel angst in a safe and organized place like the dojo? HOw did you survived in the real world in the first place? You are afraid of loosing the ground beneath your feet? You do not want to be confronted with your flaws?

Movement has an impact on the internal processes going on in your body. When you move hormones and chemical stuff (sry I am not a scientist) are produced en masse. The Chi begins to flow. The human body was made to move, not to sit and type in front of a PC. It was created by the evolution to resist the whole wild and untamed nature out there. Unfortunately we have forgotten what real movement in real nature is. We are living between squares made of concrete. The nature is squeezed into unnatural forms. We are directed into an unnatural direction. I do not mean: “Hey let’s start to live in a den and hunt my next lunch with a wooden spear.” I mean that there are increasingly more directions which are forced upon us from the outside. Which are not appropriate for us. Which change our inner self. Budo is the defending wall, the guardian of our natural I. Through the Budo training you learn to cope with forces which cross your liveline, like meteors which cross the orbits of planets and solar systems. In comparison to the planet which does not have the possibility to avoid the impact of the asteroid, we do have the ability to interact with the force. The Force is with you, Luke.

Did I partially answered the question at hand? I don’t know. I am still a beginner. Perhaps I can grasp the essence of Aikido more quickly than others, but there is so much to learn that I will perhaps need only 50 lifetimes to learn everything whereas others need 100.

But that is the Goal.

Sometimes during the practice of Aikido you can really feel you are more than bones, flesh and hair. Sometimes when you cannot breath because your sensei asks you to be the uke for him you can feel what you are when there is nothing left. Sometimes you can leave the earth for some seconds of ukemi flight and and the earth is above your head and you know everything is fine. Sometimes you will feel like a wood plank. Sometimes like someone else. Sometimes very rarely you can proclaim:”I am the Universe.”

For the spectator Aikido may look like a choreographed dance. But 90 percent of the real technique is internal or the atemi movements are so small that not perceptible. Sometimes not too often because it would kill you, you will feel the immense power of an Aikido move. You will feel when you suddenly loose the ground beneath your feet. And you do not know what had happened but you are lying on the floor. These will be the moments when you stop to think that Aikido is only a “dance”. It is a cosmic dance. And do you really want to fight the cosmic powers?

You cannot fight. You should not fight. Do not resist. Take ukemi. Once a fairly new Aikido practitioner became resistant and stiff while holding my sensei arm in gyaku hanmi. We should do ikkyo. But the uke only stiffened his arm and made ikkyo very hard to perform. My sensei looked at the firm gripping hand, then looked into the eyes of the uke. This was a moment where I, who was sitting in seiza next to this scene, would have loosen my grip. Alas the uke did not do that. So he was struck to the mat with a very soft strike with the edge of the other free hand to the carotid artery. The move was very determined but not devastating. Purposeful but not strong.But hey you just told us “Do not fight” and your sensei struck this poor student to the mat. Firstly the strike come from the heart. Secondly akikdo is not “evade, evade, evade”. It is rather regaining the balance. When you are in balance you are not stiff. When you are not stiff you can feel the ki. When you feel the ki you get connected to the universe. Are you doing QiGong? I can very much recommend it to you. Aikido is like a roller coaster, but QiGong is like … hard to find the right words, like a roller coaster within you. One have to feel it. You feel you are more. You really become one with the universe. This sounds very sophisticated but it is not.

It should be the usual feeling when you wake up, when you breath, when you move, when you love, when you fight.

But many aspects of the modern life hinder our capability to see the obvious truth.

We are here now and never again. Let this thought ring in your head for a while. You should feel something when thinking this thought again. Everybody will feel differently and different. But this thought evokes something. It connects us with something. Call it Kami, God, Qi or the Universe. Or do not call it at all, just be sure you do not miss this feeling.

I am the Universe. Sounds weird. How can a small person, on a small planet, in a small solar system, in one galaxy be the whole universe? By using our imagination. The flow of our electrical brain activities are detectable. I think therefor I am.

Our thoughts are faster than the light. They can move freely into the past and the future. They control us and they free us. They are the motor of the movement. They are deeds in status nascendi. They are the future, compressed into the present. They are expanding, and they stay still. Like the Universe.

What does this mean to be the Universe? Does this mean to understand the Universe? Does this mean act like the Universe? How does the Universe behave? It is. It just is. It fulfills its hidden aim, its hidden goal. And we may just take a short glimpse on the way of the Universe. The Do of the Universe. The Do of the Energy. KiDo.The harmonious way of the energy. Aikido.