REFLECTIONS ON PRACTICE
It is often said that technique is only a means and not an end; but if technique is not an end, then one should ask what the purpose of technique is.
Aikido, like the Sword, is first and foremost a practice which, through the use of the body, seeks harmony, movement, and coordination. It is the instrument that allows us to enter into relation with the other, necessarily moving in accordance with the Laws and principles of the Universe, both physically and mentally.
Practice is characterized by three fundamental aspects: physical, intellectual, and emotional. First of all, it should be made clear that there is no real separation between these three aspects; on the contrary, they are inseparable. A practice that is only physical, only intellectual, or only emotional will lead to an imbalance in the practitioner’s development.
Physical practice
This is the most essential, concrete, and evident aspect, although this does not mean it is the best understood, since it is based on the study of movement in the double role of Tori and Uke (Shidachi and Uchidachi in the Sword).
One of the practitioner’s first objectives should therefore be to make the body acquire movement through constant repetition, so that the body can learn to move in accordance with the principles on which the Discipline is founded.
Only when the practitioner can move in harmony with these principles will he begin to feel the fluidity and security of his practice, having acquired the ability to move naturally without having to pay attention to it and without having to think.
In reality, the study of technique is never truly forgotten, as shown by the fact that even the greatest virtuosos continue to repeat the basic exercises regularly. A martial arts practitioner must never stop practicing and repeating, both as Tori and as Uke; with the passing of time, age may not be particularly helpful, especially in the role of Uke, but even then the physical mastery of the principles should allow the older practitioner to remain on the tatami serenely even at an advanced age. By “intelligence of the body” we mean that instinct which is developed through continuous repetition and which allows one to react to a stimulus even before the brain has had time to reason about the situation.
If the practitioner wants to continue practicing for as long as possible, sooner or later he must ask himself questions about the movement he performs, its reason for existing, and its meaning.
The mere mechanical repetition of a gesture does not in fact guarantee that the body will automatically be well educated.
This is so for at least two reasons:
- The model of the movement to be reproduced must be perfect.
The Martial Art is written through the laws of physics and biomechanics.
One could say that, for a martial arts practitioner, the study of movements, or techniques, is comparable to the study of notes and solfège for a musician.
- Assuming that the human being has an innate ability to reproduce a gesture by imitation, according to the theory of mirror neurons, one might then ask why we do not all practice like the great Masters.
Even if the model is perfect, nothing can guarantee that the student will have the ability to see it and reproduce it correctly. The gestures he reproduces by imitation at the beginning of his practice will therefore deviate from those of the model and, most likely, the body will from the start repeat incorrect movements without even becoming consciously aware of it. Our uncertainty in perceiving a movement and trying to reproduce it faithfully, together with our still limited competence in evaluating the model before our eyes, gives us the near certainty that the first years of practice will be spent teaching our body movements that are not perfectly correct, and that we will spend the rest of our practice correcting errors and “relearning how to walk”…
In a specifically sporting environment, competitive practice is one of the pedagogical means that can lead to the acquisition of this bodily intelligence, since it is based on intense and regular physical training that will structurally shape the body so that, in the end, it responds to the athletic demands of the sport in question.
Teaching in every bodily discipline, and the Martial Arts are part of this, is based on the physical repetition of movements that will lead the body to act instinctively. There is, however, a fundamental difference between a “Dō” and a sport: their purpose.
The former is a system for improving the human being in the broadest sense of the term, whereas the latter aims mainly at improving performance.
At this point, the motivation that allows a practitioner to accept an hour or more of exhausting suburi must be sought in his own personal reasons.
If training alone were enough to develop one’s growth, everyone would automatically become a Master. It is also true, however, that all great Masters have, at some point in their path, trained their body seriously. Since this is not the case, it seems clear that the practitioner cannot be satisfied with bodily work alone in order to grasp the principles of his discipline.
One of the means available to him is to appeal to his capacity for reasoning and discernment: the intellectual aspect of practice.
Intellectual practice
As we have seen, the study of technique cannot be limited to reproducing the form, which is only its choreographic representation. The simpler this form is, the easier it will be to reproduce and transmit without alteration; however, the form is only the physical manifestation of a principle, and everyone must be careful not to mistake the finger pointing at the moon for the moon itself.
To introduce this “intellectual” aspect of practice, it must be made clear that this is not merely the natural curiosity that leads the practitioner to take an interest in the culture connected with his discipline, nor a simple accumulation of knowledge, but rather a search, a theoretical and speculative study of movement. Intellectual practice will therefore be based on cognitive abilities in order to understand movement through analysis, introspection, and criticism. In other words, the practitioner must strive to define the how and why of movement.
Indeed, if the teacher raises an arm while turning on himself, the student may limit himself to endlessly repeating what he has seen, persuaded that he is faithfully reproducing the movement demonstrated. At a certain point, however, he will have to surrender to the evidence that his action does not produce the same effects as that of the teacher or the sempai. The aesthetic imitation of movement or technique concerns the physical aspect of practice, but a movement cannot be studied independently of its effect; if the practitioner intends to continue his study, he will have to question the related physiological, biomechanical, physical, structural, and multidimensional process.
It will be necessary to visualize the trajectory of the attack, and therefore of its kinetic energy, in order to annihilate it (Irimi) or guide it (Tenkan). This research should make it possible to understand that the human body functions like a piece of high-precision mechanics, capable of performing extraordinary movements when used correctly.
This intellectual path should naturally accompany the practitioner toward the rank of Shodan, that is, the level at which the practitioner has shown that he has acquired the form of the technique. This is confirmed by the fact that this rank corresponds to a “beginning”; at this point, the practitioner will know how to educate his own body. This process essentially unfolds in three phases: the first linked to perception and therefore to the gathering of data; the second to reworking and experimentation; the third to metabolization and creation.
At the beginning, understanding is obviously limited, and the movement reproduced will demonstrate this. Later, however, as understanding improves, the body, now correctly instructed, will gain more and more confidence and will improve its subsequent executions in a continuous process of adjustment.
The practitioner must nevertheless be careful not to let himself be seduced by the “song of the sirens,” for it is easy to take pleasure in intellectual practice, since it is much less physically demanding and less tiring. Many people assess their martial level on the basis of this understanding alone. It is enough to attend a few seminars to observe that, apart from a few rare exceptions, practitioners are more skilled at explaining than at demonstrating, and of course their explanations are very often not equal to what they are able to demonstrate.
We might compare the study of Budō to a puzzle: each piece corresponds to a Kihon, a basic movement. The practitioner knows that he must put all the pieces in their proper place so that the image is complete and coherent; his work will certainly be made easier if he already has an idea of the final image he will obtain once all the pieces are assembled.
The only difference from an ordinary puzzle is that a good knowledge of each individual piece makes it possible to create an infinite number of images. Perhaps this is precisely the freedom the Masters speak of. For a long time, one must reproduce the image proposed by the teacher and place the pieces according to his indications, until one has developed the ability to create personal images and, subsequently, the method for reproducing them.
Achieving awareness of one’s movements and body, as well as of the resistances and superfluous gestures in the execution of a movement, is part of this search. The task is to let body and mind enter into dialogue in order to eliminate tensions and unnecessary movements.
At the same time, the whole body of notions and concepts inherent in practice is also part of this study: memorizing the numerous Japanese nomenclatures, such as the names of kata and techniques, Japanese history, the study of Bujutsu and its development into Budō, and so on.
Having reached a level of physical and intellectual understanding, the practitioner should therefore have attained the intelligence of the body. But now even a mental interference will be enough to interrupt the fluidity of the movement, for the body will be forced to reduce its speed to that of the slower brain. It is at this level that emotional practice will begin to make sense.
This does not mean that the practitioner has never been confronted with the emotional dimension before. But thanks to the greater physical and intellectual understanding he has acquired, he will know how to move his body correctly and will thus be able to face, analyze, and understand his own emotions and fears.
In possession of a well-trained and conscious body, the practitioner can now deepen emotional practice; that is, he can examine how a well-prepared practitioner, aware of what he has learned, will behave during a simulated fight or on a virtual battlefield.
Emotional practice
We will not try to analyze the whole range of emotions that each of us may feel while practicing. The Discipline necessarily passes through physical contact, and each person has his own way of reacting to a grip, an attack, or an aggression, even when simulated and codified.
Contact can provoke, especially in beginners, a range of emotions that manifest as involuntary physiological reactions: accelerated heartbeat, involuntary blinking, strong muscular tension, excessive sweating, and so on.
Contact will lead the practitioner to enter into relation with the other. Supported by physical practice, which allows him an appropriate technical response, and by intellectual practice, which has made him understand the “how and why,” he will be ready to manage these emotional reactions so that they do not disturb his movement.
These emotional reactions are common to all bodily practices in which physical contact is involved. Yet the Martial Art has a direct and specific way of bringing us into our fears, because through its training system it proposes that we approach, study, understand, and control fear; more precisely, that we become familiar with the idea of fear without necessarily having to risk our lives.
Man is not psychologically programmed to enter voluntarily into an attack; on the contrary, his genetic programming pushes him to flee from it. Martial practice therefore proposes an alternative to this survival instinct, teaching that it is often better to face a problem than to try to avoid it, thus allowing the practitioner to enter progressively, even if obviously in a limited way, into the emotional state he might experience if he were truly fighting for his life.
This approach is progressive and depends on the ability to receive and deliver the attack up to the point at which Tori, or Shidachi, feels fear for himself and Uke, or Uchidachi, feels fear of striking Tori. It is not rare, in fact, to see the attacker interrupt his action with the feeling that, if he completed it, he would risk hitting his training partner.
In practice with the ken, there is a paired cutting exercise, Kiri-Otoshi, the Chokusen Irimi of Aikido, in which the technique is effective only if Shidachi lets Uchidachi enter deeply into his attack, to the point of making him believe that he will touch him.
The practitioner will understand, through the emotional experiences he lives during his martial path, that he needs this ability if he does not want to become the victim of involuntary physiological manifestations.
In his book Aikido, Tamura Sensei expresses it in these terms: “More important is to forget your own body, to enter and pierce while thinking you are being pierced, to enter directly without the slightest hesitation. Push Aite with your mental power, until you force him to attack; using and taking his attack, enter!”
It must be acknowledged that work with weapons, perhaps because of the danger they represent in popular imagination and because of their potentially greater dangerousness, is an excellent way to undertake, study, and refine this aspect of practice.
The work of voluntarily placing oneself in a situation of danger, that is, this capacity to remain motionless and impassive until the point of no return in Uke’s attack, allows one to enter a new dimension and also allows one to evaluate to what extent the two previous aspects of practice are both indispensable and useless on their own.
To use O-Sensei’s words: “I am not teaching you how to move your feet, but how to move your mind!”
It is certainly undeniable that one understands better when one knows how to move one’s feet.
When the practitioner has reached the point at which his physical, intellectual, and emotional practice is harmoniously developed and balanced, from a martial point of view he has acquired all the skills that will allow him to engage in combat with a probability of coming out unharmed.
The practitioner’s martial path could end here, or rather continue by perfecting itself while maintaining these three aspects of practice in balance. The study of the martial art (Bu-Jutsu) is in fact limited to this: becoming ever more effective.
There is, however, another dimension, and its particularity lies in the fact that it is neither obligatory nor automatic, and that it will not make the practitioner technically stronger. Neglecting it will therefore not prevent him from progressing, provided that he continues to practice physically, intellectually, and emotionally.
It is up to the practitioner to undertake it, consciously or not. It is common to all disciplines that carry the suffix “Dō” in their name and is perfectly summarized in these words of the Buddha: “The only true fight to engage in is the fight against oneself!”
This is certainly a new dimension of practice. The martial art (Bu-Jutsu) is limited in function to improving the performance of its adepts, whereas the martial disciplines (Bu-Dō) instead propose that the practitioner use the martial method also to perfect himself and become better from a human point of view.
Here one can begin to speak of spiritual practice.
Spiritual practice
Many people are attracted to the Traditional Martial Arts also because of the spiritual aura that surrounds them.
For many years the Aikido practitioner studies and experiences “technique,” which offers him a wide variety of solutions for facing a possible attack. When his level of practice grows and he becomes capable of responding effectively to all forms of attack provided for by conventional practice, his reflection should naturally lead him to ask more about the nature of his study. He will begin to perceive the space and time between the intention of the attack and its realization, even between non-intention and intention. The more refined his perception becomes, the more he will understand that he can act, and no longer merely react, even before the attack.
The word used in Budō to define this ability is Yoyu: the margin.
Practice, however, risks remaining only a way of perfecting one’s technique, whereas it should be the means for perfecting one’s being. Indeed, what use would it be to become stronger if one does not become better? “Spiritual practice” fundamentally seeks the ability to transpose our technical understanding, physical, intellectual, and emotional, into daily life in order to manage as harmoniously as possible the inevitable conflicts to which we are exposed by our way of living and thinking.
To succeed in this, however, one must develop the ability to question oneself.
The growth of technical ability can, in fact, risk flattering the ego, reassuring, gratifying, and negatively strengthening the practitioner.
To undertake the study of a Martial Art also means consciously committing oneself to declaring war on oneself, on the ego with its strategies and compromises.
Onore-ni-Katsu (onore: oneself; ni: dative preposition; katsu: to win) is a concept of fundamental importance in the Martial Arts and lies at the basis of all Budō practice, yet at the same time it is not so often seen realized.
In sports, despite criteria of equality, an opponent will always do something more or something less than we do; in one case we will be defeated, in the other we will be victorious.
In military strategy, a commander responsible for the lives of his men will attack the enemy only when the enemy is weak, or apparently so. However, when the opponent is ourselves, the balance is total. Overcoming this opponent remains the finest victory, because the personal struggle does not depend on luck or surprise. It is a direct, sincere, face-to-face combat, for at the moment when we confront ourselves, we have an opponent exactly equal to ourselves… (from the book Ten - Jin - Chi by Pascal Krieger Sensei)