I've Got The Power!

"Before you learn to move your body, don't try to move the jo."  It is one of most important piece of advice I received from the late Rocky Izumi Sensei -- my very first Aikido teacher.  Feels like I can never repeat this enough to our students.

Since COVID 19, most of our classes are on jo, so that people can stay a good, safe distance away from each other.  Is it a lack of practice or is it the tremendous stress that people are experiencing because of the pandemic and the election?  Everybody is so eager to hit hard although there is nothing to hit.  They are so forceful that they compromise their own posture.  To feel the power and to demonstrate that they can hit, people add juice and work themselves excessively.  

"This may give you a good cardio workout and you will grow some muscles.  However, it is not going to help your Aikido," I tease.  As usual, I try to convince them to ease off and forget about hitting something external.  

"The practice is within you, not outside.  Calm down and focus on your form.  The jo has its way of moving.  It likes to move certain ways.  It slides back and forth easily, as in a tsuki; it spins, as in figure 8; and it swings readily, like in a shomen hit.  Yet, if you try to force the jo to move any other way, it would resist.  It drags and it feels very heavy.

The bokken and the jo are your best teachers.  Don't try to move the sticks.  Instead, let the sticks move and move along side so that you do not get hit."

"The most common mistake is to willfully manipulate the jo with force.  People tend to do that because people have a brain.  The brain is willful, so we do willful things.  On the contrary, the jo is just a piece of wood.  It has no brain.  It does not know how to be willful.  The jo is nature.  It only follows nature's way.  And that is the only way -- the way we come to Aikido to learn.  Quit being willful.  Stop imposing yourself on your sticks.  Listen to nature and use it as your teacher.  Try to become part of nature.  Nature already knows how to move.  Only people don't.  Get used to the idea: You cannot make things happen.  Try to let things happen." 

The more people struggle to become powerful, the more powerless they become.  It is frustrating to see people being so frustrated.  

Having said that, it also took me many years to learn and accept that truth.  Generations after generations, Aikido students go through the exact same process, and then witness their own students do the same.

Every once in a while, as you are not suspecting, a light bulb lights up somewhere . . .

After the jo class today, a student who normally is quite apprehensive about weapons class came to me to tell me his epiphany, "I had an interesting feeling today that if you allow it, the jo would actually keep moving by itself.  It is almost like dancing: you just have to follow its lead and you will be fine!"  I wonder if he could see my big smile behind the face mask, but I gave him a big, solid pat on the back, "Yup.  You got it!  That's exactly how it works."