Two Hundred and Twenty-three

Distillation.

When the temporal separation
of my mind and body
has narrowed to the point

where

my mind and body are functioning
as a single unit
there is no perceptible gap
between thinking and doing.

Two Hundred and Twenty-two

To closely coordinate mind and body I must endeavor to bring them into close temporal alignment. As I've stated in prior posts, absolute temporal alignment of mind and body is not possible due to the time lag that the mind experiences processing sensory input. However, the two can be brought together without limit as their degree of temporal separation approaches zero. A non-Aikido example may help to clarify what I mean.

When I set out to do a painting the first thing I do is think about what it is that I am going to paint. I consider subject, composition, color pallet and preparation of materials. All of those considerations share in common the fact that they are parts of a future act and as I ponder them my mind moves further from the moment as I visualize the finished work. My mind and body become increasingly separated in temporal space the further my visualization process goes.

When I actually begin the physical process of applying paint to canvas all of those future musings go away. The brush moves seemingly of its own volition, not that it actually does; but by that time the temporal separation of my mind and body has narrowed to the point where mind and body are functioning as a single unit. The separation is too narrow for me to perceive consciously.

It can be seen from my example that mind/body coordination is not a binary state.  Mind/body coordination is continuous. What varies is the degree of coordination at any given moment. Aikido practice provides me with the venue I need to explore very close to the horizon of now; to feel and strengthen my awareness of the present with my whole being. When my mind and body are closely coordinated I am in my strongest, most dependable state.

Two Hundred and Twenty-one

Connection once established
is unidirectional,
from nage to uke
but not the reverse.

Uke is fully accessible to nage,
while nage remains "hidden";
simultaneously slightly ahead
and behind.

Uke, free to move with autonomy,
is unable to intersect with nage
as points of intersection
become tangents on meeting.

Two Hundred and Twenty

Maintain correct posture.

My overall posture is composed of two separate components that come together, appropriately enough, at One Point. External posture is the posture of my body. It is characterized by how I maintain my physical structure in space. Internal posture is the posture of my mind. It is characterized by how I see myself in my mind's eye. External and internal posture combine to form a co-referential feedback loop which can prove extremely empowering.

The cooperative nature of Aikido training serves to foster correct external and internal postures. Over time as I continue to train, lapses of posture are less frequent and correct posture becomes my natural and most dependable state.

Two Hundred and Nineteen

Train to become progressively more relaxed.

When I first started my study of Aikido the sentiment above was stated simply as "Relax Completely." Shortly after leaving Ki Society and forming Kokikai, Maruyama sensei changed it to "Progressive Relaxation." He reasoned that complete relaxation would leave one with the structure of a cooked noodle, no form, no strength. He wanted to preserve the idea that relaxation is an integral part of coordinating mind and body  while doing away with the notion that complete relaxation was attainable or even desirable. Keeping with the idea proposed in my previous post that these "principles" are really instructional guidelines I rephrased "train to become progressively more relaxed."

A coordinated mind/body is greatly facilitated by a relaxed mind and relaxed body. A stiff mind is a mind that cannot be emptied, that cannot cede conscious control over the body. A stiff mind remains separate from the body thereby preventing the occurrence of mind/body coordination. A stiff body is a body that is partitioned and cannot move as an integrated whole. Whenever I lock a joint I disrupt communication across that joint and weaken my structure. If I use muscle tension to ward off an incoming force I provide uke with a place to "rest" since my tensed muscles prohibit the body part being loaded from passing the force along and being dissipated. When my mind and body are relaxed incoming forces have no where to land and be applied.

My relaxed mind is sharp, my relaxed body is strong, integrated and free of tension. My coordinated mind/body is my most dependable state. As I continue to train I become progressively more relaxed, more completely integrated, more "One Pointed."

Two Hundred and Eighteen

Keep One Point.

One Point is where my mind and body come together. It is not a point in space. Not a location in my body; though that is sometimes a useful metaphor for envisioning the result of the dissolution of the separation of mind and body. My mind and body are welded together by intent which, when it becomes the sole focus of both, facilitates the emergence of mind/body, my most dependable state. One Point is connection, the primary connection I must make with myself before I can hope to effectively connect with uke. Aikido training is a vehicle which provides me with the tools I need to discover and strengthen One Point.

Keep One Point. It's not a principle, it's an instruction.

Two Hundred and Seventeen

Of late I have been examining the nature of working the edge of an encounter with uke. I define the edge of an encounter as a point at which my energy and ukes energy cancel each other out and our meeting becomes push/pull free. The objective of working the edge is to extend the point of equilibrium continuously through the entire encounter, stretching it, as it were, to form an edge along which uke and I move.

Working the edge, along with my occupying the epicenter of our combined motion, allows me to simultaneously lead and follow uke while guiding him into a state of unbalance which will give rise to a technique that's derived logically and naturally from our interaction.

Two Hundred and Sixteen

I connect with uke in all three realms; manifest, hidden and divine.

Our manifest connection is characterized by our physical contact and our motion. Our motion, if in concert,  dictates physical contact that is suggestive and encouraging rather than demanding and forcing. When we move in concert we move as one, our kinetic energies becoming additive.

Our hidden connection is somewhat harder to characterize; it is, after all, hidden. The hidden realm is the province of the mind, the seat of emotive behavior. My goal in connecting on this level is to become something of a void into which uke's emotional energy may fall and be dissipated. I can be engulfed by uke's emotions but I do not provide them a place to land. I let them swirl down into the void I have created and let them blow themselves out harmlessly.

Our divine connection... well, truthfully, I am still working on formulating a metaphor for this. I have only recently been able to verbalize the role of spirit as the facilitator of the mind/body unification process and as of yet I have not been able to see how this translates to a connection with uke in the divine realm. Perhaps our divine connection enables the unification of nage and uke into nage/uke in much the same way that my spirit enables and augments my mind/body emergence. I will continue exploring this aspect of my training and revisit it in a future post.

Two Hundred and Fifteen

I began this year's spring seminar by holding up a quarter. I noted that the quarter has two faces, one we call heads the other we call tails. I then asked the students to consider where one face ends and the other begins. I asked them to imagine what happens at the interface of the change in identity where heads becomes tails and tails becomes heads.

This little intro segued into the theme of the seminar which dealt with the unification of mind and body. Unifying mind and body is a core goal of Aikido study and practice. From a unified mind/body Ki is generated and correct feeling is realized. So what happens at the mind/body interface? What facilitates the unification process? How is it that the hidden and manifest realms of self are able to come together so completely that the sum is greater than the individual parts?

Understanding the nature of the ideas posed by these three questions requires a third component of the unification process... spirit. It's only by examining the role played by the divine realm of self in the unification of mind and body that I can begin to glean the answers. Spirit is kind of the ugly step child of the unification triad. I think this is more due to the word "spirit" itself than the underlying role it plays in the process of unification. For some the word evokes religious overtones, others see it as leading to the adoption of "New Age" ideas as the foundation of the practice of Aikido. Still others see the word spirit connected to the notion of the supernatural. I subscribe to none of these views and see spirit as a necessary ingredient for the bringing together the disparate natures of mind and body.

Imagine a beaker that contains two liquids, one blue the other yellow. Now suppose the blue liquid has a lower relative density than the yellow liquid. If the beaker is left undisturbed the liquids will, over time, separate, the blue rising to the top, the yellow settling to the bottom. Let's say that there's another substance that I can introduce into the beaker that will change the nature of the blue and yellow liquids at the boundary of their separation in such a way as to cause them to unify and transform into a substance that possesses characteristics of all three but is wholly none of them. Increasing the amount the catalyst intensifies the interaction. The strength of the interaction can be inferred by measuring the  overall thickness of the resulting green boundary layer.

Spirit, like the catalyst in the above thought experiment is the facilitator of the unification of mind and body. Spirit allows the transformation of mind and body into mind/body which possesses characteristics all three but is wholly none of them. When my spirit is strong mind/body is easy to manifest, Ki flows effortlessly and correct feeling is easily achieved. The emergence of mind/body is considerably more difficult when my spirit is weak. It is the nature of the process such that the strengthening of correct feeling also enhances my spirit which further strengthens the mind/body connection so that the resulting interaction of spirit and mind/body is seen to be symbiotic.

Two Hundred and Fourteen

Uke can only be either in motion or stationary. If uke is in motion there's no need for me to move him. If uke is stationary, again, there's no need for me to move him.

Uke can only attack while he's moving. Since he's moving there's no need for me to move him.

Uke attacks and stops, remaining motionless. Since he's not moving he's not attacking and there's no need for me to move him.

Two Hundred and Thirteen

The rooms of my mind harbor
the memories of my life.

Door upon door to my left
to my right,
some weathered,
darkened with age,
cob webs adorn the corners.

Others new,
fresh with drying paint.

Many are locked
and how to open them
eludes me,
though not all
are aged
that are forgotten.

Aikido practice has wrought
it's changes on me
at a much deeper level
than memory.

For as long as I
can step on the mat
and move,
there is no need
for me to remember
what I have learned,
for I am
a product of that learning.

Aikido is growth
and change
and speaks
to each individual differently.

Two Hundred and Twelve

From the standpoint of the constructal law, Aikido can be seen as a tool I can use to, over time, alter my shape and structure so as to more efficiently coordinate mind and body. Coordination of mind and body intensifies my awareness of one point which in turn promotes correct feeling. Ki is the current of correct feeling.

The exercises employed in Aikido practice (Ki development, techniques, weapons work, solo and partnered training) affect the shape and structure of both my mind and body without my having to consciously direct those changes. Consequently, the resulting me arises naturally out of the practice. The form of the change I undergo as a result of my training is governed by the constructal law to promote easier access to and more efficient manipulation of the flow of Ki.

Two Hundred and Eleven

'The constructal law was stated by Adrian Bejan  in 1996 as follows: "For a finite-size system to persist in time (to live), it must evolve in such a way that it provides easier access to the imposed currents that flow through it."  - Bejan, Adrian (1997). Advanced Engineering Thermodynamics, (2nd ed.). New York: Wiley'

and

"The constructal law is a first principle of physics that accounts for all design and evolution in nature. It holds that shape and structure arises to facilitate flow. The designs that arise spontaneously in nature reflect this tendency: they allow entities to flow more easily – to measurably move more current farther and faster for less unit of useful energy consumed. - Bejan, A; Lorente, S (2006). Constructal Theory of Generation of Configuration in Nature and Engineering, Journal of Applied Physics. Vol. 100: 041301.'

According to Bejan the constructal law deals with nature's propensity to evolve designs that facilitate flow. Designs that move currents from an area to a point and/or from a point to an area (tree-like designs, circulatory and nervous systems are examples).

As I was reading about this an image of an Aikido encounter arose in my mind. The image conveyed that as the encounter begins uke and I are area bound. As we come together along the paths of our motion we proceed from an area bound configuration to one that is increasingly point bound. The technique executed will take us through the point bound state back to an area bound state as we disengage. The totality of our interaction forms a tree-like structure and its mirror image, as though reflected in a still pond.

Within the context of Aikido, the shape and structure we form facilitates the flow of Ki. As I continue to practice I am better able to shape and structure my movements in order to move more Ki through our connection using less energy. My goal is to ultimately be able to merge my motion with my uke to such a fine degree that our energies become completely additive. Growth via Aikido training is an excellent example of the constructal law in action. Growing more coordinated in mind and body I am able to more efficiently move greater and greater amounts of Ki using less and less energy. In addition, the changes wrought in me provide me with easier access to the Ki that is the result of a coordinated mind and body.

Two Hundred and Ten

With both of us in natural stance, my partner grabs my lapels and holds tightly. His aim is to prevent me from turning my body either left or right via the application of force against my upper torso. I want to turn my body without having to rely on moving my feet from natural stance. My first inclination is to just bull my way through the turn; possible, but difficult even against a partner I can clearly overpower. Turning in that manner involves lots of shoulders and upper body muscle strength. Not much in the way of correct feeling there.

Next I might try to forego the shoulder push and sneak up on the turn by subtly withdrawing one shoulder and then forcefully coming forward with the other one as my partner uses strength to counter my retreat. With a partner who lets his awareness waver this method can be successful. It is, however, just the flip side of the power through maneuver, though it relies more on speed and surprise than raw strength. *Sigh*. Not correct feeling either.

 No, confronting his power directly is not what I am looking for in order to perform the exercise with correct feeling. I will need to coordinate mind and body in order to take up slack and move into the turn with my whole body integrated and connected. 

When I demonstrate the idea of taking up slack in this exercise I use a physical metaphor as follows: Let's say I decide to turn to my left. My right shoulder will approach my partner while my left shoulder will move away from him as a result of the turn. To demonstrate taking up slack before I move into the turn I extend my right shoulder very slightly to my right and extend my left shoulder very slightly to my left using small circular motions on the direction of my turn before beginning to turn into my partner. This has the effect of neutralizing his hold on my lapels. The result is that I am able to turn freely (provided I am able to move my body as a unit, more on that in a bit). 

Of course if I were to try this for real my partner would make adjustments to his holds and stop me from moving. But it is only a metaphor for what's occurring inside. In actual practice I will use his handholds as points of connection and perform the taking up slack maneuver without moving. When I am on the grabbing side of the exercise and my partner does this correctly he seems to go away and I feel like I'm holding an empty jacket. 

Having taken up the slack, I must now move my body as a connected unified structure in order to effect the turn. I notice that I don't lead the turn from my hips, waist or shoulders. Rather, they all move as a single unit. I also make note of the fact that my one of my legs will turn slightly outward, the other inward as my body turns.

As with all partnered Ki exercises, my partner will apply just enough resistance to take me just to the point  of failure to give me the opportunity to move through it. If I am unable to he will back off slightly until I can perform the exercise correctly.

Enjoy.