How to teach

From agasan’s blog | and gnarly Google translated page here: (my highlights in bold)

When my teacher, Kuroiwa Yoshio sensei, was teaching at Hombu, he was once dispatched to teach at a certain dojo in the Tokyo area. The head of the dojo was also a kenjutsu practitioner, and was better known in that field. At one time Kisshomaru sensei was also going there, but overall it seems that that dojo head was a difficult person and all of the instructors who had been dispatched from Hombu to go there did not do so for long.

As I’m sure everyone who has ever received instruction from Kuroiwa sensei already knows, he teaches in a way that is very congenial and easy to understand. So, at the above dojo as well, after Kuroiwa sensei began to teach there, the number of students enrolling increased quite a bit.

However, he began to notice that there were fewer and fewer people coming to practice, and thinking it strange, asked about it to one of the students. He found out that the dojo head was tenaciously working to make the aikido students join the kenjutsu practice also. Some students said, “I enjoy aikido and would like to continue it, but I’m not interested in kenjutsu, so [I don’t think I’ll come anymore].” As it turned out, Kuroiwa sensei had been used as a lure for new students.

That was unacceptable, and sensei promptly quit going. As could be expected, the number of students drastically dropped, and the perplexed dojo head again requested Kuroiwa sensei to be dispatched. Kuroiwa sensei was supplicated by Kisshomaru sensei and again began to teach at the dojo. Again the number of students rose, and just when he was breathing a sigh of relief, the dojo head repeated his past behavior. This time sensei absolutely refused to go. It’s not that studying kenjutsu is bad, but it might be too much for a new aikido student to handle all at once.

By the way, the way Kuroiwa sensei teaches, he doesn’t distinguish between whether a person has been practicing for many years or few, or what the person’s rank is. In other words, even if there are differences in experience level, it might be that nobody is so perfect that they are outside of the relative need for improvement. Sensei’s understanding of logic and technique appear quite far from other people’s in general, such that a person with experience needs to struggle that much more to break apart what they know in order to get it. Thus it may require some conviction if one is to try to understand sensei. However this may be true to one degree or another with regards to receiving teaching in general.

This brings to mind another story. At a seminar a long time ago, an important person at the end of the shogunate was being honored. The representative at this gathering was someone who had taught aikido before. While that important person is someone who I myself respect, it is no wonder that the representative for such a gathering is also someone who I felt is a formidable person. I reckon that that person was higher ranking than Kuroiwa sensei (who only accepted 6th dan after being begged by Kisshomaru sensei). In any case that person conducted himself very well with regards to etiquette at the event. It’s likely that he may have been thrown off by movement that was different from the aikido that he was used to – however he practiced diligently, including asking questions.

It is not necessary to throw away the fruits of one’s practice as much as that person did. Even if you don’t undergo a “full model change”, it is the Kuroiwa style to change parts here and there, and get better by leaps and bounds that way. In fact this method may be the most effective for someone who has been doing aikido for many years and encounters walls and is faced with questions.

The average student does not grasp what the difference is between a person who is really good and a person who is not. Conversely, if a person were to grasp that, then they would be good. Currently I am now in a position to teach people and am gradually learning how to teach. To grasp the overall technique and the general flow is so obvious that it’s not necessary to make mention of it. In fact, it is more conducive to students’ gaining understanding if I err on the analytic side, coupled with clear details, e.g., the meanings of techniques, how to place one’s hips, how to move one’s feet, how to use one’s hands, etc.

Also, something that I currently think is one of the most important things is to practice such that one painstakingly breaks down movement, particularly the trajectories of the hands and feet. It is ideal if one can see (or thinks one can see) these trajectories. It may sound unscientific to say that one can see what is invisible, but there is value in doing repetition so that one can come to perceive thusly.

I don’t have the ability to express with the written word these trajectories. However, (and this is crucial) it does not force something unreasonable or cramped upon the opponent, yet at the same time be accompanied by movement that effects sufficient balance-breaking (movement that does not force something unreasonable or cramped upon the opponent is most effective). Please try studying it.

To think on how to teach so that people can understand is to revisit one’s own movement objectively and analytically, and is relevant to one’s own improvement. It is something to be grateful for.

Tradition, Ignorance, and (Inadvertent) Obfuscation

There has been some “pieces falling into place” in my brain recently, and I thought about why these things had to fall in place now and not earlier. There are various specific details and rationales that I am discovering underlie a lot of the things we in the aikido world do traditionally. Some of these things require a developed, or refined, sense, so that explaining or focusing on them excessively earlier would not necessarily have fit. For example, the idea that physical timing is not the ultimate element of technique/irimi would have been beyond me until I was able to embody some degree of facility with physical timing and positioning, as well as knowing and using my mind. On the other hand there are some things that could have fit.

“Knowledge is Power”; “Power Corrupts”

This could be related to the idea/realization that a lot of the “aikido greats” uchideshi were young when they were kicking butt and being sent overseas to spread the good word. And since they were young we might unwittingly forget that at that stage in their life as human beings and aikido practitioners they had more or less universal issues to wrestle with (or pass over), such as impatience, dogma, objectifying others, arrogance, expectations of others, etc. And since I have more or less been in the same stage of life in recent years, I know I face these issues myself.

Stigma (”Manipulative-ness”, “Resistance”, “Connection”)

Communication in general involves a lot of interpretation and presumptions, probably more so than we take for granted. When one is more in a receiving role, such as a student, there is accordingly more assimilating and conforming to the giver, or the teacher. That is, we try to adopt the teacher’s way of seeing and thinking, and the connotations of their words.

Perfection - When the middle way can’t be

I’ve been playing with a question that started forming when I left Seattle a few days ago. It originally felt like the problem of integrating, or deciding on some balance between, two mutually exclusive elements. This led to the heart of the matter: what I want for myself and what I’d like to impart to others ultimately (which are basically the same, as I am one person).

My weekend (4/4-4/6/08)

advanced theory/practical vs basics theory

I had a conversation recently with sensei in which he said clearly that what he did normally in his classes was theory, and that people need to take it upon themselves to get the basics. Furthermore, it is basics that enable a person to understand more advanced, as well as diverse (e.g. material from a different school), material, and provide the starting point from which a person departs and finds their own style. (For context simplicity’s sake: what sensei does in his classes could also be called “advanced practical” is putting basics into practice, and that might make more sense if we considered, here, basics classes as “theory”.)

I feel that I neglected to touch upon an important point from my conversation above:
Basics are the “starting point” from which we depart, deviate, adapt to fit reality, etc. What sensei is teaching, he said, and what everyone should do as far as creating/finding their own aikido, is depart from the starting point in a way that has validity and meaning for them.

Manipulative Behavior (cont.)

The parallel between conversation and dance has been often used. There’s rhythm, spacing, and all sorts of subtle cues, verbal and nonverbal. And as people within a certain culture we get used to a certain set of spacing, etc., and when someone doesn’t follow it, it feels a little weird and unnerving.

Aikido Metaphor, Language, DBT

I haven’t had any conscious, pseudo-literal applications of aikido principles for a long time now. Recently at a DBT training, the trainer challenged us to stop using the word “but” altogether and instead use the word “and”. I’ve been trying this and have been giving it some thought also. As I was explaining it to my wife, the aikido metaphor was all too clear, cheesy as it may be.

Know Thyself

I read in an interview one shihan’s statement that kata (forms) were a way for a person to be able to have a conversation with his own body/own self. While part of my brain registered that this could sound like a silly idea, it also made perfect sense. It has also occurred to me that, during my thoughts about inspiration and faith, and learning and development, that imagination is something that you use “on” yourself (and it’s also registered to me that this idea also might sound silly, like “I know who I am already. Should I act like a crazy person and imagine I’m superman?”) Even the use of imagery, at least in the way we usually conceive it, does not amount to what I’m thinking of as “imagination” here.

Manipulative Behavior

By coincidence, I have just come out of a meeting on Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, and there was a little rustling of feathers around the idea of the therapist focusing on getting the client’s commitment to therapy and to stay safe, and its resemblence to manipulation. It appears that, not only do we not like being manipulated, we don’t like the thought of being manipulative ourselves.

There are some parts to manipulative behavior that I’m seeing as I think about these questions.

Blog Stats - “Manipulative”

I noticed on my blog stats page that most recent search words that are bringing people here are variations on the word manipulation (eg how to deal with manipulative behavior). It is striking that it is such a “popular” idea. I think this has to do with its being fuzzy and undefined, yet bothersome. Anyway, I thought that, sometime in the near future, I’d write more on the topic with the search engine queries in mind.

Oppression - a reframe (2)

As I was reading my first “fly-by” of this topic I saw that what I wrote would give the impression that I misunderstood some points entirely and not address the original topic very much. I thought I’d like to make another pass though I won’t claim to even try to hit the nail on the head precisely. This is in the context of the student-teacher relationship and faith.

Is it the skill or the person? + Developing One’s Eye

a person can do all of these things but still be missing something.

As I accumulate experience/just plain get older while continuing to develop my eye i.e., try to see details while maintaining a constructive skepticism (”Am I really seeing everything?”), I become better at seeing exactly which parts of the “it” are missing. Sadly it’s easier for me to see these elements when the examples of lack are compared with examples in which they are present. In any case, developing my mind’s eye in this respect is mostly academic,

Productive Keiko

From a post on Aikiweb on Paul Kang sensei’s passing:In a class devoted to ukemi, while working on ukemi for ikkyo omote, he almost imperceptibly indicated an opening for uke to perform a double-leg takedown yet allowed nage to complete the technique without any resistance. Someone asked him about it immediately afterward and he said: “If you can’t take ukemi while looking for openings in which reversals might occur without always taking the opening, maybe aikido isn’t the martial art for you.”

When I put the above here a while back, the main word on my mind was “self-restraint”. However, I remembered something I heard once: “Aikido keiko is kata-geiko (forms-based practice) and competitions/contests combined.”