INNOCENT EYES

When I taught beginning painting, my students always had a series of homework assignments that involved looking:
1. Select a wall in your house, if possible at right angle to a window and painted a fairly pale color. Over the next week, observe it at different times of day/night and in different weather conditions. Using any kind of description or comparison, describe the various colors you see on the wall.
2. If possible, do the same thing with the ocean or a lake in the park.
3. After a class in color mixing using just the primary colors and white, I asked them to come up with as many "browns" as possible by blending one color with its complementary color in different proportions.

Painting is a visual art, and by the time adult learners come to me they have decades of received cultural baggage and iconic images. Sky is blue. Water is blue, or maybe green. My wall is the color of the paint I chose. A "duck"might be either a white bird or a mallard, but never a teal or a gadwall. So my first job as a teacher is to get them to learn to simply see.

Aikido presents a somewhat different conundrum. It is primarily a kinesthetic and tactile/sensual art, involving bodies in motion in relation to each other and mediated by touching. There are also visual and energetic elements, but without touch and movement there is nothing.

But teaching and learning is largely transmitted by watching demonstrations. A common problem for beginners is that they don't know what to look at/for: without a context - what I refer to above as received cultural baggage - they are overwhelmed and don't know if they should watch hands, feet, hips, steps, turns, the attack or the pin. Over time, with the physical practice combined with associating names with certain attacks or techniques, they become more sophisticated viewers and develop shorthand references to make sense of what they see: "Oh! A shoulder grab and he turns inward and does a shihonage. Cool variation!"

One problem with this is that often those darn iconic associations override what is actual there to be seen: "Oh! He's doing shihonage" but missing the details that make it a variation.

The other problem that often the important information is not as easily seen as it is felt. Some examples: Any single body movement can often be accomplished by engaging a variety of muscle combinations, and the results are really different. An apparent step backwards may actually be a very forward-directed movement. What looks like a roundhouse may be a linear cut accompanied by a hip turn. What looks like a throw caused by a hand movement may have originated in the center of the body.

I learned many years ago that the most valuable question to ask a teacher is "may I feel that?" - in other words, please apply the technique to me so my body can feel what your body is actually doing. I have also learned that at times, if I trust my partner, it is helpful for one or two times to slowly work with eyes closed in order to block out confusing or conflicting visual input and only feel - whether I was the attacker or the defender.

Now when I am on the side watching people train, maybe because we are doing line technique or I'm tired and sitting out, what I pay attention to are peoples' body use and energy -- posture, efficiency of movement, groundedness, integration of front and back, connection -- and how those factors seem to affect outcomes.