Zanshin Art

NEW AIKIWEB COLUMN UP

2012-01-27T17:33:00.000-08:00

The latest column by The Mirror is up at Aikiweb. It's one of our now and then "round robins" where several of us contribute and I collate/edit.
When we started this column over seven years ago, I suggested the title The Mirror because, like a crystal mirror, it would be reflections of our practice. It's been interesting to compare our writings over the years with those of many of the male columnists on Aikiweb: some of them tend to philosophize or put things in abstract terms that frankly I just don't understand or relate to. Our columns tend to be much more down to earth and relate to "off the mat" concerns, training issues, or other practical stuff.

SHIFTING WEIGHT

2012-01-21T04:47:00.000-08:00

Shift weight through the center
Not just foot to foot
Pulling rather than pushing

The slow back and forth ikkyo partner exercise becomes an excellent training device for exploring how to do this while connected to another person.

MOVIN' ON

2011-11-30T20:59:00.000-08:00

Over the years this blog has evolved. At this point I'm finding it less "user friendly" than many other resources on the internet. So while it is not "going away," I will not be adding to it for now.
My longer essays on aikido continue to get published as part of The Mirror column on Aikiweb (it's a monthly column I coedit with other women, and I typically write two or three pieces per year).
Information about what's going on in my studio in terms of custom sewing, fine arts, etc. is on a public Facebook page and on a public Google+ page and I invite you to "like" or subscribe to one or both of those.
For more general stuff like links about health, anatomy, etc. I'll be exclusively using a tumblr blog I've had for a while that is much easier than this site for sharing links, photos, etc. I thank all who have read and commented over the years and hope to hear from you on another site in the future.

AH, WELL....

2011-11-21T22:54:00.001-08:00

So I work on exercises for structure and balance and better body usage....and I go to the dojo...and I start to move with a partner....and yep the instructor comes over and points out where I'm stiff, where I'm holding tension, where my movements are imbalanced.
I KNOW it is/I am "a work in progress" and mostly that's fine but every now and I then I wish it was a little more progress for all the work.

Vibram Five Fingers ROCK

2011-09-15T21:58:00.000-07:00

Ok...so my knee travails started 11 yrs ago when my ACL/medial meniscus blew out...lots of ups & downs, times off the mat....and the severe knee pain of osteoarthritis that has limited my training + other activities.

Since starting to work on internal stuff - which involves a fair amount of standing w/ weight shifts, which Really Bothers The Knee - I've also starting focusing more especially since the seminar in Seattle on what it means to really use natural movement, to have good structure, to relax, etc... and even with opening my hips more and letting them take over for my knees, my knee was Not Happy.

At the same time...over the years I've been less and less tolerant of shoes. A dozen years before starting aikido, I had a very bad case of plantar fasciitis, had both feet taped for weeks, was given custom rigid orthotics and exercises....and with time, it seemed the "better" the shoe was, the more rigid the orthotic was, the more my foot would fight it. I'd buy "good" shoes and give them away after two months. Ended up buying cheap shit and never wearing the same style more than two days in a row in an attempt to keep my feet happy.

As of two weeks ago I was down to three pairs of shoes I could wear, each with limited uses due to color or general condition. At home, going barefoot. So I decided to give the Vibram Five Fingers a try just to see if they would make my feet happy.

I bought them Monday, wore them in the office a few hours, very happy feet. I wore them Tuesday in the office six hours, very happy feet. Oh and by the way, my knee didn't hurt either day...
Wednesday I wore them all morning, then to my one hour QuiGong class (standing weight shifts on wood floor: ALWAYS hurts my knee), then drove my pickup an hour and walked down a dirt and rock slope to a patient's shack, visited, walked back up the slope and drove home. Did I mention my knee didn't hurt?

Today I wore them all day at work, seeing clients, walking around town...finally took them off to train at the dojo. During tonight's class, felt so good that for the first time in 11 years, I shikko'd - four steps - to demo proper body use to a newbie. My knee didn't hurt.

My structure and relaxation might not be great (yet) but hey, did I mention that my knee doesn't hurt?

THOUGHTS A FEW DAYS AFTER...

2011-08-25T23:34:00.000-07:00

There was a lot to watch, feel, learn and do at the three day Aiki workshop in Seattle. A more cogent essay will likely emerge for my October contribution to The Mirror in Aikiweb. Meanwhile a few thoughts.

It was manifestly clear that the area I most need to work on is posture/structure. Kaizen Taki worked with me 1:1 during an open mat session, giving some very specific feedback and recommendations from a Systema perspective that I've already started integrating into my sitting and walking. Toby Threadgill also demonstrated some exercises for identifying proper structure that I've started playing with.

Of course, on the mat, in the middle of training is still going to be the hardest place to keep new stuff "in there" and in last night's class my very poor posture was brought to my attention at a time I was totally unaware if it. The work continues....

Another thing both Kaizen and Howard Popkin talked about a lot was remaining relaxed under pressure (Howard thought we ALL were too stiff and so opened the Sunday session with paper cups of sacramental sake all around!) Kaizen had us specifically working on exercises to selectively tense and relax individual muscles and to relax out of pins or uncomfortable holds. I did pretty well with that but will keep refining it as there is plenty of room for development! I realize I hold a lot of tension right in my core and believe it is related to poor posture - yes, it's all related....

ILL PREPARED, FRUSTRATED BY MY LIMITS

2011-08-10T21:59:00.000-07:00

Aargh. Demoralized by things I can and cannot control.....I suppose sometimes facing that squarely IS the training.

Have asked at least once a week for a month for a copy of the disc for studying weapons at home and still have not received it. So I came into weapons class feeling ill-prepared, not having done enough homework. Then towards the end of class, tired and frustrated, I let myself be drawn into a side conversation when I know better etiquette than to do that - should have just quietly suggested we resume training.

But the number one frustration is, as always, my own limitations as a learner of movement based arts. I have never been able to learn more than one kata at a time because if I am presented with too many new pieces I only recall the most recently performed one. It's the same as getting directions from point A to point B: when a person tells me to make a left, go two blocks, bear right then at the toplight make another right, each new instruction will have replaced the previous one; I need either written directions or a map. Perhaps I need to simply going with the flow of the information and absorb what I can each time? I honestly don't know.

What I do know is that if and when I ever do get the videos, it will be just the start of my at-home practice:since I can't learn by watching or by hearing directions. I will make written notes based on watching snippets of the video, then parse out the movements a couple at a time, step by step, from that written language-based study sheet. Believe it or not, every weapons kata I ever learned from anybody's system was done that way.

I don't mind doing the work....because I really hate showing up unprepared.
And, yeah, because even though it's hard to learn, I really really love DOING weapons training.

ADDENDUM, THURSDAY MORNING: In order to take responsibility for my own homework, I've done some exploring and found on youtube very good videos of Saito Sensei both slowly doing AND explaining the kumi tachi - slowly enough for me to write notes and start practicing both sides.

SEATTLE PRINCIPLES OF AIKI SEMINAR 2011

2011-08-08T21:59:00.000-07:00

I haven't been on a vacation (which is generally me and Stu on a road trip) in over five years, haven't traveled past San Francisco since going to New York nearly two years ago to help my mom get ready to move out here...and with our low budget and the price of filling the gas tank, Stu and I have even given up on pleasure drives to the coast.
But nearly a year ago I got an email about this seminar and in a little over a week I'm flying up to Seattle for a few days.
Last year, I told Stu the registration money was coming out of our dwindling savings and that somehow when the time came I would also come up with the bucks to get there. Fortunately I sold a bunch of weapons bags earlier this year.
How will my body hold up to this all day/three day schedule? I don't know. Sort of don't care. If I didn't go I'd regret it always, and life is too short for that.

KEIKO FUKUDA NAMED 10TH DAN

2011-08-06T18:00:00.000-07:00

I'm so sorry Gayle Fillman Sensei didn't get to see this...her mentor, 98 year old judo master, surviving original student of Kano Sensei, becomes the first woman and one of only four people to ever be awarded 10th dan.

THANKS BE TO UKE!

2011-08-02T18:08:00.001-07:00

Last night was a good night at the dojo.
We have a big, strong, energetic young guy who is fairly new but a very good, connected uke - works hard at finding the area between tanking and resisting that gives nage real feedback - which is a real gift because each and every hole in my default settings (Oh, like YOU don't have default settings? bet you do....) is immediately apparent.
Good reality checks!

TRANSFORMATION EVERY TIME

2011-07-26T05:50:00.000-07:00

It's odd how body awareness and pain work. There is a predictable pattern during most aikido classes:
During breathing practice, after a certain length of time, physical stillness creates hyperawareness of discomfort, interfering with the breath exercise because of a desire to get up and move freely.
During warmups, enjoying those that involve active range of motion but most of them aren't and so I get uncomfortable but try to convert the stretches into range of motion.
During rolling practice, feeling like I've hit the limit of what my knee can handle.
The overall effect of the start of class is that while working to prepare for "the meat and potatoes" of training, I'm actually feeling worse and worse and wonder if/how I'll make it through class.
Then things start to improve with ki exercises, moving freely, truly warming up, while also getting mind and body focused on center and four principles.
And then...bowing in to a partner and training...and somehow the body that was stiff and cranky and hyperaware of every pain is moving, reaching, striking, connecting, falling, turning, getting up...the mind, taken out of it's focus in the body's internal state, reaches out to connect with another person...sometimes the knee will override and demand I sit down. But most nights as I bow out it is with equal parts amazement at the transition that has happened and profound gratitude for the gift of aikido.

MY TWO DOJOS...

2011-07-12T14:32:00.000-07:00

...OR THE BENEFITS OF ONLINE COMMUNITY.

In January of 1996 I bowed into an aikido dojo. Sometime late that year I signed onto an email list called aikido-l. Ever since then, I have been part of aikido in both the real world and a seemingly nebulous online world. The latter might seem silly or extraneous. But keep in mind that it comprises real people, talking to each other...and it is not an exaggeration to say that without it's support I would probably not still be training.

During my second year of training, a situation arose in which a person very much senior to me acted in a way that I considered a serious ethical issue - not interpersonal but regarding the dojo. I felt I couldn't continue to train there. Being a newbie, having a problem with a highly respected and well liked person, there was literally nobody local for me to turn to for advice. Via aikido-l, I was able to reach out to a yudansha living thousands of miles away, who I had developed a lot of respect for, whose history and affiliation was in a different organization, and with whom I could correspond in Spanish (what can I say? Vietnam War-era lefties have reasons for residual bits of paranoia that surface under stress...). His advice made it much easier for me to make the necessary transition to another dojo. I honestly don't know if I would have continued training without feeling I had the ability for this "backup" for reality checking and support from my online community.

That same year, prompted by Jun Akiyama, we started organizing the first aikido-l seminar. This was before the Aiki Expo, a lot of "friendship" or "bridge" types of seminars; for the most part different styles of aikido still weren't talking to each other. In 1998 we met in San Antonio. The instructors were all volunteers active on aikido-l and included
Chuck Clark, 7th dan, Jiyushinkai Aikibudo
Carlos Escobar, 4th dan, Kurita Juku Aikido
Chuck Gordon, Renshi (Chuden), Kokoro-ryu Aiki Budo
Dennis Hooker, 5th dan, Shinkai Aikikai
George Simcox, 5th dan, Virgina Ki Society

As a relative newbie (2 1/2 years of training but a very slow learner), a lot of the instruction went right over my head! But a key lesson I took away was that no one dojo has the "right way" to do any particular technique, and that there are valuable lessons to be learned from a variety of styles and teaching methods. I would never fall into the "us versus them" mentality.

Over the course of subsequent years (and a few more aikido-l seminars - complete list HERE; I was at four of them), I continued to benefit from the ongoing online exchange of ideas and support from people I had either trained with or hoped to some day, and from the real-life opportunity to train with a wide variety of partners. This has not led me to better technique so much as it has helped me refine what is possible in aikido and what my personal goals are. Without this exposure to alternate visions of aikido I may not have made some changes in where and how I train when maintaining a status quo would have been to the detrimental to my development.

By the time I had my knee injury and was pondering my future in aikido, aikiweb was up and running and was supplanting aikido-l as the main online community. Writing and editing as one of women who comprise "The Mirror" column gave me a chance to explore my personal issues, warts and all, in a long essay format. Learning to keep a neutral and respectful tone in sometimes contentious discussion threads has been another way to practice "aikido off the mat." The support I have received from people I've learned to respect and trust on aikiweb was key in keeping me on the mat until accumulated health issues made me feel I just couldn't do it, and then in bringing me back after a two year hiatus.

It is true there is no substitute for training - those who say "it has to be felt" are absolutely right! - it is equally true there is value in having people from around the world find a place in which to share ideas, provide feedback and support, and make arrangements to meet and learn from each other on the mat.

A DIFFERENT KIND OF PLATEAU

2011-07-07T04:14:00.000-07:00

In 2004, in a column for aikiweb on Aikido and spirituality, I wrote:

Painting is how I mediate the world, the process by which I integrate my experience of receiving the world into myself. Aikido is how I connect with the world, the process by which I learn to be a human being with other human beings.

Seven years later I find myself wondering if I'll ever get near where I want to be, not just technically on the mat, but the learning to be a human being part.

When I was a child I trusted books and I trusted animals. Humans, whether other kids or adults, were a mystery to me. I certainly couldn't articulate it back then, but truly how they thought, why they acted or spoke as they did, what motivated them...none of it made much sense. The quintessential nerdy little girl, I was the outsider who silently observed, asking no questions, just watching and trying to learn.

Over the years the basic social skills developed so in my teens I had a circle of like-minded friends (the misfit artists and antiwar activists). But to this day I am only really comfortable either in very quiet one to one conversations or in situations where there is a very clear role to play (whether it is task-specific, like collecting tickets at the door to an event, performance, like a political action, or professional, like being a nurse). Faced with a group, even of people I know, when there is no specific role to play or project for us to work on I vacillate between the extremes of hanging back as a silent observer, interjecting myself awkwardly and hoping for the best, or getting flustered and babbling.

One thing I love about aikido is that when I let it, it is the closest I can get with human beings to the interactions I have with critters: with open eyes, mind and heart, enjoying a physical and movement based connection. But still, when the training is over and we bow out, some days it just feels like I'm back to square one, the awkward and inappropriate outsider. There are training plateaus in aikido that can be prolonged and frustrating...I guess sometimes they happen in life itself, too.....

AIKIMUTT AT PLAY AND AT PONDER

2011-06-19T11:59:00.000-07:00

Three very different training sessions in one week...Monday night, Carol Sensei adapted class to a new student, parsing out katetori ikkyo and having us go through it very slowly. Wednesday night, Jay Sensei came up from Santa Rosa to lead us further through Iwama style weapons with a continuing focus on the two sides of the 31 jo kata. Friday afternoon I met Brandon and his dad in a space they are using in Willits, with Brandon leading an exploration of blending exercises leading into techniques....then a few days to let random musings simmer, putting this week’s activity into the perspective of lessons already learned and my current goals.

This aiki-mutt has learned valuable things from every dojo she ever joined or visited. One thing I treasure from the years spent as a newbie in USAF dojos was Chiba Sensei’s approach to weapons, which invests the training with the etiquette and the martial intent of a koryu art, a focus on accuracy and there only being one correct way to do any movement. I took to this avidly and upon changing dojos missed this aspect of training for several years, before finding a Suio Ryu study group in San Francisco in 2007 - only to move away up north several months later. So now while I find myself frustrated at times trying to learn specific new moves within the Iwama weapons system, even more strong is the sense of familiarity (I know HOW to approach this) and the sheer delight in the training.

The benefits of also spending at least some training time each week on slow empty hand practice have been clear to me since my first knee injury over ten years ago, when I had no choice but to move slowly and cautiously, neither taking rolls/falls as uke nor completing throws as nage. Back then, it was a chance to explore body position relative to my partner and where/how to find kuzushi. Now I find it is only at a slow pace that there is any chance to start integrating what I learn from solo internal training into my aikido practice.

What I’ve been working on in solo training is generating movement and power directly from my center, while remaining relaxed and playing with weighting and groundpath options. Integrating this into my aikido relies on establishing a real connection from my center to my partner. This can’t be learned if the partner is overly resistant, since that blocks the connection. It also can’t be learned if the partner is overly compliant, since that results in a false degree of positive feedback.

I’ve been puzzling over the idea of blending versus connecting. It strikes me that they are not the same thing and that it is very possible to have one without the other.

A blending exercise plays with ma’ai, exploring distance, timing, and body position/movement between the partners. Such an exploration, done without first establishing connection, essentially becomes a dance in which neither partner is actually affecting the other.

What interests me is not “blending” but what I’d call “unifying” - using intent, awareness of centerline, and moving from my center to establish a connection. If done correctly, nage/uke becomes one system for which, optimally, nage is providing the structural integrity, hence is able to undermine uke. From this position, technique manifests. It is if nage loses that integrity or connection that a softly connected, continually attacking (but not resistant) uke will find the opportunity to reverse - again, technique manifests.

At least, that’s how I understand it today. Ask me again after I've been out playing more.....

DOWN TIME

2011-05-22T18:49:00.000-07:00

I haven't been able to train in over a week due to illness, and the first half of this week looks like it will be a washout due to residual sinus problems impairing breathing and energy. What I have managed to do at home is the 31 jo kata, twice daily, very slowly and aiming for precision, plus some isometrics the PT suggested to strengthen my glutes (the likely cause of some psoas and quadratus lumborum issues) and a little silk reeling and tree-hugging.

I also haven't had the focus and energy to sew, but have been looking at fabric. The hemp/recycled poly blend I bought for gi pants would likely also make a very good summer gi - it is lightweight and drapes beautifully - and since we often are training in 90+ weather, lighter weight wear is really helpful. So at least it is laundered and ready for whenever I am.

Beginnings and Endings

2011-05-13T10:43:00.000-07:00

Thursday morning I was thinking about the previous night's weapons class and figuring I'd write about how, even after fifteen years, I retain the ability to be confounded anew by a previously unseen movement. The main thing is that after all these years, there are few basic building block movements I haven't yet learned, so it is easy to forget for months or years at a time how hard-fought each technique was.....how my inborn neurological strengths and weaknesses do not predispose me to learn a body/movement based art easily.

Then I got an email from somebody I haven't seen in several years. She tracked me down via my website to say "...you should know that Jeff Fox died last week of a massive heart attack caused by congestive heart failure. I don't think he was active in the Aikido community so I don't know if any of his old friends or students know of his passing. You were his first student here, and I thought you should be informed."

I was Jeff's student from the start of 1996 through half of 1997. I walked into his class with no real idea of what aikido was as distinct from any other martial art. He was incredibly patient with this older, awkward beginner, yet never condescending. When it was clear I was terrified to forward roll, he didn't bat an eyelash but started me on suwariwaza shomenuchi ikkyo and katatetori sumiotoshi and let me approach rolling in my own time. His approach casually assumed that I would succeed, and this was so consistent a message that I seemed to internalize it: despite having no innate talent and having to work hard every step of the way, it never occurred to me to stop showing up. It would have been incredibly easy to blow me off as not worth the effort, or to let a stray comment or even gesture shatter my self-confidence.

Jeff deserves full credit for starting me on the path that has so enriched my life. I hope the years were kind to him and his passing swift and merciful.

WORKING WITH THE DISABLED

2011-03-25T11:52:00.000-07:00

This is an article about a 65 year old woman in Vietnam who teaches aikido to children with disabilities.

SEMINAR WITH IKEDA SENSEI

2011-03-14T13:21:00.000-07:00

This weekend was the first time I've ever been on the mat for an Ikeda Sensei seminar. It also marked my first seminar, period, in quite some years, this partly due to financial constraints but also largely due to shyness about feeling not up to my own standards because of my knee and intermittent issues with forward rolls (as in, sometimes just can't do them on one side, period).

One things about seminars is, if the mat is crowded, nobody expects you to do much rolling, and especially since the true focus here was on issues of engaging center to take kuzushi, it was easy to do slower practice and just go to the point of breaking balance. A few times when I did take backfalls, a partner looked askance and I had to explain it is actually a lot easier for me to go down than to stagger in order to stay upright! Friday evening, about an hour and a half in, the weird thing that sometimes happens to the back of my bad knee happened (I assume it's a hamstring tendon) and I promptly bowed out and sat down for the rest of the evening. Saturday I made it through both two hour sessions with no problems.

Besides training in aikido at my local dojo two or three times a week, for almost a year now I've been doing solo training nearly daily including the type of silk-reeling and "tree-hugging" groundpath exercises folks have been talking about on aikiweb. I've been doing them with the very concrete focus of learning to literally "move my center" as a physical phenomenon rather than a metaphorical or metaphysical one. I've started integrating this body awareness into my regular aikido training, finding it brings a very different flavor and benefit to our ki exercises, and just taking baby steps in terms of trying to bring up these abilities with a partner attached.

So given what I've been reading and hearing about how Ikeda Sensei has been teaching, I was very excited to be in a roomful of people at least some of whom would be explicitly working on the same things I am, and receiving instruction from somebody who is explicitly teaching along these lines.

Oh, it was so cool. Ikeda Sensei would actually show how the movement of center could be grossly amplified so it was visible in his whole body, then bring it down smaller so just his center would be visibly moving (OOH! I thought, that's how my body looks when I'm doing my ki exercises in front of the dojo mirror!), then bringing it down even smaller so there was no visible external movement....just an inability from his (at times quite uncooperative) ukes to maintain their structural integrity. His instructions and explanations were often couched in humor but were jargon-free and totally accessible.

My partners, all of whom were quite delightful people, included some of the usual "just doing the techniques I know, thank you" folks, some real newbies with wide eyes doing their darndest to "get it," some well-meaning folks too limp or too "nice" to actually reflect what I may have been doing (as in, I know darn well I didn't have THAT much effect on you...) - and yes, quite a number of people, from various backgrounds and ranks, who like me are on the path of actively working on learning this stuff and giving the best somatic and sometimes verbal feedback on what they were feeling from me and interested in receiving my feedback.

So I came away feeling that I am making very real progress on the path I have chosen and that it is safe for me to go to seminars.

On the drive home I got profoundly anxious and had to get off the freeway. I suspected low blood sugar, but found myself driving through the streets of a town in Sonoma County weeping uncontrollably for Gayle Fillman Sensei, or rather, really, for my losing a teacher at what is in many ways a critical time in my training. I know I will be reaching out to like-minded aikidoka but it would have been so nice to sit down and discuss this stuff over a cup of tea with her....

MORE WEAPONS KATA, PLEASE, SIR!

2011-03-10T15:00:00.000-08:00

We had a guest instructor last night, Jay Bell Sensei from Traditional Aikido of Santa Rosa. He had trained for three years with Gayle Sensei before moving to Japan to train directly under Saito Sensei as an uchideshi in Iwama in 1982. So he has a lot of experience with Saito Sensei's weapons, and he is also licensed to instruct in the koryu art Tenshin Shoden Katori Shinto Ryu.
One of the weapons kata we practice at Ukiah Aikido is Saito Sensei's 31 jo kata, but it was clear last night that some of our positioning relative to center line and the target of our strikes has gone astray over the years (a drift certainly well known to any of us who have tried to maintain solo practice away from our teachers!).
It was a revelation to see the kata done as a series of responses to attacks and parries so that the positioning and strikes "make sense." We started doing the paired practice for the 31 jo kata and also did some paired bokken work
For this longtime weapons junkie, who comes alive when holding a staff or sword while facing a staff or sword, it was an overdue "fix" and I'm delighted he is graciously planning to visit monthly.

RONIN

2011-02-13T02:47:00.000-08:00

I "have a dojo" where I feel welcomed, enjoy the training and my partners, pay dues each month, and am even teaching one evening a week (mostly with just one student, but we are both getting a lot out of it).
Yet the issues of center and connection I'm working on are essentially things I'm self-directed on. While I practice them in the dojo, both when doing the ki exercises and when working with a training partner, many of the tools I'm using for that practice have come to me from other sources. So more than ever it seems I am responsible for my own education.
Such an odd feeling.

CELEBRATING THE LIFE OF GAYLE FILLMAN SENSEI

2011-01-23T19:40:00.001-08:00

There will be a celebration of Fillman Sensei's life on Saturday, February 19, 2011, starting at 12 Noon, at the Coyote Valley Gymnasium, featuring demonstrations by her students, sharing of memories, performances, and a potluck.

The Coyote Valley Gymnasium is right across the parking lot from the Coyote Valley Casino in Redwood Valley. From Ukiah, either go north up State Street or take the West Rd. exit off 101 and double back along N. State Street. From Willits, take southbound 101 to the West Rd. exit and make the right onto N. State St. From N. State Street, follow the signs for the Casino.

ACCEPTING AMBIGUITY

2010-12-29T12:00:00.000-08:00

One of the things about being a non-deist, for me anyhow, is being willing to embrace randomness and chaos as among the organizing principles of the universe (along with its essential neutrality as to our existence). More than anything else, the SF Bay Area earthquake of 1989 brought this home to me. Since then, in day to day life I aim to not waste energy arguing with realities I can't actually affect or by stressing out over ambiguity. As I said many years ago to an astonished oncologist pressing me prematurely for details about a patient's discharge from the hospital, "All will be revealed in the fulness of time."

I'm keeping this in mind now as the arbitrary year marker gets ready to flip over a mere couple of weeks after my teacher's death. Will the dojo be able to keep paying rent? Is there enough organizational will to keep it going long term? In what direction will a new chief instructor lead us? In a more urban area there are more options and a larger pool of potential students. Here in our rural community it's more problematic. The decisions will be made by a group who may or may not chose to include me, a relative newcomer with years of experience but not much rank. All I can do is shrug and just keep showing up and training, volunteer for whatever I can contribute, and be comfortable with ambiguity.

GOODNIGHT, SENSEI

2010-12-17T21:37:00.001-08:00

This morning I helped dress Sensei in her keikogi and hakama, the one I've repaired so many times. This time the keikogi, in accordance with Japanese custom, was closed right over left. Later we added various talismans and the table on which she lay was surrounded by floral arrangements. This evening we bade her farewell in a room that over the hours contained reverent quiet, lamentation, laughter, quiet conversation, babies and children playing, and Pomo songs.

GAYLE FILLMAN SENSEI PASSES ON

2010-12-16T08:22:00.000-08:00

The aikido community of Ukiah and Willits, California is in mourning over the unexpected death of Gayle Fillman Sensei on December 14, 2010 at the age of 63.

Fillman Sensei began her aikido training in August, 1966, with Richard Kahoalli, Sr. When Koichi Tohei started visiting California a couple of years later she trained with him and also traveled to seminars with him in Hawaii. She opened Ukiah Aikido in 1976 and has been the chief instructor and dojocho since then. In the early 1980s, she met and began to train with Judo Master Keiko Fukuda, who has been her mentor and close friend since then, visiting Ukiah Aikido regularly (last in May, 2009).

Fillman Sensei has woven herself into the life of this rural community, teaching aikido, self-defense and conflict resolution to everyone from law enforcement professionals to kids in foster care, plus teaching gymnastics, doing choreography, and mentoring countless young people. Under her leadership, Ukiah Aikido has become a community institution, providing martial arts training to up to three generations of some families.

She is survived by her life partner of 23 years, Carol Marrington, several siblings, and many nieces, nephews, and godchildren. There will be a viewing at Eversole Mortuary, Ukiah, Friday December 17, from 4 to 8 p.m. with a public memorial to be organized shortly after the New Year. Donations may be made to Redwood Children’s Services or the Boys and Girls Club of Ukiah.

ANOTHER CLASS...

2010-12-14T21:41:00.000-08:00

Tonight’s class Dec. 14: 2 students

Standing bow in - Breathing exercise, short warm up
Ki exercises through udemuwashi, focus tonight on engagement of center
Demos of unbendable arm, intent, relaxation
Partner practice with jo for connection and extension while moving.

Ma’ai, hamni, and katatori practice: martial and energetic issues.

Koho tento waza, basic (for chin tucking, breathing, forward extension and ki test)
Rotational rolling (shoulder-shoulder-hip-hip)
Koho tento waza with hip switch so it leads into a circular move for standing up.

Introduction to randori throw.
Standing bow out
Q & A

TONIGHT'S CLASS

2010-12-07T20:38:00.000-08:00

I wanted to pull together threads from the past two classes.

Standing bow in, breathing exercise, short warm up. Ki exercises through udemuwashi, focus tonight on extension of energy. Partner practice with jo for connection and extension while moving.

Rolling practice: Koho tento waza, basic (for chin tucking, breathing, forward extension and ki test) - Rotational rolling (shoulder-shoulder-hip-hip) - Koho tento waza with hip switch so it leads into a circular move for standing up - Going into koho tento waza from standing and then getting up.

Review of jo so far: bow in, carrying, grip, tsuki, block, yokomen, reverse yokomen
Jo 22, steps 1-10

Aikido arts, focusing on connection and 4 principles: Review of ma’ai, katatori exercise
katatori ikkyo irimi and tenkan; brief demo/practice of transition to nikkyo; review of yokomen/response; yokomenuchi shihonage irimi and tenkan.

Cooldown, standing bow out

ANOTHER CLASS

2010-11-30T21:45:00.000-08:00

Over the weekend something happened to make my bum knee go from intermittent and about 3/10 on the pain scale to constant w/ weight-bearing and about a 7/10 on the pain scale. The only thing I can think of is that I increased repetitions on a hamstring strengthening exercise that may have thrown off the delicate quads/strings balance that keeps my knee functioning. At any rate, I couldn't train Monday night, today I used my walking stick all day, but I didn't want to bail on teaching tonight. So I needed to structure a class around things I could actually do. It ended up being a class on the theme of yokoman and it was a lot of fun.
Standing bow in - Breathing exercise, short warm up.
Ki exercises through udemuwashi, focusing on the “irimi tenkan” turns. Then the partner practice on doing irimi/tenkan with focus on ma'ai and connection.
Break then over to rolling practice: Koho tento waza, basic (for chin tucking, breathing, forward extension and ki test), then with hip switch so it leads into a circular move for standing up. Then going into koho tento waza from standing - alone, from a push, and w/ inside leg going down.
Introduction to jo!: bowing in, carrying, grip, and introduction to the first moves of the first kata:Tsuki and block, Yokomen cut and reverse yokomen cut. Then, finally, TaDa!: putting together the irimi tenkan move, the yokoman cut, the basic back fall and introduing our third basic: Yokomenuchi shihonage.
My knee wasn't any worse at the end of class....

THANKSGIVING

2010-11-25T11:59:00.000-08:00

I am so thankful to have aikido in so many parts of my life.

It occurred to me last week that when it comes to things for which I have "natural talent," like visual arts and language, I'm essentially lazy; that is, I enjoy doing them but I've never had the inner drive to practice daily/regularly to the point that I achieve mastery. As long as I have some kind of creative project to work on with my hands, it seems to make no difference whether it is painting, gardening or sewing. I never wake up craving the feel of a paintbrush in my hand.

In aikido, where I utterly lack natural talent, I have continually found ways to keep training and am very happy to do the repetitions of practice.Were I to face the physical challenges in, say, painting, that I have faced in aikido, I don't know that I'd persevered that way. I think it's more likely I'd just find another creative outlet.

Likewise, except when I had a very specific role at Artspan (first as an office volunteer, then for two years on their Artist Advisory Council), I've never really felt myself part of an art community. Yet with aikido I've long derived immense pleasure from a wide range of off-the-mat experiences, from being part of the aikido-l community and helping organize their groundbreaking cross-style seminars to designing and making aikido gear to being a contributing writer/editor on aikiweb's The Mirror column.

Now I'm thankful for having been given an opportunity to learn to teach. This is how Tuesday night's class, with two students, went:

Standing bow in
Breathing exercise, short warm up
Brief orientation to aikido, ki

Ki exercises through udefuri choyakawaza
Unbendable arm
Two on one jo exercise for unbendable arm and 4 principles while connected
Ma’ai and natural movement/walking up and shaking hands/finding, losing, finding, keeping connection

Koho tento waza, basic (for chin tucking, breathing, forward extension and ki test)
Basic circular rolling (shoulder, shoulder, hip, hip)

Ma’ai and katatori exercise back and forth across the mat
Picking up ikkyo, bringing to center, finding and testing unbendable arm
Picking up ikkyo, etc, bringing uke down to mat

Standing bow out
Q & A

LEARNING AND MASTERY

2010-11-13T11:38:00.001-08:00

This month's The Mirror column on aikiweb, cowritten by me and Katherine Derbyshire, is on Learning and Mastery.

MOVIE TIME!

2010-11-11T17:30:00.000-08:00

I have received permission from a satisfied customer to post the home video shot of him modeling my hemp twill keikogi (and I didn't even have to offer him a discount on the second one he's going to order....).

LINK IS HERE

Meanwhile I'm about to make a couple of weapons bags from the black hemp herringbone - one for me, one for a customer - and I'm waiting for my supplier to get back in stock the lighter weight hemp-cotton blend I want to use for gi pants.

ONE THING LEADS TO ANOTHER

2010-11-04T22:06:00.000-07:00

Part of teaching, as I've learned teaching nursing, sewing and painting, is whenever possible having a narrative arc underlying a large part of the class (the qualifier is because sometimes a question or a problem a student is experiencing makes it more valuable to follow a tangent).

This Tuesday, in the energetics class, I wanted to bridge from connection/energy exercise to technique. So I introduced the two students to the exercise where we share responsibility to keep a jo, held horizontally between us supported by extended but open hands, from falling. I talked them through focusing on each of the four principles, then had them start walking and moving, slowly but freely around the mat. As they began to "get it" (with just some prompting early on to remember to breathe) you could see, through the enormous concentration, small smiles breaking through.

After we had each partnered with each other for a few minutes, I talked about holding onto that feeling of connection without the mediation of the jo, and introduced the partner practice that starts with cross-hand unbendable arms meeting in a shomen block. One partner begins to slowly cut as for ikkyo, and the other partner receives it, staying connected and soft until near-crouching, and gently extends the arc and rises in a reversal...and back and forth. Again, good for the four principles, good for finding and connecting to a partner's center, and very good for enhancing flexibility and opening the joints. We each partnered with each other, doing both sides of the body...then I asked my partner, when she was cutting down and I was receiving, to find a place to settle and draw my arm out straight....and make a good unbendable arm...then had her walk me down to the mat into ikkyo. And so, after a brief review of how to go down to the mat, we worked on ikkyo.

This couple is also attending our regular beginner's classes, but sometimes have a little trouble keeping up, so they are finding this a very good supplement - and I remind them that when we start getting new folks just in the energetics class, they will be the senior students! As for me, I'm grateful to have this opportunity to experiment and learn more about structuring and pacing a class while attendance is still small.

A GREAT INTERVIEW

2010-10-19T09:23:00.000-07:00

George Ledyard on Aiki, Kaeshiwaza, and more Twisting Wrists: "The art seems to have split into a group of folks who think it has something to do with “fighting” and spend their time preparing for some imagined and anticipated “street” encounter. I think these folks tend to be running a sort of modern day “samurai wanna be” story in their heads. On the other hand, many folks who are quite serious about Aikido as a means of personal transformation, or as a way towards conflict resolution, whatever are simply incapable of executing their techniques in a situation of real conflict."

SOMEDAY

2010-10-16T23:06:00.000-07:00

Someday, I figured, my paths as nurse and as aikidoka would converge, and I would teach middle aged folks how to get up and down without breaking their bones.

Someday, I figured, all the weird ways I have learned to adapt "standard" aikido to accommodate my minor disabilities would be helpful in working with other differently-abled folks.

Someday, I figured, my interest in the side of aikido that focuses on how it feels in order to do it more effectively would be something I'd start to share with others.

Someday, I figured, I'd eventually rank for shodan and have the credibility to ask my teacher about starting a class like that.

Silly me. I had it backwards. I don't get to think about ranking for shodan until I've been teaching that class. Welcome to Ukiah Aikido's Tuesday night Aikido Energetics class.

STUDIO DAY!

2010-09-25T18:21:00.000-07:00

I've started hemp keikogi number 2, and await measurements from the last beta tester (in Nova Scotia!) for number 3. Then it will be time to "proof" a pants pattern because eventually somebody is going to want a full set (actually the person ordering number 2 is already making noises in that direction...).

So I already feel confident about the construction. Yes, I had a false start today (started chalking in the top forgetting that the shoulder is not a separate seam) - won't make that mistake again - next time it will be a totally different mistake. Heck I remember as a novice sewer feeling so reassured when my teacher, a master seamstress, confessed to having put in a sleeve backwards.

And yes, no matter how adept I get, this is going to be a very labor-intensive project. But between the lovely fabric and the attention to detail, it is a very pleasurable project.

THE BOOKSHELF

2010-09-19T09:05:00.000-07:00

San Francisco artist Anna Conti and I share a fascination with research and musings that touch on the intersections of human perception, anatomy and physiology, and creativity - form and function as it applies to humans, as opposed to applying to the things humans make, if you will (though, of course, we like that too). Over the years we have had many conversations and recommended books to each other.

At the moment, I'm about 1/3 the way into her most recent recommendation, and want to pass it along: "The Hand: How its use shapes the human brain, language, and human culture," by Frank R. Wilson. I'm not yet convinced it will live up to its subtitle, but am very much enjoying the ride as he (so far) looks at the development of the hand (along with the shoulder and forearm) as a structural and functional entity while discussing juggling, piano-playing and rock-climbing. A good read for those of us who are avid tool-users. If you are looking for good books on art-related themes, favorites in my studio bookcase include:
"Color: A Natural History of the Palette" by Victoria Finlay
"River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West" by Rebecca Solnit
"Renoir, My Father" by Jean Renoir
"The Gift" by Lewis Hyde

Not on art, but on how different cultures perceive how the human body is structured, hence what it is to be human, an outstanding and fascinating book is "The Expressiveness of the Body and the Divergence of Greek and Chinese Medicine" by Shigehisa Kuriyama.

ZANSHIN ART CUSTOM WEAPONS BAGS

2010-09-19T07:06:00.000-07:00

Each bag is sewn to order. Currently the basic fabrics are black brushed cotton twill, navy cotton canvas, and for an additional fee, black hemp herringbone twill. Cotton prints to decorate your bag can be seen HERE. A photo gallery of some previous custom bags is HERE.

For inquiries email zanshinart@yahoo.com

"Getting Back to the Phantom Skill"

2010-09-18T13:30:00.000-07:00

This will be a series on NY Times website by artist/writer James McMullan on drawing titled Line By Line; he starts by encouraging folks to actually sit down and read it w/ paper and pencil handy.

MEMO TO SELF....

2010-09-16T20:48:00.000-07:00

courtesy of Fillman Sensei tonight...I don't do beginners any favors by being so gentle with them. It keeps my body from giving their body a clearly readable message of where to go. The funny thing is that I distinctly remember being a 5th kyu student and really appreciating it when a senior student or instructor would simply, slowly, in a controlled way put me where I, as uke, was supposed to be. This is a skill I need to work on, starting with trusting myself to do so.

KEIKOGI!

2010-09-15T16:42:00.000-07:00

Zanshin Art's first hemp keikogi top

The first hemp gi top has been delivered, trained in, and deemed excellent. The fit is good enough that she declined adding modesty ties!

I used the lighter weight herringbone twill for the body of the keikogi and the heavier, harder plain twill for the interior yokes and the front band. It's a couple of shades paler than the herringbone, so using it for the band also made a nice, subtle contrast.

My second customer is lined up, swatches are in the mail to a possible third, and hemp fabric from a second order has arrived and is getting prewashed as I write.

I should note that this fabric is a pure pleasure to work with. Making a curved flat-felled seam or a turned band in some fabrics is a real chore; the fabric fights you. This stuff not only feels good in the hand, it is eminently cooperative, seeming to say "oh you want me to do that now? ok..."

STRETCHING REDUX....

2010-09-01T22:20:00.000-07:00

Here is another study, another nail in the coffin in which someday we will finally bury the pre-training static stretching routine.

This one involved around 1400 runners ranging from teenagers through folks in their 60s; half did a normal warm up but without static stretching, half included a specific static stretching routine. People are so attached to stretching that it took them a couple of years to recruit enough subjects willing to run without their stretches.... yet in the course of the study, the injury rate was the same for the two groups.

Quoting Gretchen Reynolds, a really good health/sci writer for the NY TImes: "Stretching is, of course, a contentious issue in sports. The bulk of the available science strongly suggests that static stretching before a workout not only does not prevent overuse injuries but also may actually hinder athletic performance. "There is a very important neurological effect of stretching," said Ross Tucker, a physiologist in South Africa and co-author of the Web site The Science of Sport. "There is a reflex that prevents the muscle from being stretched too much," which is activated by static stretching, inducing the muscle to become, in effect, tighter in self-protection. Past studies have found that athletes' vertical jump is lower after a bout of static stretching than with no stretching at all. They can't generate as much power. Meanwhile, other studies have found, like the new track and field association report, that static stretching seems to have little benefit in terms of injury prevention, particularly against the overuse injuries common in running."

MORE THIS AND THAT

2010-08-28T18:56:00.000-07:00

It is said that the thing we most object to in others is what we fear in ourselves. I stopped myself from correcting a kohei the other evening when I realized that I'm equally guilty in my own training of the same etiquette breach. The specifics don't matter. The key here is that I need to decide if this is important enough an issue that my own practice needs to change, and not concern myself with another's behavior until my own is addressed.

I am about 3/4 of the way through sewing up my first hemp herringbone dogi top. I took a break to reorganize my studio, making fabric-handling and tool availability more efficient. The hemp fabric is a pure pleasure to work with in the hands, finger-pressing in spots and taking heavy heat and steam when needed, always behaving. Today I did the curving flat-fell underarm seams and finished the skirt section (hemmed and vented). That leaves the sleeve hems, joining the upper section to the skirt section, and applying the front band. I have a big piece of organic cotton herringbone left from a years-old project and plan to do the second of these judo-gi style tops in that for myself, plus proof a dogi pants pattern in a cotton print I have lying around, perfect for lounging-around-the-house pants. Then I'll be looking for a couple more reduced-price beta testers.

THE MORE THINGS CHANGE...

2010-08-17T19:43:00.000-07:00

...the more they don't.

I'm really happy with my training - it feels like the right balance for now of working on polishing things within my comfort zone and expanding the boundaries just enough to get a little frustrated with myself. Yet I find myself chuckling to myself - not on the mat, but after I'm home and reflecting on things - how if I try to put into words what I'm working on, it sounds like things I was working on a dozen years ago. Committed attacks. Moving from center. Staying in the moment. And so on. It's just that the level of understanding changes.

Meanwhile I am beginning to feel and actively cultivate a deeper understanding of what it means to engage the center - not the hips, but the center and its relationship with the ground - mostly during aiki taiso, kokyu dosa and weapons kata but also trying to bringing it into general training.

In 1998, when I was asked if I felt like my aikido was improving, I replied, "It sucks at a higher level." Still feeling that....still feeling like I could devote a lifetime to it.

FIRST PROTOTYPE DONE

2010-08-06T15:29:00.000-07:00

This afternoon I've finished the first "muslin" of a custom dogi for somebody to try on so we can check fit and discuss some style variations. Excuse the horrible bilious color - it was the cheapest fabric I could find in a cotton-poly blend that would lend itself to the process.

As I mentioned before, it's very different to construct a cute little baby gi versus an actual keikogi that will hold up to grabbing, falling and all the other abuse to which we subject our training garments. There is a reason the standard judogi has triple-stitched flat-fell seams and extra fabric under the arms as well as that front/shoulder/back shield.

The only significant variation I've introduced is that rather than a simple rolled binding at the side slits I'm doing a placket finish. It may not be traditional in the martial arts, but in traditional garment-making it is the preferred way to finish and protect an opening cut into the fabric, and I trust its integrity.

Once this prototype has been "proofed" for fit and design, I'll alter the paper pattern accordingly, get my hemp yardage prewashed, and get to work on Zanshin Art's first hemp dogi jacket.

MORE PUBLIC HEALTH, PLUS TUMBLING

2010-08-04T13:50:00.000-07:00

First, for anybody not reading Aikiweb, I posted over there about a NY Times column detailing two excellent recently published studies looking at outcomes from surgical repair of ACL injuries. The column is well written and includes links to abstracts of the published studies.

Second, my intent with this blog was never to provide twitter-type updates, nor the unedited and mostly boring and poorly written spewings that so many people offer as blogs, but to create a place for reflective and edited observations.

When I was on Facebook I got used to doing quick, frequent posts about articles, current events and the like. It was nice to offer that and I've sort of missed it, but I still didn't want to corrupt how this blog is crafted.

My friend Katherine is on tumblr and after also reading a NY Times article about tumblr I decided to give it a try. So now I have a blog, over there, on which I'm posting more often, mostly interesting links and similar stuff.This blogger blog will continue to be the place for musings, reflection, commentary, and my own updates about training or the arts.

A PUBLIC HEALTH POST

2010-08-03T12:21:00.000-07:00

Over the years, at different dojos, I've been appalled at the lax attitude some folks bring to health issues.

I once literally blocked another student from getting on the mat because a chronic skin condition had activated, leaving his wrists - right where we all would grab- with multiple open sites oozing lymph and blood. Didn't wait for a sempai or instructor, just basically barked at him that he couldn't possibly get on the mat until those were healed or 100% covered with impermeable dressings.

At a couple of different places, folks were happy to take off their shoes on entering the dojo, and being on the mat in bare feet, but thought nothing of bowing off the mat in bare feet to walk into the bathroom and use the toilet, then bow back onto the mat. Cases for very basic public health intervention: get some cheap zori, put them by the bathroom door, and post a friendly note.

Don't even get me started on the people who cough into their hands or wipe their noses with their hands, then want to grab somebody's wrist without bowing off for a quick handwashing, or who come in to train when sick because the workout will make them sweat and feel better, or..... {I'm stopping before I get the vapors and have to lie down quietly for an hour}

Anyhow....a good column in today's NY Times on skin infections in the gym that pertains equally well to the dojo. It made me recall some product information posted on aikiweb a while back by Keith Larman. I don't know enough to endorse or criticize this product. Just want to remind everybody to stay safe and healthy while training!

FRESH EYES

2010-08-01T14:42:00.000-07:00

Yesterday three canvasses and a dozen quiltscapes came home from Tierra. Rather than put them away, I took the opportunity to move or change out the art hanging on walls throughout the house, a mix of my own with works bought or, more often bartered from other artists, plus the stray poster or postcard.

I used to move pieces around our flat in San Francisco. Often friends would come over and say something like "Hey, that's a great new painting!" when looking at something at least three years old that had simply been relocated to a wall 90 degrees from before. Sometimes all it takes is a little different light or perspective.

It's that way in the dojo, too. After fourteen years, it's really no longer a matter of working on new techniques, but on delving into better understanding of, and manifesting in practice, the underlying principles. So one evening a different training partner will murmur a small pointer and ask me to try again, or Sensei will speak for a few minutes, and I'll see (or more aptly, feel) things in a new way.

MEASURE TWICE, CUT ONCE...

2010-07-25T18:54:00.000-07:00

The show at Tierra comes down on Saturday so the quiltscapes, minus two that went off the new homes, come back until I find another venue for presenting them.

Meanwhile, the question of "what do I do next?" in terms of fine arts is totally back-burnered as I work on refining the construction techniques I need to make keikogi for people who actively train (as opposed to for babies, who look waaaaay too cute in the babygi but don't actually grapple or throw in them... we hope...).

It's true that I've made myself a couple of keikogi tops, a white one for aikido and a black one for koryu. But I designed those as a sort of a hybrid between a fitted jacket and a karate gi, and frankly when I sew just for me I don't always finish them as nicely inside as when I sew for other people (unless I'm sewing a real "show off" garment like a corset or a semi-lined coat).

So while waiting for the hemp to arrive, I'm pulling out old fabric to mark up and cut, sharpening skills not needed for quite some years, like plackets and flat-felled seams.

Oh, yeah, and wondering where the heck to roll and store another dozen yards of fabric... here's to not needing another studio re-design.

ANOTHER INTERESTING CLASS!

2010-07-22T21:03:00.000-07:00

Interesting stuff at Wednesday night class, both to work on and to ponder later.

First, lots of fine tuning on weapons work. We drilled on proper raising of the sword or jo, and then cutting or striking with good extension and control specifically for an overhead cut to jodan. Then Sensei slowly deconstructed the first four moves of Tohei Sensei's jo kata, with attention to weighting, direction of centerlines, and targets. Sheer bliss for a kata junkie.

The class ended with jiyuwaza in the particular form in which Sensei learned and teaches it. The role of uke is continuing attacking coming up from the floor, which I'd learned in another dojo many years ago but haven't had a chance to practice since until the past couple of Wed. evening classes. It was nage's role that was truly fascinating to play with.

The ideal she wanted us to strive for was to, having thrown uke once, enter directly and while uke was formulating the intent to rise and attack, throw again with absolutely minimal force because uke at that point was still very unbalanced. Several students raised the question of agression, and did this in fact change nage into uke/the attacker? The answer was hard to explain verbally, then easy to see after observing each pair do jiyuwaza (we did paired practice, but one pair at a time with everybody else watching, and Sensei calling out prompts), then hard to actually do. What happens is, if nage's timing and position are spot-on, it is easy to non-agressively catch an unbalanced uke and repeatedly gently rethrow him.

But if that "sweet spot" is missed, nage has to immediately back off to let uke fully recover and initiate a fresh attack. To try and throw uke too late, when he has already regained balance and is getting up, indeed becomes a very agressive act on nage's part. The most common problem folks had as nage was failure to recognize that the moment had past and so not allow a new attack to develop.

When I had the opportunity to do nagewaza (with the good fortune to be matched to an excellent uke), I had a somewhat different problem. I found it very difficult to get in fast enough and to the right position to unbalance him while he was down. People reported that they saw me going forward, not retreating. So what was the difficulty?

I think I was messing myself up with a classic "approach-avoidance" issue. Have you ever watched a raven or a cat approach something that MIGHT be food but looks unfamiliar enough that it might be dangerous? The desire to investigate and eat is strong enough to give them plenty of intent. But they cannot fully commit because they are afraid it might reach up and bite them. So the raven hops forward and just as quickly hops back (watching a group of them do this to a carcass or a pizza box is pretty darn funny); the cat crouches as low as it can, reaches a paw to just barely touch the object, then springs back a foot or two.

I wasn't hopping back, but I think that uncertainty about the next movement of my uke - would a foot snake out and kick me? would he roll over and grab me? - led to a hole, so to speak, in my intent that may not have been visible to most of the observers but that uke sensed and entered. Once I accepted that I wasn't going to be able to get in there at the right time, I gave myself permission to let uke come up and attack, and tried to develop some longer throws so I could at least be moving towards him with good intent while he was rising to attack with good intent.

Yep, fascinating stuff.

SO, FIVE DAYS LATER...

2010-07-20T22:43:00.000-07:00

...I've drafted version one of a paper pattern, computed yardage, ordered fabric, and sewn a couple of tests (like placket for side vents).

Meanwhile, since my web host is offering price reductions to move to "cloud hosting," I've reviewed my redesign of my website and done the steps to start migrating to a new server (the new webpages won't be "live" for a few days).

Yeah, all this while going to the day job, watering the veg, going to the coast, running around w/ mom, going to the dojo, cooking, watching movies w/ Stu.... Never can understand people who say they are "bored"!

Anyhow, aiming to start the beta test of the pattern, in a cheap muslin, sometime next week, make any necessary changes, then start cutting hemp twill.... Stay tuned!

YOU JUST NEVER KNOW

2010-07-16T09:46:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you make plans; other times - and usually in my life this has been the case - things just find you.

Eleven years ago, when I was first visiting Ukiah Aikido, folks there were wearing hemp dogi made by a woman named Machiko. She used to run a print ad in Aikido Today magazine but never had an online presence. Her dogi were in the judo style (double layer shields at the front and back shoulder for holding up to grabs, and the "skirted" bottom); they looked great and held up unbelievably well due to the inherent characteristics of the hemp fiber.

Fast forward. I'm now living in Ukiah, with a nine year old home microbusiness custom sewing baby-sized organic cotton dogi and cotton weapons bags. The original batch of hemp dogi at the dojo are at last showing their wear, but Machiko is no longer making them.

Can you see where this is going?

Yep. I've gotten back in touch with my old supplier of hemp fabrics to check their fabric samples, I'm tracing Machiko's old dogi jackets to compare them with standard issue judo dogi tops, and working on a cost-out to see how much these suckers would have to priced at. Next step, make a sample for somebody at the dojo and see how it works.

THE ROAD TO MASTERY

2010-07-10T23:51:00.000-07:00

I think it was Marcy Tilton, my first sewing teacher, who commented that you have to make a particular pattern/garment three times for it to be "your's;" that is, to have a real understanding of it.

I began sewing in earnest, with Marcy and a couple of other excellent instructors as my guides, around 1980.

Through the 1980s I sewed practically every skirt, blouse, pair of pants, and jacket or coat that I wore.

I designed the baby gi pattern in 2001, and I'd guess that I've made about 75 to 80 of them over the years.

This afternoon I figured out a better way to do one of the steps. Nobody might notice but me. That's ok too.

LEARNING & TEACHING & LEARNING

2010-07-01T21:49:00.000-07:00

I continue to be fascinated by the learning process, especially the different modes of learning and the variations in teaching that are needed. I learn very well in two dimensions - words, shapes, colors, and maps. Three dimensional space and body movement have always been weaknesses - there's a reason I always drew or painted instead of sculpting, and flunked somersaults in day camp.

That's why as a beginner I learned aikido by parsing each technique into small manageable bits I could describe in a couple of words, memorized them, then put them together and practiced over and over. After a few years, when enough movements were integrated into my mind/body system, I was able to learn new variations the "easier" way by using the spatial/kinesthetic pathways the more natural athletes used all along.Unfortunately, like most people, I tend to resort to my own learning style as my default teaching style. This is great if I happen to be matched with a junior student who is as slow and un-naturally athletic as me. But it means I tend to go too slowly, too pedantically for the beginner who does sports and is innately wired to learn through the body.

I had an "Aha!" moment tonight. I was matched with a teenager for her first class and guided her through some basic jo work and basic rolling back and forth, then started on technique. After some time on basic randori throw, Sensei was having everybody work on kokyunage (iriminage for Aikikai folks). Now I had learned this the static, parsed out way. In fact, many years ago in a different dojo, working as an assistant in kids' classes, I was explicitly taught to teach it that very mechanistic way.

Tonight's approach was polar opposite: Sensei talked about the OLD Karate Kid "Wipe on - wipe off" and had us respond to the attack (two hand lapel grab) with a "wipe off," then make a circular turn with drop, and finish the technique (with basically a "wipe on" though she didn't say so). Nice big movements and no instructions to the newbies about where to step, how to turn.

And I suddenly remembered how I taught basic painting: most of the students would select a small brush, and in a constipated manner sit still and use their hands to make lots of timid little brush strokes, worrying about each one. So I would walk around the studio handing out brushes three to four times larger, and encourage them to move their shoulders and arms freely as they applied paint. "Go bigger! You can always paint over anything you don't like!"

As I bowed in again to my partner it was with a wonderful feeling of liberation. We trained, focusing on the gross movements (and a couple of key points for her safety); at one point, she said, "You know, I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to be doing with my feet on the turn" and I was able to laugh and reply, "that's ok, you already have enough to learn right now and you're doing great!"

COMPETENCE OF ANOTHER KIND

2010-06-25T11:17:00.000-07:00

Some artists really merit the descriptor "flaky." I found this out back in the early 90s when I was volunteering in the offices of Artspan, the non-profit that puts on San Francisco's Open Studios. When it was specified that "35 mm slides" were needed for inclusion in the print catalog, people would send in black and white photographs, or tattered drawings torn from looseleaf binders. Don't even ask about the general attitude towards deadlines...

I am a pretty typical artist in that I do a lousy job marketing or representing my fine arts work. But on the purely business end, I've got the soul of an accountant. With the sewing business, there are spreadsheets for specs and cost-outs. My paintings and quilts are all catalogued.

My show of small quiltscapes at Tierra was supposed to be coming down this Saturday to make room for the July show. But the July artist never finalized any arrangements with the gallery. Yes, very flaky.

Nicole came by yesterday. I had already selected a few small canvasses that would complement the quiltscapes. We perused the flickr page that serves as a visual catalog of the quiltscapes, selecting a few that would be taken off the wall to make room for the paintings. I copy and pasted the specs on the selected canvasess from my spreadsheet catalog of paintings into a new document, hit "print" and "save" and that was it. All we needed to do was pack up the paintings and lend her a canvas tote in which to take them away.

A little organization > no flakiness even when shit happens > way less stress in day to day life. So .... my work will be up at Tierra through July. I'll be there on first Friday, July 2, from 5 p.m. on, ready to do a lousy marketing job.

COMPETENCE

2010-06-15T04:15:00.000-07:00

The impetus for this topic was an email correspondence I've been having with a young person who relocated from one part of the country to another and is having some difficulty with the transition from one style of aikido to another.

One of the emails said, "No one there knows that I really am competent, just not in that setting...everyone under 1st kyu wears white belts, so any rank I might have had is not evident...."

Aside from obvious topics of conversation, like ego issues (to which the writer admitted) and the value of "beginner's mind," I was struck by the use of the word "competent" to describe someone with a relatively short history in the art. It got me to thinking.

Part of my reply was: "I’d reframe your comment from “No one there knows that I really am competent, just not in that setting” to “No one knows my history. I have trained for a while and I felt competent in that context - now I’m out of my comfort zone.”

This is a very interesting concept for life in general. It also connects with a related idea I'll go into more in depth another time, the difference between techniques and principles. For now, here's how I see the connection:

Each of us can only be competent in those endeavors we have studied and practiced. If I spent two years in a studio painting floral arrangements in watercolor, I’m still going to be a newbie when I walk into a studio to do portrait painting in oils. If I’ve been mindful in my watercolor work, I will have integrated some principles about color, composition and design that may make it easier for me to make presentable portraits. But if I try to carry over my technical abilities out of habit, like using my watercolor brushes with oil paint or trying to mix oils the way I mixed watercolors, I’m going to get in the way of my progress.

HEALTH ALERT: With summer here, a very interesting article on the possible long term affects on brain, liver, etc of heat stroke.

TRAIN LIKE YOU'RE EIGHTY....

2010-06-11T21:45:00.000-07:00

Several days ago I read a wonderful quote, and now of course I can't find it. The gist of it was, an older aikidoka was counseled by a senior teacher to "start training now as if you are eighty; that way when you hit eighty you'll already have twenty years practice at it."

I laughed in wry recognition of the wisdom, but Wednesday night I didn't heed the advice. I know that pivoting quickly and repeatedly is guaranteed to hurt my knee. In partner practice, even in jiyuwza or randori, I'm generally able to play with the time/velocity aspects of ma'ai to work with attacks coming in faster than I'm able to move. No, this wasn't any kind of accident or miscalculation in an interaction with a partner. It was just me, letting myself be seduced into trying to keep up with the group doing weapons kata faster than I can safely turn.

It was not the first time my inner voice has messed me up. I feel like the nail standing out, literally, during about half of our warm-ups, either doing my own adaptation of them or sitting quietly. And while there are contexts in which I don't at all mind being different or making a spectacle of myself, the aikido dojo is emphatically NOT one of them. The voice says, "so the least I can do is take part in weapons kata." Well, no.

Two thirds of the way through the knee hurt. I made my movements smaller, waited until we were done, then bowed to the instructor, murmuring that I'd misjudged and needed to go home and ice my knee. It was the first time in a very long time I cried driving home from the dojo.

Fortunately, Thursday evening Sensei was available for a chat, or, as I put it to her, a reality check. I wanted to make sure the problem was purely in my head, and see how she felt it should be handled. She was very supportive of me continuing to set my limits, and reassured me that I was welcome to continue attending Wednesday night advanced classes whenever my schedule permitted, simply quietly sitting out weapons kata.

Now I just have to internalize this message. And continue to work on training like I'm eighty, so my aikido will be about relaxed extension and my body might have a chance to keep bowing in, training, and bowing out. Without crying on the way home.

TRIKONOMETRY

2010-06-02T12:49:00.000-07:00

I was triking home from work yesterday when I realized that I was continually auto-correcting how I use my body. I'm not sure if this "belongs" on the general blog or on the Zanshin Art blog, so I guess I'll post on both.

Riding a vehicle that has two back wheels is emphatically NOT like riding a bike or motorcycle. One does not shift weight to circle a curve or turn a corner, one simply turns the handlebars. My sister told me about watching her neighbor almost have some serious accidents in the bike store and out in its parking lot trying to ride an adult trike in the manner she was accustomed to bike riding. For me, who hadn't ridden a bike more than three times in 20 years, it was easier; the worst thing that happened was I made two right turns I had no intention of making.

The interesting result of avoiding weight shifts is that one can, and in fact should, ride with a very still center, which facilitates focusing on economy of posture and movement.

Why are my hands gripping the handlebars? Why is my right wrist cocked? I'm not propelling the thing with my arms! Exhale, relax the hands, put wrists in neutral position, connect up to the center of the body and extend. Ahhh, much better.

Here comes that rise just south of Washington Avenue. Uh-oh, why am I leaning forward to engage my low back? Come on, I know better than to try to push my legs with my quadratus lumborum. Deep breath, slightly shake out the pelvis, settle on the seat, let the little muscles of the mid back pull down my shoulder blades, exhale as I tighten the core, and let the glutes and quads do the work they are supposed to do. I'm guessing the whole process takes somewhere between 1 and 2 seconds.

I'm not necessarily going faster, but I'm sitting up straighter and feeling better, which also makes me look around and notice more of the world around me, which puts a smile on my face even though I'm working hard.

FINDING A TEACHER

2010-05-31T16:46:00.000-07:00

Over the past 14+ years, I’ve paid dues at five dojos. If you ask why, there was a specific reason for each change, all under the heading of “my evolving understanding of what I wanted to learn.” Only recently have I come to see that a related issue is that I was looking for a teacher and only finding instructors.

What I mean by “finding instructors” is that there were specific things, technical or otherwise, that I could learn from highly ranked people who were capable of conveying information. I always respected the individuals for their knowledge and skill. What was lacking was the development of a real rapport between us, because I either didn’t viscerally trust them or I felt there was a disconnect between their teaching and their actions.

In visiting dojos around the country or attending seminars, I met people I both respected and trusted. Unfortunately they all lived very far away. I could train with them from time to time, learn what could be learned that way, but they couldn’t really be my teachers.

I first visited Ukiah Aikido in late 1999, when Stu and I were in the process of buying a house up here. I liked Fillman Sensei immediately. Over several years of intermittent visits, seeing the role she plays in the community and the dojo culture she fosters, my respect for her grew. One reason I looked forward to moving up here in 2007 was that (having stopped training a year or so earlier) I knew that if there was a dojo in which I could explore my limits, it was this one.

Over the past two years, I’ve come to appreciate the integrity of her teaching. She started training in 1966; her lineage is Tohei Sensei through both direct teaching and his senior students in Hawai’i and California. It bothers me when aikido folks don’t cop to the fact that we do kata. Here we do aiki taiso in each class to get the basic moves integrated, we do solo weapons kata, and she focuses on the cooperative nature of our training so that we are essentially doing the arts as kata. As I’ve noted in many other posts, I find the limits of kata to be remarkably freeing in terms of allowing me to focus on some small, different piece of the puzzle each time. In that sense I can work on both being a responsive training partner and being responsible for my learning.

There are times I miss the intense paired weapons practice I did many years ago (not to mention the koryu sword art I was just starting to learn when we moved). There are times I itch to cut loose with a few minutes of jiyuwaza, freely attacking or being attacked and seeing what techniques manifest.

But I have found a precious gift, a teacher, and as she makes a commitment to support my development, so I am happy to make a commitment to her methods, her teaching, and her dojo.

"THE MIRROR" COLUMN

2010-05-25T05:53:00.000-07:00

For readers of this blog who do not visit Aikiweb: for many years I've been part of a collaborative group contributing the monthly "The Mirror" column there. The May column is about working with a new student at the dojo. t's gotten some good feedback and I invite you to read it.

TEA TIME

2010-05-24T22:01:00.000-07:00

We received word that there would be a special visitor from Japan at the dojo tonight, someone who had accompanied Takanari Higuchi Shihan on his visits to Ukiah Aikido in the past.

It turned out he was traveling with his mother, who makes periodic trips to the Bay Area to purchase goods for her shop back home, and they wished to visit not in order to train but really to honor us with their hospitality.

We were almost finished with warmups when our guests arrived. Sensei had us stack gymnastic mats into a circle so we could sit. They proceeded to do a delightfully informal but heartfelt tea ceremony. There were sweets presented to each of us. Because there were only three bowls for preparing tea, it took a while for each of us to have our turn. We noted that the atmosphere in the dojo was relaxed, happy and meditative all at once. After the ceremony, we all gathered in front of the shomen for a photo, then exchanged thank-yous and goodbyes. They left with Sensei for dinner.

Class resumed. The light and open-hearted mood set by our guests filled the dojo and informed our training for the remaining 45 minutes.

TRAINING ON & OFF

2010-05-18T16:59:00.000-07:00

I missed last Thursday's class because of a family obligation (getting mother in law to SFO). I missed Monday's class because of a family obligation (getting mother to SFO...I was back in time for the dojo, but was burned out and had to medicate for a migraine). I might skip tomorrow's class because there is a life drawing group I've been wanting to check out for three months now, and have kept putting off because of aikido classes and family obligations. Thursday, I'll be at the dojo come hell or high water, because I've made a committment to be there Thursdays to work with junior students.

I find myself itching to train after this absence. I take a break during the workday to exercise, walk, stretch, and when I am doing silk-reeling I find myself wanting to have someone connected to me so I can turn it into kokyunage or sayunage.

I realize that I'm also missing the things we don't do here - jiyuwaza and paired weapons practice, and the sustained, focused connection they demand.

I remind myself it wasn't so long ago that I bowed back into aikido, grateful to be able to train at all, and to cultivate the patience to appreciate what I am and what I have.

READY FOR A HANGING

2010-05-15T19:20:00.001-07:00

It must be nearly time to hang a new show: I'm starting to work on an updated "artist statement." It's time to sit down, make a list of what exactly will get hung, settle on pricing, etc.

My quiltscapes will be hanging at Tierra Gallery in Ukiah throughout the month of June. The reception is during the First Friday Artwalk, June 4, from 5 pm to 8 pm.

Meanwhile, these quiltscapes represent a series that seems to be coming to an end. I wonder what my next project will be?

KATA IN THE VISUAL ARTS

2010-05-02T21:33:00.000-07:00

Last month, Jun and I were having one of those conversations under the heading of “best practices for teaching/learning aikido” and of course the use of kata came up. As usual, he threw an unexpected question at me, which I’ll paraphrase it here:

Does kata or the process of kata show up in any way in your artwork?

I immediately went back about a dozen years, to a question posed by Anna Conti: Are you still painting those seascapes? When are you going to be done? Anna couldn’t believe that doing an open-ended series could be interesting for any length of time. If memory serves, my reply as something like, well, I guess as long as it’s interesting and until I run out of things to say about it.

In 1996 I was living in the Sunset district and working as a part time home health nurse, most days I would drive along some segment of Ocean Beach. The color of the sky, the presence or form or color of the offshore fog, the color and movement of the water were always shifting. But together they formed a triad of sky-fog-water. As I drove by I always had a moment to murmur to myself or to stop and make a note: “sky bright blue, fog very white but with holes like a torn curtain, water greenish and calm.” I found a rectangle I liked, 24" high by 16" wide, and had a few canvasses custom made...then a few more...and more still. Because the more I looked, the more there was to see. I ended up doing about two dozen paintings over a two year period, still doing other seascapes as well.

I told Jun this story, and said, yes I do believe that qualifies as kata. This series of “Fog Rothkos” was the purest example in that there was both a fixed context and a fixed scale. But over the years I’ve done other series: a group of three paintings based on one reference photo taken looking south from the Cliff House, several landscapes based on reference photos taken at exactly the same spot in Ukiah but at different times of the year.

And I have found this process fascinating; it unleashes tremendous creative energy and gives me a feeling of freedom to solve various problems posed within those strictures, just as in doing martial arts kata one can be exploring any one of a seemingly infinite number of variables.

I would never have considered the process worth thinking about if not for one friend’s good question posed many years ago, and it never would have occurred to me to connect the art process with a martial arts training method if a second and equally perceptive friend had not asked another question. Here’s to smart friends, good conversation, and kata!
Anna and I both do a lot of representational painting in acrylic paint, but the process and end results are very different. She works slowly and meticulously, applying layer after layer of glazes, to develop the color, intensity, and tonality she wants on images of stunning clarity. I work as fast as straight-from-the-tube acrylic paint dries, standing at an easel with fairly large brushes, dancing in place, creating color-drenched shapes that reflect the lack of detail with which I actually view the world.

ROLES

2010-04-21T00:51:00.000-07:00

This will sound strange to many folks who know me as a nurse, teacher, or activist, but in most social situations I feel very awkward. It's having a clearly defined role that allows me to relax and engage. Of course, nursing, teaching, and going out in funny clothes while holding political banners all involve role-playing.

Groups I affiliate with tend to reap the benefit of this quirk: in order to reduce my stress, I need a defined role, so I volunteer to do things. This also makes me feel more a part of the community without having to do the more difficult things like ask or answer a lot of personal questions (I'm usually the last person to know about somebody's pregnancy or new job). The upshot is that I end up being a valued member of the group, but rarely develop friendships within the group. The friends I've made as an adult have tended to be random and serendipitous - two of us in the right place at the right time start chatting; we have some common interests (music, art, martial arts, birds, gardening...), but are most likely not members of the same formal group organized around that interest.

Maybe part of why I derive so much pleasure from kata and from aikido is that the roles are so defined (well, that and we get to wear funny clothes). I may not be very good at the stuff of what we are doing, but if I understand what is being asked of me in the role, I have one less thing to worry about.

Come to think of it, the only times I ever really have conflict with a training partner, is when there is what I'd characterize as "role confusion;" that is, my partner and I act as if we have a fundamentally different idea of what we are each supposed to be doing - not in terms of the technique, but in terms of our role vis-a-vis the other person. Fortunately this is rare.

It's a funny paradox too: a key component of training for me is the feeling of vulnerability that comes from standing sincerely and without pretense ("eyes open, mind open, heart open") welcoming either an attack or a chance to attack. I suppose that, just as one finds freedom in working a kata, one can find an essential honesty in assuming one's role.

A GOOD CLASS

2010-03-29T23:19:00.000-07:00

Tonight, as always, I thanked Sensei for class, and we all agreed it had been a good class...and driving home, I wondered, what makes a "good class"? On one level I suppose it's any class that results in me bowing out of the dojo with a smile bigger than the one I bowed in with.

Tonight we spent longer than usual on weapons, focusing on the first jo kata. I'd learned different styles of weapons before moving up here, so it's been just two years I've been working on the four kata done here (three, really, but one is done in both left and right versions). The prolonged focus was ostensibly for the newbies in class. But as it happens I caught an important distinction tonight, something that is done differently here than what I'd done elsewhere; I honestly don't know if folks had noticed I've been doing it differently or not all but I suddenly did. I was able to swiftly integrate the preferred method into my practice.

Then I was asked to work 1:1 with one of our beginners, getting her "solid" with steps 1 through 12. I demonstrated along side her to figure out the weak points in her practice, then acted as a stationery opponent so she could see how her movements were actually strikes, first here, then there, and how finding a straight line on the floor would let her locate a center line at all times. I enjoy doing this because it really gets me to analyze the movements and transitions - it's a great "polishing" method.

For empty hand techniques we were working from rear attacks (both wrists grabbed). It was fun to work on my connection both as uke and as nage. On a basic kokyunage it just felt familiar and "in the body," so it was one of those times when there is just this feeling of freedom and fun. On kotegaishe, the instructor was able to get me to understand where, as nage, I was disconnecting. At one point almost at the end of the class I was probably talking too much (explaining) and she was good enough to come over and take over without criticizing me.

So...I got to learn some key points, I got to help a junior, I got to practice freely and joyfully, and I got a little reality check on a bad habit. Yep, sounds like a good class to me!

DEADLINES

2010-03-07T01:06:00.000-08:00

There is nothing like a deadline to sharpen one's focus. I'm deep into preparations for a June show at Tierra here in Ukiah. When I committed to this over a year ago, it wasn't clear exactly what I'd be showing, but it looks like it will be either entirely or at least 90% small quiltscapes. Having made about a dozen, I'm putting a temporary hold on the fun part of designing them in order to make sure that these dozen will be fully ready to show. This means hand sewing Zanshin Art labels on the backs, getting my neighbor's help to cut dowels to the right sizes, and making little hanging ribbons.

The payoff is that if I can do all that during March, I'll have April and May to have fun making some new pieces without getting caught short AND still have time for things like designing a postcard, finalizing mailing lists, etc.

The day job, the art studio, and the aikido gear sewing business all have deadlines. In its own way, so does the garden. So its a relief that home and aikido dojo are two deadline-free spaces!

FABRIC..... AHHHH....

2010-02-28T09:32:00.000-08:00

I took a break from making quiltscapes in order to sew some custom weapons bags, which made me realize that it's now well into a "new year" without me having procured new cotton prints for folks to decorate their bags with!

Now this presents a pickle: my clients for the most part want "Japanese" themed fabric, but most of the fabrics in that general category are either garish florals or silly images of kittens or sushi. The more subtle dragonflies, bamboo, & so on have been getting harder to find, not only in brick-&-mortar stores but online.

I lucked out on my latest 'net search though, finding a shop in Hawai'i with an interesting selection, good prices (which means my own prices hold steady another year!), & very good customer service. The prints I've selected are larger & bolder than in previous years, when I focused on smaller, "scattered" patterns. But they caught my eye online &, when the fabric came & I folded it into the approximate size & shape of a band for a weapons bag, they passed the test: I could not resist reaching out & handling the fabric.

Enjoy!

NEW YEAR, NEW PAINTING

2010-02-15T02:49:00.000-08:00

Right around the New Year, I took some reference photos while Stu & I were walking a trail above Ukiah. They were of oaks growing along a creek. The trunk & main branch forms were incredibly architectural, & the lichens or mosses, growing up to a couple of inches thick in areas, glowed an amazing gold-green in the afternoon light approaching the golden hour.

The first layer of underpainting was the mottled background of the other plant life - various native shrubs & sub-shrubs that were various shades of green with a fair amount of violet due to the shadows.

The second layer of underpainting was the brown of the oaks, with some light green to show where the lichens were growing.

The painting stopped there on February 2 due to some sewing projects that needed to take priority.

CREATIVE NEW YEAR ENERGY

2010-01-15T07:14:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year!

I have five months to prepare for a show at Tierra Gallery. Mostly it will feature these small ready-to-hang quiltscapes, essentially free-from collages that I then machine-quilt and finish of with fabric "frames."

I've also just taken some reference photos of moss-covered oaks, and am digging out the canvas and acrylics to work on a new painting series.

A TANGLE

2009-12-14T22:37:00.000-08:00

I haven't been blogging much about martial arts recently. The most recent m.a. posting is
http://northleftcoastblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/tangle.html

GIFTS

2009-10-01T23:26:00.000-07:00

I posted a training-related essay tonight on the main blog
http://northleftcoastblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/gifts.html

MODEST GOALS

2009-09-02T21:23:00.000-07:00

I've posted my essay that was on aikiweb in August at
http://northleftcoastblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/modest-goals.html

ON RANDORI

2009-07-14T17:53:00.000-07:00

http://northleftcoastblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/welcome-come-on-in.html
A new aikido related posting

HERE COMES THE SUMMER!

2009-06-18T14:34:00.000-07:00

New martial arts related posting at http://northleftcoastblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/here-comes-summer.html

New aikido post on my other blog

2009-05-12T21:00:00.000-07:00

http://northleftcoastblog.blogspot.com/

MOVE IT ON OVER

2009-04-19T02:09:00.000-07:00

I started this blog in August 2007mostly as a place to explore thoughts on visual and martial arts.

A lot has happened, in the world and in my little corner of it, in the nearly two years since then.

I didn't know that a scant 6 months later I'd be starting a blog to document my move to a small town. What I do know know is that it's all one life: gardening, aikido, cats, painting, family, sewing. So one blog is enough. I decided to keep the other one as the active one for the simple and lazy reason that the layout/colors are what I prefer over there. This will stay here so any of us can reference it.

I thank all of you who have stopped by, with or without comments, and invite you to bookmark or follow me at http://northleftcoastblog.blogspot.com/

A FEW BUSINESS NOTES....

2009-04-12T20:12:00.000-07:00

It's been a month since I blogged here, during which time I've not returned to the landscapes I started in March. A couple of custom sewing jobs and early spring gardening, plus some family stuff, have kept me from the easel. Between family stuff and a couple of migraines, I also lost some dojo time.

The good news is the sewing has been going very well and the last of the current orders is going to the post office tomorrow, AND I'm back at the dojo and physical complaints notwithstanding feeling very good about training.

I'm thinking that the time may be coming to merge my two blogs - this one and northleftcoastblog - into one. My life doesn't feel compartmentalized, so I'm not sure why my blogs should be.

In order to concentrate on custom sewing, the Nishoku line of premade bags has been marked down to the same price as a basic bag, $46, and with free shipping in the USA. Three new fabrics, pictured here, have been added to the color swatches page for embellishing custom bags.

BACK IN THE STUDIO

2009-03-11T21:22:00.000-07:00

The new studio is working well. The painting corner is a compact space (the carpet remnant that defines the area is 6x10 feet) but it is part of a spacious, airy room, and I made sure to site it by the large sliding glass doors that open to the courtyard.

After not painting for almost two years, it is hard to figure out "where to go." It seemed like the best way to start would be to pick up where I last was: landscape paintings based on my reference photos. The pictures here show my working method: a color print, a black and white print (for gridding and tonality), and my first pass at underpainting. I have had three more sessions since taking this photograph; the sky and distant mountains are done and the rest is beginning to get definition.

The process is interesting in many ways. For one thing, I'm rediscovering what works/doesn't work for me in terms of paint handling. For another, I'm not sure landscape is what I'll stay with once I get back into the groove. Finally, I now have a studio that accommodates having painting and sewing projects going simultaneously....and last week I got a powerful yen to make some skirts! Jo and I were running around downtown Petaluma Sunday, and there was one of those clothing stores where (if money was no object) I could outfit my entire closet. I ended up intensely studying the cut and construction of one skirt. I've shopped locally for the fabrics and trims I want, and drafted a flat pattern. So...tomorrow I have a few hours...shall I paint or shall I cut fabric?

Things are so much more straightforward in aikido: class is at a certain time, I show up and train....

RANKING

2009-02-18T21:38:00.000-08:00

I had the pleasure of watching, and taking a bit of ukemi for, several rankings last week at our dojo. It's interesting to note how different dojo cultures are reflected in this process.

In terms of the "testing" aspect, it really varies. At one extreme, I've seen organizations in which real testing for rank never seems to stop: folks who are up for even advanced yudansha ranking are challenged and may well not pass. At the opposite pole, what is done is essentially a demonstration that celebrates the assumption of the next rank, with the uke preselected and no surprises. The most interesting to watch fall somewhere in between: the person is well prepared but things are not scripted or choreographed. My own tests, done so far in three different dojos over the years, have fallen into this category, and managed to be simultaneously challenging and fun. Kind of like aikido in general.

Another difference is in the expectations of how techniques are done. One of the neat things about watching people doing tests for the same rank is how what are nominally the same techniques manifest based on a range of factors (size, age, gender, personality to name just a few). Its sort of like when I worked as an artist's model and loved walking around the studio during breaks to see all the different ways in which painters were interpreting me. At a dojo where I trained some years ago, the instructor was very concerned that everybody do the technique just how his shihan did it. This didn't make much sense to me. So it was nice last week to see peoples' individual natural styles not only tolerated but appreciated.

The thing that was very new to me was that after each person was awarded his or her new rank by the chief instructor, there was an opportunity for every other person on the mat to make a comment. They were very insightful and the cumulative effect was incredibly moving, "It takes a village" indeed.

We have four new first kyu students, and a week later I still smile thinking about that evening.

THOUGHTS ON UKEMI

2009-02-08T18:05:00.000-08:00

There's always an ongoing discussion somewhere in the aikido world about the "proper" role of uke; that is, the role that involves attacking a partner and, usually in most dojos, staying in that role to have the technique applied and accepting the fall or pin that results.

What is most often derided (well, after the really cruddy attacks you see in some dojos) is the practice of "tanking," of being so into playing the role that you go through it pro forma and roll or fall regardless of what your partner does. The funny thing is, I've been in dojos that will remain nameless that decry the practice while engaging in it, at least when the person applying the technique wears a black belt. Anyhow, it does seem to be widely recognized, if only in lip service sometimes, that unless you are with a real beginner, nobody learns if uke tanks.

The problem is, if you are not tanking, what ARE you doing?

I've practiced with partners who seem to think the proper non-tanking ukemi is active resistance, muscling back at their partners. There are others who, having delivered their initial attack, simply hang on and root themselves. In my opinion, they miss the point of the type of training we are doing.

Peter "the Budo Bum" Boylan and I have been having a back and forth about the role of kata for some time. Like him, I believe that the kind of partnered practice most aikido dojos use outside of kiyuwaza or randori is really a kata: an attack and a technique are specified, and two people, each with a predestined role, do their best to deliver it.

Viewed in this light, the role of uke is to deliver and keep delivering a committed attack,one that isn't so fast or hard as to overwhelm the skills level of the partner, but one that is continually aimed at the partner's center and continues the attacking energy as long as possible. This allows the partner to move appropriately, connect with uke, find the technique, and let it happen.

I also agree with a thought Jun Akiyama articulated many years ago: "nage, uke, same, same;" that is, it shouldn't matter which role you are in, the principles apply. So if the person doing the technique to uke is not supposed to be muscling or rooting, why would it be considered apt to incorporate such non-aiki principles in one's ukemi?

My own ukemi is a work in progress. It's limited by inability to move swiftly in some directions, certain actual disabilities and certain lingering fears. But I'm striving to find what I believe is the middle path, finding the "aiki" in the role: giving a sincere attack and, once it establishes a connection with my partner, being as committed as she is to staying connected. With a beginner I aim to let my body assume to shape of an idealized ukemi. But with others, I aim to relax and let my body reflect accurately what it is my partner is actually doing.

TEMPORARY SETBACKS

2009-01-28T21:13:00.000-08:00

It's been a hectic couple of weeks. I had to miss two aikido classes, one due to being on pain meds, one to celebrating a birthday. I'd hoped to at least keep up on practicing weapons at home, but with a three day trip to San Francisco, starting a twice-weekly Spanish class, and it being too cold to train outdoors in the few daylight hours that would be available, that fell by the wayside. And the art studio still doesn't have a carpet remnant down (nor shelves, bulletin boards and pegboards, but I can start painting without those).

So no painting, no weapons...at least I'm maintaining the little bit of stationery biking and Pilates I do in order to keep from falling apart, and have made it back to the dojo (although my hands gave out before the class did Monday night).

The good news is, we are going to buy AND put down the carpet remnant tomorrow before I go to the dojo for evening class. Other chores may have to wait, but this will be done. And I think this weekend will be the start of a planned prescheduled weapons practice, because if I don't treat it that way, it won't happen.

Having so many things one cannot just stop doing is difficult.

A TIME TO MAKE, A TIME TO SELL

2009-01-18T20:59:00.000-08:00

The need to have a part time day job (plus making time for martial arts and marital arts and miscellaneous interests) has always meant that there have to be compromises made. Over the past twenty five years I've tended to alternate between periods of mostly sewing or mostly painting. For the past four years, between making custom aikido goods and playing with costumes and corsets, the balance was very much towards sewing. When I was in between custom orders and had some really cool new Japanese prints to play with, I'd make up fancy looking weapons bags. That led to presenting a line of premade bags under the line Nishoku.

The pull is now very much towards painting again. A year after setting up a new home, I'm finally organizing the painting section of the studio. So in order to make time to paint, sewing is going to be purely on a custom basis again, and I'm clearing out the premade bags at a good sale price. There are only six of them, and when they go, they are gone. So if you can use a good deal on a well made weapons bag and want something a little different, check out the Nishoku final sale.

LET'S TRY IT AGAIN, THIS WAY

2009-01-14T21:11:00.000-08:00

I've worked with a variety of metaphors to help me better understand the aikido principle that in every tenkan there is an irimi (how one turns without a hint of "moving back." I've started with the New York u-turn into a parking space across the street and tried to translate that into hip movement. I've played with weighting and pointing and a bunch of things. My understanding improves but my doing it invariable lags behind (bodies are soooo uncooperative).

The other evening, a different approach was presented to this problem. The teacher clearly knew what she was aiming for us to try, and she was presenting it pretty clearly, but most of us were having trouble embodying it. I don't think it was a weakness in the teaching; rather, for those of us who did "get it" in our heads, we were having trouble getting it from our heads to our bodies.

I finally had the "aha' mental moment in which I could reduce it to a simple mantra for how to move. I still couldn't do it well, certainly couldn't do it with a person attached to me who I should throw, because it felt so different that it took all my concentration to just get my center, hips, and feet working together the way the teacher was suggesting.

Coincidentally, I was planning all day to write on this subject tonight, and just before sitting down to write I went over to check my friend, the budo bum's, blog and found his posting on the question of kata. I commented: "Personally, the kata that have the most meaning for me are those that comprise the movements that constitute the most basic building blocks of the art. It lets all from newbie to master to have a base to which to return for reality testing, muscle memory, polishing, refinement."

Having written that, I realized as I clicked over here to write, that what would serve best with this new teaching is for me to treat it as a solo kata, working on it alone at home, so I can internalize the movement. Then I can try incorporating it into technique at the dojo.

REHEARSALS

2009-01-01T20:47:00.000-08:00

Fives years into my aikido training, I had an enforced two year hiatus due to knee injury, surgery, and rehab. During that time, I often experienced what I called "waking dreams" about aikido. Driving the car, taking a shower, walking down the street, the "back burner" of my mind would begin doing techniques to the degree that I was aware of feeling nerve-muscle connections firing even though there was no gross motor response (in other words, I wasn't making a public spectacle of myself). Sometimes when walking past an inviting lawn or traversing a large open space like inside San Francisco City Hall, I'd get an overwhelming urge to do a forward roll, and could almost visualize and somaticize doing so.

When I returned to training, it seemed to me that experiencing these phenomenon, as well as continuing to watch class from time to time, had been invaluable in keeping aikido "in my body." I was out of shape, but had not lost any technical competence in the art. Articles I've read about sports training in the years since then seems to validate this.

It has now been over a year since I've set up my palette and done any painting. But the half of my studio allocated for painting is coming together, and as I walk around town or drive through the hills of the Coast Range, my eyes and brain have begun to see differently again, in the simultaneously open and analyzing way of a painter. I'm not painting. But I'm certainly getting ready to.

KITCHEN KOTEGAESHI

2008-12-16T22:11:00.000-08:00

I was looking at a recipe online today, jotting a couple of notes and calculations, and out of the blue had to chuckle. I’d also been looking at aikiweb and yet another discussion started by somebody wanting to know “the right way” to do kotegaeshi. By my reckoning I’ve been shown at least five right ways. But what does this have to do with recipes?

Several years ago it became imperative to get more whole grains and flax seed meal into our morning routine. I looked over a bunch of recipes for cookies and quick sweet breads and figured out substitutions: non fat yogurt, applesauce, and either honey, molasses, or maple syrup in lieu of butter and refined sugar; whole wheat or spelt flour with oats and flax seed meal instead of white flour. But the whole grains made things heavier and the flax seed meal, a solid, actually added some moist oil to the finished product. So I played on paper with various calculations and substitutions and pretty much every recipe has turned out delicious on the first try: peanut butter cookies, spice cookies, sesame cookies, filled coffee cake, date nut loaf, gingerbread, honey tahini cake, maple pecan loaf.

For tonight I wanted to bake a non-sweet quick bread, probably a variant of an Irish soda bread, to accompany split pea soup. Since my morning recipes already have the grains we need, it was a matter of getting rid of the sweet parts without throwing off the wet/dry ingredient balance or making it tasteless. So this morning I jotted down my basic coffee cake recipe and brought it to work with me. On a break, I looked up some Irish soda bread recipes and compared their proportions of wet and dry to that of my coffee cake. I did a little math (whoever says algebra isn’t a real life skill has never tried to cook, bake, sew or build anything!) and jotted down a recipe.

So what’s the right way to make a cake? Well, first let’s talk about the right ways I’ve been taught kotegaeshi. In most of them, you enter to the attackers side, lining up alongside him. But how do you get there? One way is to simply turn and pivot but another insists on a full tenkan. One has you follow that up with a step forward and then another pivot; another has you step back to make space; a third has you do another full tenkan so you are momentarily back to back with the attacker (and then there’s the reverse kotegaeshi where you don’t enter at all).

Then what happens? The first way I learned was that you use both of your hands on the attacker’s hand and wrist, applying an uncomfortable stretch as your hips turn, so the attacker is projected away. Another dojo taught me to use both of your hands the same way, but to aim the stretch into the attacker’s center so he goes straight down. At a third dojo, you don’t crank at all but simply hold the attacker’s hand and wrist unit in the proper shape with one or two hands at your stable center as you step back. And where I train now, we use one hand to secure the proper shape and the other hand on the attacker’s forearm in order to guide his fall straight down and then, in a continuous movement, to face down (and then there’s the reverse kotegaeshi where you just keep pivoting).

Each of these is immediately recognizable to any aikido student as some kind of kotegaeshi because the underlying principle is the same. Each is “right” in its own dojo, within a larger defined (if implicit) relationship between training partners, with its own conventions for what constitutes a proper attack, how technique is supposed to unfold, and what the norms are for how an attacker engages, connects, resists, or disengages.

So what is the right way to make a quick bread? It depends on what role it will play: dessert? something to melt cheese on? dunk in soup or in coffee? The basic elements are the same. The baker understand the role that each ingredient plays and has a general sense of their relative proportions. If it baked up as a quick bread and it fulfills its role, it was the right way to make it. If your kotegaeshi embodied fundamental aikido principles and resulted in your attacker being taken down safely, it was the right way to do it.

MISOGI

2008-12-10T21:22:00.000-08:00

(This essay was originally written 2005, and was published in the Iaido Journal/EJMAS sometime after)

Several New Years ago I received invitations to participate in two different misogi. One was under the auspices of the dojo at which I trained at the time, the other of a dojo that I visited from time to time. While the two are of different affiliations, with somewhat different approaches to the art, the misogi have in common immersion in very cold water and chanting; in one instance while doing bokken cuts and in the other while ringing bells.

My immediate response to each was a polite declination. If prodded for further explanation, I joked about not liking getting up early and getting wet. However, my real problem goes much deeper and has to do with two beliefs I see as implicit in the practice: that artificially created suffering is good for personal growth and that humans need ritual purification.

Life is hard. This is not stated as a complaint; rather as a given. For 35 years, as an activist and as a nurse, I have worked to alleviate pain and suffering. I cannot get my head around the concept of purposefully creating a situation that is uncomfortable or painful, merely in order to be able to rise above it. Real life, with it’s attendant illnesses, natural disasters and weird accidents, offers ample opportunity for such testing. If your’s doesn’t, then you are unusually lucky.

Misogi is often described as a “cleansing” or “purification.” In this sense, it’s connected to such religious-based rites as the ritual cleansing of Orthodox Jewish woman in a mikvah (communal bathhouse) and the medieval Christian practice of self-flagellation. This need to “cleanse” stems from a religious or cultural belief that one had become “soiled,” sinful.

I suppose it’s the atheist in me, but I just don’t get it. It seems to me that most of us muddle through the best we can, apologize like grownups for our errors, and try to be better today than we were yesterday. Any world view that defines the baseline condition of humanity as inherently impure is abhorrent to me.

If the goal is to “test” oneself, there are certainly ample activities that are physically and morally challenging while being a lot more socially useful. I mean, unless you are taking pledges for each minute you stay in the cold water, or are carrying somebody’s dirty clothes in with you to pound on the rocks, what actual benefit accrues? If the goal is to “clear” or “rebalance” oneself, or to reflect on one’s failings, why can’t this as easily be done at a civilized hour and while the body is comfortable?

With this in mind, I suggest a new tradition in New Years misogi, based on the principles that life is hard, and that the best way to clear oneself is to relax and feel good: First, go out and spend some time and money, maybe more than you’d actually like to, doing something to directly benefit somebody in worse straits than yours. Then have a nice long soak in a tub of warm water by candlelight while listening to John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme.” Feel free to chant along, swing a sword or ring bells if it makes you feel better.

FLOW & JOY

2008-11-26T17:27:00.000-08:00

A couple of times recently, after warming up and weapons, we paired up for "eight basics" (see note below). Nage was told to focus on flow and keeping it light (which I played with as not feeling like you are pushing down into your partner but letting an up energy serve as an imbalancing). We were asked in the uke role to also keep a flow going, to make the attacks continuous both in terms of getting up and into the next attack and in terms of making sure to keep the attacking energy throughout the technique.

I was reminded both nights on how much I really enjoy the role of uke. It is a wonderful training in so many ways:
how to project energy
how to keep connection
how to be a mirror for nage, giving somatic feedback
how to protect myself

Doing it as a continuous exercise, rather than stopping in between techniques, was was a good exercise in breathing and conservation of energy. I was able to go through basic eight, left and right, irimi and tenkan versions when we do them, and only wanted a one to two minute breather before moving into the nage role.

Perhaps the neatest thing about the continuous attack and focus on flow is that we ended up with huge grins. It felt like having the spirit of OSensei when he advised to train joyously.

Basic eight: katatori ikkyo, katatori nikkyo, yokomenuchi shihonage, shomenuchi kokyunage (iriminage for Aikikai dojo), tsuki kotegaishe, ushiro kokyunage, ushiro sankyo, kokyudosa

ALWAYS IRIMI, SOMEHOW

2008-11-12T20:53:00.000-08:00

Last night we were working on variations from ryotetori (your left and right wrist are both grabbed in the attack). There are a number of possible opening responses. Even though we were doing it from a static grab, it was clear that the opening we were practicing assumes a strong incoming attack: The instructor described it as withdrawing a shoulder/foot while doing a rising shomen block. I recognized it energetically as that wonderful aikido conundrum of being receptive while entering, or as I'd written in a column early in 2005, finding the irimi inherent in tenkan or in tenshin.

I find there is value in considering all the available metaphors when working on these things. So one day I may consider it as a kinesthetic issue and focus on which hip is initiating movement and how weight shifts from foot to foot, working on form. Another day I may look at it as an energetic issue and focus on reading my partner and on extending ki. A third day I may play with the idea of the attack as a spacial disturbance and how the space around me needs to respond....

Understanding improves but I still don't "get it" and that's ok.

COLORS OF THE SEASON

2008-10-29T17:22:00.000-07:00

Kitigawa Utamaro: Dragonfly & poppies

"This dragonfly has dyed his body autumn"
--Bakasui

I wake up in the dark and reach for corduroys and knits in shades of green and rust.

A partly pieced quilt top starts in pale yellows and runs through the earth tones to end in deep forest green.

I look up, close my eyes, sniff the wind. Change is in the air. It is a good season, somehow, for weapons kata. May my strikes be as crisp as the Arkansas Black apples that spill from my basket.

MAKE YOUR CHOICES

2008-10-22T18:24:00.000-07:00

If I use the shovel too much, I cannot use the jo or the bokken.
If I walk too far, I cannot do aiki taiso.
If I sew too much, I cannot grasp or pin.

If I do too much, I have to take meds, and cannot train.
If I think too much, I get a migraine and cannot train.

When I can keep things in balance, I get to do some of everything every week.

TAKING RESPONSIBILITY

2008-10-10T20:43:00.000-07:00

I'm used to teaching informally; it's been part of every nursing job I've ever had. I've enjoyed teaching beginning painting in small classes or for individual students, and have mentored a particularly talented and hardworking sewing student (who is now a costume intern at ACT!)

But it's been several years since I've been part of an aikido community in which I really had a role to play in the sempai/kohai relationship, that Japanese tradition in which students (or employees, in any given setting) at each level have a responsibility to support and teach those junior to them. As Rocky Izumai points out, it serves many useful purposes in the aikido dojo. For me, it contributes to mindfulness in a couple of ways.

The first is that there is a general awareness that I'm expected to be a role model. So besides working on my technique when I train, there is a greater sense of polishing my attitude: how am I interacting with everybody? how well am I carrying out what is asked? One thing I'm working on now is not overtly revealing my frustration when my hands can't quite do something "the right way;" instead, being calm so I'm not a disruptive presence and so I'm receptive to what the instructor is suggesting.

The second is that it calls for taking a wider view - maybe both a little more zanshin and a little more "distant mountains" gaze - seeing the larger picture of what the dojo needs. For instance, last night after class, Sensei asked a teenaged student to please fold the hakama of one of our black belts. He went over to do so, but grumbling slightly about not knowing how. I asked Sensei if she'd like me to offer to show him, and she said yes. As it happened, I ended up as kohai getting clarification on which folding method is preferred, and as sempai, demonstrating it start to finish for my kohei. It felt very satisfying.

Which may be one of the most enriching parts of the sempai-kohei relationship (in a healthy dojo culture): it provides a concrete albeit changing role for each dojo member, building true community.

KATA REDUX: THE LURE OF THE FAMILIAR FORM

2008-09-24T20:11:00.000-07:00

I have never really wanted, in any serious way, to be wealthy (there are always the little conversations one has when, having sprung for a lottery ticket, for a few hours you MIGHT be a winner; those are mostly centered on the joys of philanthropy and don't count).

The only time I have any regrets about opting for my way of life is when a really good art show opens on the other side of the country. There was Cezanne in Philly in 1996, Vermeer in DC in 1995...the list goes on. Currently I'm ruing not being able to see the Giorgio Morandi exhibit at the Met in NY.

It was in the early 1990s that Larry Morace introduced me to Morandi's work, telling me about him and his still life paintings during a conversation while Larry was gallery sitting at the SF Open Studio's show. He was so enthusiastic that I couldn't wait to get home and look it up!

Morandi is kind of an "artist's artist." There is handling of surface and medium that is at once painterly and austere, a really admirable achievement hit time and again. But what a lot of us are really attracted to is his large body of work comprising still lives done in his studio using the same small grouping of simple objects in varying relationships to each other.

Peter Schjeldahl, writing in the New Yorker, notes "It’s as if he had set out, time and again, to nail down the whatness of his objects but couldn’t get beyond the preliminary matter of their whereness." I don't normally like Schjedahl's writing, but his essay on this exhibit is superb; for me he nails what is so special about Morandi. Holland Cotter's piece for the NY Times is also worth reading (Is it a measure of the art that it brings out the best in the critical writing?).

It struck me, contemplating anew Morandi's work, that he had essentially created a kata for himself. By setting the limits, he could devote himself to refining and polishing his technique while exploring the possibilities inherent in the problem he had defined.

I'm not sure why I think this is wonderful, but I do.

SEMPAI

2008-09-05T20:43:00.000-07:00

Something came up. I was asked to stay the last half hour of the class, me and two high school age students, then close up for the night. Work on their yokomenuchi shihonage. And also on shomenuchi kokyunage (iriminage in an aikikai dojo): they are going backwards when they lead the turn.

They are young, a bit gawky and loose-limbed, with great "can do" attitudes. And I wear a brown belt and have around forty years on them, so they are willing to go into our half hour with open ears and eyes and full of trust.

I start by demonstrating shihonage on each of them, then receive technique from each of them and give some pointers, then sit back and watch them practice together. One can feel he is not taking uke's balance. His form looks good, but he's right. I show them how sensei likes us to do a wheel-like rotation by uke's elbow, rather than the lateral stretch some instructors use. I do that, then swing under into shihonage, and stand there, him on his tiptoes and a huge grin as he realizes I totally have his balance and haven't thrown him. Ain't aikido grand? They practice just the elbow thing for a couple of minutes, then integrate it into the technique.

They are too young to know it firsthand, so I describe the guy on the cover of Grateful Dead album with the ice cream cone plastered to his forehead. They laugh at the idea, and I tell them if they treat uke's hand like that ice cream cone, uke will never throw them backwards. I let my invisible ice cream cone get behind my head and one of the kids obligingly throws me backwards.

Fifteen minutes up. Time to move on. Kokyunage (maybe your iriminage). How to explain in a shorthand things I've explored for years on how to maintain forward energy while receiving, on how to find the irimi in a tenkan? Things I can't do consistently.

I try a combination of somatic exercise and then in-the-technique physics: We stand in a line and I have them do a simple tenshi stepping back with the focus on, yep, stepping back. What does it feel like? Like going backwards... Then I ask them to focus on the back leg and to imagine/feel that hip moving forward and, as that side of the body shifts forward in space, to simply allow the front leg to swing back. I suggest that, to me, it feels very much like I've entered towards the front, even though my formerly front foot has stepped back and I'm "off the line." They try it a few times. I don't know if it makes any sense to them.

I demo the technique on each of them, then have them each do it to me, then watch them. They are going backwards. I demo going backwards and they nod sagely.

We parse it out: Enter, get lined up properly: facing the same direction as uke, in shikaku. Don't know if they know shikaku, the blind spot. Demo how easy it is to imbalance uke a bunch of ways. Nice place to be. Be there before you move on to the next anything.

How to move forward when your whole body tells you you are kicking backwards? Extend the lead hand and, as sensei says, actually point your finger forward. I take it a little further, tell them extend forward. Even though that foot is going to feel like its going back, shift your weight onto the inside (back) foot, and let that become a weighted, forward oriented center while the front foot just kind of gets out of the way.

For the next few minutes, it works. All we can ask. We bow out and it feels like all of our "thank you"s are sincere.

MIND AND/OR BODY

2008-08-26T08:58:00.000-07:00

I've never been one of those dualists (though as a child enamored of Zorro, I briefly considered being a duellist). For one thing, a lot of the idea behind it seemed to be "mind good and noble, flesh dirty and base," and I was rather fond of and, so to speak, attached to my flesh, thank you very much. For another I'm one of those folks born sensitive to the workings of my body - able to isolate and move one muscle instead of another, feeling at once the difference between an injury to an organ versus connective tissue; hence, as a young person, it never actually occurred to me until reading about it that anybody would posit a split between mind and body.

So why is it that some nights at the dojo, given but a minor variation in focus and movement, I'm able to (1) visually see the nuances, (2) describe them verbally both concretely and metaphorically, (3) experience them done correctly to me when I attack, and, again, relate that somatic experience into a visual and verbal description of what was being done to me, yet my body is incapable of integrating all that "knowledge" into the set of postures and movements I intend to make?

(sigh)

I know its a matter of "practice, practice, practice."

But why can't the body and mind I believe are one system actually TALK TO EACH OTHER more effectively?

CREATION

2008-08-12T20:55:00.000-07:00

To create, according to the online Merriam-Webster dictionary:

1: to bring into existence created the heaven and the earth — Genesis 1:1(Authorized Version)>2 a: to invest with a new form, office, or rank created a lieutenant> b: to produce or bring about by a course of action or behavior created a terrible fuss> <create new jobs>3: cause, occasion creates high food prices>4 a: to produce through imaginative skill <create a painting> b: design <creates dresses>...

I have drawn pictures since I could hold a crayon or pencil, sitting on the floor or at any available surface, happy with a number 2 pencil and a stack of old stationery. When I was a pre-teenager, my mother taught me the basics of houseplant care, pruning, and transplanting at the kitchen table of our tiny Brooklyn apartment (where she also taught me to dissect a fetal pig, but that's another story...). With a lot of help from a high school friend, I sewed my first garment, shaping two dimensional cloth into a new three dimensional form. A few months ago, I brought forth from soil and sun my first humble crop of radishes, lettuce, and basil.

I am rarely happier than when I am making something.

The exigencies of life (having, alas, to earn a living - although attenuated by being able to do work I enjoy and find meaning in) mean it is very difficult to make time to both paint and sew. When we moved north, I had no choice: there were orders for aikido gear waiting, so the studio space had to be set up quickly to accommodate efficient sewing. It has actually been well over a year since I've painted and I'm getting the urge (there is also a show coming up, but too quickly to do new work for it; it is likely they will want a series that I did a dozen years ago).

Conveniently, the studio needs a new sliding glass door put in where it faces the courtyard. This gives me both the opportunity and a timeline for reconfiguring the space so that there are discrete areas for painting and sewing (a luxury I never had in San Francisco) plus the option of, in temperate seasons, moving the easel and table out into the courtyard itself.

It will be interesting to see what space and what art will be created.

MAKING DECISIONS

2008-07-23T21:04:00.000-07:00

PHOTO: FELINE NEWAZA!

So, I'm working on this "quilt challenge" put out by a local quilting guild. Each participant is given a piece of identical fabric: a quilting cotton in a simple black and white check pattern, the individual squares about 1/4". All if it is to be used, somehow, in the top of the quilt. Other than that, one is free to use any technique or quilt pattern, to incorporate any colors. But the only types of fabric that are to be used are checks, stripes, dots or plaids.

It struck me this evening that in both the creative and the martial arts, consciously or not, we go through a process of solving a puzzle by moving from (too) many options to ever narrower limits until, finally, there is one inevitable solution left.

Thirty six or thirty seven years ago, an art teacher told me a story. I'm afraid I don't remember who he was paraphrasing, but this is the creative process he ascribed to a famous artist:
"When I start a painting, the room is crowded. My friends and family, everybody I've known, read about, heard of, they are all in there with me. I begin to paint. Quietly, one by one, they leave. Finally it is just me and the painting. Then I leave."
As a teenager, the "moral of the story" for me was the separation of the art from the artist. It taught me a lot about how to finish a painting.

But as I've gotten older, what I've taken from the story is trusting a reductive process. Each shape of color I add to the canvas rules out certain future choices and in doing so points the way to the next "best" choices to mix and apply.

The quilt challenge has me working this process very deliberately, since I started with their rules, developed certain design concepts I wanted to use, and "designing as I go" from the central motif out, I find the aesthetic decisions working within ever narrower parameter. It makes me think of aikido jiyuwaza, or "doing variations". Someone will come at you with a specified attack, and you are free to use any technique. Except you're actually not. It really ought to be a known aikido technique, part of that particular dojo's curriculum and not, say, a kick to the head or a left hook or an aikido throw nobody in that dojo knows how to safely receive.

Furthermore, the attack may be specified, but the energy of the attacker is a wild card. If it is, say, intensely rushing at you, faster than you expected, your best choices would be limited to the range of techniques that involve "late entry," letting the attack fully develop and really receiving it. You might do so while turning aside, perhaps even making a 180 degree pivot as the attacker goes past.

But then there might be a major size disparity between the two of you, or the attacker may have an injury you are aware of; she may be coming at you with one hand instead of both hands, or aim the attack at a different angle than the last person did...

If you have decided ahead of time "I'm going to do xyz technique on the next attack," you are making an arbitrary decision that can be inappropriate to the reality that is going to unfold in your face in the next fifteen seconds.

If you allow the process, you are not guaranteed of a "good" or "the right" result, any more than an artist is assured of always making something that is successful in pleasing himself or the buying public. But you are going to put the odds on your side. With lots of mindful practice, paying attention to how different responses to the variables end up with different results, you will learn to trust the process and narrow your choices down to get closer to the results you want more often.

ONE SIZE DOES NOT FIT ALL

2008-07-13T16:03:00.000-07:00

Last week, I was working with a couple of kohei practicing "variations" - from a given attack, showing a variety of techniques. I was pretty happy to act as uke, letting them work on it, only going into the role of nage to demo a point I thought would be helpful. At one point I was doing shihonage as a tanto takeaway, and sensei noted that I didn't need to be so careful with uke, that I could have just thrown rather than maintaining physical contact and bringing them to the mat (we were NOT going for a pin). I wryly smiled and noted that it is an artifact of my nurse role: taking care of everybody ('s wellbeing, I could have added).

Towards the end of class, sensei called up various students to demo randori. Interestingly, for one of the brown belts, she called up three very junior students to uke, including a couple of youngsters who really don't roll much.

Afterwards, in talking about it to the class, her point was that she purposely wanted to create a situation where (my paraphrasing here) he couldn't go into overdrive or tension and just throw willy-nilly, but would have to slow down, relax and be attentive to the skills and limits of each partner.

A good lesson for the day.

MEMO TO SELF....

2008-07-08T18:28:00.000-07:00

...every time you run into trouble on the mat it is because of lack of patience and trying to impose a solution.

If the attack is sooner, faster, or more intense than you anticipated, don't struggle or revert to looking for how to make something happen. Connect, keep breathing, move while keeping the connection and have faith that with patience something will manifest.

I can tell other people that. I often know it. Sometimes (like last night) I don't know it, though, and it is embarrassing to be so frustrated and have to have a senior student or teacher remind me.

I really wish it were permanently etched in the grey matter.

Its funny how that translates across disciplines, too. I am working on a "quilt challenge" (designing and making a quilt within certain parameters), and had backed myself into a corner with a few pieces. After a few days of struggle, I took a deep breath and relaxed and let the solution come.

Yeah, its not just "on the mat."

This is Leo and Lily, our new family members. They are very good at imposing their will on us.

BODY MEMORY/THE LURE OF THE FAMILIAR

2008-06-13T23:17:00.000-07:00

Back when I stopped training for two years for my ACL surgery and rehab, I had "waking dreams" in which I'd find my wandering mind and on a small scale my body doing aikido techniques. It was always either sayunage (also known as sokumen iriminage) or else picking up sankyo from a shoulder grab. Neither were particularly "my favorite techniques" during training - if asked at the time, I'd probably say either shihonage or udekeminage (also known as tenbin nage). But clearly my mind/body was reverting to some neural preference.

Fast forward a few years, and I'm training again, in a different town, different dojo, different style. Some classes we spend time working on variations from a given attack. One of my peers has a very mechanistic approach to this: he goes through "the eight basics" in the order he learned them. I can't do that. Rightly or wrongly, I figure I should have all the options at my fingertips, so to speak, and be able to do an appropriate opening and from there a technique will happen.

Turns out that oh maybe 8 times out of 10 the first thing I find is sayunage. Shihonage and udekeminage are close behind. I think the sankyo was so attack-specific that it just sort of fades from this scenario.

So after those, I start looking for other things, the myriad variations of body position, hand angle, and energy that allow different techniques to manifest. OH! So that's how I get from there to there and look...its kaitennage.

Similar things happen in the studio all the time. Favorite colors get mixed on the palette, however complex, seemingly without thinking about it, and patterns of brushstrokes dance across the canvas. The carrying strap for a weapons bag gets attached with its specific 7 direction, crossing stitch pattern in one smooth procedure; my hands and the steam iron turn and press the sides of a tanto sleeve. It is relaxing and reassuring.

But it's also part of the allure when a customer poses a design problem, or after years of doing seascapes one decides to do a landscape. Relaxing and reassuring is nice and it builds one's craft, but challenge is interesting. Without a puzzle to solve, even if it is a minor variation on an established theme, there is nothing to learn, no creative growth.

So muscle memory is good, but the mind, like muscle, needs to be exercised.

INNOCENT EYES

2008-05-21T21:09:00.000-07:00

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.

LISTENING TO THE MESSAGE

2008-05-08T03:33:00.000-07:00

Classes are offered Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday. My body generally can handle two classes a week if I pace my activity during the class (although this Monday I had to bow out and go home for pain medication after the 45 minute warm up which includes aiki taiso).

My usual pattern was to attend Monday and Wednesday. Monday is a basics class taught by a senior student and also attended by a yudansha and a couple of brown belts (including myself); it offers good fundamentals and a chance to slowly start to learn this dojo's weapons kata. Wednesday is the advanced class; following warmups by a senior student, it is taught be sensei. I get the double benefit of her instruction plus feedback from partnering with a variety of senior students.

A few weeks ago, my Wednesday workday was such that I needed to GO HOME and eat dinner and rest. So that Thursday evening, rejuvenated by my "day off" (sewing orders, doing work around the house), off I went to the dojo for intermediate class. The first half is led by a brown belt - warm ups, aiki taiso, weapons. Then sensei takes over for techniques. There were no yudansha; myself and the other brown belt were the seniors that evening.

Sensei commented after class that it was helpful to have another student of my rank on the mat. I thanked her for a great class and noted that, as Wednesdays might be hard for me sometimes due to work, and it is hard for me to train two nights in a row, I'd probably alternate Wednesdays and Thursdays.

The following week, I had to miss Monday night. Wednesday night was such an exhilarating class that I decided to take a chance and double back on Thursday night. Sensei commented after class that it was really good to have me on the mat on Thursday nights.

OK, so after a dozen years on and off doing aikido, I'm still a bit dense about certain protocols. It wasn't until I was driving home that my brain went "DOH!" Of course. I am being asked to chose Thursday nights over Wednesday nights. And of course, out of respect for my sensei, I will do so.