I have been incredibly busy performing lately. As someone who takes a performance-oriented approach to budo, this has been very satisfying. Since mid-April, I have taken part in four budo or Nihon buyo performances, or some combination of both. This week I have two more, then one next week, then two more about ten days after that. I think I have a break from somewhere around mid-May until mid-June, but it's too early to tell yet whether something might show up in the intervening time.
Why perform? For a dancer of any type, of course, the answer is obvious; though it is usually difficult to articulate to viewers (and I think not really necessary. One of the irritating things about Americans is their constant asking why: Why do you perform? Why do you dance? Why do you study budo? Why are you wearing that?). The dancer's art, especially Japanese traditional art, is not complete until it is seen by an audience. And after the performance, it vanishes, except in the memory of that audience, at that time, in that place, never to happen again (as in the proverb, "one meeting, one chance").
As I see it, performing is performing, whether dance, budo, or at a poetry slam. Some of the best performers I have ever met are total amateurs, and some professionals could take lessons from them. That does not mean that a performer is good at everything she tries her hand at. But some people are very good at performing certain things.
But, to get back to the second paragraph, why do I perform budo, and why do we do demos? It's not for the reasons people think (even my own students). I/we do not perform in order to attract students, and, to be honest, anyone who would join a budo group on the basis of seeing a demonstration is being hasty, to say the least. A demo presents but one face (hopefully the best possible face) of what a group does. It does not by any means convey the whole picture, however. Iaido is pretty thankless - there are no tournaments or trophies (except for kata competition, which, depending on whom you ask, can be as much fun as watching paint dry). There is not even much in the way of rank; that is, while modern groups do offer dan rankings on a fairly (in my experience) rapid basis, more traditional groups take much more time to confer any type of recognition. In other words, people looking for continual, regular reinforcement of their achievement in budo should probably not join a really traditional group where it takes more than 10 years to get a certificate of any kind. The best way to decide on a budo group is to take part in a regular practice and see if it strikes a chord. Then continue. Or not.
So, why perform? Because it's a challenge. Because it can be difficult; and even if things go smoothly, they never go perfectly. There are always "wild" factors that figure in. The weather for an outdoor performance is rarely perfectly clear and calm, neither too hot nor too cold. There's always something - wind, an uneven floor, or things one could never anticipate. For example, a few weeks ago, we were performing outdoors on some springy, black mats more suited to cushioning breakfalls than steadying some barefoot iaidoka. Most of us were wearing tabi as a precaution against the uncertain ground, and when I took mine off, the better to maintain my balance, I was met with a most unpleasant surprise. The sun, wan as it was, had heated up the black rubber to the point where it felt like Miami Beach in August. I could feel my feet burning as I did my kata (which is probably why the photos of me at this demo look like they do). We were so grateful to finish and bow off the mat. It was so bad, the karate group after us had the mats rolled up in order to spare their feet. They did not change their demo, however, and the uke earned some sympathetic murmurs from the audience when he was bounced to the ground in a slightly-less-than-controlled fall. As I said, the demo went smoothly in the sense that there were no obvious deviations in our plans, but the experience was unique, as always, and could not have been predicted. Needless to say, we all learned to be wary of black mats in the pale sun, even after a rainy morning in mid-April! And the only certainty for the next demo is that yet more variables will insert themselves into the equation.
Demos are a way to test oneself - how good is my concentration? Can I do this even with burning feet? (An extreme example, but it happened.) In a space smaller than promised? With a ceiling that's too low? After getting lost on the way to the venue and arriving flustered at the last minute? How steady am I? On mats? On uneven ground? Even better - if someone in the group cancels at the last minute, can I carry on without him/her?
Iai is the practice of swordsmanship in a very controlled environment. It has to be done that way. Moreover, the possibility of having to use a sword to defend against someone else with one is (happily) nonexistent. Live demonstrations are an opportunity to find out what we are really made of, in the best possible way - we can test ourselves without harming others, and the audience gets to enjoy the result.
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Monday, April 15, 2013
The meltdown
Some short while ago, I noted that some writers have written about their practice as a way of healing and/or empowering themselves. I have always found this idea dismaying. Budo is a wonderful practice for body and mind. There are also considerable philosophical ideas behind many practices. I think these aspects are wonderful, but that does not make my practice a vehicle for psychological healing or empowerment, and it surely does not make me a therapist. What dismayed me most about these writers' thoughts on this subject was that when their teachers were mentioned at all, no one considered what it might feel like for the person who runs the local karate group to be saddled with responsibility for his students' mental well-being. Even if the teacher happens to be a licensed mental health professional, if a student is not an actual patient, it seems really pretentious to simply assume his/her practice with that teacher will somehow heal them (I guess self-centeredness is not supposed to be something a student can be cured of by practicing budo).
One teacher who ran a chigung group I took part in many years ago, apropos of nothing that we knew of, once started a class session by saying more or less the following: "I am your teacher. I teach martial arts. I am not your friend, or your dad or mom, or your kindly uncle. Don't invite me to your graduations, weddings, christenings, bat mitzvahs, bar mitzvahs or brises. Don't call me at home. Don't tell me your problems. Don't take our equipment. Don't owe us money. Just pay your dues and come to practice."
After class, I asked him why he felt the need to make that point plain. He said this (approximately): "Your students will take more out of you [emotionally] than your children ever will. Trust me." (One of his senior students later told me that the teacher had been pulled into what he referred to as a "family argument" amongst some of the other seniors in the dojo. By "family argument," he meant something that was not unusual, but not trivial either. By making that pronouncement, he may have been sending a message to his seniors, but he was also, certainly, trying to head off possible trouble in the future.)
I was, at the time, a beginning and by no means full time teacher (I simply took over the class if I was the highest-ranking person there, meaning that I actually had a little seniority in our little group by then). But I thought about his statements long and hard, and, as I became a teacher in my own right, I never forgot what he said. And I have tried very hard to be professional with my students. Though it is frequently impossible not to tell the occasional anecdote (actually, I think I'm sort of famous for them), and there are times when any human being is stressed enough to share something difficult that is going on with people whom you, after all, know quite well, I have always thought that this teacher's point was excellent, and well worth remembering.
Recently, though, I have been pulled into some drama in a student's personal life that has spilled into the dojo. It affected not only me, but others there as well, involving some flagrant misbehavior that actually threatened both myself and my sponsor with potential liability. To put it delicately, he showed up at practice in absolutely no acceptable state, put on his gi, and began swinging a sword around. We took care of the immediate problem by sending the student home. By the end of the evening, he had emailed me that he quit (upon reading this out loud to the students present after okeiko, we all laughed, actually). Like my old teacher, Mr. Otani, I had to promise my other students that I would communicate with the offending person immediately, which I did. I sent a sternly worded email that he might be allowed back to okeiko only if he never did such a thing ever again. And I decided that he would not be permitted to take part in any travel or outside activities until after a lengthy probation period; that is, if he ever returned.
I received a response that was the epitome of self-pitying aggrandizement, expecting me to "understand" the "stresses" he was going through. I did not respond.
Is it because I don't care about his problems? Actually, yes, it's exactly that. Like the chigung teacher, I am neither trained nor inclined to help this person with his personal problems in any way. And it was the height of self-aggrandizement (there's that word again) to make all of us part of his personal drama. Where do people get this idea? I think, sometimes, potential students take the idea of the self-improvement aspect of the martial arts, as well as the sometimes deliberately-misleading hype about MA as a spiritual practice, to think that helping people overcome their personal problems is part of our function. In my observation, this same misunderstanding seems to relate to why some troubled individuals join the church and become priests. They are not looking to serve others, they are trying to cope with their own enormous problems. (To be honest, the church has always sold itself as a personal problem solver. However, we have seen through recent experience that troubled churchmen are not very good at solving other people's troubles.)
Though philosophical considerations have come up from time to time in budo, along with tie-ins to Buddhist, Shinto and Daoist principles through its history, the full-blown idea of improving oneself through practice is relatively recent, and coincides with the reestablishment of practices after the Pacific War and subsequent Occupation. A cynical observer might suggest that this emphasis on personality development might have been put out somewhat disproportionately in order to legitimate practices that up until just before then had been associated with extreme nationalism and militarism (just saying). However, that does not mean that this philosophical stance is not real, or is not worthwhile. It is. But, as with everything, context is important. And misuse of the idea, whether to turn budo classes into therapy sessions, or for powerful teaching personalities to misuse students' trust, should be acknowledged. Generally speaking, a front kick is just a front kick. As a teacher, I feel it is part of my responsibility to point out that it is better not to use that front kick outside the dojo except in a metaphorical sense most of the time. But I believe that is pretty much where my responsibility ends.
This is the second time this same student has screwed up and then apologized and asked for forgiveness. I'm not giving it. Like my old chigung teacher, I teach budo. I do not give dispensation.
One teacher who ran a chigung group I took part in many years ago, apropos of nothing that we knew of, once started a class session by saying more or less the following: "I am your teacher. I teach martial arts. I am not your friend, or your dad or mom, or your kindly uncle. Don't invite me to your graduations, weddings, christenings, bat mitzvahs, bar mitzvahs or brises. Don't call me at home. Don't tell me your problems. Don't take our equipment. Don't owe us money. Just pay your dues and come to practice."
After class, I asked him why he felt the need to make that point plain. He said this (approximately): "Your students will take more out of you [emotionally] than your children ever will. Trust me." (One of his senior students later told me that the teacher had been pulled into what he referred to as a "family argument" amongst some of the other seniors in the dojo. By "family argument," he meant something that was not unusual, but not trivial either. By making that pronouncement, he may have been sending a message to his seniors, but he was also, certainly, trying to head off possible trouble in the future.)
I was, at the time, a beginning and by no means full time teacher (I simply took over the class if I was the highest-ranking person there, meaning that I actually had a little seniority in our little group by then). But I thought about his statements long and hard, and, as I became a teacher in my own right, I never forgot what he said. And I have tried very hard to be professional with my students. Though it is frequently impossible not to tell the occasional anecdote (actually, I think I'm sort of famous for them), and there are times when any human being is stressed enough to share something difficult that is going on with people whom you, after all, know quite well, I have always thought that this teacher's point was excellent, and well worth remembering.
Recently, though, I have been pulled into some drama in a student's personal life that has spilled into the dojo. It affected not only me, but others there as well, involving some flagrant misbehavior that actually threatened both myself and my sponsor with potential liability. To put it delicately, he showed up at practice in absolutely no acceptable state, put on his gi, and began swinging a sword around. We took care of the immediate problem by sending the student home. By the end of the evening, he had emailed me that he quit (upon reading this out loud to the students present after okeiko, we all laughed, actually). Like my old teacher, Mr. Otani, I had to promise my other students that I would communicate with the offending person immediately, which I did. I sent a sternly worded email that he might be allowed back to okeiko only if he never did such a thing ever again. And I decided that he would not be permitted to take part in any travel or outside activities until after a lengthy probation period; that is, if he ever returned.
I received a response that was the epitome of self-pitying aggrandizement, expecting me to "understand" the "stresses" he was going through. I did not respond.
Is it because I don't care about his problems? Actually, yes, it's exactly that. Like the chigung teacher, I am neither trained nor inclined to help this person with his personal problems in any way. And it was the height of self-aggrandizement (there's that word again) to make all of us part of his personal drama. Where do people get this idea? I think, sometimes, potential students take the idea of the self-improvement aspect of the martial arts, as well as the sometimes deliberately-misleading hype about MA as a spiritual practice, to think that helping people overcome their personal problems is part of our function. In my observation, this same misunderstanding seems to relate to why some troubled individuals join the church and become priests. They are not looking to serve others, they are trying to cope with their own enormous problems. (To be honest, the church has always sold itself as a personal problem solver. However, we have seen through recent experience that troubled churchmen are not very good at solving other people's troubles.)
Though philosophical considerations have come up from time to time in budo, along with tie-ins to Buddhist, Shinto and Daoist principles through its history, the full-blown idea of improving oneself through practice is relatively recent, and coincides with the reestablishment of practices after the Pacific War and subsequent Occupation. A cynical observer might suggest that this emphasis on personality development might have been put out somewhat disproportionately in order to legitimate practices that up until just before then had been associated with extreme nationalism and militarism (just saying). However, that does not mean that this philosophical stance is not real, or is not worthwhile. It is. But, as with everything, context is important. And misuse of the idea, whether to turn budo classes into therapy sessions, or for powerful teaching personalities to misuse students' trust, should be acknowledged. Generally speaking, a front kick is just a front kick. As a teacher, I feel it is part of my responsibility to point out that it is better not to use that front kick outside the dojo except in a metaphorical sense most of the time. But I believe that is pretty much where my responsibility ends.
This is the second time this same student has screwed up and then apologized and asked for forgiveness. I'm not giving it. Like my old chigung teacher, I teach budo. I do not give dispensation.
Thursday, April 11, 2013
Beginners' minds
I love beginners. I love their initial awkwardness, which diminishes with every subsequent practice. In fact, sometimes I wish I could video tape people's first classes (I would have loved to have started with my own), just so I could show people the difference in their abilities, even six months later. They would be amazed at the difference, as I always am. I love that they ask questions I never, ever would have thought of, that are frequently incredibly difficult to answer. As a teacher, I have discovered over and over that someone's straightforward thought can be another person's left field.
It's a good thing I love beginners, because, basically, that is what I have to work with. I have one returnee student who knew me at the old place, found me, and resumed training (though, honestly, he was still mostly a beginner when he left, so I am not sure if he qualifies as a senior, except in the relative sense). And I have one who started with me about three years ago, who is still involved, though he does not come to okeiko as much as I would like him to. I realize that in some arts, three years' tenure might rate a student as an assistant instructor, but that is definitely not true in koryu. Even if you want to debate whether iaido is a genuine koryu, it is close enough - the repertory is large and complicated and takes years to learn. Moreover, a student may know the mechanics of a kata, but that in no way means that she really understands it. Even physically talented people need years of practice to "unpack" (as one of my colleagues put it) iai kata. My teacher used to say it takes maybe 10 years of training to really start seeing the deeper meanings in the techniques. And that's just the start.
One of the problems with having a group of newbies (I started this group approximately four years ago) is that there is little, if any, institutional memory because there isn't much to remember. And the things that a sempai would show students have to be handled by me instead. Like my teacher, I would prefer not to discuss the nuances of proper behavior, and yet, I can't fault people for not being as polite as they should be because they simply have no idea. Even my Japanese student had minimal traditional experience (he played kendo in high school, but that's about it), so he is not as much help as I wish he was. And Americans - well, you know Americans.
When I first started training, we had a hardass sempai who, even though he had actually not been there that long, had a very clear idea of what should be proper in the dojo. I never liked the guy for a number of solid reasons, but that was one thing he did that I will always respect him for. Even though he sometimes missed the mark, the emphasis he placed on proper behavior turned me into a careful observer, both here and in the Old Country, which has proved very beneficial to my practice.
I have found that, when training in Japan, or even in a traditional dojo here in NYC, what you know of a particular style is not as important as how you approach it. If you know how to behave when walking into a dojo for the first time, even if you don't know the specific customs of the place, you will quickly adapt. Once people get over the amazement that a foreign barbarian knows how to behave respectfully ("We get a lot of freaks," is how one teacher explained it to me, in English), you will be accepted as a guest and be able to train with the group. Actually, proper behavior begins before the visit, with a formal introduction of some sort before you set foot in the door. Unhappily, some boors have figured out this trick, so people will still be wary. But, behaving well will put people at their ease, though it might take a little time.
As I said, with no sempai to speak of, sometimes I have to have specific talks with my students that my teacher never found necessary, at least not by the time I met him. I am hoping that by both setting an example and reinforcing it with the occasional lecture, I am building a group that in time will be able to handle the politeness thing on its own.
It's a good thing I love beginners, because, basically, that is what I have to work with. I have one returnee student who knew me at the old place, found me, and resumed training (though, honestly, he was still mostly a beginner when he left, so I am not sure if he qualifies as a senior, except in the relative sense). And I have one who started with me about three years ago, who is still involved, though he does not come to okeiko as much as I would like him to. I realize that in some arts, three years' tenure might rate a student as an assistant instructor, but that is definitely not true in koryu. Even if you want to debate whether iaido is a genuine koryu, it is close enough - the repertory is large and complicated and takes years to learn. Moreover, a student may know the mechanics of a kata, but that in no way means that she really understands it. Even physically talented people need years of practice to "unpack" (as one of my colleagues put it) iai kata. My teacher used to say it takes maybe 10 years of training to really start seeing the deeper meanings in the techniques. And that's just the start.
One of the problems with having a group of newbies (I started this group approximately four years ago) is that there is little, if any, institutional memory because there isn't much to remember. And the things that a sempai would show students have to be handled by me instead. Like my teacher, I would prefer not to discuss the nuances of proper behavior, and yet, I can't fault people for not being as polite as they should be because they simply have no idea. Even my Japanese student had minimal traditional experience (he played kendo in high school, but that's about it), so he is not as much help as I wish he was. And Americans - well, you know Americans.
When I first started training, we had a hardass sempai who, even though he had actually not been there that long, had a very clear idea of what should be proper in the dojo. I never liked the guy for a number of solid reasons, but that was one thing he did that I will always respect him for. Even though he sometimes missed the mark, the emphasis he placed on proper behavior turned me into a careful observer, both here and in the Old Country, which has proved very beneficial to my practice.
I have found that, when training in Japan, or even in a traditional dojo here in NYC, what you know of a particular style is not as important as how you approach it. If you know how to behave when walking into a dojo for the first time, even if you don't know the specific customs of the place, you will quickly adapt. Once people get over the amazement that a foreign barbarian knows how to behave respectfully ("We get a lot of freaks," is how one teacher explained it to me, in English), you will be accepted as a guest and be able to train with the group. Actually, proper behavior begins before the visit, with a formal introduction of some sort before you set foot in the door. Unhappily, some boors have figured out this trick, so people will still be wary. But, behaving well will put people at their ease, though it might take a little time.
As I said, with no sempai to speak of, sometimes I have to have specific talks with my students that my teacher never found necessary, at least not by the time I met him. I am hoping that by both setting an example and reinforcing it with the occasional lecture, I am building a group that in time will be able to handle the politeness thing on its own.
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