Onion Slices

One of the things that I love about Budo Taijutsu is that we teach weapon techniques, as well as natural body movement. This is really profound, simply because we use the weapons as an extension of that natural body movement. It’s not a weapon; it is part of the body.

As a first degree black belt, I should be studying all sorts of bladed and edged weapons. On my next test, I will be expected to display proficiency with knives and swords, and how to defend against them. Since I am training and studying after a long break, however, I really want to walk through all the basics before I start moving on. If I can’t do a roll without a sword in hand, I’ll have a durn hard time doing a roll WITH one.

So, now that I’ve talked about that, I don’t really have a good transition to what I want to start doing in class, so I’ll just jump. This afternoon, after work, I made some Eda Koppo to train with. I don’t know what the exact translation is, but the actual weapon is a short stick, about 6 to 8 inches long. I’ve used BIC pens in the past, and I’ve seen everything from a ruler to a custom carved stick to a pipe used in the techniques we’ll be doing, so I think these will work out well.

I started off with a regular ole .99 cent dowel from Fred Meyer.

Next, I cut it into four sections, each about as long as the distance from my thumb to my pinky.

The last step was to round the edges with sandpaper. If I was going to actually be using this as a defensive weapon, rather than a training tool, I would have left the edges sharp, as they hurt a LOT!

So, that’s how you make them! For the techniques that we will be working on, we’re going to work our way through Soke’s book.

(This SHOULD be a link to Amazon!)

Today, a couple of my co-workers and I had to take some computers to be shipped out to a show. While we were on the road, I was amazed to see the guy in the truck next to us reading a book. Not, just glancing at a map, or putting on makeup, but actually intently reading a book. He pulled up to the red light with it already open in his hand and when he pulled away when the light turned green, he still had it open and only glanced up, changed the position of his hand on the steering wheel and continued reading!

As many people are aware, I’ve started training again, and I couldn’t be happier. I’ve been teaching twice a week at a local park, and I’m still looking for a nice place to set up for classes when the weather turns. One of the things that my instructor said to me when I was promoted to black-belt was that I needed to train twice a week if I was going to train and to train with him at least once a year. Well, I took some time off after I moved here, but now I’m picking up where I left off and I’m exploring the art that I love so much.

In the interest of getting “official sanction” I sent my sensei a couple of e-mail, and when we had some time, I sat down and talked with him on the phone for a while. This was really great because after training with him for several years, I really value him, not only as an instructor, but as a friend. We didn’t spend a lot of time catching up, but what we DID do was that we started to explore the things that I will need to know to continue to grow as a martial artist and as an instructor.

Throughout this post, I’ve been avoiding using “teach” and “teacher” in most places because of one of the things that we talked about is what it means to transmit this art to students. One of the points that Soke (the grandmaster of our martial art) has stressed as a teaching point is that in the dojo, the goal is not to be a teacher, but instead be a transmitter of the art. This is a pretty big shift in the way I was trained, and Skillman Sensei and I had a good discussion about that.

I don’t want to sound too egotistical, but I think that I’ve already started down that path, without even knowing it. Ever since I started training again, I’ve been keeping the fact that I am learning as much, if not more, than my students as one of the principles of what I’m doing. I am doing what I am doing because, number one, I love my art, and number two, because I want to pass it on to others. Every time I “teach” a class, I want to make sure that I am training as well. Even if I am not rolling while I watch someone else, I am taking the time to be training right there with them. When something is not right, I hop down and try to duplicate what is going wrong. I know how it feels to do a good roll, but I want to know how it feels to be doing what they are. The single hardest thing that I have to do in EVERY SINGLE CLASS is just shutting up and training.

It’s quite hard, I’ve noticed. I like to talk about what I’m doing! I love what I do and it is a subject that I can speak on for hours. This, however, is not training, it’s lecturing, and that is one of the things that I am learning to avoid. The goal that I want to accomplish is to be able to show a technique and watch as we all explore how it works, and how it’s different from person to person. One of the best feelings I’ve ever known is to watch someone I’m training with light up with joy when they figure something out!

To sum things up, my goal over the next couple of weeks to going to be to really explore the principle of making my dojo the “dojo, just down the street, that I train at” and move away from the feeling of training at the “Bujinkan International Dojo Inc.” I don’t know if we’ll be successful with it, but it is worth it in the long run to build the connections that will make the first one a reality!