Forget your life situation and pay attention to your life!

Excerpt from Eckhart Tolle's 'Power of Now' : 

Your 'life situation' exists in time.  Your life is now.  Your 'life situation' is mind-stuff.  Your life is real.

Find the "narrow gate that leads to life".  It is called the Now.  Narrow your life down to this moment.  Your life situation may be full of problems - most are - but find out if you have any problems at this moment.  Not tomorrow or in ten minutes, but now.  Do you have a problem now?

When you are full of problems, there is no room for anything new to enter, no room for a solution.  So, whenever you can, make some room, create some space, so that you find the life underneath your life situation.

Use your senses fully.  Be where you are.  Look around.  Just look, don't interpret.  See the light, shapes, colours, textures.  Be aware of the silent presence of each thing.  Be aware of the space that allows everything to be.  Listen to the sounds; don't judge them.  Listen to the silence underneath the sounds.  Touch something - anything - and feel and acknowledge it's Being.

Observe the rhythm of your breathing; feel the air flowing in and out, feel the life energy inside your body.  Allow everything to be, within and without.  Allow the "isness" of all things.  Move deeply into the Now.

You are leaving behind the deadening world of mental abstraction, of time.  You are getting out of the insane mind that is draining you of your life energy, just as [the collective mind] is slowly poisoning and destroying the Earth.  You are awakening out of the dream of time and into the present.

There's always a bigger fish

Just back from a four day hippie festival in Somerset and the moment that stands out for me was finding Jude, my son, wandering back towards our tent one day crying.

Jude is six. When I asked him what was up he said that he'd gotten into a fight with another boy but that the other boy was so strong. He wasn't so upset at this point, more genuinely surprised and worried. Jude practices Karate on Saturday mornings and he said that this boy was so strong he just blocked even Jude's powerful punches and then hit Jude repeatedly.

What could my little dude do?

I think he learned an important lesson, which we talked about :
There will always be someone physically stronger than you.

So we discussed options. The best is by far, do not get into a fight with anyone, big or small, but if it's unavoidable and you find yourself up against someone stronger, strong punches won't do it. You need good technique, good technique will always overcome physical strength and you need enormous spirit, good spirit will always overcome technique and strength.

Reassured that there was more than just physical strength to rely on, Jude felt better and we practiced some aikido techniques.

Rubbish Ukemi is Rubbish

In training I have a tendency to think that when I can't do a technique on a paticular partner, my aikido is rubbish. It must be, I can't perform the wrist lock! What gives?

Yet when I step back away from my own frustration I realize that I am standing behind my partner, having entered as they attack, focusing on trying to put a pin on his arm when he's stood there facing away from me.

Now from a martial perspective this is called rubbish ukemi. One should never, ever take ones eyes off one's partner for you never know what they will do. The moment you disconnect is the moment you have given up.

Standing behind someone who is not trying to turn and face you or hit you there is no need to do a technique, you walk away. Standing behind someone who knows better, they will come around as fast as they can to face you, you then take their body movement and go with it and a technique happens naturally.

Performing rubbish ukemi means you don't get stretched and worked out and you frustrate you partner if they don't know any better. Performing rubbish ukemi on the wrong person or worse still, out of habit in a proper fight, get's painful and dangerous. Someday you will meet a real dragon, and what then?

Always look at your partner.

Ikkyo, Nikkyo, Sankyo, Yonkyo

Ikkyo, Nikkyo, Sankyo, Yonkyo.

1st principle, 2nd principle, third principle, 4th principle.

Ikkyo is the primary technique in aikido. From ikkyo flows nikkyo, sankyo and yonkyo. The same opening movement is used in all four techniques. Indeed, if you get the opening movement right you don't need the specific pin that defines a paticular technique.

The reason we apply the pin is to protect not only oneself from further attack but to prevent the attacker from continuing to try and hurt himself.

I love aikido for it's spirit of non aggression. Without the spiritual principle aikido is ineffective. If fear or anger are present you become too visible to your attacker, physically and mentally. No thought, or mushin and no body tension allow you to flow around your attacker. A piercing focus allows you to direct the mass of the whole movement to where your attacker must fall. A continuing of feeling down and through his body allows you to pin him safely.

Then as soon as you start thinking about it, or competing with it, it all falls apart.

Try again.

What I took away from tonight's class was, when striking or meeting a strike, your hands should not move apart two much. They should stay maybe the distance apart they would be gripping a sword. Strike almost as if attacking with bokken. If you spilt your hands wide apart that focus is lost, the strength of the form broken. I found this much more satisfying then waving a hand up in the air and it kept my centre focused ahead on my uke.

3000 Ukemi Challenge

I am training for Mark Walsh's 3000 ukemi challenge in about 10 weeks time. It involves roughly about 7.5 hours of taking ukemi which will be challenging, to say the least, but I think I can do it.

I think there'll be alot to learn from this experience and it's a good way to test my aikido and aerobic stamina. In preparation I have added some more strenuous exercises to my morning routine and some skipping to increase my aerobic ability. I also want to try and bulk up if possible to give myself some more reserves but I don't know if this is possible, I don't eat meat and have pretty much remained about nine and a half stone for some years now.

My routine currently stands as :

3 sets of maka ho stretching, 3 times
40 tucks of various forms
30 press ups
2 sets of hip and spine stretches
20 one leg squats
100 saburi (sword cuts)
15 mins skipping

I have stopped meditating for the moment as I actually found it was causing psychological problems for me, very odd, but I feel better not meditating at the moment. At least, not sitting to meditate specifically. I have been using Thich Nhat Hahn's suggestions of meditating while washing the dishes, walking, climbing stairs etc. Mindfullness.

Incidentally I am looking for sponsorship for the 3000 Ukemi Challenge, in aid of Aiki Extensions...

One Point

I decided over the weekend to approach aikido slightly differently. I will take one paticular aspect of aikido and focus on that for the whole class.

So yesterday I chose my stance, in paticluar, making a nice deep stance in every technique and exercise.

This obviously demanded more of my body yet I found very early on in the session that my legs were getting hot but me head was cooling down. After 20 minutes of practicing like that my mental dialogue had practically dissappeared and I felt like beaming for the rest of the evening.

In an art as technically complex and sophisticated as aikido it's easy to get lost in techniques and angles and figuring out what you're supposed to be doing.

Don't.
Take one aspect of it and do that really well.

The Camping Bug

So we've got the camping bug. After my first ever succesful (as in enjoyable and comfortable) camping trip last weekend, we are off to Bodiam, east and a little north of our current location (which is how you start thinking when you become a seasoned outdoorsman) this weekend for our second trip of the summer! And it's supposed to be a hot one. And I've made a deal that ensures we are back in time for me to make it to the dojo on Sunday also - having cake AND eating it, awesome.

So, best bits about last weekend :
Learning how to make fire without firelighters and charcoal.
Lying flat on the ground watching shooting stars with my son, Jude.
Walking through the woods with my family at night.
Lying flat on the ground by the campfire later on when it was even darker watching the milky way and passing satellites.
Roasting marshmallows.
Not thinking.
Staring at the campfire.
Having the space to swing my jo.
Hiking through mud and a downpour as we upped our pitch and headed home.

Looking forward to hitting the road again later today.

Rib damage

So am recovering from misogi finally. Quite achy the last two days! Foolishly tried to do my hundred sword cuts the morning after the 2500 cuts and got to about 25 before I had to stop from screaming wrists. Found a bit of jo swinging much nicer.

After some googling on t'internet I have concluded I cracked a rib a couple of weeks ago falling onto Tom Hume's knee in the dojo! Still quite tender to touch but OK to breath - just every now again I use one particular muscle group and the pain! Ouch.

Jesus - aikido mastery (hah!) does not come cheap!

The Collective

So after at least a year in which I proclaimed myself free of the awful burden of needing to play music I am back on that paticular wagon. Went to see my friend's band, Super Kasanova, play in London last week and was inspired to get a band up and running again. Watch this space for new songs from Catherine, my wonderful other half, and I. If you want to partake in recording or performing in any way just contact the collective.

Misogi

Just back from Misogi. This is a ritual undertaken by aikio practitioners on the anniversary of O Sensei's (Aikido's founder) death every year.

This year we spent 50 minutes doing saburi, or sword cuts with bokken. Interesting when you do something like this in that after about ten minutes, wherever your technique is flawed it will start to give out. But as you've started and committed and everyone else is doing it you must keep going. So you alter your technique and then after about twenty minutes your shouting the count out using aggression to keep going and get through it.

This gets you so far but not far enough. After half an hour your in and out of a state of no mind (mu shin) and egoic reeling and ranting and complaining about the pain and the blisters. It's then that you either join the people wobbling and flailing about but keeping going and getting through it or get really clever with your cutting and improve it enough to make it to the finish. Either way, no one gets off at this stop.

Would be interesting to do misogi more often and take an aikido technique and do that one technique a thousand times, see where you fail, what you have to do to make through the wall.

Gavin Darcy, MCP

Just back from my first Microsoft exam and I passed! I was pleasantly surprised. I can now place the three letters, MCP, after my name, hurrah!

I've spent years in IT and never bothered before but it feels great to finally get a professional qualification.

The last month has been coloured by at least an hour every evening mostly boring myself stupid studying, with occasional bursts of interest when I learned something usefully nerdy. So I'm going to take a well deserved rest for a week or so before booking my next exam and starting the process again.

MCDST here I come.
MCSE, you're on my list.

Step back and dis identify

Been listening to Eckhart Tolle speaking about the inner body the last few days on my MP3 player. This is a great teaching which I've not heard from anyone else, not to say it's not been taught by anyone else. Focusing on the feeling of the body from the inside as both a meditation and as a means to bring oneself back from the incessant stream of thought during daily life. And what a martial practice, to be constantly aware of one's own internal energies from moment to moment in the maelstrom of bodies flying around the dojo.

Eckhart's other main teaching is to dis identify from one's thoughts and emotions, and what he calls the pain body. The pain body is basically accumulated emotional baggage that has been repressed over the years and rears it's head as an overwhelming emotional burst. When you can step back, so to speak, and witness your thoughts and emotions for what they are, realize, there are my thoughts, and there I feel my emotions, and hear I am, then you are automatically free from them. You are free to choose to change your behaviour, to feel good instead of bad, to take the higher path.

It is my mission to maintain that awareness constantly. When I feel I am being over-run by negative emotion or thought pattern, no matter what apparently reasonable excuse I might have, I will not identify and react but will step back, breath, feel my body from within and make an original decision.

Backwards Ukemi

Just back from the dojo - another night of the freezing toes at the wildpark.
I am currently vexed by the 'new' backwards ukemi - it feels terrible crashing in a heap on the ground and half arsedly slapping the mats. My head is knocked sideways, my hips hit the mats, I get up unsteadily! It's not fighting!

And yet, I watch Tom Helsby doing it and it looks like fighting, it looks right. I saw so many aikidoka at the weekend doing it properly (and so many not) that I am just going to have to get it down. I'm trying not to think about how many years I've spent so far trying to get forward rolls down!

I think after tonight's practice that I have an idea what I am doing wrong. Like in the forward and standard backwards rolls, there is a circle that needs to be made with the arms, like the rim of a wheel. I have this pretty much down with the flying version of this new ukemi, I need now to reduce that architecture down into the more compact version.

Keiko keiko keiko...

Sugawara Sensei, Edinburgh

Just back from Edinburgh and a two day course with Sugawara Sensei, a Hombu Shihan.
My thanks to Neil Blacknell of Azami Kai Aikido for organizing and translating.

Sugawara Sensei is amazing. Lovely to see him taking ukemi towards the end of the course, right up on the balls of his feet, bouncing around almost - reminded me very much of footage I've seen of Goza Shioda Sensei.

I found that whenever he came round to me it was my ukemi he was correcting. And there was me taking pride in my good ukemi! Always comes before the fall. Aside though from minor corrections in how I take ukemi the thing I noticed from the two days was the almost complete lack of forward rolls. The 'new' backwards ukemi seems to have replaced it almost entirely. And I must admit this saddens me to some extent as I do like to fly away from a strong technique and bounce back up. I believe that is the point though, the flying away from your partner is not fighting. Keeping contact all the way down through the eyes is martially better maybe?

Who knows? I'm thinking maybe the 7th dan Shihan from the weekend who teaches the Tokyo riot police knows a thing or two more than me so I'll shut up and listen and try to do better!

Another point I really liked about ukemi was uke keeps his focus aimed straight at his partner's centre as long as he can, every chance he can, turn, face tori's centre.

On the other side, techniques that is, he spent alot of time stressing the basics and, for me, revealing the stuff I've forgotten because it's so basic. One's hands should never move outside of this rather small locus from the top of the head down and out to either hips and never extended too far out from the body. Sensei's hands never left this space and every technique he did was fast, powerful, unstoppable and looked amazingly easy! The effortless power referred to so often in the martial arts.

Every entering move went straight for the jugular, so to speak. There is no consideration for the limb being swung towards you, just straight in for the centre of the person attacking and then move from there.

Looking forward to getting back on the mats and practicing what I or my body remembers from the weekend and passing it on.

Basic Aikido Techniques

Youtube playlist containing most of the basic techniques in Aikido - demonstrated by various random Aikidoka. Enjoy.

Take a moment

My job can be stressful, when I take myself too seriously.  There are so many people around me taking themselves and what is done unto them seriously, that it's hard not to follow suit.

My teacher is always saying one should take what you do seriously, but not yourself.

I think this works really well with the philosophy that what people do or say to you should not be taken personally.

Whenever negative intent is sent at you it comes from a place of unconsciousness.  The person stood there in front of you as the ranting customer has slipped out of reality as it is and into their role of the affronted, offended, cheated or otherwise unsatisfied 'customer'.  They are no longer themselves, they have identified with the role they are playing out and so feel they have to behave in such a way to you, the representative of of, or as they more likely see it, you are the company.

Thinking about it like this it's very easy not to take it personally - well, maybe it's not very easy but it gets easier with practice.

Whilst all around you are losing their heads and getting caught up in roles, 'the unhappy customer', 'the stressed engineer', 'the underpaid overworked employee' you can breath, refuse to take whatever is said to you as a personal attack.

I would rather practice this surrounded by superficial role playing then try it for the first time when someone, identified with the role of axe murderer, comes charging at me with murderous intent!  Think about it in martial terms if you like.  If you are still taking flippant remarks about how long it has taken to fix some one's computer as a personal affront and feeling the blood rush to your head as your ego screams at you to 'Say something!  You can't let her talk to me like that!' (for example) how the hell are you going to stay calm and centered enough in a violent situation to help matters or at the very least save your own skin?

So today, in the wake of senior managers sticking in their oar, in the midst of colleagues raging against the machine, under the weight of a never ending list of service requests - I pruned my banzai tree.  

Take a moment for yourself and breath.  For a moment, don't do anything for anyone else.  The voice in the back of your mind urging you to 'hurry up, move on, what's the next thing?' doesn't have to be listened to.  You can take a moment and not 'do' anything with it at all.  The more you do this, the more space you will see around the events in your life, the less reactive you will get and the more intelligently you will act.

Refuge

Although I have been meditating on and off for some years now, it's only the last 3 weeks or so that I have finally succeeded in habitualising at least ten minutes twice daily.

The results so far?  I am exceedingly aware of the constant chatter my mind produces every single moment of every single day.  How was I not aware before of this mental noise?  I was aware when I was thinking, but it seems that even when I'm not consciously thinking there's a stream of babble that is mostly useless regurgitated information spilling through my head.

It's doing my head in.

I am told by reliable, worldly and spiritual sources that the next step is to accept without judgement, as I try my best to do with the world outside my head, every thought that comes.  And yet one of the thoughts that comes quite often now is 'Oh shut up you're so annoying!' which, of course, just adds to the mental clamour.  In fact, my head is doing my own head in.  Making sense?  Of course not, it's mind!

So where do I take refuge from this noise?  There's no way out!  So I must enter deeply instead.  Morihei Ueshiba is quoted as saying : 

'You cannot see or touch the Divine with your gross senses.  The Divine is within you, not somewhere else.'

I do find from time to time in my meditation that towards the end of my session, I am left calm and the noise has quietened significantly.  I remember one night last week which felt truly blissful and I did not want to leave my position.

I feel my practice must be extended now to start just when I start to reach that state.  Ten minutes to quieten the mind's chatter merely by watching it and then ten minutes mediation, sitting in the calm state.

Too Fast

I awoke this morning to my daughter Anabel doing a monologue of some sort.   She's saying she's going to go round to her friend's place and they're going to dress her in a nice dress, put on some makeup...  and I'm thinking, ah, my seven year old daughter being all girly again, playing dress up... and then they're going to straighten her hair, or maybe curl it, she doesn't know yet, and I'm thinking OK yeah, I should really get out of bed now, and then she's going to go across the road to his house and knock on his door...  wait a minute, what?!!

It was then that I found myself fully awake and musing that my seven year old daughter shouldn't be - should she?  Isn't she too young to be trying to attract boys?  Oh dear god, it begins!

Yes I know it's just an innocent way of copying the adult world and making it her own experience, and I know that the event she's actually describing is never going to happen (no way, uh uh) but it left me knocked sideways.  

So who is this boy?  What about the little fella you previously were calling your boyfriend?  Oh, you dumped him.  I see.  And this new fella's available now because he's just been dumped by your other girl friend.  Hmmmm.

They grow up so fast.

Mixing it Up

This last seven days I have trained more with strangers than I have my regular aikidoka and it's been a terrific experience.

I spent Sunday morning and early afternoon with the fantastic and formidable Gordan Jones (6th dan, UKA) and at least forty other people studying kaiten (thank you Mark Walsh for explaining, after four hours of practicing it and getting it wrong, what kaiten actually is).

And this evening I have just come back from a two and a half hour class with Nick Doyle (3rd dan, Brighton Aikikai).  So lovely to find eight people throwing themselves round a dojo at half ten on a Friday evening when everyone else is hitting the pub.  Excellent class.

So it struck me this evening that you can tell a whole lot about a person practicing in the dojo that you might never learn from talking to them.  There's a great line in the Matrix that says 'You do not truly know someone until you fight them'.  Aikido is even deeper than that.  You walk up to someone you've never trained with before and make contact by holding their wrist and then you listen to their whole body, down to their very core.  You might not pick it all up on a conscious level at first but you'll pick up everything about them, their childhood, their current mood, their energy level - it's like taking a complete psycho physical profile of another human and giving all that you've got right back.

I experienced this a few times at both practices this week but you can tell across the mat, before you even pair up, who you're going to enjoy training with the most.  You know who you'll come back for more with - who you're favourite play mates are going to be. Because when you strip all the martial art away, that's what we're doing.  We're playing on the mat, risking injury for the buzz of sailing through the air.  And playing is something that the adult section of our society has mostly forgotten how to do.  I prescribe aikido all round.

Training with new people is also a fantastic way of truly testing your aikido.  When you don't know how someone is going to react you have no preconceptions, you have to truly open up to the possibilities and listen to your partner and how they move.  

When someone doesn't know you or how you move you are pushed sometimes to your limit as they sound you out.  I remember, in particular this week, training with a dan grade on Sunday and trying desperately to keep a good grip on his wrist as he moved me very powerfully and incredibly swiftly.  I kept finding myself behind the movement of my arm attached to his, and this resolved itself in my body as a jarring sort of energy, a non too pleasant one that I couldn't leave unchecked.  I really had to focus, breath, stop thinking and loosen up to move fast enough to smooth out the motion.

Sore all over for four days afterwards I kid you not - but there's a masochistic side of me that loves that in a kind of no pain no gain kind of way.

So this year for me, start grading (I haven't graded since my 6th kyu six years ago!) and attend more classes and courses outside my usual dojo.  Loving mixing it up.

Own the Mat

Am currently reading several books and have put them aside temporarily to go through a nice, if somewhat cheesy, little book by an American sensei, George Leonard.

He writes about this lovely little concept that could be misunderstood as ego manic but is actually a brilliant way to put into practice acceptance or non resistance.

He talks of 'owning the mat'.  So when you step onto the dojo mats you say to yourself, 'this is my mat'.  You treat everyone as your guest and act accordingly, including everyone in your gaze, sending out welcoming feeling or intention toward them, taking responsibility for them.   And you acknowledge that they own their mat also.

But this expands way beyond the dojo.  When walking down the street, try, 'I own this path' and smile accordingly at everyone walking along it.  Welcome to this space I am walking through.

I love this concept and am using it everywhere I go today.  I visit alot of different sites in my job, entering alot of offices as a face that may not be recognized by most that work there daily and thusly encounter spiky energies from time to time that can be uncomfortable.  I am entering someone else's territory if you like.

But when 'I own this office' my energy is transformed completely out of discomfort and into acceptance of all around me and good intention to those I meet in it.

When people are a guest in your home it is your responsibility to make sure they are comfortable and relaxed yes?  If they fall over you rush to pick them up.  If they ask you for something you do your best to get it.  What if everyone you meet is met as though they're a guest in your place?

Recommended practice.

Prayer

I am thankful and grateful for this healthy mind and body.  There are many that have not this blessing and I appreciate it on a daily basis.

I am thankful and grateful for my partner, Catherine and my children, Anabel and Jude and especially thankful for their health and happiness.

I am thankful I do not live in a war zone.

I am thankful and grateful to have chanced upon great teachings and teachers in my life.

I am grateful for Aikido, my teachers and fellow aikidoka for throwing me to the ground repeatedly.

I am thankful for my job and other life circumstances that allow my family to live in comfort and security.

I am thankful for the thin envelope of air that gravity has stuck to this beautiful ball of rock.  I am grateful for the spinning molten metal core that has generated just enough of an electromagnetic field to protect us from the searing solar winds and radiations of the universe.

I am grateful for the incredible set of circumstances that have resulted in this life event I call 'I'.

I am thankful and grateful for this moment.

Happy New Year.