White

This weekend I'll have the opportunity to don something that spends a lot of time tucked away in a drawer. (No, not my superhero cape.)

My white belt.

I wish I looked as cool as this kid.

A friend invited me to an Aikido training day his dojo is putting on, and I thought it would be a good opportunity to learn something different. I've taken 2 or 3 Aikido classes before, but nothing in depth. I'm definitely looking forward to learning more about it.

To be honest, I'm almost more excited about the opportunity to put my white belt back on. Training in one art for a while, it's easy to forget what it was like when I first started. How confusing everything was, how my focus was on imitating the folks who knew what they were doing (or at least more than I did), and learning all the new terminology. It will help me keep that mindset fresh both so I can relate to newcomers more readily and so I can remember it for myself in class.

I read a blog post once about how our training backgrounds give us an "accent," so to speak (no pun intended). When you learn a second language, you usually speak it with the accent of whatever your first language is. I saw a lot of this in my Spanish classes; Southerners have such a hard time getting around their accent to properly pronounce foreign words.

It's similar with martial arts. Whatever the first art you learned is, you tend to carry that style of movement with you into whatever else you learn. (At least until you've been immersed long enough in the new art, then the cycle just starts again.) But it's easier to start from scratch than to fix old habits, everyone knows that.

White blank pages, blank canvases, white walls, white belts. They all start at zero and become whatever they're exposed to. So, my goal for this event is to 1) have fun and 2) go back to zero for Aikido.


BONUS ROUND!
In the comment section below, share your experience from when you first started the art you're in now or used to be in.

I don't remember much about my first jujitsu class, but I remember being pretty out of sorts when I went to my first Bujinkan class. I didn't really know the location, I didn't know anyone, I had barely any idea how to do the rolls I was being shown, and everything seemed complex. I didn't know how to act, how to "bow in," what the rules were if any, and so on. I clung to anything I could carry over from my jujitsu training, which unfortunately (fortunately?) wasn't much. Being so new to everything might have been overwhelming if the guys there hadn't been so friendly and patient with me.

Give Up?

A couple weekends ago, I attended the 3rd Southeast Bujinkan Taikai. The instructors all did a great job, and there were plenty of things to take away for further training. The title and subject of this post is what one of the instructors, Jeff Walker, taught on. (Incidentally, it was the same idea he taught on at the Midwest Taikai, which I attended back in August. So glad I got to see it twice!)

What he had us doing was giving up. No, really, that was his section. The punch/sword/whatever is coming, and you just give up.

Not truly giving up, of course. I mean, you are, but you're not. They have to believe you're giving up, that you're not in the fight anymore, and for them to believe something like that, you have to believe it yourself. That's what's so intriguing (and difficult) about kyojitsu. It's a true lie - it's true for as long as you need it to be, and then it turns out to be a lie.

So, with this giving up concept, the point was to believe - and make the opponent believe - that you've given up on the fight. You are resigned to your death. Just that part proved to be incredibly difficult to wrap my head around. I can't speak for others, but I know I'm always in the active mindset of countering, parrying, attacking, torquing, etc. Giving up is inactive, and requires me to turn off what my mind and body really want to do. It only lasts for a few seconds, but flipping that switch off for even that long is like fighting myself. (Obviously there's a lot of practice needed here.)

Once that switch is turned off and the attack is coming in, you flip it back on and get out of the way. It's not turned on full blast, though. Keeping with the light switch analogy, it's like turning on a dimmer at minimum luminosity: you have the intent and will to live back on, but you're still keeping a low profile. For the person attacking, it's like falling into a black hole. Someone is there, and then simply not, with no hint that they shouldn't still be there.

Playing with intent and kyojitsu has always been challenging and fun, and this "giving up" definitely raises the bar. Believing one of your own deceptions is hard enough when it simply redirects intent. Turning it off? That's tough. And definitely something I'll be toying with for a long while.