Chapter 175: Aikido Training and Casino Preparation

Monday, May 2, 2005 (Continued)

Describing poor Donna's lesson caused me to skip over Aikido, so I'll go back and fill in that gap now. There were only a few noteworthy points.

The first was my raising the Eaton Incident with Sensei, which I did almost immediately. Sensei had seen the article in the paper, and had intended to raise it himself. I briefly described the incident, especially each of the fight scenarios, and asked him what a good aikidoka would have done.

[I should explain that Aikido is an extremely good defensive art, but it doesn't disable the attackers in any way. In fact, it barely causes them even momentary pain. You can immobilize a guy on the ground, and hold him there as long as you want. But he's completely uninjured so the moment you let him go he can jump to his feet and attack again. This is not a problem if there's only one attacker (don't let go!), but seemed unsolvable to me if there are multiple attackers, as you have to let the first guy go in order to defend yourself from the second.]

Sensei answered, "There are several different answers, depending on the situation and the skill level of the aikidoka. In your situation, you might've been able to deflect the three boys' attacks sufficient to be able to get out of the door and run away. Most fights are caused by passion and pride rather than necessity, so leaving is often the best choice; although infrequently exercised."

I started justifying my decision not to run, but Sensei waved it away.

"An advanced aikidoka should have been able to project sufficient calmness that violence was averted, or to defuse it if it started. Failing that, knocking your opponents out was certainly morally acceptable. Not in accordance with Aikido's methodology though, because it relies on the direct application of considerable physical force. Aikido techniques can all be executed without requiring strength, by old men such as me, for example."

I asked, "What would you have done then?"

"Presuming you mean that I am unable to leave or to avert the violence?"

I nodded.

"If I could safely do so, I would deflect their attacks for a while, hoping they would become disheartened enough to give up. Being sent sprawling over the back of a sofa, or thrown into a wall, would be good ways to make them reconsider their actions.

^-- "If that failed to deter them, the next recourse for an aikidoka is to break limbs, especially arms. In the dojo we teach you to relax your holds the moment uke" (Japanese for "attacker") "experiences pain, but if you continue to twist uke's limb, then a joint will give way. Obviously we do not wish to teach that to beginners, nor do we stress it in the advanced grades either. It is more something that you will pick up as you progress. The purpose of Aikido is certainly not for you to learn how to injure people, and not even to learn how to defend yourself, but to learn about yourself."

"It's not to learn to defend yourself? It's a martial art, and self-defense is the only martial aspect it's got."

"If an aikidoka spent his entire life learning Aikido, and went to his deathbed an old man never having had a single fight in his life, he would not rue the waste of all that training time. Remember that there are no competitions in most styles of Aikido, and those that have them are recent inventions not in accordance with true Aikido principals, in my opinion. So my hypothetical aikidoka would have never used the martial aspect of Aikido. Yet it would not occur to him that learning Aikido had been a waste of his time. The martial aspect is merely the path, it is not the purpose.

^-- "That is why Aikido does not overly concern itself with practical defenses against multiple opponents. By the time a student is advanced enough to be capable of using the techniques that would be required, he should be advanced enough to prefer to learn more about the 'Art' than the 'Martial'. Another reason is that an advanced Aikidoka should be able to defend himself under most circumstances, whether or not he had specifically trained for them.

^-- "In the advanced classes we occasionally have a little fun with our students by putting them in situations they are not trained for. We might tie their ankles together with a belt, allowing only a little slack, and then require them to defend themselves; or we go to a park, give one of them a raw egg to carry and defend, and tell the attackers to try to break it somehow. Training in thigh deep water is another such idea. We want to see how the students adapt, and in particular whether the new techniques they're forced to invent reflect an intuitive understanding of Aikido principles.

^-- "With regard to your question about how you should have defended yourself at the Eatons', a good answer would be, 'However you want'. We are not teaching a rigid set of procedures; we are teaching a way of self-improvement that just happens to have some martial applications. I would have done something different than knocking them out, but that is immaterial. The difference in intent IS material though. If you fought for personal gain - to win the girl or to impress people at school - then that would be something I would disapprove of."

"No, nothing like that. I was only trying..."

Sensei waved my reassurances away, and soon after that we started warming up for our training.

Another item of note was that my learning rate suffered a major setback. Sensei introduced me to the bo (a wooden pole, something like 1.5 inches in diameter and more than 5 feet long). Much of my normally very rapid Aikido learning came from my proximity sensing what Sensei was intending. The hand-to-hand techniques we'd learned in previous lessons were taught with Sensei and me grappling with each other, so he was always within my proximity range. Proximity has a three-foot range, and it's not a good idea to stand within three feet of a man who is rapidly swinging a five-foot pole around!

Bo techniques were mostly taught with me sitting on the side of the mat while Sensei demonstrated the moves several feet away. It was immediately obvious to me that my learning rate was going to suffer badly. There were some occasions when we got within three feet of each other, giving me some benefit from proximity, but it was infrequent so Sensei was going to notice that I was much slower at learning than normal. I was unsure what to say about it.

Over the last few weeks we'd spent enough time training together that I knew Sensei had no idea how useful my proximity sense was. Had he any idea, he would've made dozens of references to it, saying things like, "Sense where I am intending to push; that's what you should be doing." He clearly didn't have a sense like mine, and I was pretty sure he hadn't even heard of anyone having such a sense. We'd discussed ki many times during our training, and nothing like my abilities had ever been mentioned. He didn't talk about sensing intentions at all, which - if he had a sense like mine - was an inexplicable omission in fight training.

I had thought about this carefully, and had decided that Sensei knew only five things about my proximity sense: the name I'd given it, that it had a three-foot range, that I can identify who is standing near me, and I can detect punches coming at me, that I can move through crowds easier because of it. He otherwise seemed to assume that my ability was similar to his, which seemed to be so weak as to be almost useless. From his comments over the weeks I had formed the idea that his proximity sense was extremely vague.

[[If proximity is likened to a visual sense, it's as if his 'picture' of a person was rendered in only one or two pixels. In other words, it's almost useless. I suspected he had nothing more than a vague idea of where the person intended to be. (His sense was also extremely range limited, although I didn't learn that until after this point in time.) Whereas my sense was probably the equivalent of a hundred pixels. Enough to identify the person and to pick out intended limb movements.]]

When he tested my ability at Julia's house, Sensei had intended to punch me, and had been pleased that I'd dodged away. That meant he knew such a reaction was possible, which implied he knew of proximity working at a level of detail that punches could be 'seen'. In which case, why didn't he repeatedly talk about limb movements during every training session? I decided that in his sense, a punch can't have been sensed as a punch; likely as nothing more than a vague sense of something coming at the top half of his body (like the top 'pixel' of an opponent was coming at him).

[[Aikidoka can sense a punch because the attacker is putting ALL his ki into it. My pixel metaphor is too spatial, whereas proximity is about ki. Intense ki is detectable by advanced aikidoka even from limbs that are too small to be detected in two-pixel 'picture'.]]

All of which left me with the question about how much to divulge to Sensei. I didn't have any good justification for asking him not to teach the bo. Saying, "Sorry, I'm allergic to wood," wasn't going to fly. So either I said nothing and my learning rate would noticeably reduce, or I came clean about needing to be within three feet of him, which would naturally led to his asking, "Why?"

I decided to say nothing for the moment, until I learned more about how different I was from normal aikidoka.

I was still my usual highly coordinated, observant self, but Sensei soon commented that I wasn't picking bo techniques up nearly as quickly as I normally did.

"Maybe I'm not used to having things in my hands, or something like that. It's a lot different than the techniques we were doing before."

We did cover a reasonable amount of material, as I still learned faster than other students and my body was better at putting into practice what I did learn.

Some of it was I able to pick up fast, when it was within my proximity range. For example, some of the techniques for disarming an attacker with a bo had us within three feet of each other. One of them required me to 'spoon' into Sensei's belly in preparation for throwing him over my shoulder, and spooning is as close as it's possible for any male to get to me.

By the way, Aikidoka don't train to defend themselves from an attacker wielding a five-foot long wooden pole because they think it's likely to happen. It's simply another way of teaching the principles of Aikido.

We also did some hand-to-hand practice too, as every lesson includes my repeating all the techniques I've learned so far.

Near the end of our session Sensei inquired about my being tired from all the unaccustomed activity, which gave me a good opportunity to get onto the topic I wanted. "No, I'm not tired. I wasn't tired after last week's session either, nor did I have any sore muscles the next day. I'm in very good shape, but as you've said several times, physical strength isn't required for Aikido. It's the mental side of Aikido that's the most important. I can't imagine you ever teaching me a physical technique which amazes me greatly, but I CAN imagine me learning something mental that was profoundly impressive."

That started the discussion I wanted. I was angling to have Sensei describe his ki abilities in detail, especially anything to do with what I called the "proximity sense," such as his gracefully navigating a mat full of students throwing each other around in odd directions. Unfortunately I had to call Mom at 9:00, so we had to cut it short before I learned anything useful, but I got some more books to read - including the best ones he had on kiatsu, as I had Ava's parents in mind - and Sensei said we'd resume the conversation next session.

^

My call to Mom required me to go home to finish off Donna's lesson in keeping her mouth shut about secrets (as already described), after which I went to Julia's.

Prof, Vanessa, Julia and I went to their study to have a planning session for tomorrow. I gave Prof the pile of documents from Mom. He checked through them and pronounced himself happy that they contained what the LA bank would need. Otherwise we spent a while discussing what I should do if various scenarios occurred.