Chapter 202: Aikido; Lessons in Ki

Monday, May 9, 2005 (Continued)

I handed the books I'd borrowed last week back to Sensei, saying, "Unfortunately, they weren't very helpful to me. I'm trying to learn more about ki and kiatsu, but all the books are too vague about it."

I wanted to know whether I could use kiatsu to cure Ava's parents. Unfortunately the books were pathetic. Some of them made wonderful claims about what kiatsu could achieve, even mentioning it helped against cancer, so that aspect of the books was good, but every other aspect was terrible. All they had was vague, wishy-washy drivel. There was nothing even remotely definitive about cause or effect, just drivel about what the authors thought should be done. If kiatsu really worked, it would be very easy to prove it scientifically since one area of science that was very well understood and worked well was the statistical analysis of medical trials. Not only didn't the books provide any proof, they didn't even refer to the existence of any proof. It was very discouraging. Because helping Ava's parents was so important, I'd also spent quite a while browsing topics like "kiatsu proof" and "kiatsu cancer", but didn't find a single useful entry. There are millions of aikidoka around the world, and no shortage of people who are looking for cures, so the lack of ANY definitive study results was damning, and a damned disappointment. I had doubts that kiatsu worked at all, as I was guessing that my accelerated healing rate was probably due to my body's actions rather than my mind's. My appendix scar was now only a faint blemish, but I had never administered kiatsu to it.

Sensei answered, "It is difficult to write about something which is so intangible."

"Can we cut short the physical part of the lesson to spend some time talking about ki tonight please? Ki is the aspect of Aikido that I'm most interested in."

"We should do that. Normal students take so long to develop their ki that I spread my comments about it over many months, but doing so with you would be incorrect."

We got on with the warming up and the physical aspect of the training, including quite a lot more bo work, because I wasn't learning that as fast or as well.

During our halftime break, while we were sharing my food in the kitchen, I told Sensei, "I'm embarrassed to tell you that I got involved in another fight. I know good aikidoka seek to avoid combat, but I was attacked by six guys at school this afternoon."

"Oh?" Sensei looked concerned. Obviously not about my health, because we'd been training happily for nearly two hours. About my morality, I guessed.

"I definitely don't want you to think poorly of me, so I guess I need to tell you a few things about me. It's embarrassing, because I have to be rather immodest, which I'm not used to, but here goes.

^-- "You've commented on how fast I learn Aikido. Actually, I learn nearly everything that fast, because I'm a bit of a genius. So I'm acing all my schoolwork, which causes some jealousy. I'm also very good at sports, which causes more jealousy. And what causes the most jealousy of all, is that I'm very successful with the girls at school. Many of them are chasing me to be my girlfriend, which quite a few of the other boys at school think is very unfair, and their response is to try to 'teach me a lesson' by beating me up.

^-- "Our Principal has been lax on bullying for many years, so there are lots of boys at school who think that physical violence is an easy option. I was in the bathroom today after lunch when six guys stormed in and tried to cut off my, you know." I pointed south as Sensei is an old-fashioned English gentleman, and I didn't want to use any word he might find offensive.

"Crown jewels?" he suggested.

"Haha. Yeah, exactly." I felt bad lying to him about that, but it made my fight tactics seem so much more appropriate. "They had a large pair of scissors with them, and they seemed determined to use them on me."

"Oh dear. That would motivate one to defend oneself, haha. Obviously you survived intact, so what became of the six assailants?"

"I'll tell you in a second, but let me duck it for the moment. I had a moral problem, which is mostly what I want to talk with you about. I could have knocked them out like I did with the Eatons, like we talked about last week. That'd cause the least possible damage to them. Merely headaches and bruises, I guess. The problem is that I expect to be the target for several more attacks yet. There's quite a high level of aggression directed at me from a significant number of boys at school who're annoyed that I'm doing better at everything than they are. Instead of raising the standard of their own behavior, their approach is to try to tear me down." Sensei nodded, obviously aware of that boyish strategy.

^-- "There's also something about me that's going to become public knowledge next week, which is going to make the other boys even more jealous. I'll tell you about that next week, but it'll REALLY annoy plenty of boys."

I wanted to offer to pay Sensei for these lessons, but I still had trouble believing the money would really, truly, turn up in my bank account. I semi-expected trouble with the checks I'd handed out, but I'd done so knowing they were to family, so if there was a problem with them, it'd only be embarrassing internally. I'm going to divert to an ATM on the way to study at the Williams' tomorrow morning, to find out whether the millions of dollars actually show as being in my Corvallis account, and if not call around the check recipients and get them to hold off banking them until the problem is fixed. I didn't want to offer to pay Sensei whatever he wanted per week, which for three hours of one-on-one training would have to be a significant amount, and then find out that I didn't have any money, so I was going to wait until next Monday before telling him I was rich.

I continued, "Expecting a lot more attacks, I though it might be better to try to scare off all the other would-be attackers by dealing with today's attackers pretty harshly. I remembered what you said last week about breaking arms, so that's what I did. The guy who had the scissors I used Kote gaeshi," (the name of the Aikido technique), "hard enough to break his wrist. When the next two guys attacked me I didn't have time for anything much, so I just pushed or threw them into a wall hard enough to stun or knock them out. Against the last three I had more time, so I broke one of their arms each. Then I called 9-1-1. The whole school saw all the ambulances and police cars, and the fight is big news around school because about twenty guys witnessed it, so it should serve as a very good deterrent for all the other guys who've been thinking of teaching me a lesson. What I want to know is what you think of the morality of what I did, breaking arms rather than just knocking them out?"

Sensei was going to read all this stuff in the newspaper tomorrow morning and for the next few days, so there wasn't any way I could avoid him finding out. I might as well be up-front about it, as it wasn't going to make him think any worse of me.

Sensei asked, "What did the police have to say about your actions?"

"There was no talk of their arresting me, if that's what you're asking about. I was the intended victim. There were witnesses who heard the guys threaten to cut my crown jewels off, and plenty of witnesses saw that I didn't attack any of them. Each time an attacker came at me, I dealt with him, then left him crying on the floor. I never went back to any of them to hurt them any more. I'm pretty sure I'm not going to get into any legal trouble over it. It was a premeditated six-on-one attack on me by guys who'd been badmouthing me all day, and recruiting other guys to join in on their planned attack on me, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if they called or texted each other when one of them saw me go into the bathroom." I'd just thought of that, and made a mental note to call the cops to tell them that, as well as about their recruiting guys to join their planned attack, as the suspended guys had told me in the parking lot.

Sensei answered, "Morally, the attack you describe was heinous both in intent and in having six assailants, so you would be allowed considerable latitude in your response. However, what strikes me is your confidence. You talk as if you had control of the situation, and had choices about how to respond. Were you that confident at the time?"

"Pretty much. There were a couple of moments when I didn't have much choice, but they lasted only a second or two. Those moments were with the two guys who didn't get broken arms; otherwise I would've broken their arms too. It's because I had choice that I had a moral dilemma. No choice obviously means no dilemma. I didn't tell the cops this, but I could've defended myself without injuring any of them, but I figured hurting them badly was the best thing to do.

^-- "When guys attack me like this, they often end up with a criminal record, which is an insanely stupid thing for them to risk just because they're annoyed that more girls are interested in me than in them. I figure a broken arm is NOTHING compared to a criminal record, but the idiots at school seem to think that what they do in school is somehow immune from the police. I think they'd almost certainly be scared of getting a broken arm, so I'm hoping that my getting tough with the guys today will deter a lot of the idiots from making the mistake of attacking me in the future."

Sensei suggested, "It would also impress the girls at school?"

"Haha. I know where you're going with that, and you couldn't be more wrong. I have absolutely no need to do anything to impress girls. I was attacked because so many of them are ALREADY interested in me, and wait until you hear what I'll tell you next Monday. Also, I don't know much about girls, but I do know they're not impressed by violence. Not any of the girls I'd want to be friends with anyway. I know a lot of guys think fighting makes them look cool with girls, but I think that's just stupid macho aggression crap. Guys fight because guys like to fight. The best thing I ever did to impress girls was to stand up in class and make a speech about how much I loved my sister, which was hardly a macho thing to do. So - to sidestep your little verbal trap - no, I didn't do it to impress girls. The ONLY reason was to serve as a deterrent for any more guys thinking to attack me."

[[There are several different forces working on guys and girls, but it wouldn't be too far off to say that girls are as instinctively motivated to mate with the alpha male, as boys are to try to be the alpha male. Violence, per se, doesn't attract most girls, but the demonstration of physical superiority over other males certainly does (there has to be a reason football jocks are so popular!). So my answer to Sensei had been unintentionally inaccurate. It didn't matter though, as he wasn't interested in scientific accuracy, only in my attitude. Amusingly, the fact that I proved I was a vastly superior fighter, and my modestly downplaying it, significantly impressed the girls at school, the opposite of what the six assailants had wanted.]]

Sensei and I discussed the issue some more, and his attitude boiled down to, "There is nothing inherently wrong with broken arms. I climbed a tree when I was boy, lost my grip, fell and broke my arm. Just a childhood accident of no lasting significance, other than I learned to be more careful when climbing trees; a lesson whose sole benefit is now in my verbally passing it on to my grandchildren.

^-- "The answer to your moral dilemma lies not in the fact of broken arms, nor in your act of breaking their arms, but in your motivation for doing so. Necessity would be an acceptable motivation, but you say that was not the case. Deterring future potential assailants so as to minimize the harm they do to their own lives is laudable, but if there was any component of self-aggrandizement in your decision, then the morality of it is questionable. Only you are in a position to be able to judge your motivations."

After we'd discussed that issue a bit, Sensei said, "One of the disadvantages of your learning the physical forms so quickly is that you are not being exposed to the philosophy of Aikido. You also need to practice your techniques against a range of different people rather than me all the time, so I think it would be a good idea for you to attend an advanced class one night. Not this Wednesday, but next, can you attend a class?"

"Certainly. Aikido has a high priority with me, so I'll try hard to fit in with anything you want."

#3: <Just as well the extra class wasn't the previous day, as that'd clash with the pipeline date that'd already been bumped out of the weekend. I suspect the girls wouldn't appreciate being bumped yet again.>

#4: <Tough luck for them, because I'd much rather go to an advanced Aikido class. I'm VERY curious to see what it's like.>

We got back to our training, which was more hand-to-hand stuff. I enjoy that more, because I understand it at a deeper level, although I do understand why Aikido includes bo techniques.

[To explain, Aikido is very 'circular'. You don't meet the attack head-on, either with your head or any other part of your anatomy. Instead you deflect the attack sideways, so its force is either lost, or better still, used to defeat the attacker. Using a bo teaches the student to think in much larger circles, potentially up to thirteen feet in diameter. You may be surprised to learn that most of the bo techniques are with the DEFENDER holding the bo, and using it to defeat the attacker. Not by banging him on the head with it, or ramming its end into his belly (nothing 'Aikido' about those techniques), but by thinking of the bo as an extension of the defender's arm, and using it to perform many of the same techniques that would be used if the attacker had grabbed the defender's wrist (for example). There are other techniques specific to the bo, but the purpose of all of them is to teach Aikido principles and techniques, rather than batter the attacker.]

We stopped the physical forms early to discuss ki. It was an awkward discussion in two respects:

1. I didn't want to tell Sensei how my ki abilities worked. It was easy to keep NP a secret from him, but proximity was awkward to talk around.

2. He thought he couldn't show me ki. In the physical forms he could show me how to move my body parts around, but ki was invisible for him. It was difficult for Sensei to talk to me, or me to him, about something he couldn't see.

We talked in metaphors mostly, his favorite one being that of a jet of water. Imagine Dad and Sensei are repeating the lapel gripping demonstration that they'd first done at the Williams'. That technique can be easily explained in terms of the jet-of-water metaphor. When Dad is grasping Sensei's lapels, Dad's concentration, intent, etc., can be thought of as a jet of metaphorical water that flows down his arm toward his fist. It's easiest to visualize by imagining that Dad's arm is literally a jet of water. The size and strength of the jet is how powerfully Dad's mind is focusing on the task. When Sensei drops his arm on to the top of Dad's, Sensei is metaphorically directing the jet of water that is his ki vertically downward into the jet of water that is Dad's. As Sensei has spent decades learning Aikido, his jet is larger and more powerful than Dad's, so Dad's little jet gets deflected downward. That means Dad no longer has any 'intent' focused on his grip, making it unmotivated, and easily brushed down as Dad's arm is swept downward by Sensei's.

Sensei was unable to break my grip on his lapel because my ki (my jet of water) is more powerful than his. Sensei has one mind (I'm sure of that), which has spent many years disciplining itself, so it has developed ki which is about three times more powerful than an untrained person's, but it's not more powerful than my untrained four minds' worth of ki. [[I didn't know the exact value yet, but four minds gave me sixteen times as much ki as non-aikidoka.]]

Using another metaphor, Sensei had learned to strengthen his ki in much the same way as someone who'd learned to play the piano without any sensory feedback (no seeing, touching or hearing the piano). In other words, as if he was sitting on a stool in front of a big, empty space. To make it worse, he'd been taught by a teacher (his Sensei) who'd never seen, touched or heard a piano either! It's a wonder aikidoka develop their ki at all.

To be more accurate, they do get some sensory feedback from how well their techniques work, but it's effectively still an 'invisible' type of feedback, working so indirectly that it's almost impossible for them to tell how well they're doing, especially because their opponent's ki influences the results, as do both their moods, whether they're hurrying, distracted by external events (an argument with a girlfriend, pressure at work, lack of sleep, etc.), too crowded on the training mats, or dozens of other factors, the effects of which are all totally invisible to them.

Not only did I have the sensory feedback I needed to learn to control my ki FAR faster, I also had the huge help of starting with four minds. They gave me four major benefits:

1. The ability to be always centered, so I could train my ki with far more efficiency than other aikidoka.

2. The ability to generate far more ki than a normal person. [[Not "generate", but "tap". With four minds, sixteen times as much, as it's a square function.]]

3. My subconsciouses could force my body to grow in desirable ways, including my brain in ways that made my ki work better, as indicated by my NP force getting stronger, albeit slowly. [[I've listed this point because I thought it was true at the time. In fact, it's almost entirely false. The ability of my brain to adapt had very little effect on my ki abilities as they're almost totally dependent on my mind. Minds are surprisingly independent of brains.]]

4. Four minds enabled the proximity sense to work very well. That I can 'see' my ki with proximity instantly makes it FAR easier for me to discipline my use of it. I can focus it, and see the focus take effect. I can concentrate hard on making it as powerful as possible, and immediately see what methods of concentration work the best. I can see when my concentration is lapsing and take immediate steps to correct it. I can see when my ki is being deflected by someone else's, so I can 'fight back'. And when my ki is deflecting someone else's ki, I can vector that properly so the opponent's resultant actions are exactly what I want.

^

[[With respect to the point immediately above, and reusing the pixel metaphor I mentioned earlier in this autobiography: with four minds, my proximity sense could be likened to a 100 pixel color picture. Had I discovered Aikido earlier, I would've seen that proximity with two minds was like having a 10 pixel gray-scale image. With one mind it's like a single pixel black or white picture, which can hardly be called a "picture". It gives a binary piece of information, specifically that when someone is standing inside your personal space, you can sometimes get a 'feeling' about it, provided you're not distracted.

This is off topic, but while I think of it, I'll give an interesting example of the power of the subconscious to make changes within the body. A guy I know went scuba diving with an ear infection. The water pressure pushed the infection farther into his body, so it infected a major nerve pathway on that (the left) side of his face, causing the nerve sheath to inflame, expand, strangle and kill the 'wire'. He lost all muscular control over the left side of his face from below the eye. When he smiled, for example, only the right side of his mouth curled up; the left side of his face hung totally slack, as every muscle in it was totally relaxed in the absence of any nerve impulses telling them to contract. When he drank liquids without keeping his head tilted back, all the liquids ran out of the left side of his mouth because he couldn't close the lips on that side. His speech was highly slurred, his facial expressions were bizarre, etc.

A couple of months after he lost the nerve, the left side of his face started sporadically twitching in strange ways, including some very large twitches, which made him look even more bizarre. Over the next few months he slowly regained all his normal muscular controls. What happened was that his body grew a new nerve pathway, sending branch connections to all of his facial muscles, test-fired the muscles over and over again, until his subconscious learned where all the connections went and how much 'juice' to give them to get the thousands of different desired results (or combinations of results) for each muscle(s). The reconnecting and re-learning of how to use half his face was impressively (and comically) performed entirely by his subconscious.

I mention this not because of its relevance to the previous section (because it's not), but because I just thought of it, and it's a good example. At many places throughout my autobiography there are references to the power of the subconscious. As the example shows, they are amazingly capable. My having four of them at this time, with only one body to control, and with human bodies having some amazingly capable repair mechanisms, gave my subconsciouses a lot of influence over my body.]]

^

Back to my discussion with Sensei. We talked around the issue, me trying to find out the range of his abilities without giving away that mine were much greater.

My ki abilities are in either of two categories: the ability to project ki, or to detect it.

1. I can project ki in three main ways: NP, blobs and what I call "The Ki of Personal Intent" (e.g., hanging on to Sensei's lapel when he tries to brush my arm away). There's a fourth possible ability: kiatsu. The Aikido books that mention kiatsu, say it's done by projecting ki, but I've got so little experience with it that it's barely worth including on this list. I had doubts it was real, because even at fifteen I knew people get weird about wanting to believe in miraculous healing. If kiatsu is a real phenomenon, it has to be a VERY weak one, otherwise there'd be a public frenzy about Aikido and kiatsu, which there isn't.

2. I can detect ki in one obvious way, my proximity sense. Plus, tentatively, the "moving in harmony with the Universe" ability, as discussed immediately below.

I'm uncertain about how to categorize my ability to move more gracefully when centered. This is nothing to do with my body being well coordinated already; it's an additional effect. If I uncenter to walk back and forth across an empty room, then recenter and repeat the journey, the second experience feels smoother than the first. My running test proved that my optimal speed is slightly higher when centered, which is almost certainly this effect. My body is the same and there are no other people around, so it's not because I'm avoiding colliding with them. I can't proximity sense that anything is happening, nor get any other clue to explain why moving while centered feels better, so it's a puzzle. I'm inclined to place it in the "detect ki" category, rather than a "projecting ki" ability, but that's mostly a vague guess.

[[It really needed to be in a category of its own because most of my logic was wrong. The spatial construction of the Universe is considerably more complex than humans are aware, and the traditional 3D view of it is simplistic, but moving through it felt easier when centered not because it was easier, but because the Universe could supply me with slightly more energy when I was centered, raising my optimal speed. It felt nicer simply because being centered is a type of meditation which feels nicer when moving than when stationary, which is misleading, as human perceptions so often are. That Aikido books call it "moving in harmony with the Universe" is a poor choice of phrase. While it is possible to work with or against the Universe's natural functions - riding a bike uphill is harder work than riding it down - my walking across a room centered or uncentered didn't require different energy expenditures.]]

As best as I can tell, Sensei has only one way of projecting ki, what I call "Personal Intent". He's never mentioned "Blobs" or "Nipple Power" (or what I'd recognize to be those abilities). He has talked about healing, but has not claimed any expertise at it.

Sensei certainly has one way of detecting ki, his much less informative version of my proximity sense. I don't know whether he has a "moving in harmony" ability. He thinks he does, and that's how he described it, but his avoiding students rolling around the mats is actually his proximity sense in operation. He says he feels smoother when centered, but whether he could run faster when centered, as a measurable example of "moving in harmony", is doubtful. If so, it wouldn't be much of an improvement.

He always talks about "projecting ki" as if it squirts out of our bodies, which is why he uses the jet of water metaphor. I cautiously asked him, "Rather than ki always projecting away from me, is there a way of sending it in other directions? Sideways across the front of me, or around corners, or anything?" I wasn't particularly interested in this topic. It came about just out of my trying to gain information from him by asking a wide variety of questions in terms that he was familiar with.

"Now you are getting into very advanced techniques. It is possible to lead your opponent's ki. Do you remember your first visit here, when you still had your arm in a cast. I invited you to try to grab my wrist, and as you tried I moved it away, causing you to fall over forward?"

"Yes, I remember it well. That was cool. You got me to fall over without touching me."

"Correct. What I did was invite you to reach for my wrist, which caused you to project your ki out of your hand as you reached forward for my wrist. I tried to reinforce the ki flowing down your arm by adding my ki to yours. The extra ki caused you to extend too far and bend over too much as I moved my wrist away and down, causing you to lose your balance and fall. Another way of thinking about it is that my ki pulled so much of your consciousness into your hand that it forgot to keep track of what was happening to your body, so you overextended. That is inaccurate in several important respects, but it describes the effect on uke well. Do you remember feeling surprised when you started falling?" (To remind you, "uke" is Japanese for "attacker".)

"Haha, I was just going to say EXACTLY the same thing! You're right, I had no idea at all that I was off balance. All I remember doing is reaching for your wrist, then I was suddenly falling over with no idea of how it happened. It was like I blacked out for the second or so in which I lost my balance."

"Yes, that is what it feels like. I held my wrist out to you with my fingers bent under and pointing down, so they were pointing in the same direction as your extending arm. What I tried to do was visualize my ki flowing out of my wrist in the direction my fingers were pointing, so toward the floor in the direction that you were leaning. I think it works in a similar way to lowering a hose into a pool of water. The water squirting out of the hose pulls some of the surrounding water along with it, including some of the water that is behind the nozzle of the hose. I believe my ki is pulling your ki along with it, maybe pulling your concentration too. In Aikido we always stress 'pushing' rather than 'pulling', especially with ki, because it's incorrect to think of a jet of water as 'pulling' anything, but in this rare circumstance, pulling seems to be what is happening."

"You sound a lot less definite than you normally do when you talk about ki?"

"Because I AM less definite. I can perform normal techniques successfully any number of times, but if I used that technique on you a few more times it would stop working, because you would learn to keep some awareness of your body. That technique is at the edge of my ability, and I do not understand it well. Masters at levels higher than mine are more skilled in leading their opponent's ki, but it is a very rare ability, and I have not heard a good explanation for how it works."

I thought I might be able to do it, and I wanted to find out whether I could. I could have tested it on anyone at home (Dad or Donna would be good picks), but I had no problem with Sensei knowing I was very good at already known Aikido abilities. It was the unknown abilities that I didn't want him to know about, like NP, or a proximity sense so much better than his that it was effectively a new ability. So I enthusiastically asked, "Can I try doing that no touch fall technique on you please?"

"Certainly. There's no harm in trying, although I've trained with masters who've used it on me several times so it is not likely to work well."

^

I need to fill in a little gap in my biography. Thus far I have made very little reference to my using my "Ki of Personal Intent", which is the ki that everyone radiates whenever they intend to move their body. It's an absolutely fundamental part of Aikido training, and it's used by every aikidoka in virtually every technique. Whenever I do anything resembling a physical Aikido technique, I use it as a matter of course. For example, I used it when I pushed Chloe onto the bed earlier today so I could run out of the room. I'd ducked under her outside arm, then pushed her upper-arm forward and around toward the bed. As I'd pushed her arm forward I'd sent my ki flowing down my pushing arm, onto her upper-arm, then down her arm. Keeping my ki flowing that way made it harder for her to pull her arm back, because before she could do that, she had to reverse the flow of her own ki down that arm. That was much harder for her, because her ki was being swept along by mine.