Month: April 2023

What does the grades in the Belt means?

What does the grades in the Belt means?

There is some confusion about what a coloured belt looks and feel. Sometimes we look at a black belt and we go like ‘wahhh… that guy’s got the swag!’

To put this in a more simplistic way other than having a functional purpose of just holding your Gi in place, we can use the grades to think and solve problems.

Shoshin (初心) Way

Harry sensei always tells us to keep a beginners mind, so much so our Dojo is called Shoshin. How then, on the mat and in our lives are we supposed to live and act on this values.

Beginner’s way of solving a problem.

A couple class back, Radek and Lois was working together to figure out a particularly complex waza. Both has clocked a good many years of training and they were moving and adjusting how the uke and nage should move. I suggest them that they need to break down their approach down to white belt level.

Sometimes, clocking those years of experience and perceived seniority can cloud and block our ability to learn new things and see the solution from another view. Other times we become so senior we foolishly held onto our ranks and reject new ways of doing things, hence making ourselves irrelevant to the dynamics of the world.

Remember your time as a White Belt

When we first joined as a white belt, we know nothing about Aikido, everything is new and we are starting from zero. Everything seems so awkward, but we weren’t shy about it, and learned with gusto, and well, failure is a given. There was no expectations about what we can get out of it, and learning like this we get everything we could out of every touch point.

White belts soak in the moves, step by step and under a good sensei, procedural guidance can help white belts gain some proficiency in the moves and eventually a white belt can, mechanically complete a basic technique.

As we become Brown Belt

This is somewhat between proficiency and exploration. I remember my times as a brown belt, I was always looking for senior black belts to train with. Being a bustling brown belt, we have gotten out fair share of mistakes and injuries, yet we are technically proficient to bring some moves to play. We are not afraid to make mistakes and we know how to avoid some of those mistakes. Brown belts are still rough around the edges but honing their moves to become more refined and polished.

Take a specific waza like Irimi-nage, a typical brown belt would have spent about 2 years practicing it, so we can execute it with finesse and speed. During my time, my brown belt friends and I look to eat black belts for breakfast lunch and dinner, since brown belts are more junior to the blacks, we can go full out with them, since they should be better than us. Anyway those are the guys we aspire to become so why not test them out?

Being Black Belt

When we become Black, we have philosophically reached the foot of the Aikido summit. We are technically proficient and we can explore more complex techniques, dive a little deeper into how the dynamics between uke and nage works, and also give Aikido back to the juniors.

We experiment with complex and compound waza moving faster and more dynamically. We are also more confident and possess a balance of technique finesse and skill.

But we get stuck sometimes

Sometimes we get stuck with a problem, we try to make sense of how a technique works. Similarly when Radek and Lois got stuck, I suggested that they dial back on their experience and approach the waza like a white belt, Put their brown belt one side and just explore with a beginners’ perspective, no risk, no expectations, no pride, explore, try, experiment, ask for help, open to learn.

Once we can understand the moves, the basic building blocks leading to the complexity of the waza, we can slowly dial it up and think of it from a brown belt level, or from a black belt level. That means we can speed it up and see how it works.

Training with different belts

I share with the class it is the same with partnering a junior belt, being a black means we must be able to dial down to a more basic junior, step by step, mechanical level of Aikido. That means I’ll need to become a white belt for my white belt partner, to match that person’s competency. There is no point for me to be a black belt and hurl the poor beginner around, as if they are at my level to take high falls and throws. This is not a sustainable way to train.

This is how we can apply Aikido spirit to help solve problems in a team, in our lives. Being a 初心 means we are continually exploring, and even when we reach an advance grade, we must not be too proud to drop to a baby’s level to learn crawling all over again, have fun, laugh and be happy. This keeps us harmoniously aligned with our world and makes sure that our ego never gets the better of us.

The Failed Nest

The Failed Nest

Dear Boys,

Life is always bittersweet, we have to experience loss and tragedy to understand the value of our existence.

Not too long ago we have a pair of Yellow Sunbirds building a nest at the netting outside out our kitchen window. There was a buzz of activity as the Sunbirds were chirping and building their home that hung precariously on the net.

It was obvious that we are going to bear witness to them laying eggs and having little chicks just outside out window!

So we left it alone, and before we know it, there’s a constant chirping from the nest and we reckoned that the eggs must have been laid and the chicks hatched.

Until a tragedy happened.

I got this WhatsApp message on our family group chat.

The Nest is no more.

The both of you went downstairs to check for any ‘survivors’ but the outcome is predictable.

Spontaneous Epiphany

While life throws you a sudden unexpected tragedy, you both acted without hesitation in an attempt to save the chicks. There was no holding back, choosing inaction, and just let what happened happen, and be sad over it, or worse indifferent. Which is honestly a done deal, the chicks are dead, I wouldn’t have bothered to go downstairs to check.

You both did more, instead of just leaving the carcass of the dead chick there, you dug a shallow grave and buried it, and place the nest on top of it as a mark. There is so much compassion and empathy from the both of you, I know deep down inside that you both have the courage to do something about death and suffering. There was no hesitation, you both knew it was simply the right thing to do, as a form of closure.

Your dad would have left it alone.

Being a Parent, Raising Children

As any parent, there is always this worry that my boys will go wayward, and turned out to become less of a person I hope you can become. With all our best intentions, there is no guarantee that kids will turn out to become decent human beings. All I can do is show you both the right way, and explain values, principle and ethos on how to live a decent life.

Showing is one thing, but I cannot tell if you boys will heed my words and have it in you to do the right thing, especially during times where there is no template. Both of you rise to the occasion that day and showed me that you both will work together, and embrace how precious life is.

This tells me that what I’ve been telling you boys, the stories I’ve shared is working.

You are the Reason why we have children

It was at this moment I got my answer as to why we have kids. With Singapore’s dipping birth-rate, it’s indeed very hard to comprehend why would we want to spend time, money and a huge part of our lives raising little human beings. I even heard younger couple say things like: “I don’t want to bring children into this world to suffer!” Back then I couldn’t comprehend this reasoning and it’s compelling given that the world’s going through a few wars, global warming, cancer, epidemics and all, it does seems like we shouldn’t make anymore human beings for them to come here and suffer with us, how noble! Oh did I mention the exorbitant cost of raising little people?

Despite of all the reasons not to, you boys gave me one single reason we did, and I’m glad we did. You have shown me that there are still good in this world, and that good lies in the both of you.

Death and destruction is constantly all around us, and there will never be any shortage of suffering, but there will always be a shortage of people who will stand up take action and make their world a little better.

One thing I know for sure; you boys will become a better person than your dad.

Moving, Flow, Rhythm and Cadence

I was training with Radek and we were practicing Shihonage-ura waza and I was encouraging a more fast pace rhythm. While I was the uke, I will always make a point to take a fall, unless my nage has made a critical mistake which allows me to get up.

After a few fall, Radek was saying, that I am falling by myself and makes it looks ‘easy’. This kind of falling is often known as a ‘Charity fall’ which means the nage don’t have to do much and you will fall. Charity fall also adds to that bad reputation Aikido and other martial arts gets, branded as ‘Bullshit-do’, and moniker of Bushido.

A very fine line

As I explained to Radek, that he is already a brown gold, and he would have gotten the basics right, he can move, gauge the distance and also execute most of the Aikido waza competently. However, he is still stuck in a static movement mindset, and puts in 100% (sometimes too much!) in everything that he does, which is fine, but as we progress, we need to better embrace rhythm, velocity and the economies of our partner’s intent and energy. After all this is what Aikido is all about!

While there is nothing wrong being static and doing the basics, it is very laborious and physical, Every time you throw or pin your uke, you will use equal or more strength, on top of a better angle of attack, geometry, positioning and all that. You don’t add value to the relationship, and when things moves fast, we get stuck. On top of getting stuck, we are unable to learn how to deal with speed and velocity.

Don’t think, move fast

Further delving into my ‘charity fall’, I explained that in the speed we are moving, there will be energy bleed, which means things will travel a bit more before it slows down to a halt. Very much like a car applying it’s brakes, it does not stop at that instant the brakes is being applied, there is a braking distance where the excessive energy is bled off and eventually comes to a halt. And you do not jam the brakes, but apply even constant pressure, watching how the car reacts to you so that the car will reach 0 km/h.

It is the same with Aikido, as we advance into our practice, we must understand economies of our partner’s energy. While Shihonage ends the moves with our partner’s hands bent backwards, there is already an inherent instability build in that will carry on as our uke falls, we don’t really have to do much and just ride that downwards wave. Hence it looks like I fall on my own without much of his involvement, fact is I am already on the way down, and if the technique starts off well at the get-go, the ending is a very natural fall, unless the start is a struggle, then it will be a struggle all the way to the end.

Follow though

I also explained to him that he has a tendency to pause, which is a normal for all of us as we sometimes put a halt and check our technique. It happens with most novices and this can disrupt the flow of the technique. As we advance in our practice, we need to be vary conscious about our stoppage as it will allow our partner to regain their balance and turn the tide against us.

Coming in as a more advanced uke, I have to show him what a thorough follow through looks like, even if he halts out of habit, it’s my role as an uke to help him follow through. Then he can have a glimpse of what the technique looks and feels like with a flow.

Unless of course the nage does a complete erroneous moves and this is where the uke has to preserve the presence of mind to stop and correct the nage. This takes trust and camaraderie to build and it helps to motivate our more junior practitioner to understand how things look like from a more senior level.

This way everyone can learn and experience Aikido in a faster, more intense pace and at the same time not getting anyone injured.

Doing Aikido Videos

Doing Aikido Videos

This is something of a gray area for Harry Sensei, while we have often serendipitously recorded his teachings every now and then, he was never consistently supportive of us doing so, his likes and dislikes ebb with his mood, sometimes he don’t mind it, often he will berates us for recording, as he would want us to focus on the training and not get distracted with recording him.

I agree with him wholeheartedly and at the same time, continues to take video recordings of my lessons. There is value in recording our trainings as we can reflect back on our moves and think deeper years later. We can compare and contrast what we did in the past and what we can do now.

I learned a lot from watching these videos, in terms of posture, in terms of my positioning and also what I am saying, those fill words and anchor words I’m constantly using which makes me sound like a broken record. I also learned a lot looking at how my fellow Aikidokas train and see that they have a different interpretations of the same technique. This also helps me think of better ways to transfer my knowledge and better share the experience.

Posting on Social Media

I do post on my social media accounts more for sharing and getting some awareness about who we are as an Aikido school, and for the same reason why I blog, I want to interact with the public at large and see what kind of response I am getting, open to feedback!

The social media landscape is a jungle and it is always a very conscientious effort to make sure I post the right things. These social media companies makes it very easy for you to post, and there is a reason for that; they want you to keep using their apps and in doing so brings traffic and popularity to their site.

One thing I always do is to get my fellow Aikido practitioner’s approval, usually just a WhatsApp:” eh, can I have your permission to post this?” This is when a specific person’s face is identifiable. If they choose not to be seen, then I will respect that decision. It’s their privacy after all.

Sharing these videos.

My fellow Aikidokas gets these videos as I want them to have it as keepsake. Very often we train, train and train, we don’t really have any kind of a video to help us remember our training days. The earliest video of me in Aikido was my brown belt grading, and I tore my right sleeve in a sleeve grab move, Back in those days it was a grainy video tape era recordings and I often wish I had something else from earlier.

Sharing these video with our loved ones.

Sometimes I wonder what our spouses and children thinks of us, we disappear once or twice a week put on white uniform, wear strange looking pleated pants that looks like a skirt, Roll around and throw people here and there on a padded mat, and it all seems like we are part of a secret squirrel club.

Having some of these videos perhaps can help us debunk some of these myths about our mysterious disappearance and also help them understand this very hard to understand martial arts.

It is visual proof that we are playing around with other people, but not in a hanky panky naughty manner.