Tokio Hirano's Hando no kata

I received an interesting message from a fellow who is planning to attend the Summer intensive in OKC this year.  He asked if the Nanatsu no kata that I planned to lead was the same thing as Hando no kata.  I had to look it up, but sure enough - there are groups of people doing Tokio Hirano's exercises under the name Hando no kata.  (Unfortunately, that video can't be embedded in my blog, so follow the link for an interesting performance.)

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It's neat to see other interpretations by people with different ideas.  Even the name, Hando no kata, is interesting because it is yet another lens on what Hirano might have been thinking - my dictionary says the name Hando means something like "reaction or recoil or kick-back or back-lash" - and this is very much an exercise of inducing a reaction in uke and then amplifying that reaction until it overwhelms uke.

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We all act like lepers

From the time we're born - perhaps even before then - we are playing with motion.  We move around for the joy and experience of movement.  We walk, skip, run, hop, crawl, dance, climb and wiggle our way around exploring our environment and figuring out what muscles and joints and fascia feel like.  We map out our bodies as we map out our world.

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But then a funny thing happens as we get older.  Funny curious - not funny "ha ha."  About the time we hit puberty, we begin slowing down and trying to look cool and conserve energy and be efficient and not sweat and this insidious thing happens - we begin to forget what our muscles and joints feel like when they move - and then after a while, without even realizing it, we have forgotten that some kinds of motion are possible.  And after a while of thinking that a motor skill is impossible, we become correct.

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Therapist, Thomas Hanna calls this phenomenon Sensorimotor amnesia, and he attributes a lot of somatic dysfunction to it - see this interesting book about Hanna Somatics ...

We can find lots of examples of this sensorimotor amnesia in our physical practices.  For instance, learning a kata the instructor tells us, "take one sliding step forward and end up in a heel-toe stance with upright posture," and we do that and the instructor stops you and tells you to look at your poture and sure enough you are all over the place.  You thought you were stepping just so far and putting your feet just so, but your feet end up shorter or farther and turned in strange angles, posture distorted randomly.

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It takes some time to figure out how to step one step forward, end up in heel-toe stance with upright posture, because we either never knew we could do that or we've forgotten.  Sensorimotor amnesia strikes again.

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So, how do you beat that insidious forgetting process?  Here's a trick I call The Leprosy Check.

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I read somewhere that  healthcare folks that worked with lepers back in the day would advise them to make a self-check every few steps.  That is, every ten steps or so, they would stop and check to see if they'd knocked up against something and damaged themselves.

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When I read that I must have just been reading Hanna Somatics because I immediately thought, "Shoot, we all behave like lepers as we progressively become more and more insensitive to our own bodies."

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So I figured a Leprosy Check might help us in our physical practices too - For at least the first few (hundred) reps of a new technique or kata or etc... put a pause in between each step.  Pause long enough between each step to figure out if you are in the position you should be in, and to fix anything that is wrong - then do the next step followed by another Leprosy Check.

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Is your martial art a cult?

Checklists like this one have circulated on the internet for several years, and have cropped up every so often with regards to martial arts organizations.  In fact, this idea has cropped up in my reading or my email 2-3 times recently with regards to some groups close to me.

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I don't think this list is necessarily diagnostic or definitive, but something to think about.  You might take this list as a sort of Jeff Foxworthy-like list-  that is, if you check too many of these...you might be in a cult.

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• The group displays excessively zealous and unquestioning commitment to its leader and (whether he is alive or dead) regards his belief system, ideology, and practices as the Truth, as law.‪ 
• Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished.‪ Mind-altering practices (such as meditation, chanting, speaking in tongues, denunciation sessions, and debilitating work routines) are used in excess and serve to suppress doubts about the group and its leader(s).‪ 
• The leadership dictates, sometimes in great detail, how members should think, act, and feel (for example, members must get permission to date, change jobs, marry—or leaders prescribe what types of clothes to wear, where to live, whether or not to have children, how to discipline children, and so forth).‪ 
• The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself, its leader(s) and members (for example, the leader is considered the Messiah, a special being, an avatar—or the group and/or the leader is on a special mission to save humanity).‪ 
• The group has a polarized us-versus-them mentality, which may cause conflict with the wider society.‪ 
• The leader is not accountable to any authorities (unlike, for example, teachers, military commanders or ministers, priests, monks, and rabbis of mainstream religious denominations).‪ 
• The group teaches or implies that its supposedly exalted ends justify whatever means it deems necessary. This may result in members' participating in behaviors or activities they would have considered reprehensible or unethical before joining the group (for example, lying to family or friends, or collecting money for bogus charities).‪ 
• The leadership induces feelings of shame and/or guilt in order to influence and/or control members. Often, this is done through peer pressure and subtle forms of persuasion.‪ 
• Subservience to the leader or group requires members to cut ties with family and friends, and radically alter the personal goals and activities they had before joining the group.‪ 
• The group is preoccupied with bringing in new members.‪ 
• The group is preoccupied with making money.‪ 
• Members are expected to devote inordinate amounts of time to the group and group-related activities.‪ 
• Members are encouraged or required to live and/or socialize only with other group members.‪ 
• The most loyal members (the “true believers”) feel there can be no life outside the context of the group. They believe there is no other way to be, and often fear reprisals to themselves or others if they leave (or even consider leaving) the group.

An interesting film of Hirano's kata

This is a right interesting film, the first part of it is Hirano's unusual rhythmic uchikomi and nagekomi exercises.  The second part beginning at about 2:20 (that caught my attention today) is Hirano's Nanatsu no kata.

This rendition of Nanatsu no kata is interesting to me because:

• He does not do the crazy big wave arm swinging thing before each move.  This suggests to me that the arm swinging thing was either a sometimes thing - an option, or it was a teaching/demonstrating thing.
• He appears to do different techniques than in his other demos.  One of the most notable instances is the first ura technique is usually demonstrated as osotogari countered by ukiotoshi, but here it is osotogari countered by sukashi.  This suggests to me that either 1) the kata was not finished when this film was made, or 2) the techniques might have been somewhat interchangeable.  I have suspected for a while that the techniques were somewhat interchangeable... Something to think on for a while...

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Yield uke into ikkyo instead of driving him there

Corky has a very nice way of explaining and demonstrating katatedori ikkyo here.

Notice the emphasis on yielding to draw (or allow) uke's arm to move into extension - the same technical idea that you see in the beginning of the tachiwaza oshitaoshi in koryu dai ichi (starting at about 2:00).

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How to practice ikkyo (and everything else)

In the past several posts, I've been working on oshitaoshi (or ikkyo - thing #1).  Here is a video of Waka Sensei demonstrating two of the primary forms of this thing that you might call omote and ura.  This seems to be a pretty common practice mode, in which tori gets to do four reps (one omote and one ura on each side) then the partners switch roles.

And interestingly enough, though the Tomiki/Ohba gang seems to have done a lot of things differently, here is that same practice mode cropping up as the first part of the first kata (hmmm... thing #1).  And you will see this pattern show up again as the first and second thing in the next section at about 1:00.

The first parts of Ichi kata appear to me to be a nod back to an old training mode in which ikkyo (for example) was repped over and over in rapid succession - right omote-left omote - right ura - left ura - switch roles and keep going - and this was done in an aerobic manner. Little formality except before and after, lots of moving and falling and lots of sweat and repetition.

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I like that mode of practice.  I don't so much like the do-two-reps-and-stop-and-talk-about-it-for-a-while mode. Nobody gets any exercise that way and nobody gets enough reps to make the technique their own - to transform thing one into just one thing.

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The boat rudder analogy

In the previous post I suggested that ikkyo/oshitaoshi seemed to me to be something like using uke's shoulder girdle and spine as levers to steer his center, like using a boat rudder to steer a boat.

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Now, I realize that all analogies fall apart when taken too far, but I think this one may bear a little extension.  Imagine trying to steer a small boat down a swiftly moving stream by controlling the rudder.  Now imagine trying to do that while standing on a rock in the river.

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That second one is not going to be too successful, because in order to use a rudder to steer a boat, you have to be riding in the boat.  Likewise, to use uke's arm and shoulder as a lever to steer his center, you have to be riding uke - or at least connected to him and moving with him.  Standing your ground and trying to turn uke upside down with a lever will not work as well as moving with him and using the lever to steer him.

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We are not standing our ground and mashing uke's elbow backwards into the ground. We are riding him into the ground using his arm and shoulder to steer him.

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Thing number one or "one thing"

They say ikkyo means something like "thing number one," but I often like looser, more colloquial translations, so I sometimes wonder if it might be better to think of "ikkyo" as "one thing," just like Curly the Cowboy in City Slickers.

There are many, many forms of ikkyo, or oshitaoshi that we practice.  I think the idea is to look at this principle from lots of different angles and under the light of many different conditions, until it becomes one thing - ikkyo - in our minds instead of many things.

For me, the one thing that all these different forms seems to be congealing into is the idea of controlling uke's center by manipulating the primary cross (the spine and shoulder girdle) sort of like a rudder on a boat - but maybe you should play with these things for 10 or 15 years yourself and see what conclusions you can draw from ikkyo.


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Thing number one - shomenuchi ikkyo

It probably does not matter too much where you start in aikido or judo or any sort of jujutsu, because whatever technique or movement you decide to call thing number one, as you play with it some, you will eventually find the other things - the other techniques and ideas surrounding thing number one will eventually make themselves known and you can call them thing number two and so on.

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Tomiki began his students' training with some taiso (coordination exercises) and then worked on shomenate as thing number one.  Beginning with shomenate seems axiomatic to us - it is just obviously the right place to start our studies.  But some aikido folks don't even consider shomenate a thing - at least not a thing worthy of a name.  They just tell uke, "hit me in the face" and they proceed with their thing number one.

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And it turns out that their thing number one is a pretty darn good place to start studying aikido.  In fact, that's where most of the rest of the aikido world starts.  They call it ikkyo, and I like to poke a little fun at their inability to come up with a better name than "thing number one," but actually, Tomiki wasn't that much more creative, because he called it, oshitaoshi, or "push the guy down."

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The following is some film of me exploring a peculiar form of shomenuchi ikkyo at Nick's beautiful Windsong Dojo in OKC.  The action starts at the 2:00 minute mark.
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And here is another bit of exploration of the same technique from a wrist grab - katatetori ikkyo.  Again, the action starts at about 2:00.

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Not only is ikkyo the starting place for most of the aikido world's studies, my law enforcement buddies assure me that it is exquisitely effective and useful in controlling aggressors in real world situations.  In any case, ikkyo (oshitaoshi, thing number one) deserves a good bit of your attention.

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Mutual Fault and Blame-sharing

I have said it many times, and my instructors before me, and theirs before them all the way back to Kano - Judo is about Mutual Welfare and Benefit.  I know that's sort of a loose translation of the principle of Jita Kyoei, but it's a common translation and as good as any.

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But Human Animal Males (HAMs) tend to fail to get the mutual benefit thing, or we get it in an incomplete sense.  It just does not make deep visceral sense to some of us that we are doing a deadly martial combat thing with a partner instead of an enemy - that our main goal is to improve both the self and the other.

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Sometimes we start class out with some vague admission or nod to Jita Kyoei, or at least with some pseudo-Japanese etiquette, but then we inevitably end up with an uke that doesn't work quite like we want and we get into this vicious cycle of pushing harder, causing uke to resist harder or do ukemi more un-naturally, which causes tori to struggle more, which makes uke more miserable...

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So, let me try to put it in different terms - one syllable each...

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If your arm gets hurt it is both folks' fault.

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If your elbow (or whatever else) gets bent, tori should not have pushed that hard, and uke should not have stood there and let tori push that hard.  It is almost always possible for uke to yield (and to yield productively) to force rather than to stand against it.  It is almost always possible for Tori to get the effect you're looking for with far less struggle.

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But since this issue  ALWAYS crops up, maybe we're all just knuckleheads who are addicted to power and bent on making our artistic pursuits so difficult that they are self-destructive.  I think that is likely the case.  We are all idiots.

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So, maybe it would do us some good to approach our practice from the angle that we really are ALL idiots, and search for ways to prevent the other guy from mashing our own personal triggers that throw our own personal form of stupid into high gear.  What are my triggers that make me stupid, and what are the ways that other people push those buttons during a conflict?  How can I respond productively to someone mashing my stupid button?

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Maybe we should approach aikido and judo from the idea of working on ourselves rather than from the perspective of applying the power of our will effectively to someone else.

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Have I heard that idea somewhere before?

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Mode-switching and switch-flipping

Toshu randori in Tomiki aikido is a strange beast.  I do not think it teaches us what we think it teaches us.

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It seems at first glance, that toshu randori would be similar to sparring in karate.  But it is not.  Randori cannot be a contest of both folks attacking to see whose attacks succeed and whose fail because that tends to lead to clashes that are not what we're looking for in aikido.

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Likewise, you can't have both guys playing the gentle, receiving, flowing role to see who has better skills at the soft aspects of the art - if both guys play that strategy then nobody does anything and we might as well sit down and share a spot of tea.

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For us to practice aikido skills, we have to have an attacker - someone playing the role of uke so that the other guy can practice being tori.  The tricky part about toshu randori is that both guys would like to be tori, so they have to either trick the other guy into being uke or find a time when he is in that mode.

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To avoid the nobody-does-anything problem, Karl used to advise us "always attack."  When in doubt, attack.  But then to avoid the everybody-always-attacks sort of clash and to actually get some aikido done, one of the partners has to switch gears in mid-attack from attacking to flowing/blending/receiving mode.

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That sounds like I'm saying someone has to choose to be uke and take a dive.  I'm not.  Funny thing is, the guy that is more adept at flipping the switch and can more smoothly and more completely take the role of receiver usually ends up being tori.

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So, that is what I think toshu randori teaches us - it develops skill at identifying when your attack is going to be insufficient and switching to receiving mode so that you can ride the other guy's attack until it is your turn again for a more decisive attack.

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Toshu randori is a mode-switching, switch-flipping practice.

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If your timing is perfect...

I'm slow, I know.  But I just realized...

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When people would ask Karl for advice on "good" technique and "proper" form, frequently he would say, "You can do anything you want if you have perfect timing."  He beat us to death with drills that worked largely on timing - and largely on timing of footsteps.

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All of his heuristics that we took as law - that we thought were THE gospel way to do aikido correctly - those were not actually THE way, they were his preferred, suggested ways to handle the problems caused by imperfect timing.  All of our heuristics can be seen as backup plans for imperfect timing.

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Why do we do the same hand/foot straight arm thing?  Because it makes us stronger when our timing fails.

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Why do we do tsugiashi instead of ayumiashi? Because it makes us more stable when we miss our timing.

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Why do we spend so much time on reflexive ukemi?  Because tori is either going to get the timing right, in which case uke will need good ukemi, or tori will screw up the timing, in which case, tori will need good ukemi as a backup plan.

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It's all about the timing, because if you have perfect timing then your form does not matter.

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Of course, nobody has perfect timing - that's why we spend so much effort on timing drills and why we have so many backup plans that we all recommend keeping in place all the time.

That's why our aikido appears to be based on lists of rules or heuristics-  Keep your arm unbendable, same-hand-same-foot, arms stay centered, etc...
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And that's why the masters , the guys that trifle with us in randori and make us look dumb, appear to break all the rules that they just told us was the right way to do aikido - they break the rules and they still come out on top because they have better timing than we do.


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Energy, Frequency, Vibration

Many of the worlds' greatest thinkers and warriors have been telling us the same thing.  Ueshiba, Tesla, Hirano, Laban, Tohei, Solomon.  The influential school of jujutsu, Kitoryu, was all about the waxing and waning of energy.  Henry Kono said (in essence) that he didn't understand aikido until he realized that Ueshiba was talking about yin-yang, and the implications of that.

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Karl Geis was fond of telling us, "You can do anything you want if you have perfect timing."

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Some of the lessons in Nanatsu

In some ways, Nanatsu no kata seems to be a better introduction to randori than does Nagenokata.  Watch the above video and observe, among other lessons,

• It has a good technical range - several ashiwaza, koshiwaza, tewaza, and sutemiwaza spread out across the gokyo
• It teaches tori to throw right-sided against both left and right postures by uke.
• It teaches tori to throw uke out of jijotai as well as shizentai.
• It teaches tori to throw tori out of light, moderate, and strong resistance conditions (watch uke's posture and arms going into each technique).
• It teaches tori a counter (or a weakness to watch for) to each technique.

Nagenokata is also a good exercise and a good introduction to randori techniques, but I would not be offended if any of my shodan candidates chose to work up Nanatsu no kata for their shodan demonstration.

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