Beginning and ending kihon

There is this practice seen mostly in pre-war aikido guys, like Tomiki and Shioda, and their students - the practice of measuring ma-ai by crossing handblades prior to practicing a technique.  This practice is not seen as much (at least in this form) in post-war aikido folks, and I have not seen video of Osensei doing this, but Doshu Moriteru Ueshiba talks some in his videos about the idea of precisely setting up each practice condition.

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I suspect that the practice of measuring ma-ai is currently in disfavor because of some misuses or misunderstandings related to it, like the zombie attack.  But it is a valuable training tool, when used properly.  This sort of practice is valuable for improving kamae, ma-ai, metsuke, and zanshin

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How we were taught to begin techniques - prior to practicing a kihon (basic form) technique,

• Uke and tori stand in front of each other in a proper stance (kamae) - whatever that is according to their teacher Tomiki-students and Shioda-students prefer different basic kamae. 
• Uke and tori extend their lead arms, nearly straight, with fingers touching or hands slightly crossed. This defines the basic operational distance for kihon (ma-ai).
• Then both partners lower their arms and look at each other for a moment.  This allows both partners to get used to judging ma-ai distance visually instead of by measuring.
• When tori is ready for the attack, he establishes the visual connection (metsuke).  Different folks will tell you to do this eye-control differently, but we were told for tori to watch uke's center while measuring and when ready for the attack, make eye contact and maintain it.
• Then uke attacks.

How we were taught to end kihon - 

• Uke falls.
• Tori follows uke into a lock or pin (unless the throw is a projection)
• Whenever possible, tori lands uke either face-down or side-lying facing away from tori
• Tori places a knee and two hands on uke, chocking him and keeping him under control.
• Tori maintains as straight a posture as possible and looks around for more attackers.
• Uke submits
• Tori backs out of ma-ai moving toward uke's head instead of his feet.
• Uke turns to face tori, gets his feet between him and tori, and gets up moving away from tori.

Again, this applies primarily to kihon (basic forms) of techniques.  You will want to get some variation on these beginnings and endings, and perhaps even drop it from most of your practice once you've done it for a while.  But I think if you implement these scripts for beginning and ending kihon, you will get  some additional practice at kamae, ma-ai, metsuke, and zanshin.


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Patrick Parker
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Get some jo in your aikido

I read it somewhere - not sure where - that the old jodo guys said that it was relatively unimportant to correct students on the things that go on in the middle of the kata.  He was saying that the really important thing to get right was the beginning and end of the kata.

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This jives to a large degree with what little teaching I've had from SMR jojutsu guys - they were very peculiar about the beginnings and the ends, and they seemed perhaps slightly less interested in the in-between actions than I was.

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They were emphasizing principle over tactics - the intangibles - ma-ai, kamae, metsuke, zanshin.  By paying close attention to the beginning and to the end of the encounter you get reinforcement in these intangibles.

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You see this same sort of attention to beginnings and ends in some of the pre-war aikido folks (like Tomiki and Shioda), and perhaps a little less in some of the post-war guys, though I have heard Doshu Moriteru Ueshiba speak on his videos about the importance of precision in setting up the conditions before each technique.

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In experienced jo guys there is a psychological (or dare I say, "psychic") pressure between them, as if there were terabytes of interaction being beamed back and forth between their eyes.  Because of the extreme consequences (jo or sword embedded in skull), neither partner dares break that line-of-sight communication until they see how it all works out.  I have found as an observer, it is easy to get drawn into and lost in that psychic communication between two good partners.  Often I have to make a concerted effort to watch their feet instead of their faces, or I won't know what happened after they are through with a kata.  

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There is value in carrying this type of practice with you when doing aikido taijutsu - (improvement of ma-ai, kamae, metsuke, and zanshin) but there is also potentially stupid tangents (e.g. the zombie attack, the no-touch ki masters), so beware the stupidity, but be aware of the potential value to your practice.

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Paranoia

There seems to be a fine line between situational awareness and full-blown paranoia.  As martial arts instructors, we like to promote awareness but we don't want to push the students and ourselves over the line into paranoid delusion - or do we?

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I mean, we do stand to benefit in a business sense, by amplifying our students' fears while setting ourselves up as the solution.  But that's not what we're supposed to be about.  We are supposed to be about alleviating fear through skill and confidence.  I think as martial arts instructors, in the face of this potential conflict of interest, we should be alert to that sort of behavior in ourselves.

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I went to a play in New Orleans this past weekend with my wife.  I absolutely hate New Orleans with an undying loathing, Everything about the city sets off my paranoia   Add to that the recent media coverage of the "knockout game" and I end up sore the next few days because of the tension of constantly being on the look-out, constantly scanning every passer-by for potential weapons or pre-attack indicators (like changing gait right as they get to ma-ai).

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It's not healthy for people to always be walking around with their swords drawn - at a state of constant alert.  St. Bernard recognized this hundreds of years ago in one of my favorite quotes...

…a warrior especially needs these three things--he must guard his person with strength, shrewdness and care; he must be free in his movements, and he must be quick to draw his sword. In Praise of the New Knighthood (Liber ad milites Templi: De laude novae militae) St. Bernard of Clairvaux 

To me, the fact that the warrior must be quick to draw the sword means that he is unable to live a normal life with the sword already drawn.  Contrast that with the famous Stonewall Jackson quote...

The time for war has not yet come, but it will come, and soon; and when it does come, my advice is to draw the sword and throw away the scabbard. 

To be alive and sane, you have to live in one mode or the other - you have to give yourself 100% to love and peace, or 100% to the destruction of war - and you have to do each at the right time, and you have to be able to switch modes at the right times and completely.  If you try to do both at the same time, you cannot be effective at either.  I suppose that might be the origin of the term, paranoia - meaning beside mind or 2 minds, or something like that.

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My New Orleans experience reminds me of an old sensei who told us that in order to develop and ingrain the "step offline at ma-ai" habit, he never shook hands or even hugged his mom without first stepping off-line of engagement at least slightly.  Is this aiki handshake a genius way of training that reaction or is it a sign of an unbalanced paranoia?

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Is it possible to develop a good sense of situational awareness that will save us when the feces hits the oscillator but will not drive us insane?  Here is one hint at training that sort of awareness.

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Patrick Parker 

www.mokurendojo.com

Zanshin recap

This past month I have written a host of articles on the topic of zanshin in martial arts. Zanshin is kind of a loose, vague concept that has something to do with awareness and something to do with connectedness. But despite being hard to get a firm handle on, zanshin is a critical part of martial arts. Following are links to my most recent thoughts on zanshin.

• A film to introduce the concept
• Defining zanshin
• Zanshin, mushin, and kime
• Something that is NOT zanshin
• Zanshin is equanimity
• Zanshin is integrity
• Zanshin is the positive space in your life
• Learning zanshin by falling as a group
• Where to stand after a technique
• Pay attention to your situation
• Zanshin for uke
• Zanshin is active noise reduction
• Attack Proof zanshin

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All my archived articles on zanshin

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Another good article on zanshin by Sensei Strange

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Patrick Parker is a Christian, husband, father, martial arts teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282

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Suggested great books on aikido, judo, and strategy.

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Attack proof zanshin

Photo courtesy of Fatboyke

A while back I reviewed John Perkins' book, Attack Proof. I thought today I'd go back to Attack Proof as I am finishing up a month of posts focussed on the topic of zanshin in martial arts. The Attack Proof guys tell me they have a new, expanded, and much-improved 2nd edition of the book available, but the version I have in front of me is 1st edition. The first chapter is about awareness as a prerequisite to self defense. Some excellent excerpts...

• By being aware of your surroundings, we are not talking about descending into some gobbledygook, New Age, Zen-like state of mind, but about the importance of training yourself to casually notice your surroundings all the time...
• ...In nearly 100% of assaults, the victim had a feeling that something was wrong before anything happened...
• ...Our primitive instincts are still fully functional, screaming at us; we're just not listening to them...
• ...You don't have to go around in a continually paranoid state, however. Simply keep your attention outward, and if something looks amiss, you'll notice it...
• ...Learn to trust your feelings...

What he is describing here is zanshin, and he gives numerous examples and exercises and hints for developing this sense in yourself. One of my favorite...

...every time you're out on the street: Decide to look for something during the course of your walk. For example, look for people with red shirts or people with mustaches. This gets you to open your awareness to your surroundings on a regular basis.

What I especially like about this particular exercise most is that you are not looking for a specific threat, but the trick of counting blue trucks (or whatever) gets you paying attention to your surroundings. If you were to try to look for specific threats, like large dirty men hiding in bushes, or suspicious-looking vans, then you would be concentrating your attention and actually limiting your intuition. By looking out for common, but specific items, like children with toys, you are staying aware without developing paranoid hyper-focus.
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If you are interested in the Attackproof book, please check out the 2nd edition at my Amazon store:

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Patrick Parker is a Christian, husband, father, martial arts teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282
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Suggested great books on aikido, judo, and strategy.
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Zanshin as active noise reduction

Photo courtesy of Cayusa

Zanshin is a state of mind that can be defined as something like quiet awareness, or connection that starts before physical contact and lasts afterward.  Since we are talking about zanshin as a kind of connection (like an internet or telephone connection) you can consider a conflict as a sort of signal theory problem.

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Tori is trying to determine if uke is sending a message and if so, what is the meaning of that message.  In signal theory, the basic idea is that the signal passing between the sender (uke) and the receiver (in this case, tori) is to some degree obscured by noise.  The noise can be an attribute of the environment, the sender, or the receiver. Of these three noise sources, the receiver can only control his own noise.  Tori can't control the noise in the environment or in the uke.

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One way to reduce the level of noise tori is injecting into the baseline is to do the same thing before and after every technique.  Whenever you are exposed to the same thing over and over, your mind is good at filtering that out.  As an example, you don't normally hear yourself breathing.  On the other hand, if you do something random and different before and after each technique, then the randomness stands out in your mind and serves as noise (like trying to listen to yourself breathe while whistling). 

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In a conflict, this noise can obscure important messages that might otherwise be obvious.  Messages from uke like, "I am not going to fall that way" or "Here I come again!"

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So, an aspect of zanshin (the stuff between the techniques) is doing the same thing before and after each technique in order to reduce the noise in the baseline so you can stay connected to uke.

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Patrick Parker, is a Christian, husband, father, judo and aikido teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282

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Zanshin for uke

Photo courtesy of Invunche

Zanshin is not just a thing for tori. Uke is learning aikido too, and ukemi provides a fine exercise for improving zanshin.  For example...

• in junana hon kata, each time tori throws uke, tori should end up moving away near tori's head. Uke, keeping in mind (zanshin) the potential for tori in this position to kick uke in the head with impunity, turns to place his feet between tori and himself, effectively placing tori in a loose, open guard. From here, uke will at least have something to say about it if tori attacks, so tori backs away and uke rises to his feet moving away (sprinter's start).
• in kimenokata, uke never allows himself to be stretched out on his belly in a prone armbar. This is considered to be a terible sign of weakness - worse than submission!  Instead, when tori is pressing uke with an armbar, uke goes with it until he is on hands and knees and is about to be stretched onto his belly, then he submits by tapping. Uke never voluntarily gives up his last bit of potential by lying on his belly.

These are both aspects of these kata which facilitate improvement of zanshin for uke - things to consider when you are doing kata.

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Patrick Parker, is a Christian, husband, father, judo and aikido teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282
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Pay attention to your situation

Zanshin is basically awareness, right? Awareness of what? Awareness of special constraints that might be placed upon your actions - situational factors under which you are operating. So how do you get better at zanshin? Start paying attention to special situational constraints.

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One great way to work on zanshin is to set some extra rules for practicing your techniques. For instance, choose a place in the dojo and define it as shomen (where the VIP's sit). A videocamera makes a good shomen when you don't have a VIP. Then practice your techniques making sure that...

• You never throw uke toward shomen.
• You never stand with your back to shomen, and minimize the times when your back is to shomen
• Between techniques, tori is always a little closer to shomen than uke is
• Tori always ends each technique closer to uke's head than to his feet.

Another great way to practice zanshin is to do randori while carrying a cup of water. Better not spill the water on the mat! Alternately, if you have small children, you might try doing randori while carrying the child or while letting them ride on your shoulders. This tends to slow the randori down and smoothe your motion out, but it also forces you to put part of your attention on the safety of whatever you are carrying.

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By setting additional rules and constraints like this, you are forced to begin dividing your attention between the technical aspects of your performance and the situational factors that constrain you. At least part of your mind is forced to remain on the constraints - by definition, zanshin (remaining mind).

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Patrick Parker, is a Christian, husband, father, judo and aikido teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282

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Where to be after a throw

Picture courtesy of Tobstone

In judo and aikido, the thrower tends to end up in different places in relation to the guy being thrown. These differences are related to the different goals of the two arts.

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In judo, most of the throws happen straight into the ground and the thrower ends up beside the faller, holding one arm or sleeve, frequently with one knee pressing the faller's belly (ukigatame) to keep him from turning over. This ending position in judo facilitates the thrower continuing the attack by moving into groundwork toward a pin or submission.

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In aikido, the throws tend to project the faller away, separating them from the thrower completely. Or if the thrower and faller do stay in contact then the thrower ends up standing above one of the faller's shoulders, diagonally away from all the faller's limbs except the one being controlled. This is a position of safety, from which it is relatively difficult for the faller to continue an attack.

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In either case, whether you intend to continue the attack or make it harder for the other guy to continue his attack, controlling this ending position is an important part of zanshin (follow-through or awareness). During practice I recommend my students end up in the appropriate ending place for whichever art we are doing.

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Patrick Parker, is a Christian, husband, father, judo and aikido teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282
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Falling with friends

So, this month I've been writing a good bit about zanshin - an important concept that comprises various mental states such as follow-through, connectedness, and awareness both before and after an encounter. It's time now (for the next several posts) to begin sharing some of the exercises that I use to work on zanshin.

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The first, and probably the easiest zanshin exercise is simply practicing falling in a group. I always tell all the students to fall so that they all slap the ground at the same time. This is not just some OCD glitch of mine, but it helps in several ways.

• it gets you paying attention to the people and things around you - an important part of safe falling practice.
• it gets you started practicing connecting and synchronizing yourself to other people.
• it gets you started practicing falling within an external constraint. You have to adjust the mechanics of your falling techniques in order to both fall safely and match the external rhythm.

All of these are aspects of zanshin - attention, connectedness, synchronization, working within constraints - and all are improved by simply falling as part of the group.

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Patrick Parker, is a Christian, husband, father, judo and aikido teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282

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Correctly defining the positive space

Image courtesy of Wikipedia

In kata, one does not just do a series of techniques one after the other.  There is a context, or baseline, within which the techniques are performed.  There is stuff between the techniques - stuff happens before and after each technique.  That in-between stuff in the interstices is zanshin.

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In art classes we talked about positive and negative space, an example being the black and white Rubin's Vase illusion above.  Do you see two faces or a vase?  Depending on what you want to call this a picture of, the spaces take on different meanings.  If it is a vase then the spaces to the side are nothing - negative space.  But if you want to say the faces on the side are the positive space (the thing itself) then the space in the middle is the nothing-space (the negative space). So, is the positive space (the thing itself) black or white?

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Kata is the same - where is the positive space and where is the negative space?  Are you demonstrating techniques with mostly an uninteresting void inbetween, or are you demonstrating the interesting stuff in the middle being occasionally interrupted by a coincidental technique?

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Most people begin aikido concentrating on the techniques and ignoring the inbetween, but consider this... In life (real life) you might never have to ever do a given technique.  That sort of diminishes the potential importance of the techniques, doesn't it?  But the stuff in the middle - that is the stuff that you do all the time - all of your life. Getting up, walking around, observing people, keeping your mind straight.  You live your whole life in the middle spaces with only the occasional interruption!

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That's zanshin!  Zanshin is defining the stuff in the interstices to be the positive space of your life.

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Patrick Parker, is a Christian, husband, father, judo and aikido teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282
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Zanshin as integrity

Photo courtesy of Ted Abbot

Zanshin is also about integrity - holding together despite the ease of pragma. Not slipping your standards based on your feelings.  A few days ago I posted on my other blog, this remarkable poem written by Kent Keith. The poem was so inspirational that Mother Teresa posted it on her wall to help motivate her.  I just realized today that one of the reasons that I like it so much is that it speaks to the Art of Love (as Morihei called aikido), including the concept of zanshin as integrity.

People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.

Love them anyway.

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives.

Do good anyway.

If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.

Succeed anyway.

The good you do today, will be forgotten tomorrow.

Do good anyway.

Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.

Be honest and frank anyway.

The biggest people with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest people with the smallest minds.

Think big anyway.

People favor underdogs, but follow only top dogs.

Fight for a few underdogs anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.

Build anyway.

People really need help, but may attack you if you do help them.

Help people anyway.

Give the world the best you have and you’ll get kicked in the teeth.

Give the world the best you have anyway.

Zanshin is "anyway."

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Patrick Parker, is a Christian, husband, father, judo and aikido teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282

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Equanimity

Photo courtesy of Centrifuga

Zanshin is not about outcome, rather it is about internal state. Notice in the film I posted the other day, on some of the faces you can guess at the outcome of the shot - that is a glitch in that person's zanshin. That student's mind is churning on something internal - approving or disapproving of something.

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You don't have to approve or disaprove of the outcome because that doesn't change your performance. Just observe and trust your subconscious to adjust your next performance toward a better outcome.

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Thus, zanshin is somethiing like poker face - only backwards.  You are not trying to keep your face blank in order to fake your opponent out. Rather, if you can get your internal state right, your face reflects nothing. So your face can be a measuring stick to gage your zanshin.

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Patrick Parker, is a Christian, husband, father, judo and aikido teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282

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Absolutely NOT zanshin

Photo courtesy of Mr. Photoshop

Let's continue trying to define zanshin by discussing briefly what zanshin is most certainly not! Zanshin is not posing.

• It is not zanshin when you do some crazy kung-fu-looking posture with eagle claw hands and a Bruce Lee scream.
• It is not zanshin when you try to look like a movie samurai in your indigo hakama and hair pulled into a topknot.
• It is not zanshin when you furrow your brow and say, "ahsoo" or "hmmmm..." as you look at the guy you just threw down.

These things are not zanshin mostly because they are focussed on your own appearance. Zanshin is about quiet awareness and connectedness - not image.

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Patrick Parker, is a Christian, husband, father, judo and aikido teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282

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Mental states in martial arts

There are several important mental states that are cited a lot in martial arts, including...

• Zanshin - the remaining mind; quiet awareness; follow-through; connectedness
• Mushin - mindlessness; doing without thinking; appropriate automaticity
• Kime - explosively focussed concentration; expending all of your physical, mental, and spiritual power on one action in one moment.

Are these three states-of-mind compatible or mutually-exclusive? Can they exist in the same mind at the same time or does the mind flit from one state to the next as necessary?
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Patrick Parker, is a Christian, husband, father, judo and aikido teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282
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Defining zanshin

Photo courtesy of esc8311976

The word zanshin literally means 'remaining mind. Interestingly (to me at least), 'zan' is the same word used to describe food leftover from dinner the next day. So, the implication is that zanshin is the state-of-mind or spirit that remains after something is finished.

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Like any abstract construct that describes a state of mind, there is a lot that goes into zanshin, but basically you can think of it as a combination of...

• Situational awareness - both before a conflict and after the physical part of the conflict is finished.
• Zanshin also has elements of "follow-through" but not in the sense of some motion that occurs after the engagement is over (like follow-through when swinging a baseball bat).
• Zanshin is a mental connection that begins before physical contact and continues after physical contact is over.

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Patrick Parker, is a Christian, husband, father, judo and aikido teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282

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Zanshin Month

Next month's theme at Mokuren Dojo and here at the blog is going to be zanshin - the remaining mind.  I'd like to open this theme up with a very nicely-done video about zanshin in the context of kyudo (archery), then we'll try to define zanshin and investigate a few aspects of this state of mind.

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Patrick Parker, is a Christian, husband, father, judo and aikido teacher, Program Director for a Cardiac Rehab, and a Ph.D. Contact: mokurendojo@gmail.com or phone 601.248.7282
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Properties of the principles of aikido

It's pretty common to hear instructors talk about the principles of aikido being more important than the techniques. The techniques are just instantiations of principle. The principles are what you actually do and the technique is what happens. But here are a couple of properties of the principles that some of you may or may not have thought about.

• The principles are mutually-reinforcing. Becoming a little better at any one of them makes all of the other principles work better. When you find something wrong with your techniques, you can almost randomly pick a principle to focus on and the technique will start working better.
• The principles are an ordered set. While the greatest masters of aikido might do all the principles all the time, the rest of us peons generally benefit from getting the principles in a certain order.

There might be some disagreement about the exact order, but in general, you want to get the major principles of aikido working in the following order. If you find a problem with a technique, then start with relaxation, then posture, and so on trying to repair the technique...

• relaxation
• shizentai (posture)
• metsuke (eye control)
• ashi sabaki (footwork)
• ki-musubi (synchronization with the opponent)
• ma-ai (personal space and timing)
• move offline (the aiki-brushoff)
• orenaite (unbendable arm) and kite (ki-hands)
• kuzushi (off-balancing the opponent)
• atemi (striking the opponent down)
• osaekomi (suppressing the opponent)
• zanshin (remaining aware)

Notice that kuzushi, atemi, and osaekomi (the majority of what you think of as aikido) are at the end of the list. There is a whole pile of things you need to set in order before you worry too much about offbalancing the other guy or hitting him or holding him down.

Gravy and crawfish

Okay, well that was a good class. We worked on all the stuff I'd planned (see the last post). Especially cool was the chain - Rob asked one of the classic questions, "What if you're in an enclosed space?" Well, we did the chain on less than one 6x12 mat space and Rob came up with the answer, "Oh, it's worse on uke..." I really wasn't trying to punish him or smear him (I promise) it's just that if you spread the fall out over several seconds and several feet then the impact is less than if you are thrown face first straight into the ground right where you are standing. Really, all the aiki that people see where tori moves around in these giant arcs and uke takes these beautiful long falls - that's all gravy. The technique happened and was over with fifteen feet and 5 seconds ago and all the rest was just zanshin.

After class we had a lovely session of crawfish eating and beer drinking. It was mighty fine. Rob and Andy and I talked about knife-fighting and grandmasters and the women-folks talked about Easter dresses and babies and we all ended up half drunk with very spicy fingers and smelling like crawfish.

Zanshin

I wrote a while back about the concepts of zanshin (remaining aware), mushin (acting without analysis), and kime (explosively focussed concentration). Basically my assertion was that we need to develop a healthy balance in our martial arts between these (mostly) mutually exclusive states of mind.
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Different martial arts seem to specialize to different degrees in these ideas. Karate, for instance is all about kime, while aiki (as I understand it) is more about zanshin - to the point that I'd be willing to say there is almost no kime in aiki. I know Ueshiba said "Aikido decides between life and death in an instant," and this is used to promote the idea of kime in aikido, but I don't really think that dog hunts. Maybe that will be a topic for another post.
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Today I want to talk about zanshin. Remaining aware. There are a couple of practices that lead to a greater awareness of your surroundings as you are playing the role of tori.

• proper posture - The aiki posture we use almost exclusively is shizentai (gesundheit!) - the natural, upright posture with feet under hips. Musashi called this "stance of no stance" and talked about remaining "open in all eight directions." I take this to mean that a neutral stance keeps your options open - but it also means that upright posture makes you more alert in all directions. Try this: stand upright and look straight ahead. notice what you can see in your peripheral vision in all directions - up, down, left and right. now, bend over 90 degrees at the waist and look straight down and check how much you can see. upright posture gives you a better field of vision - thus better awareness.
• The ura forms. Tomiki collected seventeen fundamental techniques that occur a lot in randori into a kata and named it (uncreatively) Junana Hon Kata (the 17 fundamental forms). I don't know if it was coincidence (I suspect it wasn't) but almost all the techniques in Junana are omote forms, meaning that tori enters in front of uke and executes the technique from there. For most of these 17 techniques, we also frequently play with the ura forms, meaning tori enters behind uke and stays there while doing the technique. This tends to take the form of entering, turning 180 degrees behind uke, then throwing. A cool side effect of this 180 degree turn is that it allows tori to see what is going on all around him before he commits to busting uke. Zanshin!

So, next time you're practicing your aiki, consider how upright, neutral posture and the ura (turning backward) forms allow for greater situational awareness. Look around a little bit!