Читать книгу Martial Arts Training in Japan. A Guide for Westerners онлайн

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The lesson here is universal and sounds almost mystical, but really is not. The mind has to cease discursiveness for the body to learn. When the two are vying for position, the result is that you are working against yourself, with the effect of simply exhausting your energy. You are working for perfection of an act that when done correctly you will never witness, such as a judo throw, the shot of an arrow, a correctly timed combination in kumite (sparring; literally: “exchange of hands”). Experienced martial arts sensei will tell you that they often experience spontaneous techniques which seem to occur when the discursive mind is not paying attention.

Occasionally, when teaching aikido, I will invite my demonstration partner to attack freely. Sometimes my response is conditioned by decades of aikido practice and is usually a basic technique—and sometimes the defensive technique I use seems to come out of nowhere! I see the attack come, and the next thing I see is the attacker on the dojo floor. If the technique felt right—a condition I cannot define—I clap my hands and invite the students to practice the technique. As they begin, I study my senior students to find out what I just did, because in a very true way “I” was not there when it happened. If you hang around to congratulate yourself on how good you look in kata, you will progress much less than if you rid yourself of the ego observer. Even as I write this, it sounds like so much mystical drivel, but it is not! It is the natural outcome of sound practice over time.