Fear and Sloppy Thinking in Las Vegas (or anywhere else)

The dojo often serves as a wonderful microcosm for everything else in my life. Example from my training recently:

I'm working on some technique. It is not working correctly. Midway through it, I realize something is amiss and set to correcting it.

The only problem is that I do not change one thing to correct it. I change many things. Together. Quickly. The problem with this approach is that it embodies two things: sloppy thought processes and fear.

Here's what I mean.

Thought processes should be clean when you are solving problems. If you change half a dozen things and the guy ends up getting thrown, can you really say you understand what caused the problem? How many of the things you changed actually accomplished anything? A key aspect of not repeating errors is understanding exactly what the damn error was. Without the ability to clearly "show your work" and cleanly describe a chain of cause and effect, you are doing "Las Vegas" style martial arts. Maybe it worked on this one guy this one time, but if you don't own WHY, what are the odds you will be able to consistently reproduce it?

It's like being sick and downing six different pills to fix it without knowing what the pills do. Maybe you get better... but with no idea why. (And the side effects of this type of "shotgun blast" medicine could get you in trouble. Same thing with training. Along with the one right thing you did, you may have added a ton of wrong ones which you now consciously or unconsciously associate with “getting it right.” Congratulations, you are now deeper in the “muck” than you were when you started.)

The second piece, the fear, is maybe more insidious and more human.

My teacher said to me years ago, "The good ones last for an instant, but the bad ones seem to go on for eternity."

He's right. When you really nail a technique, it is like it comes out of nowhere. Usually there is very little in the way of feedback and it is almost done before you realize it happens.

You usually see screwing up well before it gets to its apex. Like, miles before it gets to its apex. For me, it seems to loom on the horizon like Mt. Kilimanjaro. My thought process usually runs like this:

“Ok, I’m going to do this technique… Oh shit, this is going bad. I don’t quite have it… Let’s get out of this bad spot as quickly as possible!”

Commence changing the gang of things I addressed earlier.

It is fundamentally human to want to escape when things are not going the way we want them to. It does not matter whether it is a bad date, a bad business meeting, or a bad arm bar. If you screw it up, there is a part of you that wants to get the hell out of there before someone sees how bad you messed it up.

That’s a funny idea because the screw up already happened. Unless you have a time machine, you can’t un-do it. And chances are, the people on the other end know damn well that you screwed up. If it is the date or the business meeting, most people can tell really quickly if things are going south. If it is a martial arts technique and the guy on the business end is really talented, he or she can literally feel the wrong-ness.

So why hurry to get away from there? The cat is already out of the bag. And yet, some irrational part of us wishes it wasn’t, and thinks that hurrying away from the problem will make it like it never happened.

The folks I am sharing the mat with now have a habit of saying “freeze!” when a screw up happens. This very habit is what brought my “thought poison” into technicolor detail. I screw up, hear “freeze!”, and despite consciously thinking, “OK, don’t change anything in my body or my relationship to my partner,” I unconsciously started trying to move body parts and fix stuff.  

I’ve been at this for thirteen years now. I have spent that entire time making peace with my errors and imperfections. Coming into my new training environment (been in a new dojo for about a month and change), I thought I had a very good grasp on it.

It has been illuminating to see how much my subconscious still does not want my errors to be seen.

But it is, of course, only through the process of being seen that we fix ourselves in the dojo. And everywhere else.

The times that I have managed to actually freeze and keep my hand or foot or whatever in the wrong place, the error has been really hammered into my mind. When the error isn’t a dirty secret, the fix isn’t a shameful cure.

Progress has occurred when I have truly seen my errors, understood them, and made a conscious decision not to make those mistakes again.

Las Vegas, shotgun blasts, and fist-fulls of pills don’t come into the picture even a little bit. 

The Irrelevance of Fairness: A Step-by-Step Guide to Exiting Shit’s Creek

Over the course of my life, I’ve weathered a lot of crises (mine and those of other people). As a lawyer, crisis is a fundamental part of my life. It’s why people call me in the first place. As I’ve waded through all those crisis situations, I’ve noticed some pretty common inefficient behaviors people (read: me) do that don’t help.

I bring them up here on the far outside chance you may do some of the same things.

Today’s thesis is pretty simple:

When you find yourself in shit’s creek, abandon all thoughts of fairness. Instead, focus on the fact that you are literally standing in a creek of shit, and start coming up with ways to get out.

See that branch over there? How about that root? Could you climb up that slope? As disgusting as this metaphor is, it is a good one. The terrain and how you use it are relevant to getting out of this proverbial creek. What are your capabilities? What assets do you have? Start assessing these and how you might use them, and you are now on your way out of shit’s creek.

Want to know what’s not relevant to the exodus? Fairness.

Does it matter why you ended up in this creek of shit? Not in the short term. At the very least, not until you get out. Does it matter that other people, perhaps even more deserving people, are not in this creek? No. Meditate on that as hard as you want, and you will still find yourself immersed to the waist in shit.

Only through action can you possibly be saved. Only through well-reasoned and realistic action will you probably be saved.

How do you get to such well-reasoned and realistic action? Here are my steps:

1.     Admit you are in shit’s creek: I know, this sounds obvious. But seriously, denial isn’t just a river in Egypt. It’s a freaking force if nature that has powerful effects anywhere there happens to be a human being. I can’t tell you how many people I have seen whose primary coping strategy to being in a crisis seems to be doing utterly spectacular mental yoga to convince themselves that they are not in a crisis. (I’ve had a guy looking at his fourth DUI swear to me that he doesn’t have a drinking problem.) You cannot get out of the crisis until you say to yourself, “I am totally screwed by [insert problem]. Now what can I do about it?”

2.     Carefully examine the creek: Now that you admitted there is a problem, you are just getting started. The problem needs a name. Or names. (It might be an interrelated system of things.) Go through it carefully, doing your best not to cloud your vision with fear or denial. Look fully in the face of whatever is causing you problems. I recommend literally sitting down and writing down a list of everything. That way, it goes from an amorphous maelstrom in your mind to a manageable list on paper.

3.     Find your ultimate exit point: Look at the terrain around you. Somewhere, somehow, there is a way out of the creek. In terms of your problems, this is what I would call the “big solution.” You can usually quickly spot big solutions because they can be described in one short phrase. Examples: Get out of debt, fix my marriage, get my health under control. In terms of creek-exit, it is looking at that spot out of the creek where you’d like to end up. Until you know where this spot is, you cannot plan. You can only flail around and hope to get lucky. With Murphy’s Law being what it is, you probably won’t.

4.     Check for other creek occupants: There’s a chance you may not be standing in the creek alone. You’d be amazed how often standing in shit’s creek is a group participation sport. Be grateful for this. You are the sum total of your ideas, your capabilities, and your resources. So is everyone else in the creek. Together, you are more than that. Given that you have a common interest (creek exit), you’ll already have something to talk about. Make introductions, describe the problem (“we’re in shit’s creek”), and commiserate briefly (“I hate this creek”) because going on a long diatribe while standing in human refuse is not a good idea.

5.     Survey your assets: Look at your ideas, capabilities, and resources. Count your companions and their ideas, capabilities, and resources as part of your own. Survey the territory you are standing on for those distinct features you might use. In terms of crisis management, this means that you should force yourself to list these out as well. Peoples’ fear about outcomes often makes them blind to the assets at their disposal. Making a list engages your logical mind and helps counteract this effect.

Make sure the other creek occupants can see the list, because your known assets are limited by your perception. You may have some available to you that others can see.

Also, if you see someone laying on the bank with his chest heaving as if he just got out, work up the courage to ask that guy. Being in shit’s creek (or any crisis) is a harrowing experience, and survivors usually do want to give hints to people still climbing out. There’s absolutely no reason to “re-invent the wheel” if other people have come up with perfectly effective methods.

It does not matter what your problem is. Here in the information age, there is simply no excuse for getting on a computer / to a library / on a help-line / etc. to figure out how others have exited the creek you are standing in. It is overwhelmingly likely that you are not a special snowflake and others have triumphed over your creek.

6.     Think: Now that you know your assets, figure out how to use them intelligently and make a plan. And remember, without specifics a plan is just a wish. “I’m going to grab this root, pull myself up onto that ledge, and then wedge my foot onto that rock.” What you need is a list of specific actions, one following the other, that continue until you reach your goal.

If you find yourself coming up with an en masse creek exit, specifically chart down what is going to be done, who is going to do it, and when? If you cannot answer all these questions, all you have is a dressed up wish.

Unless you maintain a condo in a lamp and have pointed shoes, you cannot wish yourself out of shit’s creek.

7.     Execute the plan: Now you are at the stage where you are actually progressing towards your goal. It is important that you execute the plan. If you do something other than the plan, or do the plan half-assed, do not delude yourself into thinking, “This plan isn’t working.” It’s you who isn’t working, not the plan. Do not confuse lack of diligence with poor planning. Those are two separate animals.

Now go.

8.     Stop to think more (if not already out): Sometimes it isn’t shit’s creek. It’s more like shit’s gorge. Climbing out is an involved process. In such a process, a few things will be necessary.

One thing is rest. Pushing yourself to exhaustion and then collapsing likely means you’ll just conk out and roll back to the bottom of the creek. Pace yourself. Realistically pace yourself. And understand that often you can’t come up with realistic pacing until you really get into the meat of the project and know exactly what you are up against. (So, to reiterate, come up with a pace. Once you get boots on the ground and know exactly how hard this will be, come up with a realistic pace. You’ll find the more creeks you exit using these methods, the more accurate your initial estimations will get. “Know theyself,” and all that jazz.)

This brings me to the other important point at this step. No plan, no matter how good, survives first contact. That “root” was actually a snake. That mild slope was slicker than a greased pig and you can’t climb it. Things you counted on are unreliable.

Instead of grieving when this happens, literally go back to step six and say to yourself, “This pretty plan I’m coming up will not survive the day. That’s totally ok. I’ll make a new one when things change.”

It also bears mentioning that if you’re in a gorge, you can’t see the whole way up. As you learn more, the plan must grow and evolve. Do whatsoever mental yoga is necessary in order to make these adjustments your internal norm, instead of an unexpected and undesired new crisis.

9.     After Action Review: Ah, you’re free at last. Now and only now is it productive to ask yourself, “How the hell did I get down there?” And the only reason it matters remotely is to answer the next question: “How can I avoid going back?”

Keep in mind that the answer to this question, too, is a plan in and of itself. So be specific. Vague promises to yourself (“I’m never gonna end up in shit’s creek again!”) are as useful as (to use my father’s colloquialism) tits on a bull. A specific plan on how to avoid it, maybe some standard operating procedures, actually ups your odds of no repeat performances.

I’ll go ahead and give you a part of any worthwhile plan for free: help other people out of the creek. This is total pay-it-forward mojo. People that were in the creek before you helped you out, so you help out the people after you. In the process of doing so, you’ll help reinforce avoiding the behaviors that got you there in the first place. (And you get the added bonus of being a good human being.)

You should also know this: there will be another creek. You will fall in it. Guaranteed or your money back. If, as a species, we line all the edges of the creeks with helpers, the occupants will get out that much faster and easier. If we all help others out of the creeks we know, we are more likely to find helping hands when we splash down in that new one.

So that’s it. I hope that helps you with whatever creek you’ve fallen into. Good luck getting out. Let me know if I can lend a hand.

-         PGS – 10/2/15

My Wife, the Self-Defense Expert

My wife has gone her entire life without ever getting in a physical fight. She doesn’t train in martial arts. She does not read books on military tactics. She has never had any training on how to de-escalate violent and mentally ill people. She doesn’t know how to do any joint locks, or even how to throw a punch. And yet, her self-defense tactics have yielded perfect results for her entire life. To be clear, she hasn’t lived an isolated existence, either. She's been to some pretty rough places.

Food for thought, no?

I think about my martial arts training. When you use the term “self-defense”, people’s minds automatically go to punching and kicking. When I think about my own life, however, I am struck by how little of my own effective self-defense has involved those things. In fact, I can count on one hand the number of times I have had to use my physical training to defend myself. I literally cannot count the number of times I avoided violence through smart tactical decisions and careful social interaction.

So why is it, then, as martial artists, that we focus so much on those rare instances when all other options have failed and we are forced to resort to physical intervention? Shouldn’t the systems we use to train, if they are really effective systems of self-defense, have methods for training these non-combative forms of self-defense?

(A good friend of mine always says, “You tend to solve problems in terms of the tools you like to use.” If the only tool in your toolbox is violence, you’re in for a rough life.)

Martial arts should teach these “non-violent” facets of self defense, and thankfully,  I have found that many do, if you look in the right places. When people look at a martial art’s curriculum, their eyes are naturally drawn to the “sexy” parts: the throws, the strikes, the locks, and the pins. All the stuff they put into movies. That said, I have noted one theme that is common among many people I have talked to who have seriously trained in a wide variety of systems: High level teachers in many systems spend a lot of time working on how you stand, how you walk around, and how you approach other people. I do not believe that to be a coincidence. I think that, hidden in a lot of these teachings, are the core concepts of non-violent self-defense.

Upright, alert, relaxed posture is a no-brainer. Sure, such a posture puts you in a good position to do the techniques of your system, but it also sends a message. Predators, by nature, are essentially opportunists. Watch as many nature programs as you want, and you will never see a lion crack its knuckles, look at its fellow lions, and say, “Well, boys, let’s assault that elephant over there. It will be a long fight, with casualties, but I think we can take him.” Lions don’t attack elephants because they would get trampled to death. Lions attack gazelles, because they can kill them. And even then, it isn’t just any gazelle. It is the smallest, easiest one to take down.

Human predators aren’t that much different. Even if you aren’t the largest or meanest looking person on the block, there is a high likelihood that predators will see you, an alert target, and simply decide to wait for an easier mark to head down the street. If he does so, and you do not have to fight him, congratulations. You have just engaged in successful self defense. Sure, you don’t have a swinging dick story, but does that matter? Nope. Not to me, at least. I embrace the “I want to keep on living” school of thought. I could give a damn about whether or not I am perceived as strong.

The focus on how one walks is important, too. I can’t think of a lot of refined martial arts systems that teach their devotees to move wildly or swagger. These sort of inefficient, attitude-infused methods of movement attract all kinds of bad attention, because they are an unspoken challenge to anyone who views them. Most of us don’t bother to answer that challenge, but a territorial predator who feels threatened certainly will. A relaxed, controlled, unobtrustive, non-eye-catching gait will render you effectively invisible. Paired with an unobtrustive appearance, your moving through a predator’s territory will not be viewed as any sort of challenge to his authority. If you aren’t challenging or threatening the potential Threat, there is no reason for a physical conflict. Again, self-defense without fighting.

If you think I am being a bit too obsessive about small details, I invite you to spend a lot of time at a jail and see who catches a hard time, be it an inmate, guard, or lawyer. The old ones, or at least the wise ones, will have learned how to keep their head down.

Another part of this non-violent self defense puzzle are what I call the okuden (Japanese for “inner transmission”). Nearly every high-level teacher that I’ve met puts in a significant amount of face time with their students, both in and out of the training environment. Enormous amounts of information are imparted orally, sometimes in lectures, more often in the form of instructional stories. These little gems often contain many of the important principles in non-violent self defense.

I know that I had picked up an enormous amount of information about this stuff before I ever studied it formally. My teacher, a paramedic for twenty-five years, is a veritable vault of information about personal interaction, violence on the street, and the realities of how people get hurt. He has been deluging me with these real-life stories for my entire training. It was only after many years of training, when I started formally studying things like de-escalation and tactical decision-making in urban environments, that I appreciated exactly what he was doing. More than once, I thought to myself, “Holy shit, I already know this stuff!”

It got snuck in to my training without my realizing it. Thanks, sensei.

I think another piece of it is the way that good martial arts training will systematically reduce your arrogance and your insecurities. (Note that “good” qualifier in that last sentence. There are a seemingly infinite amount of assholes out there that will teach you to swagger and act like an even bigger asshole. I’m not talking about those guys, and if you don’t know who they are, recognizing them needs to be one of your top priorities.) It takes a good deal of personal growth before you can habitually take your ego out of your decision-making. The serious martial artists that I know have no compunction about walking away from a fight if they have the option to do so. Even if it might make them look “weak” or “scared”. Drinking from the well of reality long enough will inform you that it is better to look weak than to run the risk that you are going to get seriously hurt or killed (which, by the way, is a risk in any physical conflict, no matter what). It is amazing how many options open themselves to you when your decisions no longer have to bolster some sort of skewed self-image about who you are, or how strong you think you are. 

This also addresses the issue of what I call "unconscious data transmissions". Again, ask a scholar why this works, but here is how it works. In a thousand ways that you often don't realize, what is running through your mind is manifested in your body. There are the really obvious ones like scowling when you are enraged, or flushing when you are embarrassed, but there are a lot of much smaller transmissions that people don't even realize. A really common one I see with young public defenders is the idea they maintain that they are somehow better or smarter than their client. While there are instances where this might be correct, this sort of thinking is a bad idea. (There's a lot of reasons that it is - I'm only going to touch on one here.) This thinking, in a thousand small ways, manifests itself in the person's physical demeanor, and the clients pick up on it. Drug-addled, drunk, or even the mentally ill will pick up on these unconscious data transmissions and be rightfully pissed. And they will make life a living hell for the transmitter until said person pulls their head out of their ass and stops doing it. 

I believe that martial arts, in its technical and psychological aspects, helps with this phenomenon. Earlier this year, I had to go to a really rough part of town to track down a witness. As a white guy in a suit, I definitely attracted a lot of stares. I kept the following dialogue running through my mind, "Good Lord, I am not supposed to be here. I have come here for a limited purpose. I am not a threat to you. I will do my job quickly and get the hell out." I totally immersed my mind in this as I moved through this particular neighborhood, and no one bothered me at all. Coincidence? Maybe. But I think not. I had enough young predators size me up that, had I moved differently, I am sure that one would have felt the need to protect his territory. 


Hopefully I’ve made you think a little bit with my post. Take a long, hard look at your training system. Does it address these things? How so? Does it do it enough? If not, ask yourself where you might go to get this type of training.

After all, it’s only the vast majority of your self-defense.

"Catch!" Mind

I recently read Patrick Rothfuss' book A Wise Man's Fear. I really enjoyed the book as a whole, and I am not sure whether or not Mr. Rothfuss has ever done any sort of training in martial arts, but there were a number of passages that stimulated my martial arts thought processes.

In one of my favorite passages, one of the teachers at a university gets seven students together. Each of these students is brilliant, and accomplished in a wide array of academic fields. The teacher tells the students that he will, in thirty minutes, stand at a certain point and lob a ball with a certain amount of force. He asks the students to use their arts and sciences to calculate where the ball will land.

The students spend their thirty minutes furiously applying their various disciplines to the prediction of the ball's landing point. The thirty minutes pass and leave the students frustrated. The teacher asks the students if they have their answer. The students grudgingly admit that they cannot say for certain where the ball will land, despite their calculations. The teacher abruptly leaves the classroom and comes back in the company of an eight year-old boy.

Striding right to the spot he gave the students, the teacher turns and lobs the ball at the surprised eight-year old. The eight year old, somewhat started, catches the ball perfectly.

The teacher then turns to the students and asks them, "How is it that an eight year-old was able to predict in less than a second what seven of the brightest students here could not in half an hour?"

The answer, of course, is that the boy saw the teacher's movements, the ball, and its flight and was able to make all the calculations in the subconscious parts of his brain, and relay all that information to place his hands in the right place, at the right time, in the right shape to catch the ball. If he'd tried to process it intellectually, the ball would have hit the ground long before he came close to making all the right calculations.

This brings me to martial arts training. I am not so different from those students described in the book. I have a great deal of intellectual training. Doing things intuitively, by feel, is not something that comes naturally to me. That said, I do believe it is a necessary part of martial arts training.

Kata makes sense to me. The pre-arranged forms are designed to teach certain principles in certain ways. Things go as expected, and can be intellectually processed and analyzed. If something goes wrong, you can repeat the experiment, making little adjustments, until it works correctly. While it is intense, and emotionally challenging in its way, it is somewhat predictable work.

Randori isn't so simple. For one, if it goes south, you can't just stop and do it over again. You've got to live with whatever ugly thing you tried to give birth to. Instead of a small number of variables, like in kata, there are an infinite number of variables, compounded by a problem that is constantly shifting and changing (i.e. - your opponent). Instead of a steady trickle of data, it is a flood. Compounded by the flood of information is the strange way that randori seems to tap directly into all of your inner psychological clutter and allow it to flow up to the surface. In such an atmosphere, the odds on being able to intellectually process your way through a problem in half a second (which, in my estimate, is a realistic measure of how much time you have) are quite long.

I have spent years doing randori slowly, thinking my way through it. I certainly learned a ton from this practice, but I believe I made some faulty assumptions about it. I functioned on the assumption that if I did enough of this, I could learn to "think fast" enough to do the right thing in full-speed randori.

My efforts have been met with a lot of frustration.

Last night, my training partner and I tried something totally different. We agreed to do randori with no definite plan as to what techniques we were "looking for". If he attacked, I would just touch him, feel, and move with him. That was my only agenda. I didn't even care if I got him or not, or whether or not I made a technique.

And strangely... stuff just started happening. We relaxed, moved our feet, and tried to do it "by feel" instead of engaging our intellectual brains. We didn't care if it looked silly, or even if it worked. We kept hitting techniques, and found ourselves echoing the words of our teachers... "I don't choose the technique. You do. I just go with it and it happens." It felt so organic, so natural. And my brain didn't feel like it was trying to do the intellectual version of lifting a car. I could describe what happened (usually after the fact), but I didn't really plan it.

This is a totally different type of practice for me, and it wasn't easy. After a few exchanges, I would find myself trying to "do stuff" again... and I would have to catch myself and remind myself that I was doing it by feel and to leave my machinations at the door.

Regardless, I think exploring this might bear some interesting fruit.

"I dunno..."

“I dunno... I just did it. I didn’t have a reason.”

I do not accept this explanation for any human behavior. If you apply the labels “random” or “pointless” to any human behavior, you close off the possibility of exploring the inner workings of the behavior... and my experience is that there is always a reason for human behavior. That isn’t to say that it is a good reason, necessarily, but there is always a reason, and I think a large part of our task in practice is to ask the question.

It’s an important question, because what are we, if not a collection of behaviors and reasons?

I think people use “I dunno”, perhaps unconsciously, because looking at the alternative can be extremely uncomfortable.

I encountered a great example of this the other day in the dojo. I was on the mat with on of my training partners. We were about half-way through a kata that he had been practicing for about a year. Our in-class repetition of the kata had been sporadic, so his recollection of the techniques was a bit spotty.

In these situations, especially with juniors, my teachers have taught me to verbally communicate before attacking the person, to make sure he knows what he is doing. Bad stuff can happen in martial arts practice when the two people practicing aren’t on the same page.

In this instance, I said the name of the technique, and asked my training partner, “Do you know it? Are you ready?” He replied in the affirmative, so I attacked him. He started half of a movement in the wrong direction, moving without much real purpose, and then I knocked him on his butt.

Perhaps it comes from the fact that I am a bit too at ease in the dojo environment. Perhaps it is just that I am naturally a it disrespectful. Maybe I’m just getting better at being honest. But when this happened, I looked down at him and said, “You lied!”

My partner, who is usually a deeply introspective, spiritual, and moral man, stiffened up as he got up. I could tell that I struck a nerve. “I do not lie!” he responded, testily.

Years ago, I would have shied away from uncomfortable confrontations like this. Luckily, my teachers have put me in this “crucible” before, with my own thoughts and assumptions, so when I saw that I’d struck a nerve, I realized it for what it was: a great training opportunity. Randori for the heart and mind, if you will. I fell into the cadence of a cross examination without realizing it.

“Do you remember me telling you the name of the technique?”

“Yes.”

“Do you remember me asking you if you remembered how to do the technique? If you were ready?”

“Yes.”

“Do recall what you said?”

“... that I knew it, and I was ready.”

“Were you?”

“I guess not...”

“You guess? You mean you’re not sure whether or not you were ready? I’m positive. You weren’t. In your heart, you know it, too. So, why ‘I guess’? You know!”

“I dunno. I just said it. I didn’t have a reason.”

Ah-ha! The roadblock!

I have a dear friend (not the same person) who often tells me, “Words are just wind, Pat.” I disagree. If my life as a practitioner of law has taught me one thing, it is this: words have power. Words have deep, subtle, and resounding power. And the words we choose often provide a valuable cross-section into the inner workings of our minds and hearts. This interaction, rich as it was, gave testimony to that.

“Yes, you did,” I replied, “You just may not be comfortable saying it.”

He thought for a moment, and scratched his head.

“I guess...” he began. I looked at him meaningfully.

“Okay, I know why. I... did not want to admit that I’d forgotten it.”

“Eureka!” I raised my hands up.

Now, think about this for a second. It is one thing to be uncomfortable to admit a failure... but put it in the martial arts context. As I mentioned above, two practitioners who aren’t on the page can end up in serious injury, or even death, depending on what is being practiced. You add velocity, or weapons into the mix, and these little mental “vacations” can have life-altering consequences! My friend’s desire not to admit ignorance ran so deep that he was willing to risk injury to himself and one of his best friends in order to run from it!

I pointed out as much to him, and he looked troubled. That is a good thing, in my opinion. As one of your companions in training, if I do not occasionally trouble you, I don’t believe I am doing my part. (That’s another valuable thing I learned from watching my teachers.)

It really is amazing how all our little fears can have dramatic impact on our decision-making, without us even realizing it. The beauty of martial arts training, though, is that it has a way of making the things we’d prefer to avoid startlingly explicit. My friend may have been able to ignore words, but he could not ignore the fact that he ended up firmly on his butt. No shades of gray there, just shockingly clear truth.

I looked him in the eye, clapped a hand on his shoulder, and said, “How many places you got in your life where you won’t admit that you don’t know what the hell you’re doing?”

He grinned, sheepishly. I gave him a big hug. It was amazing to see Something in him (and yes, that is a capital “Something”) change as that realization traveled through him. I could see all the little gears whirring in his head as he thought about all the different places in life he ran into that particular mental roadblock. He’d discovered the reason for his behavior, and I could literally see him make the decision to have better reasons.

That kind of stuff keeps me coming back for more and more.

Lexicon

(This is an answer to a friend's question that turned into a blog post.)

I remember when I first started training, I spent a lot of time on the internet reading material about martial arts, and discussing it with other people. The reading part hasn't changed that much (that's another essay), but I find myself engaging in a lot less discussion.

It isn't because I don't have anything to say. To the contrary, I've been training for eight and a half years, and I certainly have a lot more food for thought than I did at the beginning.

That said, I don't engage in much "net discussion" because of the lexicon problem. Here is what I mean. In any given system, there is a particular lexicon. One of of the difficulties of martial arts, in comparison to things like music, is that there isn't an extremely precise technical language that can produce nearly identical results. At best, we have a hodge-podge of terms from physics, poetry, and history meant to convey certain principles. Among practitioners in a common system, we at least use some of this same hodge-podge to convey meaning.

Further, this meaning is reinforced by common experience. Most of us have been the business end of the same people, and spent time trying to do the same things. Therefore, our "common picture", if you will, is a little bit more clear.

That said, I often find myself striving to communicate things in the dojo and failing. And this is among the people that I work with every day. I use a word like "push" to mean a certain method of moving feet and dropping weight on a certain vector, while relaxed and extending. When I say it to someone, they might interpret it to mean that they are going to plant their feet in one place and strongly "exploding" into their target with upper body force.

There is a constant struggle to find the right words to cause a certain set of muscular actions.

Now, remove that web of common experience. Things get a lot more tricky at that point, when you've got different people doing things. Made more confusing by the fact that some people use the same words to describe different sets of physical activities. (Get people from 3 styles of aikido together and try to define what "attack" means.) When you get a group of different people from different traditions on the same mat, confusion is inevitable.

But at least you've got the equalizer of being able to get hands on each other. Even if I can't say the right words to someone, I might be able to create understanding by demonstrating what I am doing. Whatever labels we put on things, we can all perceive the same phenomena in the same room.

Thus my problem with internet discussion. Now, we've muddied the waters even further by removing physical proximity. In this virtual dojo, nothing that we say has to be backed up by reality. We never "walk the talk". In the way, when one doesn't have that ability to get out and do, I think the essence of martial arts practice is lost. Much of what is said has to do with killing spare time and affirming one's own views, and very little to do with that visceral, heart-touching learning that occurs in a dojo.

Regarding Tygers

I've recently been reading William Scott Wilson's translation of Miyamoto Musashi's Go Rin no Sho ("The Book of Five Rings"). Thus far, I have really enjoyed it because I think Mr. Wilson takes a much more precise approach than some of the "interpretations" done by other authors. I have taken very much from some of the more "elemental" passages about martial arts as a way of training and a way of life, but I must admit, I have taken somewhat less from some of his more technical discussions of swordsmanship.

This is not because of some problem with Musashi's writing. I'm sure what he says is very informative... if viewed in the proper context, which I do not have, since I have never had my hands on Miyamoto Musashi, nor any exponent of his style.

The whole problem makes me think of William Blake's poem "The Tyger".

Let me start by saying that I really like this poem. I think it is a really concise, powerful meditation on the existence of evil in the hearts of men. I think it is one that employs powerful, emotive imagery.

... but there is something missing.

Some people don't know that along with being a skillful poet, William Blake was also a master engraver. He accompanied many of his poems with illustrative prints. "The Tyger", taken from his "Songs of Experience", is no exception.

To give you a bit of background, this poem was penned in 1794. Many people in Blake's native England had heard of a tiger, but very very few (ostensibly including Blake) had ever seen one. If you look at the above image, you'll see that it has all the proper characteristics of a tiger... four feet, stripes, a tail, and claws... but we all agree that something is missing. Somehow, despite the fact that Blake correctly executed the "tiger making" characteristics, his lack of real experience left Blake unable to convey the "soul" of what a tiger really looks like.

The reason I think this is relevant to my discussion of the Book of Five Rings is because I think many of us, as readers, are in a similar position to Blake and the people of England who had never had personal experience with a tiger. While we agree on many of the characteristics, lacking that "real knowledge", our picture is somehow inevitably skewed and never quite right... and this is obvious to anyone that really knows what the real deal is.

Among people who train in a common system of martial arts, have common vocabulary, and have a schematic through which to understand, I think technical discussions in the written word can be enormously helpful... but among people with no common experience, I think there will inevitably be a somewhat substantial "communication gap".

Which leads me to my conclusion. You can't learn martial arts from a book. I've known a number of people who have bragged to me about all the videos they have watched and the books they have read, and I always end up asking them the same question: what have you actually done? Without that direct contact with someone that "knows", and the feedback that comes from it, I do not believe people can learn something as highly technical as a martial arts system.

If real practice is the soil a plant grows in, books are just the fertilizer. (Feel free to insert your own "B.S." joke at this point.)

To Musashi's credit, he realized the same thing and stated as much in his book. He directly states that this his is an "oral tradition", meaning that it has to be passed down person to person - not through a book.

... so at least we're all on the same page.