Since ancient times
Art and the Martial Way
and the good, hard
practice of both
have made the Body-Mind – - – wake up!!!
- – - O’Sensei
“At the very bottom is the question, ‘how do you prepare your mind to become a singer…
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Visit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CEr2GfGilw&feature=fvwrel
So what is happening here? Is the dancer spinning clockwise or counter-clockwise?
Depends which side of the brain you are using.
Left side: logical, language, methodic, concepts, like a serial processor
Right side: creative, emotion, direct experience, like a parallel processor
Can you get it to switch at will?
- by doing math in your head?
- by imaginging you are about to look at your hand?
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…cold is a purifying agent – just like salt and alcohol (sake), flowing air and perfect words – like the first two, it is a traditional means of preserving food. When you perform misogi, not only do you stimulate the hind-part of the brain associated with altruism, and kick your blood circulation and your immune system into overdrive…. you also drop your body temperature to a place where many micro-organisms slow down or cannot survive.
But I’m realizing, as the temperatures in Boise hover in the single digits and the teens: this cold, and the snow and the ice, transform our walking, cycling, driving, into a meditation practice.
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“…I had many opportunities to accompany [O'Sensei] and during those times I would analyse intently the pace and movement of his feet as I followed along behind him. I was interested in where he held his center of gravity and just how he transformed it as he moved along…”
- – - Gozo Shioda Sensei, Aikido Shugyo p.82
“…I was mostly focused on [Takeda Sokaku] Sensei’s footwork. I took notes on which foot came first or what he did to immobilize me – these are the points that I paid attention to and took down carefully in my notes. You students today…your attention is diverted by the form and how it looks overall.”
- – - Sagawa Yukiyoshi Sensei, Transparent Power, p.129
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I move air for a living – I’m a theatrical sound designer. At really fun moments I make air dance in harmony with itself. What I do leaves no trace – - – you have to catch it in the room, with a bunch of other people listening and some actors onstage. After that it is gone.
So it is fascinating to find myself the substance of an artform that consists entirely of reflexes in a human body: mine, my fellow students’, Sensei’s, – - – and the bodies of a lineage of masters and students going back four hundred years – all the way back to Ito Ittosai.
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It has been my privilege to know Kimbal Anderson for the last eight years. He has been a teacher, mentor, healer and friend.
In the summer of 2008, Kimbal co-choreographed the sword fight for the Idaho Shakespeare Festival’s production of “Macbeth”. I was playing Macduff, and Doug Miller was Macbeth, and Kimbal worked extensively on creating a visually stunning yet amazingly real Japanese sword fight…
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