Teaching Kid's Class

Over the course of the past couple months, I have been very involved in running a children’s Aikido class. This includes teaching whenever the sensei is busy or out of town. Class sizes can vary from three to nine students ranging in age from five to thirteen.





Teaching children an art such as Aikido can be very difficult. Unlike other martial arts where the sensei can line children up and instruct them all on a strike or kick, Aikido requires partner-based training and a lot of one-on-one work with each student. I have always enjoyed teaching children, though, for the special challenge it provides. This means you not only must be flexible in your approach to teaching, but creative in your explanations. For example: teaching kotegaishi (a basic wrist bending throw) can be confusing when a younger student has never practiced a martial art before. Words like, “Grab Uke’s left hand with your right and twist toward the floor,” will be met my blank looks. Most five year olds haven’t quite gotten the hang of your right and his left. Saying, “Put both your thumbs on the back of Uke’s hand and make a butterfly (sticking fingers out straight to either side); now wrap the butterfly’s wings together around Uke’s hand,” however, can help kids picture the throw a little differently. The idea is to find a way to express the techniques, keeping in mind that your audience has an attention span of about 10 seconds.


We are very lucky in our class for the diversity of students. Several students are of the Muslim faith and, therefore, have different customs and traditions they must uphold even when in the dojo. For starters—literally—it is against the Muslim faith to bow before anyone other than God. Bowing is an integral part of dojo culture, however, as it shows both respect and humility before the sensei and other students. Even more importantly, bowing is a form of self control and discipline that is especially important to teach.
After much thought and conversations with the parents, we decided upon a compromise that would not only show respect, but also fit in with Japanese customs. When other students bow at the beginning or end of class or when stepping on and off the tatami, the Muslim students put their hands together in “Gasshou”. This is similar to a “praying hands” gesture, but does not hold religious significance within the dojo setting. It is important to understand and transmit to our students that Gasshou, as well as bowing, are symbols of respect and not religion. We maintain these traditions within the dojo because they are a part of the culture of Japan and of the martial art. To lose such symbols would be to lose a part of the art.


When I was first asked to teach the children’s class, I had a couple obvious concerns. I am blind; how will I know what the kids are actually doing? Although adults are respectful enough to pay attention and do what I tell them, children are sometimes less agreeable to instructions. But rather than worry about the possibility of children running wild, I thought about the advantages of my particular situation.
1: This was an opportunity to give the older students some responsibility. I took the student who had been training longest aside before class and explained that I could really use his help; he was a good kid and now it was up to him to help the younger students. During class, I tried to partner newer students with some of the more veteran members of similar ages. It was a chance to not only teach Aikido, but teach members to look after one another.
2: Since I can’t “see” a student as they are learning how to roll or take ukemi (fall) this was a good chance to encourage the students to verbalize and work through their ukemi step by step. In one instance, I asked a student to “teach me” how to roll. This required the student to tell me, piece by piece, how the body should be positioned. This also gave me a chance to see if any important elements of the student’s roll were missing.
3: Finally, this was a good chance to encourage other adult members of the dojo to come in and help. Sure, I’ll play that card… “I could really use the help…” but truthfully, children’s’ classes are normally avoided by adults and this was an opportunity to get some people on the tatami and training.


I was always against having children in the dojo in Japan because they were mixed in with adult classes. This is not the right environment for a child to learn Aikido and can be dangerous besides. On one occasion, a child was on the mat during an Aikido class and not paying attention to anything around him. As my partner—who was likewise oblivious to his surroundings, apparently—through me, I realized just in time that I was headed straight for the kid. I had to take a very painful fall which injured my wrist quite badly. I was not only angry at my partner, but also at the stupidity of having children mixed into an adult class with no special attention.
After teaching and helping to teach over these past two months, I’ve come to see the important difference in how a “children’s’” class is run. It’s a great opportunity to teach kids an awareness of their environment that will hopefully carry over to adulthood. It is also a chance to teach respect, responsibility, and self control. The important difference between these classes in the U.S. and those classes I attended in Japan is that these are children’s’ classes with adults who participate and not adult classes with children who participate.

*editted for correct photo*

The Three Wiseass Monkeys

Over the past few weeks, I have been writing blog entries primarily regarding my last couple months in Japan. Though I do have a few more of these tales yet to tell, I have not been idol in the meanwhile. I have continued my training here at home with renewed vigor. It is about this training, then, that I would like to devote the next three posts.



Several months ago I posted an entry about the Three Wise Monkeys. This is a famous symbol in Japan used during the Tokugawa Shogunate to represent the proper way to live: hear not, see not, and speak not. Some have given the ancient phrase a more modern interpretation: hear no evil, see no evil, and speak no evil. In 17th century Japan, however, these were maxims by which a samurai lived his life.




This age-old symbol was given a new meaning today as I was training with my father and our Sensei, Dave Mata, at the Grand Rapids Kyoseikan dojo. Due to the fact this was a day-class, when many people are working, it was just the three of us. My father, who began training in Aikido at the age of 67—who says you can’t teach an old dog knew tricks—is legally deaf. He usually doesn’t wear his hearing aids during class for fear of damaging them. Mata Sensei, on the other hand, claims to find verbally explaining techniques to be very difficult. As for me… well, I’m just blind.



So here you have a deaf monkey, a blind monkey, and a monkey who can’t explain what he’s doing; how do they work together? After spending several minutes trying to describe his movements while taking ukemi—safely falling—Mata Sensei suggested a very intuitive strategy for the three of us. While Sensei slowly moved through a fall, he asked my father to explain, in his own words, how it looked. Does this sound simple? Try to explain, in detail, the position of your body as you climb the stairs or even move from standing to sitting in a chair. Are your hips forward or back? How is your balance distributed over your feet; is your weight forward or back? These motions, which we take for granted, are very difficult to explain when moving slowly. Sensei, who has been “learning how to fall” for over fifteen years, does it without thinking. I myself have been training in Aikido for nine years and the falls have always been something I enjoyed. My father, though, has only been training for a year. These movements are not yet ingrained so deeply in his muscle memory.



Ukemi—falling—is not a simple, once you’ve learned it you’re finished, process. AS you age and your body accrues injuries and stiffness, ukemi is something you must develop and think about. The intent of this entry, however, is not to focus on a discussion of ukemi but rather on this interesting style of teaching. I believe Mata Sensei’s casual suggestion touches upon a very important piece of teaching methodology for the blind or visually impaired. I believe it can also serve equally well for sighted people both beginners and advanced, if for a slightly different reason.
Each person “sees” the world slightly differently. I realized this in particular when visiting an art museum with two friends in Japan. Each of my friends would describe the same painting, but using completely different words. While one friend spoke of the emotions she felt while looking at the image, the other friend talked in more detail about the specific techniques used to create the image. Though each person described the same picture, for me it was as though I had viewed two separate paintings: one a moving, emotional picture while the other was more detailed and graphic. Similarly, the same technique or, in this case, ukemi described by two separate people can touch upon details that one person alone might have missed. A concrete example from today’s class occurred when my father mention the way Sensei turned his hips to keep balance while falling forward into a front ukemi. While Mata Sensei had described to me how he kept weight back and lowered his knee as close to the ground as possible before shifting forward, turning his hips was something he had done without realizing. Again, I am not trying to teach ukemi with this post. I am only discussing a strategy for teaching.
Similarly, this same process of describing a technique can apply for sighted people as well, but the other way around. Especially when first learning, talking your way through an action may help you to more fully understand what it is you are doing. If anything, it may help you become a better teacher in the long run as it helps you to continuously think about your movements. Sometimes, talking yourself through may help you find the point you are missing. It really helps to bring a more conscious awareness to the activity you are performing.




The three little monkeys finally all fell successfully off the bed and landed safely on the tatami. Mata Sensei is, in the end, a very skilled instructor. I would not return to his dojo each time I am in G.R. if I did not feel I could learn from him. Sensei is constantly seeking to become a better teacher—a better “sensei—and this is more valuable than knowing how to describe each technique in detail. It is more important because, after all, each person learns differently. Mata Sensei seeks ways to adjust his instruction for his students.

On Friday and Sunday of the International Budo Seminar, time blocks were set aside for participants to train in their primary martial art. In my case, I used Friday’s session for Judo while joining the Aikido group on Sunday. In addition to these regularly scheduled blocks, the dojos remained open each evening so that people might gather and train with one-another freely. These open-mat sessions are, perhaps, the best part of the budo seminar.



The Friday Judo training was something of a disappointment. Very few Judo players from outside the International Budo University came to the seminar. Perhaps because of this, the Judo sensei neglected to make the training session instructive. Instead, it was thirty minutes of randori (sparring) and little else. The four of us Judo bekkasei were joined by eight or so Judo players from the university and a visiting sensei from Tokyo.
What frustrated me in particular about this “special training” was that the Judo players joining us from the University were regular members of our daily judo club. Despite this, these Judo players had never deigned to train with us bekkasei in the entirety of the previous year. Furthermore, these Japanese students were obviously unenthusiastic and did not train seriously.



Though I had officially signed up with Judo as my primary Budo, the sincere enthusiasm of the Aikido practitioners convinced me to join them for training on Sunday. Throughout the day on Friday and Saturday, whenever someone came up to say hi and introduce themselves to me, it was inevitably an aikidoka. Of special note were two young aikidoka—Senya from Israel and Faik from Sri Lanka—who joined me for some additional training on Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon. Having the opportunity to train with such an international group of people is an extraordinarily valuable experience as each person brings something unique to the dojo. Senya, for example, had trained with many visually impaired people in the past. This was readily apparent in the clear way he demonstrated one variation of kokyuudousa (breath throw). Faik, on the other hand, was very energetic and paid special attention to the taking of balance. This is, of course, fundamental to the practice of Aikido, but one that some people do overlook.



At the Sunday Aikido session, I was lucky enough to spend the entire hour training with Kanazawa Sensei from the Aikikai Hombu Dojo. Kanazawa Sensei is a humble man with incredibly smooth Aikido. He is well known, especially in the international community, for the respect he shows the foreign aikidoka who come to Aikikai’s main dojo in Tokyo. Interestingly, I discovered later that my own Sensei—David Mata—had also trained with Kanazawa Sensei on his trip to Japan several years ago.



The absolute highlight of the Budo Seminar, however, was the opportunity to train with a good friend from my former home in Kitakyushu: Thierry Comont. As I have mentioned in a previous entry, Thierry is an expert on the style of sword-work Miyamoto Musashi developed while living on Kyushu. It was originally Aikido that brought Thierry to Japan, though, and his Aikido is brilliant. As other friends have noted in the past, you have only to watch Thierry walk to know he is a martial artist of the truest sense. His movements are self-assured and controlled; he is humble and polite to a fault.
Thierry and I got together to train on Saturday evening after dinner. Within only a short time, we gathered a small audience of interested spectators. Thierry pays particular attention to small details. AS he has told me in the past, "I want people to see you and be impressed; you must be ready at all times and never let down your guard."



This is precisely how Thierry trains. In every moment he is prepared; when he comes up from a roll, he is immediately in position and ready in case someone might attack. Similarly, Thierry pushes you to be in complete control of your own Aikido at all times. If there is ever a moment when he feels he can escape from a technique, he will fight free. In my opinion, this is exactly how Aikido should be practiced. Because it is a gentle art, people too often underestimate the real power behind the movements of Aikido. Perhaps this is because there are so many people who have lost the real sense of Aikido while training. The moment a partner begins to resist a technique you can start to feel whether you truly have control… or if you are just using muscle.




The International Seminar on Budo Culture is one of the great reasons people travel to Japan to do martial arts. Ironically, it is not the Japanese Sensei themselves who attract participants to the seminar, but rather it is the chance to train with so many people from so many places. As I have stated before; the benefit of living and training in Japan does not come from the Japanese Sensei alone. Of course, Sensei like Kanazawa Sensei are gifted instructors who have devoted their lives to Budo. The real benefit of living and training in Japan comes from the fact that Japan is the international hub for the martial arts. When people think about Karate, Judo, Aikido or Kendo, their minds immediately turn toward the land of the rising sun.

A Privilege and A Pleasure

Between working in Spain and Japan and then beginning this course at the Kokusai Budo Daigaku, I have spent little more than six months in the United States during the past five years. Trips home, then, are marked by the scramble to visit friends and family and there is never enough time. I am a man of clear priorities, however, and my first stop after dropping off my suitcase—and putting on my gi—is the
Kyoseikan
Dojo of Grand Rapids.


I have known Sensei David Mata (2-dan, Bironkai of North America) since I first began Aikido at the age of eighteen. The summer after my freshman year of college found me with a new passion for the martial arts. I had been practicing Aikido for six months with the Yoshokai club of the University of Michigan and I couldn’t let the summer vacation pass without finding a dojo in the Grand Rapids area. After a couple “false starts” which I will not bother to mention, I found my way to the Toyoda Center.
It was Sensei Mata who first greeted me upon my entering into the dojo. At that time, he was teaching the Saturday afternoon class and he invited me to join. Over the next few months, it was Mata Sensei more than anyone who oversaw my training. I was impressed, immediately, by his attitude toward teaching someone with a visual impairment. Aikido, after all, is a martial art anyone can do.


When Sensei Mata separated from the Toyoda Center and founded his own, Kyoseikan, dojo in September of 2006, it seemed only logical that I follow him. Mata Sensei has been both my friend and teacher during these past nine years and has always encouraged me to pursue the martial arts in any way possible. As much as he has watched my Aikido grow and develop, I have had both the privilege and pleasure of watching Sensei develop as an instructor. Mata Sensei is always working to improve fundamental aspects of his own Aikido, never taking an attitude of superiority. Most recently, Sensei has dedicated time to the deeper study of kenjitsu and the ways in which the buki—weapons—relate to Aikido.



I had the great pleasure of spending some time this past trip home being thrown around by Mata sensei. I take a lot of pride in my ukemi (falls) and I was very pleased, therefore, when Sensei noticed my movements had become lighter and faster. I enjoy these opportunities to take ukemi as they challenge you to react quickly and rely on your instinctual feelings to guide your body. The slightest turn of Sensei’s wrist can communicate the direction or type of ukemi expected. For a visually impaired budoka, the ability to read an opponent or partner’s movements is crucial. Even in daily life, when walking with a sighted guide, it is important to understand the message conveyed through subtle body movements. The way a guide’s weight shifts from one foot to the other can communicate a step or change in the terrain; the sharpness of an arm movement can indicate surprise or distraction. Its amazing the amount of information we project in our slightest motion.
This is a video of Mata Sensei tossing me around:
Taking ukemi
A word of advice: Do Not, I repeat, Do Not do a full stomach work out at the gym immediately before a class in which you may have to take prolonged ukemi. I was struggling to get up from back-breakfalls.


It is so important to know that, no matter where I travel or how long I am gone, I always have my home at the Kyoseikan Dojo. For a real budoka, your dojo is in many ways your second home…. Or even your first.

Aikido

     My first real introduction to the martial arts and Japanese culture came through my training in the Aikido club of the University of Michigan.  Due to the many times I have moved, I have studied under a variety of instructors in several styles of aikido.  To date, I hold rank with four associations; no one of which has recognized my time with the others.  But though Aikido is sometimes a highly insular martial art, I believe my wide exposure has benefited me.  Where I lack high rank in any one association—I hold the rank of 2kyu with Birankai of North America and the Japanese Aikikai associations—I have learned much about what I look for in a good instructor… and what I look for in a great one.  Most importantly, I have had the opportunity to consider what Aikido means to me, personally. 

 

     This being said, I consider myself to be always and above all others a member of the

Kyoseikan

Dojo of Grand Rapids, Michigan.  My instructor is David Mata, under Keith Moore sensei, under T K Chiba Sensei.

  

         What is Aikido? 

     You can research Aikido on the internet and discover much more than I could ever hope to explain here on this blog.  My purpose is to tell you what the martial arts mean to me: my feelings, interpretations and reasons for training.

     I believe patience is the word that best describes Aikido at this moment in my life.  Patience is a powerful virtue both in and out of the dojo.  It embodies control, awareness and self discipline.  In an art such as Aikido, we train with a wide range of people of varying levels of skill and physical ability.  When we rush into a situation, we are liable to overpower our partner or, in turn, be overpowered ourselves.  Patience is required to find the “path of least resistance,” so to speak and prevent us from immediately relying upon muscle.  One habit we have in the western world is our reliance on brute strength. 

      This does not mean that speed and force hold no place in aikido.  We practice patiently now so that we understand, later, how to apply techniques with greater power.  In a given class, you might learn one technique—you may even learn that technique perfectly—but what you have learned is one variation of a technique in a universe where there are a thousand incarnations of that movement; you have learned the technique in the setting of a dojo from a specific attack.  Aikido requires years of practice in order that the body learn to react instinctually, from a variety of attacks and in a variety of situations.  This might make it seem as though “repetition” were the most important key to developing Aikido.  Repetition, however, implies a mindless series of movements.  Patience, on the other hand, requires the mind’s active engagement in an activity. 

     The energy in Aikido can be illustrated by thinking of the movement of water.  Water, when presented with an obstacle, seeks the path of least resistance.  Water does not draw back, nor push outward.  Rather, it maintains a constant pressure in response to that which is exuded upon itself.  A wave may be gentle or highly destructive, according to the power of the circular energy which generates its movement.  Similarly, Aikido depends upon circular movements to generate techniques. 

     This has been a brief introduction to my thoughts on an art I have studied for nearly nine years.  In the future I will write about more specific aspects of Aikido or possibly revisit ideas I have mentioned here.