It's the contextual premise stupid

"Hey man, I did all the other martial arts and (insert favorite martial art here) is the best man."

"(Insert despised martial art here) sucks bro. An MMA guy can kick ass on those dudes anytime!"

I often hear that kind of talk from people doing martial arts. First of all, it's the practitioner that's gonna make the art effective or not, not the art itself. And let's be real, not all martial arts were created equal! As far as I know, karate was not developed as a martial art to be used against other martial artists. Just listen to Okinawan karate master Choki Motobu:

"...the applications of kata have their limits and one must come to understand this. The techniques of kata were never developed to be used against a professional fighter, in an arena or on the battlefield. They were, however, most effective against someone who had no idea of the strategy being used to counter their aggressive behavior." (pg. 96)

In other words, and in light of the research that karate historian Patrick McCarthy has done, karate was to be utilized against a person engaging in what he terms habitual acts of physical violence. Those acts are the contextual premise, the foundation on which the techniques in the kata were created to deal with. I think this is a crucial point to understand when talking about martial arts, especially with people who have no experience with it. Most people's general perceptions of martial arts, in my experience, is seeing it as "fighting". Now, although there is a thin line between fighting and self-defense, how a person trains for one or the other seems to require two different kinds of expertise. And you have to distinguish what you mean when you talk about "fighting". Because if you are talking about fighting where there are guns involved, then no martial art in the world will help you to stop a bullet penetrating your soft, fleshy human body. And if you are talking about fighting like they do in the UFC cage, then you are talking about training in a sport that has rules and regulations and guidelines. And if you are talking about fighting like in the "street" then I don't really think you need to take the time to study a martial art; just go insult someone's momma and see what happens. So "learning how to fight" is different to me than learning how to successfully handle unprovoked aggression. Both may require similar technical understanding, but which martial art is effective or not depends on what you want it to be effective for; winning points/trophies/titles/fame or survival? 

Elbow SMASH!
- Hiji Até

Thoughts on women, self-defense and karate

I have had the fortune of practicing the last few times with a new friend I've met here in the D whom I shall refer to as "Amy". Although she did not have any previous martial arts experience, Amy was enthusiastic enough to want to see what karate was all about and I'm glad she was because her presence has sparked a lot of thought. Amy, who could be described as a young white female, told me about an incident where she had been physically assaulted (groped) by a man. In her retelling of the incident, she said that she had sort of blanked-out and her body went "numb" as this was happening. Fortunately she was able to get away from this individual and escape, although she says she doesn't quite remember how or what she did to get away. What she does remember is feeling angered by the incident afterward. In response to my asking Amy what she might physically do again in that type of situation she said that the socialization she's had as a female makes her to want to "empathize" and thus "feel bad" about potentially hurting someone despite what they might be doing to her. That got me thinking about something Rory Miller highlights in Meditations on Violence:

"Don't be afraid to be rude. In the vast majority of these predator assaults, you did not ask for the attention and you have no obligation to the person trying to get close, no matter what he tells you or what your momma told you about being polite." (pg. 133)

Amy did end up enrolling herself in some self-defense classes which she said helped her to be more comfortable and confident with using her body in ways that would have seemed "rude" before. What's interesting is how she (unintentionally) delineated between having taken "self-defense classes" as opposed to having never done any "martial arts". That begs the question What do people think karate is? and How do karateka themselves define what they do? What's needed I think is a pedagogical model of karate that corresponds to the realities of women like Amy. Here's a female-bodied person who has actually had the real experience of being assaulted. Here I am, a student of a martial art and I have never had the experience of this reality that I am supposedly training to deal with. It's more like Amy could benefit from functional self-defensive skill more than me! The modern dojo environment in which I have trained is severely divorced from reality in that respect. What we do in the dojo has less to do with self-defense (the origin of karate) than it does with maintaining a kind of elaborate physical ritual. Where and how did we go from something useful, practical and effective (not to mention that karate is a holistic art so there is a spiritual side as well) to screaming paper tigers in white pajamas? I'm not implying that only females need this kind of functional skill. As a male, I know all too well what it feels like to not want to be rude and to empathize with someone else despite their aggression. But as a male, I am also aware of the fact that it is highly unlikely that I will be objectified and groped (or worse) on the street. That fact alone may be what saves me from having to be in those kinds of dangerous situations in the first place. I'm not saying that women need to do karate more than men. I'm saying that, in light of the contextual premise on which the karate of Okinawa was founded (i.e. habitual acts of physical violence), and because women are still disproportionately affected by physical assault/abuse perpetrated by men, finding a way to teach karate as was originally taught could be very beneficial to women in the 21st century. And beneficial to men as well considering that modern karate also tends to focus mainly on physical brutality and not spiritual development (a sort of prerequisite perhaps towards de-escalating internal male aggression). 

Elbow SMASH!
- Hiji Até

Is it because I'm Asian?

So I've noticed this strange phenomenon happen to me here in Detroit. To give you some quick context, I'm like one of 5 Asian dudes in the entire city. Okay that's totally exaggerating. But there really is not a lot of Asians here. Having this distinctly East Asian male face that I have, more often than not I tend to stand out in this predominantly Black city. Which doesn't bother me at all really. It has however contributed to numerous cases of mistaken identity: "No, no. I'm not Bruce Lee. Bruce Lee was Chinese. I'm Okinawan-Japanese." Usually those comments about my supposed resemblance to the late martial arts icon are from strangers and I'm no longer fazed by any of that stuff. But a similar kind of "mistaken identity" pervades the mindset of some of the people I've actually gotten to know. It usually goes like this: I'll casually mention to someone in conversation that I do karate. For whatever reason that gets construed to mean that I'm some sort of expert. I emphasize clearly that I am just a student and I've only been training for the last 5 years. That then gets construed to mean that I'm just being humble. I explain that it has nothing to do with being humble and everything to do with being real with myself. Then somehow that's taken to mean that I'm just hiding my awesome karate skills and pretending to be mediocre. I mean maybe there's some sort of satisfaction in having secret ninja skills to hide but the fact of the matter is I have none. Perhaps that's just too disappointing for people to handle. I'm reminded of the animated film Rango in which the main protagonist, an "ordinary-guy" type character passes himself off as a slick gun fighter only to be unmasked later on much to the disappointment of those who came to believe in him. Now, while I certainly haven't tried to pass myself off as any kind of martial expert, nor have I survived any serious life-threatening encounters here in the city, certain people still seem to think I possess some deadly secret skills. I mean, if I was some white guy who did karate would people still assume this much about me? It could be that I'm misconstruing something myself here and twisting their comments to mean exactly what I want to believe about myself. Of course, it's not like I don't want to be good with my karate (and that's subjective anyway), but these misperceptions frustrate me at times. Especially when people think that I'm supposed to be some kind of "good fighter" or that I can "kick ass". This is what I believe most people think of martial arts as being about. But "fighting" implies something far more different than what my Okinawan ancestors were getting at when they said things like karate ni sente nashi. Training to attack and defend against an equally trained opponent is not the same to me as training to deal with unprovoked aggression and physical violence by someone intent on doing us harm. I think both types of training engender different states of mind. I could be wrong, as I have no real experience with either fighting or self-defense. But I do see that there is still a serious lack of understanding about this "humble tradition" from Okinawa. I guess in the end it doesn't really matter what people think about karate. No matter what I say, people are still going to see in it what they want. And if being Asian makes a person's Oriental martial fantasies go wild, what can I do? I guess I gotta just keep being real with myself.

Elbow SMASH!
- Hiji Até

Iain Abernethy on "Angles"

I was browsing YouTube yesterday looking for videos to help me get an idea for some "Wanshu" kata bunkai when I came across this video of an Iain Abernethy seminar in Colorado. I have read Abernethy's articles on The Basics of Bunkai as well as his Introduction to Applied Karate e-book so I was familiar with what he was talking about. But I just had to blog about this because he reiterates something that is helpful in understanding kata:

"...the angle doesn't represent the angle the opponent's at, it represents the angle that you shift to..." (1:34)

What he's talking about is the angle at which you begin the movements in the kata. For example, when executing the "Pinan Shodan" kata, I would first turn my body to face left. The way I was taught was that I am turning to face an imaginary opponent who has come onto my left side. Abernethy mentions this also in the video about how we think that is what the kata is telling us to do, to turn towards the opponent. I am no great judge of the legitimacy of martial arts teachers but I can say that when something makes sense, it makes sense. And what Iain Abernethy highlights here about angles makes sense because, when looked at within the context of bunkai, being off the opponents line of attack is, as Abernethy says, "advantageous". But for those of us who are factory-farmed karateka (like I was) we might view what he's saying as sacrilegious ("Abernethy's a white guy! He doesn't know what the Okinawan masters were really saying!"). What's ironic for the narrow-minded-stuck-in-tradition-karateka to know is that Abernethy is just simply stating something that yes, even the Okinawan karate masters of old knew well. Take for instance what Shoshin Nagamine wrote in his I-highly-recommend-that-you-read-it book, Tales of Okinawa's Great Masters:

"...Seek to understand the value of angular movement. Never face an opponent directly, and learn body change through mastering foot movement." (pg. 102)

And that was something Nagamine Sensei wrote after contemplating the teachings of one of his sensei, Choki Motobu, another famous Okinawan karate master. So you know people like Abernethy must be onto something if even the Okinawan masters have said it! I mean, I'm not doubting Abernethy's insights. I'm just pointing out that his discussion of angles in the kata makes more sense than what I was taught (and hey, I was actually taught by an Okinawan sensei!). If I were to apply what I was taught, it would probably look something like this:

As you watch that video, ask yourself, "Do those movements make any sense for actual self-defense? Is that how I would actually counter a kick or a punch? Do people really attack like that?" What's interesting too is finding this same discussion of angles in other martial disciplines (like this). It kind of lets me know that this is a critical yet common-martial arts-sense principle.

I should mention here that what I'm blahging about is pretty obvious for those who are already in the know. But this blog isn't for those that know....it's for karate students like me who are finally waking up! But I think all karateka need to have an understanding of these principles if we should seek to bring our training in line with how reality operates (or go ahead and stay stuck in your tradition, doesn't matter to me).

Elbow SMASH!
- Hiji Até

A non-exhaustive list of resources for the Karate mind

What's up folks. The following is an online list of people/resources that I have been frequently turning to for guidance in my karate journey:

1. Jesse Enkamp

2. Patrick McCarthy

3. Charles C. Goodin

4. Rory Miller

5. Iain Abernethy

6. Angel Lemus

Particularly, it was reading articles by Jesse Enkamp and Patrick McCarthy that first blew the doors off my closed-karate mind. I remember feeling very overwhelmed and just aghast at how much I really didn't know about the art I had been practicing for the last 4-5 years. It was honestly very painful to read well researched information that contradicted nearly all of what I thought I knew. I found the other resources simply by researching deeper into what I was reading from those two individuals. The only "non-karate" resource is Rory Miller, although his insight is applicable across the martial arts board. And like, Enkamp and McCarthy, Rory Miller blew my mind with his two books, Meditations on Violence and Facing Violence (plus his blog). If you were ever interested in taking martial arts classes for "self-defense (like I was) then I would highly suggest you read those two books of his.

I should also say that most of what I am blogging about is stuff that the above list of people have already talked about in depth. I'm not pretending to be original with this blog. What I am doing is flexing my creative karate muscle and attempting to mold this blog into a potent synthesis of organic thought.

Elbow SMASH!
- Hiji Até

Overcoming fear

I've had my copy of the Bubishi now for a couple weeks. Fascinating reading. Great historical resource. Grateful that Patrick McCarthy has provided us English speaking martial artists with such a well researched and well translated text. As I was reading "Article 2" under History and Philosophy I came across the following passage that spoke directly to why I was at one time such a frustrated and disgruntled karateka (I still am in some ways):

"Lacking confidence about self-protection is the mind's subliminal message to the body that more training is necessary to overcome fear. Indomitable fortitude illuminates the darkness of fear." (pg. 104)

On a deeper level, I can see now that what I was searching for when I first walked into that karate dojo was something to help me "overcome fear". I imagine that being proficient/effective in personal defensive skills can be a huge booster to a person's innermost confidence and self-esteem. To a point where you feel you don't have to fight because you don't feel you need to prove yourself; it's the other person who has that need when they call you names or spit on you. Your deep knowledge of self, gained from your training, allows you to walk away from those "monkey dances" and to exemplify what Shoshin Nagamine says in The Essence of Okinawan Karate-do, "The ultimate goal of all martial arts is to defeat the enemy without fighting back." (pg. 82). Now that sounds all well and good and ideal, but the key point to understand here, for me at least, is that your training has to actually help you develop functional self-defensive skill. You need the "dō" and the "jutsu", the hard and soft, "go" and "ju", yin and yang. Your martial arts may be verbal (non-violent communication strategies) or they may be physical. I don't believe you can just develop one over the other or that one is more important than the other. They are both integral to the whole. And I say I imagine that being proficient in martial skills is a huge booster because well, I honestly don't know what that feels like. I only know what it's like to feel so shitty about yourself as a martial artist and a person so as to make you feel like you want to quit or beat-up on weaker people because it makes you feel stronger. Training in a "traditional style" in a "traditional dojo" has had the same effect on me as a public school student; I grew to have an intense dislike of school and its subject matter. I felt that the subject matter had no relevance to my life. It was just testing me to see if I had the competence to become part of the status quo of which I  have no desire to be a part of. I have a desire to know myself and my purpose in life, not how my round head can fit into a square hole. So I think we need to radically re-imagine how we teach karate/martial arts so that it provides the learner with relevant subject matter that they can apply in their life (the jutsu) and the space for them to grow into their own individual martial potential so as to help them gain a deeper understanding of self (the dō).  

Elbow SMASH!
- Hiji Até

In search of a living karate

Had fun training yesterday with my friend Andrew. After going through my usual warm-up routine, somehow or another we got into doing bunkai. Andrew has some experience with martial arts (I believe it was some style of karate) so he knew about the kata and the basic "blocks" and "punches". So I shared with him some of my recent knowledge gleaned from Iain Abernethy (mostly from his "The Basics of Bunkai" articles) about the "age uke" (rising block), the "shuto-uke" (knife hand block) and a particular sequence of movements from the "Pinan Yondan" kata. And we talked about how a "block" isn't necessarily what it says it is. Same with a "punch" or a "kick". Then I talked to him about how important I thought it was to understand what Patrick McCarthy calls the "contextual premise" of the kata, which is the HAPV (Habitual Acts of Physical Violence). I whipped out my little black book of karate notes in which I wrote down the "36 acts of physical violence" and recited it to him. From there we used one of those acts (single lapel grab) as the basis for executing the "rising block". One particular movement that Andrew said he could never figure out was the gedan uke (lower block). So using some of the principles of body shifting and weight distribution found in the "stances" as well as the function of the "hikite" (pulling hand), we experimented with how the "lower block" might actually be applied (which began to look less like a "block" and more like a set-up for a strike of some kind). I write all of this just to say that I found myself to be genuinely excited about what we were doing. It was actually "fun" to think about possible applications for kata movements. And in realizing that I was having fun (and when I say "fun" I mean to say a genuine excitement in learning, not mindless and haphazard), I realized that a "living karate" lies somewhere within this realm of literal hands on experimentation. I think the modern pedagogical approach to karate results more in"conformity" rather than "proficiency". The rote repetition of "basics" (at least my understanding of it as blocks, punches, kicks), while certainly great for conditioning the body, has more to do with producing a kind of industrial-model "one-size-fits-all" karateka rather than a "free, creative martial artist". I think that has much to do with the introduction of this art to the Japanese in the late 19th and early 20th century; a country that was transitioning from the feudal era into the industrial era. From what I can remember in my readings, the Japanese martial arts establishment at the time looked down upon this raggedy looking martial practice from Okinawa and sort of "forced" them into adopting a more streamlined approach and look. Thus resulting in the belt/ranking system, the white pajama uniforms, and even the mindset towards training (which again I think was more about making sure you conformed to the status quo through martial-sounding things like "discipline of character"). It was that Japanese need for "pounding the nail that sticks up" in order to have harmony in the society. I don't believe it's necessarily good or bad that these things occurred. But I do believe that learning karate in that way is less "fun" and more "dead". There's nothing alive to me about endlessly repeating what everyone else does in the dojo so that you can look like everyone else. There's nothing exciting to me about winning a trophy in a tournament for doing a kata that everyone else knows, except that you did yours "better" (and those standards are arbitrary man). What is exciting to me is the act of acquiring serious martial skills that deal in the realm of "life and death" rather than "winning or losing points". I mean, I think tournaments/competitive events are great and they have their place in the society, but I think the practice of doing modern karate today is like cleaning and polishing and holding reverence for a realistic looking prop gun. That's not to say it's a bad thing; I don't necessarily think people who practice kendo today need to go back to the samurai days and carry an actual sword around with them (while that may make sense in war on a battlefield, I don't think it makes sense in peacetime around the city or neighborhood). What I think makes Okinawan karate so adaptable for today's modern world is that, as far as my understanding goes, it was not created for use on a battlefield to know how to take a person's life. It was created for means of "civilian self-defense" in order to counteract the aggression of someone engaging in habitual acts of physical violence (which had the risk of death of course). Battlefield use and civilian use have very different meanings to me: the former connotes more of an ideological/willful intention to do violence; the latter connotes more of like the violence an animal might employ to get themselves out of a life-threatening situation. This is gonna sound off-topic but stay with me here: I think the industrial-model of societal organization has had the effect of making us "soft" or "non-gritty". There's no balance with the "hard" or "grit". We no longer till the land for vegetables, we buy them in bags at a grocery store. We no longer catch and kill the animal for our food, we buy it wrapped in plastic on a foam tray. While life certainly has been made easier by this model, I think it leaves us humans lacking in "what's real". And I'm certainly not saying I have lots of experience with what's "real" (I'm a middle-class Asian American kid from the suburbs), but I can sense that modern martial artists (myself included) are sort of toying around in the dojo with an idea or assumption of what violence is (I mean it's like you might as well sit at home in a Hawaii Chair™ while playing the 2D version of Karateka). But to acquire skills in something that is real (facing violence) and is guided by profound spiritual principles to help you see the web of interconnection that we all share (thus promoting a profound respect for life) not only seems "fun" to me but necessary in the 21st century. 

Elbow SMASH.
-Hiji Até

You block his kick, then you punch

I'd like to open up this post with a quote from David Bohm taken from Margaret Wheatley's book Leadership and the New Science:

"For fragmentation is now very widespread, not only throughout society, but also in each individual; and this is leading to a kind of general confusion of the mind, which creates an endless series of problems and interferes with our clarity of perception so seriously as to prevent us from being able to solve most of them...The notion that all these fragments are separately existent is evidently an illusion, and this illusion cannot do other than lead to endless conflict and confusion."

This quote speaks directly I believe to the problem of Okinawan karate today (and other martial arts as well). It can be seen in the way that the kata are taught to the students without knowledge of function and in the way that we are taught basics (kihon) without knowledge of how that fits into the kata. The karate researcher and writer from Hawaii, Charles C. Goodin also makes a good point about fragmentation in his article, The Why of Bunkai: A Guide for Beginners:

"Once the movements of a kata are identified as specific techniques, the meanings become fixed. A 'block' has a certain meaning, as does a 'punch'. A stance has a certain configuration and weight distribution. A dynamic process is reduced to a series of still photographs."

I know for myself now when I train how difficult it is to get my mind out of thinking, "Okay now I'm blocking" Or, "Now I'm kicking". In our dojo, whenever we went through the kata, it was almost a given that any movement we did that resembled a "block" or a "punch" was referred to as a "block" or a "punch". In retrospect, practicing the kata in this way severely limits an understanding of the totality of what could be possible. I have read that other martial artists criticize karate for its impractical movements. I would have to agree considering how we were taught in my dojo. The karate that was taught to me was better suited for demonstrations and tournaments than it was for self-defense.

SIDE NOTE: To the credit of my Sensei however, I don't recall there being the advertising words "self-defense" painted on the glass window outside the dojo. So it was only my assumption that I would be learning "self-defense" when I entered that dojo. But I mean that's a strong assumption you know? It makes sense. I wasn't looking for a school to teach me how to "fight". My understanding of "fight" means, "Okay motherfucker, you insulted my momma. Let's go!". So I don't think you need to go to a dojo for that. But "self-defense" is more like, "Oh, you insulted my mother? That's okay. Your insults do not disturb my mind. But please don't lay an aggressive or violent hand upon me or I shall be forced to use my well practiced technique on your face." 

What I'm trying to point out here in this post is that the Newtonian world view of separately existing parts no longer applies. Another quote, this time from Margaret Wheatley herself:

"Until recently, we really believed that we could study the parts, no matter how many of them there were, to arrive at knowledge of the whole. We have reduced and described and separated things into cause and effect, and drawn the world in lines and boxes." (pg. 27)

So the effect that this worldview has had on karate is to make it a "dead karate". No life, no character. Soul-less. All students are required to practice the same basics, the same techniques, kiai at the same time, and then repeat to infinity. My Sensei often said to us after class though that he would have liked to teach us all individually because we were all at individual levels, but then how would he be able to hold class then? He'd be focusing only on one or two students to the detriment of the others. So business-wise that would not be viable; other students would get jealous, complain about favoritism and then quit; then there's like one or two students left and who's gonna pay the rent? But teaching-wise? I think that model would be essential. The same goes for the public school classroom. The students, despite their obvious individuality are having their small round heads pounded into even smaller square holes. Enough students are successful in this model that we are able to point to them as proof that this method works. This then implies that the other students are just not trying hard enough or are somehow not "smart" enough. In the dojo, I definitely felt like the student in both the "not trying hard enough" and "not smart enough" categories. Yes, I could do the basics the same if not better than other students. But when it came to the free-jazz improvisation of kumite for example, I was lost man. I felt stupid. My Sensei often joked that I was a "punching bag" in kumite. I kept asking myself, "What's going on here? I'm doing the basics pretty well, and yet when it comes time to apply that to kumite, it's like a huge disconnect". I mean, I recognize that it's not only my unfamiliarity with sparring, the fear of getting hit, poor understanding of timing and distance and other similar factors that contributes to this "punching bag" quality. But I always felt like I was smart enough to understand how things worked and that's what led me to become so frustrated with my training because I didn't know exactly what was not working! I always put the blame on myself for my perceived lack of skill. Little could I have imagined at the time that I was locked into a pedagogical model that was making it inherently difficult to have clarity on my so called "problems".

Elbow SMASH!
- Hiji Até

Perfectionism of form is a disease

So when I first came to Detroit, I was not thinking about training. I was in a mindset of "I'm no good with karate. I don't know what my goals are with training. I'm done with it." But as I've already written, I did end up starting a training routine. And I basically began by doing everything I could think of that we did in the dojo (warm-up, conditioning, kata) and just doing it outside (the Detroit summer was oppressively humid man....like Okinawa!). The only thing I couldn't practice at first was kumite. And so this was pretty much my initial training routine for the summer. The one thing that I thought would be best to focus on was the kata (of course what would karate be without kata?). Not only so that I would remember the kata, but also I was in a mindset of "I have to keep practicing the kata to understand them". Now, being the perfectionist that I am, I was never happy with my overall kata performances. I just always had this feeling of not doing the kata "good enough". One of the training tips my Sensei gave me a while ago had to do with picking out a certain section of the kata to work on (because it would be a waste of time to keep repeating the entire kata over and over again if I only wanted to improve on a specific portion of it). So that's what I would do. Focusing mainly on the so-called "higher" kata like Passai and especially Chinto, I would work on a sequence of movements within the kata that I thought I needed to improve upon. And I would do that over and over again because that's how I thought I was supposed to improve my karate. And of course, each time I did it I always felt it wasn't sharp enough or smooth enough or whatever. It was always lacking. Here's a video of me doing the kata "Chinto" at the park (taken by my neighbor and training partner Dave):

So yeah. That's what I did 3x a week at the park in the summer. The problem that I'm getting at here is with this "perfectionism". Let me quote you something from the blog of Rory Miller (someone whom I'll mention more often in future blogs):

"But fear of failure leads to a paralysis, sometimes from overthinking.  Sometimes from learned helplessness....I'm of course thinking of martial arts.  The perfectionists overtly try to avoid mistakes, seeking a visible perfection.  'Form.'  And these often divorce form from use.  So things can look perfect and not work.  And I wonder sometimes if the tendency of the perfectionists to avoid rough and tumble testing is just an extension of the fear of making mistakes.  You don't have to count the mistakes you don't know about, right?  And there is a potentially toxic teaching style with this.  If you point out every flaw, if nothing can ever be good or good enough, the student conditions at a very deep level that the safest strategy is to do nothing.  Be passive.  Never take risks.  This is 'learned helplessness' and it is an important aspect of training someone to be a victim."

When I read that I was like "Damn". That's exactly what I've ingrained. I would keep doing the movements in the kata, trying to perfect something I really didn't understand (physical abstraction) until I got sick of it, sick of myself for basically not being "perfect". And I highlighted "toxic teaching style" because that's how I felt we were taught in our dojo. Not on purpose, but it's like, that's just how my Sensei learned and that's how he taught us. I think part of my dissatisfaction with my form wasn't only from my own penchant for perfectionism but from constantly being reminded of every little movement I could be doing better. As if my ability to actually "do it right" was always just out of reach. And that's the thing, NOBODY can reach perfection. I guess what I'm saying is, the pedagogical approach my Sensei and the senior black belts had towards karate had the unintended affect of reinforcing the fear of failure and rigidity. Training sometimes felt like I was being picked at for every little blemish on my face. I would feel so ugly and unhappy afterwards. But it was like, "Dude! This is my face man. It's not gonna look like an airbrushed magazine model. Leave me alone!" But see that's the thing I'm trying to get at here with this post. If you have no understanding of how something functions, all you're told is how it's "supposed" to look, then you spend all your time trying to perfect something that's not even inherently "perfect" to begin with! What you should be spending time "perfecting" is the function of the thing you're doing. That makes more sense. Spending your time perfecting "form" (for me at least) is discouraging. And I had this funny thought that maybe this "perfectionism of form" leads to a sort of sadomasochism in training. Like you keep pounding on that makiwara (which physically hurts) cause you hate yourself for not being perfect. Or maybe you take out your self-hatred on a white belt (in a controlled manner of course, but you let that side kick fly a little bit harder than if you were sparring a senior student). It wasn't until I read some articles by Patrick McCarthy that I began to understand that the kata actually had a functional use. It was a real eye opener. I realized that if I had an understanding of what the movements meant in the kata (bunkai) then I would feel better about my overall performance of it. I don't know what that's comparable to; maybe like teaching an aspiring tennis player how to move their body and hit the ball, but they never actually learn with a real ball or a racket and they never actually play a tennis match...? Yeah I'm sure there's a better example. But my point is, it was liberating to discover that kata wasn't this dead thing that I just had to constantly repeat to infinity and never get right. There can be actual improvement associated with understanding function man! So that's what I'm trying to get a handle on now.

Elbow SMASH!
-Hiji Até

Stop trying to be witty and clever and just write!

I've been sitting here for over an hour now, writing and re-writing my thoughts as if I was trying to write a fucking novel or something. It's a BLAHG dammit! An electronic piece of paper that very few if any will read. So just write fool! Ain't nobody care.

Okay. That's what I'm doing. I'm writing. Focusing my thoughts now...

There's always so many things about karate that I'm thinking about, questioning, pondering. Two things that I wrote down to blog about:

1. Continuing to train even though you feel like you no longer know how
2. Feeling like the karate you've been learning for the past 5 years is just so...lacking

Number One:
What I mean here is that I'm now concerned with understanding the bunkai of the kata. I'm perceiving this to be the key in understanding karate as practical and effective self-defense. But because this isn't how we trained in our dojo, I'm confused as to how to implement a training regimen for myself that works to help in understanding bunkai. I definitely need a training partner right? I mean, spending all my time training alone isn't going to necessarily help me to understand how the applications work in reality. How I'm training right now is a bit haphazard. I always start with a warm-up/conditioning exercise routine. After that, it's like, what do I do? I've just been going over the kata in our curriculum (the Pinan series, Chinto, Passai, Rohai, etc) not only to re-freshen my memory but also to pick out curious/odd movements from them that I want to understand as an application. But then, when I'm doing that, I don't feel like I'm getting the conditioning I need. Imagining that you're "blocking" an opponent, but then learning that there really are no "blocks" can be downright confusing. That's how you learned you know? Your Sensei tells you, "okay now you turn to face a new opponent and block his punch or kick". Makes sense 'cause that's what it looks like you're doing in the kata...blocking and punching and kicking. But then, it doesn't make sense 'cause you're saying to yourself, "why am I blocking with my arms crossed like that?" Or, "why am I punching with one arm pulled back?", etc. So then I don't go through the kata as hard because I'm thinking about all the damn movements that I don't understand.

Number Two:
My newly stated goal is: Understanding how karate works as a means of civilian self-defense and becoming proficient at that. My original intention in training, however naive, was to learn "self-defense". Not because that's what I saw in a movie. Not because someone in my family did it. It's because, when I think of martial arts, I think of defending myself from physical violence. That was my "stereotype" of karate I suppose. I was ignorant as to how the actual karate of today has developed into martial-flavored physical fitness. I guess I thought they were still practicing like the "old-days". Haha. So that's what I mean by "lacking". Lacking in the thing that I wanted to learn most, self-defensive skill. That reminds me of the documentary, The Real Shaolin, where two of the four people followed in the film realize that the gongfu they were practicing really has nothing to do with defensive or fighting skill and more to do with acrobatic performance. Wouldn't it be funny to have a documentary called "The Real Karate"? Haha....

Alright, I've been sitting at this computer for too damn long.

That's all for now.

Elbow SMASH.
-Hiji Até

A poem

Paper tigers 
Screaming in white pajamas
Who are they fooling?

That's right folks, a poem. If its connection to modern karate isn't obvious, allow me to fill you in: for the most part, karate training as we know it today does not produce martial artists with functioning self-defensive skill. It produces paper tigers who sweat and kiai (the screaming) in white pajamas (the uniform), believing (or maybe just hoping?) that their punches and kicks will save them when the time comes. Better to realize sooner than later that honesty with one's self is the best policy. How does that saying go?

"A harmful truth is better than a useful lie." - Thomas Mann

Harmful cause it hurts man. It rips away at the thin martial veil covering your eyes. Sinks you to the bottom of yourself. Makes you feel vulnerable. Naked. Fearful. Don't get me wrong: I've been fortunate enough to train in a great dojo with a great down-to-earth Sensei. And I will always be grateful for what I've learned about myself and this art through him. But that don't mean I should shut my mouth if I'm sensing that something is wrong with the pedagogical approach to karate. It can be hard to speak up, especially in a traditional dojo environment where you fall into a culture of reverence for your "master" (I mean, my Sensei is literally a 9th-dan master). Perhaps it's the same kind of reverence that produces strange phenomena like this:

Or this:

I'm not saying that my Sensei would ever tell me to shut-up. I'm saying that it's difficult to speak up when you are locked into these hierarchies of "respect" (which is oftentimes just social conformity to the status quo). But things have got to start changing. What is the use of martial training that has no functional capacity? Not for the indiscriminate use of it on others of course, but for the continued development of a "living karate". The Okinawan art of percussive empty-handed self-defense that my ancestors have cultivated and developed through their genius has now unfortunately become what author Matthew Fox might call, "art for art's sake".

Elbow SMASH!
- Hiji Até

You can't spell "Detroit" without "DO IT"

Saw that on the wall of a recycling center here...it really does speak to the character of some of the folks I've met in the "D"...

So yeah, I've been living here in Detroit for the past 9 months now. I initially came here last May because I had read a book called The Next American Revolution by Grace Lee Boggs. It's still strange for me to say, but I literally felt "called" to come here. And it wasn't necessarily just the ideas presented in Grace's book that got me....it just felt so much larger...like there was an epic purpose to my life and I needed to go to Detroit to begin to understand what that was. Up until that time I had never gone that far east across the country (let alone driving by myself). I don't have any family in Michigan, but interestingly enough my father went to Michigan State University on the GI bill in the '70's, so there are some family friends in Lansing (an hour or so away from the D), but none in the city of Detroit. Point is, there wasn't going to be anyone to help ease the transition when I got here. Scary as that was, nine months later that fear seems so trivial. I often joke with people here that I've made more friends in just these past few months than I ever have living in LA for the past 15 years! I guess that says a lot about me doesn't it...

Anyway, why am I writing all that? Cause I can dude! This is my blog; I'll say whatever the F-YOU-SEE-KAY I want! HA! Alright, calm down. No need to get nasty with the people. I can tell you that I never had the intention of writing any of these thoughts down. I mean, that's why I keep a journal...a private journal. And I mean, I guess since that's private no one except me gets to see it. But I mean, what's so special about my thoughts? Well shit man, if people wanna follow the status updates and tweets of their favorite celebrity, then why the hell can't I blog my thoughts into the cyber universe? The thoughts of those celebrities ain't anymore special than mine right? Right. Everybody got to get the hubris in them sometime, you know what I mean?

Okay, so what does all this have to do with karate? I know it's not so obvious now but this blog is an attempt to lay out some ideas, thoughts, connections, etc. about this art that I've been practicing for the past 5 years. What's interesting is that when I was getting ready to drive out here, I thought that I was going to quit my training. I was an extremely frustrated karateka who didn't understand my place in the martial spectrum of things. I mean, 5 years of training ain't that long, but it was long enough (and I was old enough in my late twenties) to begin to seriously ask myself what I was doing with karate. I was feeling like it was time to stop deluding myself about my martial aspirations, admit to my sucky-ness and just move on. Little did I know that I would come to Detroit and actually even begin "teaching" karate! Ha! That's an irony if I ever saw one (or heard one or...whatever). But that's what happened. It started off innocently enough by showing my karate to a friend at the local island park. From there it progressed, by word of my friend's mouth, that I was doing karate at the park and that if anyone wanted to come and train with me they were quite welcome. So began a 3-day-a-week training routine for the next 4 months; which is basically what my training routine was in LA! Most of the time it was by myself (which is how I wanted it), but my neighbor Dave was loyal enough to keep coming out to train with me as often as he could. Then winter came (damn that cold!). It was difficult to find a space to train for 3-4 months. I tried training in the living room of the rented flat we have here; I got a text from the upstairs neighbor asking me what all the pounding noises were and could I please stop (okay so yeah it was like 11 at night). But that was a no-go. In December I "tried" working with a local church to have a once a week karate class for the young people in the neighborhood. Held that space every Saturday for a month before I decided that I didn't have the conviction (yet) that it would work (only 2 people ever came, and they were people I knew). But then starting last month (February) I was fortunate enough to get a space at a local artists gallery in Southwest Detroit. With the stipulation that I would be holding karate "classes", I am now currently using the space 3 days a week, free of charge, for my own training. And funny enough, that's the only reason I wanted to get these spaces, so that I wouldn't have to stop training! But I guess you can't expect to do something "exotic" like martial arts somewhere and not have some people be interested in that. Point is, despite 3 days being the minimum I could be training, I am glad that I even have the space to be DOING IT at all. And no, I am not trying to conclude my blogs with clever sentences that connect it to the title. Only sometimes.

Elbow SMASH!
- Hiji Até

Showing Fukyukata Ichi at Belle Isle.

There is no try

"Don't think! Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do things." - Ray Bradbury

Got that quote from Seth Godin's book, The Icarus Deception. I highly recommend it for the stuck-in-the-closet artists like me who have been too timid to let their genius shine forth. Anyways, I had this idea that instead of writing out my thoughts on karate only in my private journal, I would just do the same thing but "in public" so to speak. Maybe someone will read one of these blahgs and connect to it? I don't know. I often hesitate upon doing these types of things. I guess I'm looking to break the habit of hiding. We'll see how it goes. "Don't think!". Okay. Here we go...

About that name of the blog: I was doing my laundry yesterday and I was reading Margaret J. Wheatley's "Leadership and the New Science". This "new science" is about the "...revolutionary discoveries in quantum physics, chaos theory and biology that are overturning the models of science that have dominated for centuries" (from the back cover). And so I was reading this book and I just kept getting blown away by what she was saying and the connections it has to martial arts and karate in particular. And I said to myself, "Damn man. That's what I am. That's what I want to be with my karate....quantum!" So yeah, that's the origins of the name. A "karateka" for those that don't know is Japanese for someone who practices karate.

That's all for now.

Elbow SMASH!
-Hiji Até