Kotsu Kotsu

A friend wrote to me that she was having anxiety problems, and that her husband is having difficulty sleeping. "Aren't you both still practicing yoga?" I asked. "The breathing is usually really great for stress and sleep problems." "Oh, yes, we both still go regularly, but more for the stretching and flexibility and less for the breathing." Two weeks previously I had attended a yoga class at a community center, and I believe I heard the words "inhale," or "exhale," approximately four times in an hour. When I tell people about the benefits of yoga and they take a class that doesn't emphasize breathing, I feel like I recommended a great restaurant and they ended up in the fast food place next door. Yoga taught without incorporating breathing is like eating food without nutrition. It may make you feel good but ultimately it doesn't sustain you. I understand. The benefits of any practice are highly dependent on the teac...

The way you think really affects your ability to do things.

I made the apple pie in this picture. When it was finished I had to laugh. It looks so good with that perfect, flaky, whole wheat pastry crust. Unfortunately, I used apple slices that had been too long in the freezer. The pie was inedible! Sensei uses this metaphor to describe technique. He'll throw someone with big, flamboyant movements, with his arms and fingers extended and a mean look on his face. Then he does the same thing, only this time he tells uke to resist. Impossible! The technique looks great until uke resists, and then we see that it's ineffective. Just like the apple pie, beautiful, but not what it seems. Then Sensei will do the technique again, only without the showmanship: more relaxed, with correct internal feeling . Amazingly powerful. No one can resist. And he can throw hard or soft, throwing large, flexible and fast people, or small, inexperienced beginners, all with the same effect. I've watched this in person, I've watched on videotape, I...

When he teaches aikido, Sensei talks about positive mind. Positive mind is one of the four basic principles of Kokikai Aikido . We usually think about positive mind in two ways. The first is feeling confident, believing in yourself, and letting go of any thoughts about "I can't" or "I'm weak" or "I'm not good enough" or "This isn't going to work out well for me." That's the idea Sensei is most likely to talk about when he teaches. When he says "remove impurities," he's talking about something like this, rather than something your Sunday School teacher might have said! The second way of thinking of positive mind isn't really different, but we tend to think of it as different, because we don't usually pay attention to how the mind and the body are connected. This has to do with the way your state of mind affects your body. You can see directly how this is true. Stand up in your best, natural stanc...

Often when beginning students practice an aikido technique they are frustrated at their inability to do the techniques correctly. (Actually, although they may be working on a different level of refinement, advanced students often feel the same way!) I have had students ask me whether we couldn't just focus on a few techniques until they get them "right," and then progress on to the next set, etc. I have never taught that way, mostly because my instructor doesn't teach that way, and Sensei doesn't teach that way. After a number of years, I realized that I did have a grasp of a great number of techniques, although I never remember devoting particular attention to any one. It was my piano teacher, David Leonhardt , who articulated why this worked in a lesson this morning. I asked, "Are you sure I should be moving on to the next exercise? I'm still pretty sloppy on this one in a lot of ways." He said, "Your goal in playing music isn't t...

Some Kokikai dojo display photos of previous Kokikai Winter and Summer Camps . Each shows 200 or so people lined up in some configuration around Sensei . When we see them, each of us does the same thing: "Here's me!" Those 30 or 40 pixels that form the shape of my head are so important to me! Meanwhile, Sensei's focus is on arranging all those forms to make a beautiful image: straight lines, clean edges, hands folded. Sometimes, to put my ego in the back seat for a while, I imagine myself as a blotch of paint in Sensei's pointillist canvas. Then Gil Fronsdal says "Each of you has within you a tremendous beauty. and if you only knew how beautiful you are, you would fall on your knees and bow to yourself." Am I important? Or are I insignificant? Am I one pixel on the great canvas? Or am I worthy of worship? I puzzle on this as I drive to work. Then I see a heron winging across the highway, its wings flapping in lazy beats, and I am transport...

Last weekend the radio show  This American Life  issued a retraction of a program they broadcast in January. "Mr. Daisy and the Apple Factory"  was an excerpt of a one-man show. Mike Daisy, a self-described "worshipper in the cult of Mac" went to find out first-hand about the working conditions of Chinese factory workers. I was not the only one who found the story powerful. Daisy is a great storyteller. The show was the most downloaded in This American Life's history. Then it was discovered that many of the elements of Mike Daisy's story are "a mix of things that he just heard about or researched." As in: they didn't happen to him. As in: saying that they did is not the truth. In his interview with This American Life host, Ira Glass, Daisy defends his work, although he admits it's inappropriate for a journalistic radio program: "I stand by it as a theatrical work. I stand by how it makes people see and care about the situation...