Northern Wind

Blame it on me being a visual person, but I've always liked using concrete ideas and expressions to illustrate a concept or point, both to myself and to students I may be working with. One of those analogies has really intrigued me for a while now, especially how it relates to both judo and aikido. The question comes up, from time to time, among those who practice both arts, when would you use one as opposed to the other? My answer (for the time being, as always) is that it depends on my relationship to uke's "sphere of influence." First of all, let me define what I mean by "sphere of influence." I imagine it as a giant bubble that surrounds each of us, and it represents a section of air or space where my hands (primarily, although it includes feet, too) have the greatest ability to affect something or someone else. The outer edge of that sphere, then, would be the furthest extent of my reach. If I hold my hand out at arm's length and I can touch it, it...

In a post the other day, I talked about how trying to decide which art is best is kind of silly, especially when thinking about what we do as an "art". Then Sensei Strange talked about the evolution of an art as compared to the koryu schools, who would like to keep things pretty much as they had been done for centuries. Both of us even mentioned Picasso, and it reminded me of something. In college, where I studied graphic design, there would always be students who wanted to push the envelope with their work, like with typography, for example. They'd seen the likes of designer David Carson, who got all crazy with type, grunged it up, used numbers for letters, and completely turned it on it's head in ways that had never been seen before, and wanted to do take the same kind of creative leaps. The professors, meanwhile, had a bit of a challenge on their hands. On one hand, they didn't want to stifle a young student's creative urges. They didn't want to say, ...

I recently read this interesting article on Aikido Journal by Toby Threadgill, entitled " Assumptions ."  It begins: "Recently I was introduced to a gentleman interested in martial arts training. He was not really aware of what I teach or of what constitutes Nihon Koryu Jujutsu. He just assumed that because I taught it, that I must believe it to be “the best”. When I told him I did not believe the art I taught to be “the best”, an uncomfortable silence ensued. I finally broke this taciturn moment by explaining that there is actually no such thing as a “best” martial art." It's a nice article, and I don't think I could improve upon it by anything that I say. Ultimately, no one is bulletproof. No art art will save you 100% of the time under 100% of circumstances. And the purpose of studying any given art will be vastly different from a police officer to a retired school teacher.  In terms of practicallity, it's almost like saying a hammer is the best tool ...