Adam Mitchell [00:00:00]:
Welcome to Shugyo, reflections on the path to self mastery and forging the way. My name is Adam Mitchell. I'm your host and fellow student along this path. I can remember in 1996, I was training to get a seminar with, Shoto Tanemura Sensei. He was teaching some kobudo taijutsu basics. And in this training, I somehow figured that, of course, I knew better. As a result, because I knew better, I could elevate my training experience inside the container, of what he was teaching. I could go hard.
Adam Mitchell [00:00:36]:
I could go fast. I could go real, you new, and I'll never forget the look, that he gave me when he saw me doing this. I have to say he said nothing to me. He didn't say anything directly to me. I kept going hard, and instead of following precisely what he said to do, I just pushed and pushed and pushed. And, Yeah. You know what? I know that it aggravated pretty much every training partner that I worked with. But until I got into the rotation with this one specific, fellow, he was a 6th Dan.
Adam Mitchell [00:01:08]:
And he simply when I began training with him, he simply looked at me and he said, stop. And then he inquired standing there with all the people around us in the dojo training. We the 2 of us were just standing there looking at each other. I stopped putting my hands down. I said, alright. What's going on? And he said, why are you here? And my response was if, you know, if I recall correctly was something like, well, to learn from Tanemura sensei. And his response was, what you're doing in what he is teaching are not the same thing. So why are you here? My emotions were a little bit split at the time because I really felt like a, you know, I felt like a dipshit, but I also felt as though I was being challenged, and I kind of appreciated that.
Adam Mitchell [00:01:53]:
And the problem was, as I look back at it, I was really doing nothing other than occupying the valuable time that others had invested in learning. They had invested in traveling here to study with such a great teacher and to immerse themselves in this art art and to work with other high level arts. And here I am robbing that experience of them. But I didn't care because with my own arrogance, my own immature desire, I was out to pursue something really, that I knew nothing about. I was doing technique that was and should have been really reserved for the senior students. But because, there was one person there that thought well of me, and invited me into the training and and he was trusted by the other senior students. I'm sure that I did a really good job of embarrassing him for being there. You know, I had this notion really when I was there that I could kick all their asses, take that out on the street, and that was really my attitude as a young man.
Adam Mitchell [00:02:50]:
That's how I approach this. That's what I was looking for. That's what I was after. So why shouldn't I be training hard and why shouldn't I be looking for that kind of stuff in this training? As I look back at it, I was really kind of making it up as I went. I was playing along. I was trying to make it real and show up as someone that I, I really wasn't. There was there was quite a bit of insecurity that I was probably struggling with, and it's something that I see constantly, now as the role of a teacher. The students coming into my dojo when I'm at seminars, when I'm even among my own colleagues.
Adam Mitchell [00:03:28]:
I really get how, how, mister Tanamura, Tanemura sensei, may have felt looking at me. I think I understand that new, and I can feel that let down. But, you know, following this experience, I don't think that my relationship with anyone in that room, was ever the same. And and you new, why should it have been? I wasn't there, to learn as they were. However, that one lesson really projected me into a new way of approaching Budo where I realized several years later, what I was deeply jinenkan. And when I left that training and I left the experience I specifically recall even as young and as immature as I was in those days as angry as I was as insecure that was missing. There was something there that I didn't get. I remember driving, home, from that seminar that had happened about 4 hours from, where my dojo was, where I lived.
Adam Mitchell [00:04:44]:
And I remember this sort of void this, like, I didn't re I I know that there was something there and it wasn't made available to me or I didn't make myself available to it. And what did that mean? Some years later, I was able to discover that and what it was is it was to learn how to learn. I'm standing in a converted garage in the suburbs of Baltimore on a February morning. I had been invited personally by Manaka Sensei after writing him a letter, to train with him since he was teaching at the time taijutsu, and it was myself and I was with 4 only 4 other students. And I remember it was absolutely frigid in the dojo. And he explains to me in that training, one of the first things that he that sensei explained to me immediately that there are 4 pillars of Kobudo and they are to have a straight back, to have low hips to have your elbows in and to be able to move from your tanden. But fundamentally, for right now, only focus on 3 and always fall back on these 3. Always say to yourself, if the technique isn't working, check these 3, then move on to the 4th.
Adam Mitchell [00:06:09]:
Straight back. Is your back straight york are you lurching? Are you off balance? Are your shoulder lines not in alignment with the hips? Low hips. So do you have stability in your legs? Are your knees in alignment over your feet? And your elbows in? Are your shoulders relaxed? Is your neck relaxed? Is your the muscles in your face relaxed? And then it clicked. You know, while my approach to training in that time since, I had been at that seminar with, with Tanemura Sensei, my approach to training had matured. I was less arrogant and more focused on fundamentals. This had all helped me to, be, you know, more accepted into this dojo for sure, but I really still had no template to understand what I was doing. Up to this point, even though, Manaka sensei had had welcomed me into the training, even though my own dojo had grown, I still really didn't understand how to learn. I'd been winging it.
Adam Mitchell [00:07:11]:
It was sort of this combination of my own desire to fight. I was grappling competitively at the time, and this had, all kind of morphed with my own attraction to Japanese culture and sort of this borderline sadistic willingness to do exactly what some Japanese dude in a gi was telling me to do. So with this sort of this new model that Mahopac sense it had given to me, I had something to always keep me in check. It was like a new reference for everything for everything that my body was doing. Finally, there was something even though there were all these books, even though there were all these manuals, there were all these, these things that I had gotten from other instructors at workshops and seminars, and I had traveled and I had trained. I really didn't know how to learn this stuff. Like in Zazen, when my mind wanders, I would return to 1. When my techniques wandered, now I could return to these pillars that Manaka sensei had taught me.
Adam Mitchell [00:08:11]:
Is my back straight? You know, with my head, is it leaning one way or the other? Are my knees bent and pointing in the same direction as my feet? Are my elbows in? And like I just said, are my shoulders relaxed? Are my hands soft? And without fail, I probably almost never was able to say yes to each of the question whenever I felt stuck and this became the compass towards discovering my errors along the path and in the kobudo. And this really sort of set me up to look for what are the pillars in the next step? What are the pillars in this learning that I really have to use as my foundation? What are those points in what it is that I'm learning that I can really use as my compass? And these four pillars, straight back, bent knees, low hips, elbows in, and tan den. Those four things, the three things of my body. To this day, they are always what I follow-up with whenever anything goes wrong. So suddenly this whole shut up and train attitude shifted to shut up and learn. And through this, I discovered more about the york of those harder to learn things, you know, like Kyusho. I became, a student of Shiatsu. I also more deeply really understood and found more reason to push my own healing practices and my chi kong pursuits.
Adam Mitchell [00:09:51]:
I became more fluent in looking with even looking in a photograph of a student, and being able to root out the course of a technique and being able to see what was going on, to be able to see what was happening before and what that person what what would be happening after just by what Sensei had taught me. I was able to see the, sort of the overt flaws or the obvious impact and even deadliness of a technique. And I discovered new lessons in the position just of someone's fingers. I'd be able to look at someone doing a lunge punch or movement with a sword and just to look at the alignment of the feet, I knew what the body was doing. I'd look at the lean of the shoulders. I look at the direction of the hips. I'd look at their kamai in relationship to the direction of their nose. I'd be able to see the tension in their eyes would be an indicator of what muscles were engaged in their face and what that meant to their neck and thus what it meant to their spine and just by learning how to learn everything had completely changed.
Adam Mitchell [00:11:01]:
You know, there's this saying in the art that I study, and it's kindred arts, Kasumi dojo. It's like the lifting the veil of fog. You know, it's talked about a lot in in our arts, and it kinda has this, like, mystical coolness, like, oh, the Kasumi new ho. And I really wonder how many high ranking, martial artists in this art really understand this york are they simply kind of playing in the fog as I was. I challenge you in this reflection. I challenge you to learn a little bit more this week on how to learn. I'm not challenging you to learn something new. I'm not challenging you to look at how you're learning.
Adam Mitchell [00:11:49]:
I'm challenging you to discover one new way that you can become a better student. I want you to consider this week, what is something that I can do so that I can become better at learning this art? Maybe refrain from shouting the anthem to others. Shut up and train, and begin whispering to yourself. Shut up and learn. And it's really not that hard. In fact, we can start now. Example, is your back straight?
