June, 2002
A Special Place
Previous Issues
Our dojo isn’t like the usual classroom. At the
very front, posted for every student to see, are all the answers.
Listed on a board (and not even in Japanese) are the
four principles of Aikido Kokikai. When you apply these four simple principles,
everything works beautifully. Whether it’s Aikido technique. Or just
regular things in your everyday life.
Having those principles so prominently posted, you'd
think people would come into our dojo and leave five minutes later with
all our secrets, having read these four principles, committed them to
memory, and perhaps vowed to follow them every waking moment. The reason
this doesn’t happen is, those principles are a little tricky. One
of them in particular.
It says, "Keep one-point."
This principle always requires a little explanation.
Okay, maybe a lot. The other principles, like "Find Correct Posture",
mean something to us instinctively when we read them. But people who are
new to Aikido don’t know what a one-point is. So it’s
a little hard for them to figure out how to go about keeping it.
So here's the quick rundown: One-point is a place about
two inches below your belly button. If you develop an awareness for one-point,
you'll be calmer and physically more stable. It will make Aikido technique
work like a breeze, and it will make your life feel more effortless and
pleasant than ever. There. Have you got it yet?
But when you’ve been a keeper of one-point for more
than a few months, or perhaps a few years, one-point begins to feel like
something else. It’s not simply a place inside of you. It becomes
a place all around you, wherever it is you happen to be. It's a place
where you feel totally at home.
Think back in your life to when you were a kid. Did you
have a place that you could go that you felt totally at peace, at home,
and confident, a place where you could totally be yourself? That’s
the kind of place I’m talking about. That’s what it feels like
when you are keeping one-point.
I know of a kid who, when he was little, looked forward
more than anything to the beginning of summer vacation. He was a pretty
lucky little kid, because his mom was home all summer, and she was, after
all, his favorite person in the world. For the first two weeks of summer,
he’d follow her around so close that if she turned around too quickly
she’d risk stepping on him. (She never did.) But what she did
do was listen to every word he said, every crazy idea, every made-up story,
like it was the most important thing ever said in the history of the world.
He told her how he planned to make a dune buggy just
like the kind the Banana Splits had on TV. (He actually started building
one in their family room.) He told her how it was possible to balance
on ice skates, and why she didn’t need to worry about doing it herself.
He told her about the mission to the moon, what the planets were made
of, and how magic tricks worked. She always seemed fascinated. And since
she didn’t seem to have encountered any of this knowledge before,
the little kid just kept talking.
He didn’t talk this much at school-—that was
far too scary a place. But at home, with his mom, he was totally at peace,
calm, and confident. He was completely himself. He didn’t know the
first thing about keeping one-point. But the feeling of one-point was
all around him.
Maybe that’s how we should tell people about one-point.
Yes, it’s a place somewhere in your lower abdomen. But what it becomes
is more like that special place you used to go as a kid, where you were
totally at home. Keeping one-point is simply the process of making that
place portable. You walk, and that place walks with you.
I think that in even some of the most miserable childhoods,
a place like this is found. In Frank McCourt’s book, Angela’s
Ashes, he talks about how it rained constantly in the town where he
grew up, how many people were always sick, how his father spent all their
money on booze, how they lived in an apartment the bottom floor of which
filled with water during the rainiest season. But he also talks about
how the whole family would go upstairs to the dry second floor, and be
warm by the fire, and call it Italy: "It looks like it’s time
for us to go to Italy." That’s where he could feel dry, warm,
happy, and comfortable for a while. That’s where one-point surrounded
him.
It’s too bad that we don’t all learn about
keeping one-point when we are kids. That way perhaps catching a feeling
of peacefulness would be as second nature to us as the many other things
we learn when we’re young.
But perhaps there’s a reason it works out this way. When we do discover Aikido and learn about one-point as adults, we value it in a way that we couldn’t as kids. It brings us back to a special place that we hadn’t visited in years. And we decide that we’d like to stay.
Check Your
Shoelaces
Knowing how to keep one-point is like knowing how to tie your shoes. It's
a skill. It's relatively simple—though at first it seems a little
complex. And it's something that can really mess things up for you if
you don't know how to do it.
Imagine if, as a kid, no one had ever thought
to teach you to tie your shoes. It wouldn't have made much difference
when you were young. You would just have gone around barefoot most of
the time. And heck, there’s always Velcro.
But as an adult, things would start to get
difficult. You’d feel self-conscious when you went out, your shoelaces
always dangling, threatening to drop you to the ground at any instant.
And inevitably, you’d find yourself getting tripped up just when
it mattered most. Falling on your face as you walked up to give your commencement
speech. Tripping when you stood up to leave at the end of a job interview.
Crashing catastrophically into the table at a posh restaurant when you
stood up to gallantly help your date with her coat, or to go to the powder
room. All because of those damn shoelaces. Such a little thing, with such
a big effect on everything.
Of course, this would never actually happen.
Because someone could teach you to tie your shoes in about ten minutes.
But learning to keep one-point—a skill that can increase your effectiveness
at anything, make you feel calmer, help you experience greater happiness,
help you feel much less stress—takes about five!
If we learned to keep one-point when we
were kids, finding calmness when we need it would seem as simple to us
as other routine tasks, like using a stapler, dialing the phone—or
tying our shoes. Instead, most of us wind up as adults with the idea that
developing a calm and peaceful mind is something incredibly complex, something
that is for gurus who have a whole life to devote to this pursuit.
Until we stumble on Aikido. In five minutes, we get the sensation of one-point
for the first time. We think, "Wow, that was cool! And it was so
easy!" And maybe we tally up the number of years we spent tripping
through life.
Of course, we can always get better at it. (Have you ever noticed how fast you can tie your shoes?) But the point is, being calm by keeping one-point is not something that’s mysterious, confusing, and complex. It’s pretty simple. I’ve taught five-year-olds how to do it. Whereas I’ve never ever had any success teaching a kid to tie his shoes.
Upcoming Events
Open Mat is from 5:45-7 PM on the following Fridays:
June 7, 14, and 28.
Beginners’ Class, is Wednesday, June 12 from 7-8 PM.
Ran Tori Class is Wednesday, June 19 from 7-8 PM.
Weapons Class is June 19 from 8-9 PM.
Video Night is June 27 at 9 PM.
Summer Camp with Maruyama Sensei is July 25-28. Registration forms are
in the dojo.
Maruyama Sensei’s Rochester Seminar is August 3-4.
Recent Testing
The following people tested for their next rank in May.
For 6th Kyu, Ted Leroy, Haigo Setrakian, and Jaby Thomas. For 5th Kyu,
Liz Swenson and Anne Bennett. And for 3rd Kyu Brian Lachance. Congratulations
to all on being promoted to your next rank.
Nikyo Monthly Web Banner
This month features the third and last of three banners designed for Nikyo
Monthly by Christine Kennedy. Which did you like best: April, May, or
June? (Click on the links at the top of the page to see previous month's
banners.) Send an e-mail to jlahue@frontiernet.net with your vote for
the banner we should continue to use for Nikyo Monthly. And thank you,
Christine, for the great designs!
Whoever makes home seem to the young
dearer and more happy, is a public benefactor.
- Henry Ward Beecher