“When facing a single tree, if you look at a single one of its red leaves, you will not see all the others. When the eye is not set on one leaf, and you face the tree with nothing at all in mind, any number of leaves are visible to the eye without limit.” - Takuan Soho
The best Aikidoists focus on the right things. In the beginning of our training, it is thought that students should focus more on negative things like failure, mistakes, and flaws. The reason why is that these things are thought to give us the surest picture of where we are in our self-development. Looking for the negative is supposed to help us to defeat others because we get “good at finding weak points” or suki wo mitsukeru noga jozu desu (隙を見つけるのが上手です). Students of the martial arts are supposed to be consummate self-developers and so this way of emphasizing the negative is supposed to desensitize them to failure and enable them to improve faster. Unemotionally looking at ourselves this way enables us to create a cycle where we can fall down, we get up, we re-evaluate, and then we improve. Perhaps that is why Furuya Sensei once wrote, “To fail is the starting point of further study.” The main downside is that when we habitually search for the negative, we can accidentally cultivate a mind which can only see negativity and then our outlook can become inherently negative.
When students have cultivated a mind that can easily see the negative openings, then they should start to shift their approach to training to be more balanced. When we have balance, we can unemotionally see what we did wrong but also and also take to heart the things that they did right. We might call this the well-adjusted student.
In class, students often get confused when they watch a teacher demonstrate a technique. This confusion occurs because teaching styles and points of emphasis tend to vary from person to person and also depend on things like body type, gender, and ability level. Here is a process that I use when I watch a teacher demonstrating a technique. First, I try to determine what technique the teacher is doing. Is it ikkyo, kotegaeshi, or some other technique I have done before? Secondly, if it is a technique that I have done, then I try to look for similarities. I use these first two steps to establish a baseline. Thirdly, I look for the things that are different from how I do it. Finally, I try to listen closely to the points the teacher is emphasizing. The last two steps help me to execute the technique whichever way the teacher is demonstrating it. I also use this process for techniques that I haven’t done or seen before. The reason why it also works is because the body only moves in specific ways and if I can notice a similar or difference then I can likely figure out and recreate what the teacher is doing.
Furuya Sensei advocated for something he referred to as “saikan kobai” [sic] or “the elegant apricot flower and the strong plum blossom.” He said, “Saikan kobai means to focus too much on war makes us rough and crude while the emphasis on too much beauty makes us weak.” Thus, we should not emphasize too much of any one thing. The goal of Aikido is to develop balance not only in body but in mind as well.
Today’s goal: Count our victories as much as you emphasize our defeats.
Watch this video to better understand focus