Month: June 2010

From Shiro Kuma's Weblog by kumafr

Yelling & retreating

This week-end in Budapest after a nice seminar organized by Lazslo, we went to a zoo where I had the honour of meeting the “king of the animals”, a baby lion (5 months old). I have been living with cats all my life (I have 3 cats) and this chance offered by Lazslo to meet an actual lion was something I was eager to experience.

Before I entered the cage, another man was playing with him and it was nice to watch. I was hoping to have the same kind of playing time with the young lion. But as you can see on the picture, when I entered the cage, the little guy got so frightened of me that he stepped back and didn’t want to getting close to me. At what point he eventually  yelled and “roared” at me while getting protected behind the leg of his trainer. It took him 30 minutes to come to me but he never stayed. When he was away, his eyes and ears were always turned towards me.

The trainer said that this was the first time she was seeing this reaction with a human as this is the typical attitude of the young lion when facing his lion father. This little guy was afraid of me even though my attitude was very open. Some will say that this is also why young students are afraid of me.

Nevertheless I found that interesting and sad. Interesting because it proves that the sakki might be really something that is changing our attitude, and sad because I would have loved to play with this oversized kitty as I do with my own cats.

When we undergo the sakki test, something is revealed and grows and unfolds more over the years, this is why training is so important. Truth does not lie in the technique but in the attitude.

Keep going!

From Shiro Kuma's Weblog by kumafr

the flow is permanent adaptation

When we begin the study of the bujinkan arts we are surprised to hear the teacher speaking of nagare (流れ, flow). Our intention when entering a dôjô was to learn a set of fighting techniques but we finally ended up learning how to flow with things!

The first encounter with this “flowing reality” is when we learn the uke nagashi. Uke nagashi is wrongly translated as blocking and is very far from reality and many should try to understand it in order to better their taijutsu.

Uke (受け) is the receiver of the technique in martial arts but ukemi (受身, the fall) also has the meaning of “passive  attitude”, from that we understand that uke nagashi, receiving in a flow, can also mean “flowing passively in a natural manner”. As you see the idea of “blocking” is not the only thing here!

In fact uke nagashi has multiple forms such as: Absorbing, Blocking, Countering, Deflecting, and Evading (remember the first letters of each word read:  ABCDE). The flow with which we act is not impeding the movement on the contrary. Flowing in the technique is to follow a natural succession of actions created by the encounter. As sensei said last week, there is no possibility to change what is happening, the only thing to do is to adapt to it. This is the true definition of nagare.

Whatever event  happening on the planet we are nothing and cannot modify the outcome of it, but as an individual we have the power to adapt our actions to it and to flow mindlessly with it. This flow is similar to the crossing of a river, thinking and fighting against the stream is useless. Trying to understand it will not change its power,  we just have to follow its flow and to drift through it until we reach safely the other bank.

In the dôjô, all our movements should be done according to this natural flow. We should wait “passively” and react when the opportunity emerges. Taijutsu is nagare and nagare is achieved when thinking, analysing and pre-conceiving are abandoned.

Adaptation is the essence of nagare!