Time and timing - part 1

A couple of days ago I was standing at the bus stop in the morning and saw two cars parking on the opposite side of the street. I could see their alarm lights blinking because it was still dark.

Their timing was very interesting, almost as if they were parts of a clock: one alarm the 'tic' the other the 'tac'. I noticed that if I stare at them and focus on the lights they seem to blink faster. If I concentrate even more, they will seem to blink very quickly. When I cleared my mind and just looked at the street with my brain turned off (if was easy at 5.30am) they were blinking less frequently.

This was very interesting because I've just read about the perception of time in martial arts recently. I read that if you clear your mind time seems to slow down. If it slows down it means that your reaction time decreases giving you 'streched' time to react to any attack more quickly. It was nice to see this effect in reality. Otherwise the article would have been just a couple of paragraphs about the mystery of time in martial arts.

This is why old Japanese martial arts (Koryu) teach you to stare at a distant mountain instead of your opponent. Staring and focusing too hard is not good :) . It's a bit like "freezing" without any shock experience.

Some aikido masters tell you to consider this effect and behave accordingly. Since there's no mountain in the indoors dojo it would be hard to focus on it unless one wall's wallpaper shows mountain Fuji (which I think would be nice :P). Instead you should watch the whole picture and should not focus on a particular attack (e.g. shomenuchi) but a moving figure, at least as far as I understand from the article. Probably this is what we would describe as looking for the attacker's intention to attack and start a technique before the opponent moves (as we react on his intention to start).

I'll continue with my other theories and thoughts about timing in another post later. Until that you can comment on this post :).

My first Aikido experinces

If you are talking about aikido in public, probably the first reaction to pop up will be something like “oh yes that Steven Seagal stuff”. Funny though, I didn’t even now this “common sense” until I was doing aikido for about a couple of months. Well, maybe that was my luck; otherwise I would never start learning this beautiful martial art. Not because I have no respect for Seagal, of course I had also enjoyed his movies, but because I don’t really like aggression (and now we all know that was only about entertaining), it wouldn’t be the real motivation to catch up with it.

Fortunately my master Laszlo Elsner 5.dan have more sense of harmony, so after seeing my first ever training in early 1999, I got really excited about something absolutely new (for me, of course :) ), therefore I was already taking the following class in my jogging trousers and my favourite Red Bull t-shirt (you have to look cool, hah?). I remember having pain in my knees, ankles after the first fallings, but I was absolutely determined to survive J At the beginning the progression wasn’t quite easy for me, because the majority of the club was pretty beginner-guys being graded for 5th, 6th kyu, or had no grade at all. So I started to attend classes also in my masters headquarter club, where I could also practice with some guys having hakama. Soon I realized I was utterly addicted to aikido, having 5 classes a week, plus helping out in the children's classes on Saturdays and Sundays, which made it 7 trainings a week…
The reason for doing aikdo is simple: I found something that I was missing and I would really miss in my life. Not just Aikido, harmony or the universe’s energy, but friends. Friends who really made my last decade, and hopefully they will so in the following few ones :).

How to put on your hakama?

There are several ways to tie your hakama on. I think you should choose whichever you like best or whichever fits the length of cords (himo) of your hakama.

If I needed to do it for the first time I would try to copy someone I know. You might have a master who prefers you to tie on the hakama in a certain way and expects you to do so either. I think it's also easier to copy someone as you can ask them to stop whenever you want/need or ask them to explain how they do it.

Before getting my hakama I looked up ways to put it on on the Internet. I found several figures, a couple of videos but there were too many ways to do it so I couldn't choose immediately. I had to wait until I got my own hakama and I tried a couple of versions because I didn't want to go to my first hakama training without any knowledge about how to tie it on.

Although later, I recorded how the advanced aikidoka do it in our dojo. This is a version I had never seen before online (unbelievable! Amazing! :D:D) but they say it is the easiest and quickest way, and I believe them :).



However, I do it differently (I am allowed to :)). I think my way of doing it is a mixture of things I found on the web. I try to follow a video found on youtube but finish with the 'flower-like' knot (which is from another document). I'm not including a video of me now, you would get bored at my speed as a beginner hakama wearer. Watch my video source instead.



I think the most cited (and copied) non-video method is in the document created by Bu Jin (pdf). Many other web pages use the same figures to illustrate how to tie a hakama on.

Other hakama-tying resources:

• An illustration.
• Another illustration.
• A forum on this matter.
• Another textual source (go to Using the hakama section).
• Not really the aikido way but might be good to know.
• If you can read japanase you will have detailed instructions (I guess ;)) otherwise only nice illustrations for men and women.

Some, for me at least, interesting ways of tying on and wearing a hakama:
- some people don't wear a belt so their hakama tying is different and not really applicable to us.
- the traditional Japanese way to tie a hakama also falls into this category as you don't wear a training obi with your hakama in civil life (or the belt is different).
- I saw aikido practitioners wearing a hakama and belt 'inside out': hakama inside, belt tied on top.

My knowledge about traditional Japanese clothes is limited to what I read in some articles online so if there is anything I didn't get right or missed out please tell me about it in your comments.

The first training

It is generally understood that first things are always memorable. You remember your first day at school, your first kiss and most certainly your first aikido training! There are, obviously, exceptions but if you loved it (or it was a complete shock :)), you will probably remember. This post is about my first training experience. If you too have your story please share it in the comments.

It was back in 1999 in my 2nd year at the (then) University of Veszprem. Each semester, we needed to collect 20 signatures from some sort of sport activities, and I was really bored with the excuse-sports the year before (airgun practice), so wanted to do something 'extreme' along with some friends. At that time a martial art seemed extreme enough, so I picked one at random. Alright, this is not true :). It wasn't random. I already heard about karate and kungfu but nothing about aikido, so it was an obvious choice :).

Having no martial art experience, the first training was...very funny. You had to sit down in the beginning in a line with others, and had to be in total silence for at least a minute. Then there were these jumps and breathing exercises, still in silence.
If you are in an unusual situation you often give a strange smile or play around with your fingers, ears, pen, etc., and since my body movements were controlled, smile remained :) Actually, I was really about to burst into laughing, and so were the other newcomers (roughly 15 of us). There was one time when I even needed to pretend coughing to hide a sudden laugh. I felt exposed in front of all those people and I was so lame. At the end though, I was tired and didn't feel like this anymore*. During that week of my first trainings, I already decided that aikido would be a long-term "exercise" for me.
By the way, the training was about tenchinage (as I learned its name later on).

Please share your experience with me (and other readers) even if you martial art is not aikido. That would make the story-set really interesting.


*this is not true either :D. There are still days when it's hard to control myself in the beginning of the meditation before class. The difference is that now it's now because I'm in an unusual situation but because I want to train so much and my body would jump and do those tenchinage (and many more) techniques. Be warned: the squeaking sound of a swinging punch bag can be very dangerous :D!

Let's do Aikido

I will discuss anything that is related to Aikido, sometimes specifically related to our club in Wimbledon, hopefully get some others to write as well.

For now, let's start with a link to the page of our club for those wanting to feel and do it instead of reading only:
http://www.holistic-fitness.net/classes/aikido/

Articles, photos, stories and news coming shortly.

Zolley




ps. You may have noticed that my English is not perfect but I'm willing to learn so any messages about the language are very much appreciated (you can contact me through my profile).