overthinker’s curse pt 2
The shihans at the aikido summer camp last week emphasized the ultimately “soft” nature of budo. They don’t mean lazy-soft but agile-soft, water-soft, receptive-soft, light-hearted-soft, and of course compassionate-soft. And then they throw some guy twice their size and half their age across the room to demonstrate.
It’s one of ‘em paradox things, I reckon: the idea is to be stone or water as appropriate, but with training I think you wind up being both at the same time. Know the yang but live in the yin, I think the Taoist saying went.
And then there’s this spirit thing they spoke of. It’s one of those things I think I see and understand to some extent, but typically can’t reproduce, myself.
In my own training I’m experimenting more with that lately: soft and receptive, light-hearted. It’s maybe not always appropriate to turn training into play, but it seems to work well for me. If nothing else it’s a lot more fun. The overthinker’s curse attempts to strengthen itself with failure, and this strategy sort of un-defines failure. If it’s all play, it doesn’t matter whether something “works” or not. There is no success or failure, there is only relationship.
Which potentially sort of opposes both Yoda’s and Mr. Miyagi’s advice. Though don’t get me wrong: I agree with them, too.
Still, I think there’s maybe something to the idea of transforming a grim attack/defense scenario into play.
Investigation suggests it likely that there is in fact no spoon, however the shihans did not address the topic directly, regrets.