a bull in a china shop - by martine baruch

November 5, 2015

That’s what my behavior was when I first began cleaning sensei’s office - but rightfully so! Anyone who enters his office can agree that there is some serious energy contained in that small room - an energy that both comforted and intimidated me. As I began to pick up and dust the many items, I came to a horrifying realization: everything was precious and delicate and fragile and important. I found myself shaking when I had to pick up an inscripted zippo lighter and after I dusted off a couple of seashells I placed them back down as if they were fine china. Two hours later I had finally finished cleaning the office. For the next few weeks I cleaned the office in frustrated discomfort which I narrowed down to two reasons: A) It was taking me too long to clean the office and B) I had mentally exhausted myself an hour into each session. By the fourth week, my feelings of deep frustration finally got to me and as I was gently placing one of sensei’s fountain pens back on his desk I spoke two reckless but important words to myself, “screw this.” With a quicker and less thoughtful movement I placed the pen down on the desk… but the pen didn’t break in half. Neither did the table. Noting the change in myself I moved through the office picking and placing objects with greater ease. I had dicovered that these objects, though important to me in a very truthful sense, were just objects. And they all had specific individual strength. A strength that could only be broken if I came at them with true recklessness or malice.

This discovery quickly transferred to my aikido. When I began my aikido practice, I was scared of hurting my partner. I was scared of giving them my full spirit. But then again I was also reckless in movement. My waza was careless. Through my office experience I learned that I can only hurt someone if I ignore the way they move. An arm only breaks when it can no longer bend. I could still give my full spirit, but I need to listen to what they’re giving me.

In acting, in my career, I am constantly told that true actors get their performance off the other person. The truthful response comes from how I relate to my partner; not some idea that I have about my partner. If I go into the scene with the idea that my partner is fragile or I am always too mean to them, I will miss the truth about how they actually feel about me or the situation and I will break the connection between us. The reality and truth will break.

My sister moved in with me a few months back. She is 19 years old and when she first moved in she was in a rough mental state. I knew her mind was fragile and weak, but I also knew that if I had to be hard on her and push her she could take it. I trusted our relationship and I trusted her own strength. I was hard on her. I reprimanded her when she was being selfish and when she needed a swift kick in the ass, I was there to give it to her. And I was right- she was strong enough to take it.

The real technique in cleaning and aikido and acting and relationships and cooking and fishing and everything else in life is very simple: Look, listen, feel, find the truth in what’s in front of you… and then act.

Being a bull in a china shop is a very real feeling, but it only comes from ignoring your situation in favor of whatever anxiety lives within you.

the importance of cleaning

July 28, 2015

My apartment had taken on an interesting smell. It wasn't unpleasant, it was just noticeably different. I set out to find the source but there was nothing out of the ordinary. No moldy food in the pantry, no forgotten piles of doggy accidents. In fact, my apartment seemed clean. I try to take time every day to clean the big messes in my apartment. No dishes go unwashed, my counters are cleaned a few times a day and I pick up all the cardboard Jet (my dog) has torn and tossed around.

Okay. So there was no “source” of the odor. Then what was causing the different air quality? I began to scrutinize my apartment and the closer I looked the more I saw. The garbage can had a mild smell from never being washed and the recycling bin was sticky from uncleaned beer bottles. Jet's bed hadn't been washed in a bit and smelled funky and my arm chair could probably use a cleaning. Alone, these smells were mild enough to go unnoticed but when put together it created a quality in the air that surely was. I cleaned these individual items and took Jet out for a walk. Upon reentering my apartment I didn't smell anything. The offending odor was gone.

Two and a half years ago, when I first walked into the dojo, the first thing I noticed was the strong quality of “clean” it had. After spending some time there I came up with an easy answer- we clean it all the time. All of the students spend a lot of time and effort to clean the dojo from top to bottom and when we are not there, the job falls on the shoulders of Sensei, Kate and whatever uchideshi is currently residing there. But like I said, this is an easy and incomplete answer.

To get an energy as clean as the dojo, you have to do more than clean. You have to pay close attention to every last detail. You have to give each and every object the respect it deserves - for you see, all things small and large are part of the whole and if you neglect one item, no matter how small it may seem, it will weaken the power of the whole. This is the realization I had last night as I was cleaning dojo plant Rapunzel. A plant that is dusty and less cared for will weaken the quality of the room. Even if you don't see it immediately. A dirty and less cared for garbage can will weaken the quality of the air. Even if you don't smell it immediately. -M. Baruch

the duck or the dog?

June 28, 2015

In the changing room, after the 2nd kyu test we had just sat through, Diego asked me, “So what did you think of the test?” It was December, my third month in the dojo. By then, I had discovered that class often left me at a loss for words. Watching the examination, the martial nature of our training was apparent to me for the first time. I felt that in a substantial way, Aikido was a way into matters of life and death, of living and dying. Not that the practice itself was dangerous; but that the techniques were about something much deeper than form alone. And I must confess that my initial reaction to that 2nd kyu test was a feeling of fear.

Before the test, Sensei had been teaching yokomenuchi, trying to get us to understand that the techniques were really an approximation for a life or death encounter. That to execute the form properly, we had to understand the intention beneath the form, and to enter into that state of mind. During the test, it felt as though the entire dojo had entered into this state of mind; that what was transpiring between uke and nage was of the utmost importance. As they struggled with techniques, as they struggled with exhaustion, the encounters seemed to transcend intellectual categories of passing or failing. Earlier, in the autumn, Sensei had taped up in the men’s changing room a picture of a hunting dog joyfully grasping a dead duck in its jaws, running through a stream. Above it, he had written, “this is what your Shodan test should look like!” For a while, I didn’t really get it. Watching that 2nd kyu test, feeling the intensity and focus in the room, feeling afraid of that intensity and focus, I thought about that picture. I thought, “am I the dog? or am I the duck? I don’t want to be the duck. But I’m definitely not the dog.”

So I said to Diego, “It was pretty intense”. Which was maybe the most obvious thing anyone could say. He laughed at my understatement, and we parted ways for the night. As words and thought gradually came back to me that night, it hit me that the last time I had felt this way - fear in the presence of life and death encounters - was my first year out of medical school, when I was a medical intern at UCLA. Like training Aikido, it wasn’t that the medical training was actually dangerous (though it was exhausting, and often painful); but I often felt overwhelmed and unprepared. That year (and for several years after), I was unprepared both technically and spiritually. There was so much to know - about bodies, how they worked, how they broke, about tests and treatment, and most of all, about humanity and the moral and spiritual dimensions of illness, recovery, living and dying. At the beginning of my medical training, even though I was book smart, I knew very little, and my ignorance meant that I didn’t know what was going to happen to my patients. Not knowing what was going to happen to them, I didn’t feel prepared to take care of them. I was afraid I would fail them. I was afraid because I was ignorant. About 9 years later, I discovered a different kind of fear. By then, I knew a lot. And I was about as prepared as you could be to take care of someone. And even though I had a much better sense of what was going on with each of my patients, I still didn’t know what was going to happen to them. I could see which treatments had the best chance of working; but you never really knew what was going to happen until you actually did the treatment. I was faced once again with this fear of the unknowable future, except now I could see that this was not a reflection of my own shortcomings, but was a fact of life. I was no longer ignorant. But I realized that I had been attached to this idea that I could somehow control the future if I knew enough.

Around this time, I remembered an anecdote I had heard about Kanai Sensei, from the New England Aikikai. According to the story, in his early days in Cambridge he used to give classes to the Police Department. He would demonstrate a technique, and then a cop would say, “Well what about if I did this instead?” And Kanai Sensei would then show how he would respond. And then another cop would say “What if I did this instead?” And again Kanai Sensei would show his response. After a certain point, one of the cops said, “So you’re saying that no matter what I do, no matter how I come at you, you would have a technique for it?” And Kanai Sensei replied “Yes, that’s right.” And another officer, somewhat incredulous, said, “Well, can you prove it? I could just come at you right now, and you could take me down?” And Kanai Sensei again nodded, and so this officer got ready to make the Aikido instructor prove his point. Just as the cop was was about to start his attack, Kanai Sensei said to him (possibly with a smile), “Just one thing… I don’t actually know what I’m going to do to you.” That’s the end of the story, at least as I heard it. One assumes the cop did the smart thing, and sat back down.

Reflecting on Diego’s question the next day, it seemed to me that I am back in my intern days, when it comes to Aikido. I know some things, but I’m basically ignorant, and unprepared, technically, physically, spiritually. I’m not the duck, but I’m definitely not the dog. And maybe I’m afraid that I won’t become the dog (or that I’ll end up the duck). The dojo reminds me of a teaching hospital, in good ways. It’s a place that recreates life and death situations in a safe way, allowing us to investigate how our body, mind and spirit perform in these situations, to encounter our fears and attachments, and to learn and grow stronger and wiser. There is a lot of mentorship and a lot of esprit de corp, as we all struggle with these same experiences together. The apocryphal story about Kanai Sensei suggests to me that at the end of the struggle to master technique, to master exhaustion, to master one’s body and mind, there’s the even more interesting challenge to accept the limitless possibilities within each technique and within each encounter. I hope that I am able to train long enough to get to that challenge. And I’m sure that if I do get there, I will once again feel fear, at least for a while.

-A. Charuvastra