One Thing At A Time

A while back I wrote that you should never practice anything more than once.  There is a corollary to this, that you should never do more than one thing at a time.  We live in world that bombards us with stimuli and urges us to try to do everything, and do it all at the same time.  Society seems to frown on being quiet and focused.  Multitasking is praised and held up as some kind of ideal form of functioning, when the reality is that far different.  We are all likely to fall victim to it though.  It’s just too easy in modern society, when we can be talking on the phone, working on the computer, eating lunch and texting with our kids all that same time, and I’m as guilty of falling into this trap as anyone is.

The truth is though, we’re at our best when we do one thing at a time.  I was reminded of this while reading a very nice piece about giving things 100%.  One of the great things we work on in the dojo is just doing one thing at a time.  Trust me on this, if you try to do Judo randori and even think about anything else at the same time, you will quickly find yourself flying through the air and the floor leaping up to smack you between the shoulder blades.  You just can’t do more than one important thing at a time.

We work on developing this focus and our abilities every time we’re in the dojo, and hopefully we are applying this and developing it even more when we are not in the dojo.  In the dojo we are trying to learn very complex skills that require coordinating our entire bodies and getting all the parts working together.  The first part we have to train is our mind.  We have to learn to just be in the dojo doing the technique or kata that we are practicing.  We can’t be making a shopping list or planning dinner or figuring out tomorrow’s work schedule or deciding what to watch on TV tonight.  We have to in the dojo practicing.  

We want to let go of all the other things we could be doing, and do this one thing we have chosen to be doing.  Initially, the one thing we are focusing on my be how we walk, or how we hold our head or how we swing the sword.  Over time, with focus (!) we can integrate these things so holding our head in the appropriate position and how we walk become one thing.  Then we get better at swinging the sword so we are holding our head and bodies in good posture while walking and swinging the sword in one action that we are focusing on.  Or it is drawing our partner slightly off her base as we interpose our foot between her foot and its next targeted step while maintaining our own balance, posture and proper movement.

No matter how far I progress, if I try to do more than one thing at a time, even if it is just thinking about something other than my physical activity, my physical activity suffers.  In the dojo, this means I get thrown during Judo or hit with a stick during Jodo or whacked with a sword during kenjutsu.  I’m better at focusing and just doing one thing than I used to be, but I still have a long way to go until I’m satisfied.

The surprising thing is that the more we work on focusing on just doing one thing, the better we get at everything.  With practice our ability to focus and concentrate improves, and it gets easier to let distractions float by without giving them our attention.  As we get better at this, we get better at mastering whatever it is that we are actually doing.  The time in the dojo is concentrated focusing time, whether we are doing judo or kenjutsu or iaido or whatever.  As we get better at focusing that plugs into better training results.  We get closer to achieving the goal of flow, or mushin, where we are just there, doing what we are doing without overthinking it and without being bothered by outside thoughts.

I really recommend “The Art Of Learning” by Josh Waitzkin.  He does a phenomenal job of describing the real work that goes into getting to a state of mushin or flow.  In addition, he is a great story teller who is just plain enjoyable to read.  Getting to a state of flow or mushin is  not an easy process, but he does a nice job of showing how to get there.  If we try to do more than one thing at a time though, it’s an unattainable goal.  Multitasking just takes us down a road that leads further and further from the goal.

Don’t be lured into trying to multitask.  We know it’s a siren song that will wreck learning in the dojo and our ability to get things done outside the dojo.  Multitasking doesn’t work.  Just do one thing at a time, and then you can do it well. 

Budo, the Mental Side

People talk a lot about the physical technique of budo. Budo is obviously a physical art, with techniques designed to handle the very real and serious business of violence.  Depending on the martial art you could be learning striking, throwing, joint locking, or any of the myriad of weapons that are taught in the various martial arts.  Before one can use those techniques in a real way however, development of physical technique must be paired with development of mental technique.  If you mind is not properly prepared and ready, the technique will not be there.  You can’t be thinking too much about what you are doing, and you can’t blank and forget everything either.

Ironically, the mental state that is the goal in classical Japanese martial arts is mushin無心、most often translated as “no mind”.  Better writers and far greater martial artists have written numerous treatises on mushin, so I’ll just say that it is a calm, quiet mind that reflects what is around it without imposing assumptions.  Good practice will help develop this mental quality, but I would say that that mushin is much harder to develop than good technique, and frankly, much more useful.  Violence is a rare occurrence in the industrialized world, but we need our minds all the time.

This is the mental side of what is ostensibly a physical practice.  It’s also the head fake of good training practices.  When we start our training, we are so excited by the physical techniques, and so busy trying to master them, that we hardly notice that we are training our minds at the same time. The mind and the body are really one, so what is happening with one is always reflected in the other.  If we are training and forging our body, we are necessarily also training our mind.  The question, and what sets budo and other michi apart from mere sports, is “Does our training have effects beyond the dojo.”  The answer, certainly, is yes.  Martial artists and other teachers have been talking about this in Japan for hundreds of years.  Yagyu Munenori, Miyamoto Musashi, and Takuan Soho are just a few of the older, and greatest writers on the subject. 

When we train physical technique, whether it is kata or freeform, we strive to master our breathing and to keep our mind quiet and relaxed but as ready as our muscles have to be.  This is often hardly treated in regular practice, hidden within kata that we repeat and repeat until we no longer have to think about the physical movements.  (And if you think your art doesn’t include kata, what do you think those repetitions of structured exercises are?).  As we become more familiar with the movements, we strip away more and more physical input from them.  When we are first learning the motions, we stiffen and tense our whole body, activating muscles that have nothing to do with the motions being practiced.  As we train, we strip more and more of this excess input out of technique, becoming faster, more efficient and effective.  Each time we stop activating unnecessary muscles, we reduce counterproductive activity.  When we activate muscles that aren’t necessary, at best we waste energy and at worst we are actively working against ourselves, weakening the effect of the necessary muscles, causing unbalances in our posture, and ruining our technique.  Is it possible training could help us do that same thing mentally?  That we could learn to deactivate the unnecessary, wasteful parts of our minds?

Practicing recently, I was working on an iai kata that assumes 3 adversaries.  You have to move your attention from adversary to adversary without becoming stuck on any of them.  When I would allow my attention to stick to the middle adversary, the quality of my cuts to the sides became so bad I’m not sure they would raise bruises, much less actually cut.  Your attention has to be fluid, but not scattered.  In this particular kata, the three adversaries are ranged in front of you.  You approach with open attention, aware of all of them without strongly focusing on any one. The first cut and your attention go to the adversary on your right.  The next cut is to the adversary on your left, but while moving your attention from the right to the left, you must allow your focus to strike the adversary in the middle, to make him react to the possibility that you are coming for him and to allow you the chance to react if the middle adversary is able to attack you already. You can’t let your attention stick to him though.  It has to strike him and move on. This has to be accomplished in the time it takes to sweep your sword around to the left so that you can transfer your attention to the adversary there.  If you don’t get your attention moved, you won’t have ki-ken-tai icchi 気剣体　一致, or unified mind, body and sword (I know, I’m taking a liberty translating 気 as mind in this case, but if you have more effective translation, please share it).  If your attention sticks to any of the adversaries, the lack of focus in your mind is immediately reflected in your body.  

On this occasion, that means my cuts fell apart completely.  I swung the sword, but it was a poor imitation of the movement I should have been making.  The mind guides the body, and once my mind was tuned to something besides where it should have been focused, my body’s integration and technique collapsed.  Once the mind was no longer guiding the body, there was nothing to integrate my movement and make it effective.  The speed with which this was reflected from my body as my technique fell apart, back to my mind for the third cut, was amazing.  By the third cut my mind was completely rattled from the poor performance of the second cut and I probably would have been better off not even attempting it.  My mind was busy trying to reorganize my body structure and integration so I could make a good cut, but because it was focused on my body rather than on the project of cutting, my third cut was even less effective than the second. 

The next time through the kata I kept my focus moving.  As I swept the sword from the right to the left I let my gaze slam into the middle adversary but didn’t let it stop there.  When I swung the sword to the left my gaze and my mind were right there with my body and the sword, moving together.  When the cut was done I immediately moved my focus back to the middle adversary and the sword followed.  When I did the cut it was completely on my terms and fully integrated.  It felt great. The trick now is to keep that sort of mind and body integration all the time, not just when I’m swinging a sword.

When I’m training regularly the control of my breathing and the mental stillness that I strive for in the dojo become habits that I automatically reach for and use when I’m out of the dojo. I know that I’m calmer when I’m training regularly.  In the dojo I work to breath and stay calm while people are trying to throw me or to hit me with sticks.  In Judo if I don’t stay calm during randori I get winded quickly and find myself focusing on getting another breath rather than what my partner is trying to do.  In Jodo I have to stay calm and control my breathing or else I find myself trying to take a breath when I should be getting out of the way of someone who is trying to whack me in the head.  This is a fairly stressful environment in which to practice these things, but that’s good.  It means that when you are in a stressful environment outside of practice you’ll be accustomed to dealing with the stress.

The breathing practice and mental stillness that are required for effective budo are great things outside the dojo, just as much as being in good physical condition is.  We spend some time in our society teaching people how to hold their body and we value good physical posture and movement. We spend no time at all teaching people how to relax and control their mind and take effective metal postures. In the dojo, the mental “Do” side of practice is just as important as the physical training.  It may be more important, since we don’t have business chains all over the place offering to develop our mental strength and posture.  Practicing the calm, clear, placid, reflecting mind that is required of any “Do”, martial or otherwise, and that is especially important for effective responses in “Bu”, is also tremendously useful outside the dojo.  It’s wonderful to be able to remain calm and unruffled while everyone around you is losing control.  

When my focus fell apart during the kata, all it took was a breath to relax me and pull my focus and my body back together.  In the grand world outside the dojo, all it takes for me to pull my mind and body together and bring them into a relaxed, unified posture is a breath or two as well.  The most difficult thing sometimes is remembering to take that calming breath.  It’s easy to get lost in the emotion of argument, especially when someone is attacking you.  The longer I train though, the more likely I am to be more disturbed by a disorganized mind/body state than I am by the argument, even if I’m busy trying to defend myself from a verbal attack.  The great side benefit of this is that when someone is verbally attacking you, they want you to be intimidated. They will be looking for the physical cues of intimidation or of defense.  If you take that breath and relax your mind into your body, you become physically relaxed.  Once you are relaxed, you are in control of yourself, and you can choose how to respond.  If you are relaxed in mind and body, you can respond to the situation fluidly without getting stuck on any part of the interaction.  Being relaxed, you have the possibility of being confident in your response because you are choosing it, not just reacting.  You are relaxed and responding as you see fit, rather than being herded by someone who is expecting a tense, off-balance response.  Often this failure to react as expected to their script is all it takes to make a verbal aggressor back off.

This is one of the more extreme day-to-day applications of budo training, but the basic technique is available to a budo practitioner throughout life, whatever she is struggling with..  Tension and lack of focus attack all the time, usually without as clear a source as someone yelling at us.  The more we train, the more quickly and easily we can reintegrate our mind and bodies, relax them, release unnecessary tension and activity from our awareness and move forward to clearly respond to the world as it truly is, rather than as our tension filled minds would like to view it.

This may be the greatest benefit of budo training.  As we learn to relax our minds, we learn to release our preconceptions so we can see the world as it is, rather than as we think it is.  This is the mind like a calm, smooth pond.  It clearly and properly reflects the world around it without distorting anything.  If the pond is disturbed, it moves this way and that distorting the reflection of everything.  As we practice budo, we work to keep our bodies calm so that we can respond accurately and appropriately to anything our partner does.  As we do this, often without being aware of it, we are also training our minds to be calm like that pond so we can respond to anything appropriately without the activity of our own mind distorting our vision or our actions.  The first big step is when we can consciously recognize that we are upset need to relax, and we can choose to take that breath or two that is necessary to restore our calm, placid mind.  The next big step is when we take that breath before we are aware that we need it.  When we start doing that, we may be starting to master a portion of budo.