Although I knew the emotional liberation experience couldn't last I didn't want to believe it. It was very liberating at the time. But I was right that it couldn't last and the emotions would come back. But the basic insight is lasting and that should eventually help.
I've listened enough now to Robina Courtin to know that her views do clash with Christianity, but it's possible to make use of the basic method of dealing with our mmental states without getting involved in the rest of it. And it's that method that I thlnk could be very helpful with addictions.
Yes, you'll lose it. The secret isn't in keeping from losing it, but rather in learning how to regain it.
Also, the language and imagery help to guide you. Even if you do not believe in what's behind that language and imagery, they can still work very effectively.
Explanation follows.
When I started college, I started learning karate at the dojo across the street from Santa Ana College. Our sensei was Fumio Demura. The movie
Karate Kid was written as a vehicle for him, but he was uncomfortable with a speaking part so Pat Morita was cast as Mr. Miyagi and Fumio Demura was his stunt double. Netflix has a documentary about that,
The Real Miyagi.
After a couple years I injured my hip during wall stretches (a beginner is the most dangerous person in the dojo) and had to drop out. At college (CSU Fullerton) I discovered Aikido, "The Way of Harmonizing Ki". Basically, you blend your motion with that of the attacker and, instead of throwing him, you lead him into falling. It can be very subtle; sensei would demonstrate a technique and we'd end up on the floor without feeling anything that put us there. If you try to use physical strength or leverage, then the techniques won't work. We even practiced a couple techniques in which we didn't even have to touch the attacker. If you watch any of the first Steven Seagal movies, he was using Aikido. Aikido was also a part of the US Army's experimental
First Earth Battalion (refer to
The Men Who Stare at Goats).
Our dojo emphasized Ki development, which is couched in mystical sounding language, but that language works very effectively and gets very real results. Ki is approximately translated as spirit, life energy, mind. Techniques are described in terms of blending your Ki with your opponent's and redirecting it such that you "lead his mind". Also in terms of your Ki flowing through your limbs like high-pressure water through a hose. Or flowing out of your fingertip so that, even though the attacker has a firm very strong grip on your wrist, you can still move your finger, and your hand, and your wrist, and your arm, and yourself and the attacker is powerless to stop you. You can make your arm virtually unbendable by human strength, yourself too heavy for another person to pick you up, hold weights up longer with extended arms, be very difficult to shove, endure pain much better, etc. A Seventh Day Adventist on CompuServe tried to convert me by bragging about the amazing physical feats that their founder, Ellen G. White, could do while in a trance. He immediately disappeared when I replied that when I was practicing Aikido I could do all those things and more without ever having to go into a trance.
The illustrative story for you is one that our sensei had told us of a special workshop for instructors he had attended in Japan. Part of the training involved a run ending with a dunk in an ice-cold pool under a waterfall. Maintaining their Ki (relax, maintain your center, keep weight on the underside, extend your mind), they could endure the cold water, but by the time they got to the locker room they had lost their Ki and were shaking from the cold. That discouraged most of them who felt that they had failed and were incapable of being instructors (I think some of them quit Aikido). But the only thing that they had failed at was in not regaining their Ki after having lost it. Sensei's lesson for us was that it can be far more important to learn how to recover our Ki than to never lose it (which is nearly impossible to do).
So the lesson I was trying to get across is that losing that emotional liberation experience is inevitable. The important thing is learning to recover and to regain it.
Kind of a fun little list of ways in which I benefited from and have used Aikido:
- One day I was practicing a technique in my bedroom when I brought my elbow crashing down atop a post on my bedframe. Of course I hit that nerve, the "funny bone", which causes you to hop about in pain. But because I was already relaxed and centered (was maintaining my Ki), I just sat down calmly and rubbed the injury out.
- While training for the Navy's physical fitness run, I developed shin splints. The treatment included the physical therapist working my shins with a rolling pin torture device. She warned me that it would hurt, so I immediately started maintaining my Ki. She kept looking at me puzzled that I wasn't yelping in pain like all the other men. She even had me take a rolling pin home with instructions to use it, which I did.
Similarly, a few years ago a female dermatologist was snipping skin tags off of me as I sat there calmly. She commented on and marveled at how well I could take minor pain, far better than most men.
- I worked construction for my father while in high school and college. One day I was up in the truck emptying trash into the trash bin. As I jumped down off the truck to the asphalt below, my trouser cuff got caught on something and suddenly there I was falling head-first to the ground, a prime candidate for either a cracked skull or one or two broken arms. Instead, my Aikido training kicked in. Calmly I extended my arm to blend with the ground and take me into a shoulder roll, at the end of which I popped right up into a standing position. The roll was a bit rough, but no injuries.
- A few years ago we had our only rainstorm of the year and about the first one in years, a big one around during Xmas shopping. I saw two toddlers watching the rainwater pour down with worried looks on their faces like they had never seen such a thing before, and then realized that they literally hadn't.
I had just crossed the bridge between the two malls (South Coast Plaza and Crystal Court) and was walking across the polished marble floor to the escalator when I felt my supporting foot start to lose traction. Instantly and very calmly, collapsed my supporting leg bringing myself quickly and smoothly into a seated position aided by my hands -- a completely safe landing. In this case, I think I thanked my two decades of partner dance lessons more than Aikido.
- My very first dance lesson was salsa and the class started with a drill in which we went through the steps and turns. True to the Glass Bead Game, I applied the only similar thing that I knew, which was Aikido. Dance connection was the same, moving from my center, using movement instead of muscle, etc. At the end of that very first lesson, all my partners were complementing me on my lead, which is something that most beginner men struggle with for months. I just assumed that they were buttering me up to make sure I'd be back (most dance classes suffer from more women than men, though in the Latino community salsa classes tend to have more men than women). Though of course there is one very important difference: in Aikido you want to get and keep your attacker off balance (you're both moving around your, not his), whereas in dancing you don't want that and most definitely neither does she.
- One of the four Ki principles is "Extend the mind" (AKA "Extend Ki"). You are much stronger when you look where you are going. Also, when you turn you can turn much more sharply by changing the direction you are extending your mind, so we would practice that a lot.
This is kind of a dirty trick. Our university had elevators, which were especially important in the taller buildings. More than once, I would see an elevator with just enough room for me but the doors were closing, so I would run into the elevator, hit my spot, and instantly turn and redirect my mind in the opposite direction, which stopped my momentum immediately. Scared everybody behind me. Like I said, it was kind of a dirty trick.
- I learned to use Aikido to keep dogs from jumping up on me. Some, especially our Maxie, will sit and wait for you to lean down to pet her and then she'd stand up; her favorite target was poking her nose into your mouth.
Now, you can keep a seated person from standing up by placing both hands on his shoulders exerting no pressure but for a subtle Aikido connection sliding towards his back; he has to shift his weight forward to stand up, but he can't. So I applied that to Maxie, gliding my hand from her head to her neck which kept her from being able to stand up; she wasn't able to shift her weight as she needed to. She had the most surprised and confused look on her face, like other dogs I have done that to.
If the dog is in front of you already jumping up, I would usually blend my hand with his shoulder or neck and deflect him to the side (such moves are always at right angles between you and the attacker, not straight in towards him or away) and once he's back on all fours then I'd do the petting trick.
- Handling small children. A fellow student told of having saved a child from being hit by a car. The kid was chasing his ball into the street and a car was coming. As the kid was passing my friend, he turn the child around lightly by the shoulders so that now the kid running back in the direction he had come from. No injury from grabbing and jerking him, but just blending and redirecting his mind. That can also be used in less dire circumstances for herding purposes.
More mundanely I have a technique for picking up and repositioning a child who's still small enough to be picked up. Position one hand under his shoulders and head and the other under the butt -- roll him onto your shoulder-hand first if necessary. Lift. Your partner can then rearrange the bedding. You can then rotate the kid almost 360 degrees anywhere you want and set him down. Easy and doesn't disturb the child.
- I have never ever received any training in sports nor in sports skills. I literally never learned to throw, catch, or hit a ball and therefore I simply could not. PE class required you to already have all the skills going in, so they never provided any of that training. Needless to say PE was my most hated class and was sheer torture in jr and sr high school. In college we had a 2-unit PE requirement, four half-unit classes, so I took skin diving and SCUBA, six units total. I thought that got that out of the way, but the real requirement was PE every semester until you turn 21 (I think it was left over from the ROTC requirement that had just gone away due to the student riots which always tried to burn down the campus Armory). So I did two semesters of ballroom.
One interesting side-effect of Aikido was that I suddenly developed eye-hand coordination. Suddenly, I was very adept at catching things; I would just watch the object (extending my mind) and it would just happen. Same thing with throwing a ball; I would extend my mind to where I wanted it to go and it would. That last one nearly caused some problems, especially when tossing things in the pool. I would extend my mind to the head (in martial arts, you training to look at the opponent's face) and that's where the ball would go, freaking a few people out.
Caveat. Aikido requires moving, rolling, and falling. A number of different schools have developed, some of which are more aggressive than others. For example, we had one common technique in which we'd wind up with the attacker's arm palm-up with the hand flexed and the entire arm extended such that curling the fingers into the palm would cause the attacker to flip over in the air and land face down. That is the gentle way; in some schools you would be taught to break his wrist.
There may be training geared for seniors. Maybe Tai Chi would be better for seniors. It does also employ Ki, only they call it chi or qi even though it's written the same way,
.
Edited by dwise1, : Number 9
™ Version 4.2
(1)
