Category: Kendo

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Feeling nostalgic

I noticed that in many books mindfulness is described as an opposite of being disconnected from the present moment and being lost in thoughts about the past or the future. More specifically, what is meant there is ruminating on regrets about the past or worrying about the future. I am wondering, though, whether reminiscence about the past is necessary a negative thing. For example, mentally reliving a happy memory could potentially be a nice stress relief, if nothing else. There is also a potential argument for regrets in general sometimes serving as a useful learning tool.

But I wonder if a positive case could be made for something in between these two kinds of past-dwelling. For example, considering that the definition of nostalgia is “sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations,” I think that feeling nostalgic implies feeling happy and sad at the same time. I also wonder if then, by definition, every person has something to feel nostalgic about . After all, most people probably have something with happy personal associations that is now in the past.

What do I feel nostalgic about? I certainly don’t leave with the constant feeling of nostalgia, but if I dig for it, it would probably have to be the time when I practiced kendo, or, even earlier, aikido. I miss the sense of awe of participating in something so deeply rooted in a foreign and fascinating tradition and of being aware of the formative effect of the practice on my life.

These are the kinds of thoughts I am having when present moment awareness proves elusive.

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On not giving up

Black king. Stll life with a chess piece.

“The hardest thing is to win a won game.”
— Frank Marshall

This is a popular quote in chess, and some internet sources also attribute it to Emanuel Lasker, who must have made a similar observation. It is not strictly true, of course. It is much easier to win if you have an objective advantage, either material or positional. But the point is that when you realize that you have a decisive advantage, it is easy to fall into a false sense of security and become complacent.

This is where it becomes very interesting from your opponent’s standpoint. It is useful to know about this tendency if it is your opponent who has an a superior position, and you are forced to defend. It becomes your advantage that can be exploited. If you have a losing position, it will lead to the actual loss of the game only provided that the opponent plays correctly. In practice, it is worth to put up resistance as long as possible in order to give him or her ample chances to make mistakes. The more difficult decisions the opponent is forced to make, the higher the chances of them getting something wrong.

The reigning world champion Magnus Carlsen is known for being exceptionally skilled in defending and turning around inferior positions. Of course, he is also exceptionally skilled in other aspects of the game, so he doesn’t get into inferior positions that often. But it does happen even at his level, which is what makes chess so fascinating. I remember reading (but cannot find the source) that Magnus mentioned distributing his effort of mental concentration in inverse proportion to the winning chances of the position. If he thinks that he has only 1% chance of winning, he would put 99% of energy into finding a way of doing so. Whether this is factually true or not, it is certainly an admirable goal to aspire to. It is also an illustration of warrior’s spirit, a concept that permeates chess as much as it does a martial art like kendo, which I find quite remarkable.

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Practice strategies for adults

One particularly neat thing about being a parent to a nine-year-old is that it gives me an excuse opportunity to try various activities alongside her without an expectation of accomplishment. Theoretically, it’s a license to be a beginner without any pressure to improve performance. Still, having this mindset is easier in theory than in practice. Realistically, one still needs to make some progress to maintain motivation. This raises the question: should adult beginners practice differently from children? I don’t know the answer, but I suspect that it is a ‘yes, but only after they’ve acquired the basic skills’.

Take kendo as an example (which my daughter never practiced, by the way, although I had observed other kids’ training). Physical training aimed at improving speed and endurance is a huge aspect of children’s keiko (practice sessions). It is unavoidable for adults  too, but beyond a certain level of  physical ability, the adults are typically directed to shift their focus to other elements of practice, e.g., technique, strategy, psychology, philosophy. It seems that even though there is no hope for an adult beginner to reach a level of mastery that is hypothetically available to children (provided that the kids don’t quit their practice), a better use of an adult’s time would be to concentrate on other, arguably more advance elements of the art, that are beyond pure physical skills.

If we consider violin-playing (which I started studying together with my daughter), an analogue to suburi (empty strike) practice in kendo would be playing scales. The physical skill, i.e. a combination of manual dexterity and sensory perception, which is required for extracting other-than-horrendous sounds from a violin is considerable, and it makes the learning curve very steep. As expected, my daughter leaves me in the dust in terms of the progress. As much as I would like to play the ‘adult beginner’ card and shift my focus to some of the more exciting practice elements, like dynamics of the phrases, etc., the required threshold of the physical skill remains elusive.

Ready for battle. Stll life with chess pieces.

Chess is another example, where adults often strive to improve, but find it difficult. It is a bit different from both kendo and music in that all these activities are difficult to master, but chess is relatively easy to learn. This accessibility is deceptive. It makes people believe that there is no limit to how much they’d be able to improve. While this “everything is possible if you try” attitude is generally admirable, chess is perhaps the most striking example where innate ability (i.e. talent) is dominant over hard work, perseverance and training methodology. Still, there is an analogy to the practice of musical scales and suburi sword swings in chess. The limiting skill there appears to be visualization – the ability to literally see the position of pieces in your mind, without physically setting them up on the board. This ability not only enable the accomplished players do party tricks like playing simultaneous blindfold games, but more fundamentally, to calculate the possible variations several moves ahead.

So it appears that working on the basics, in other words, practicing like a children, is a good strategy for adult beginners too, even if they they are not aiming to achieve great heights in a particular activity. And if they are aiming high, then it is even more critical, because without mastery of the fundamental skills, their progress will always be limited.

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Collective experience

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s book “Flow” is possibly the most enjoyable non-fiction book I’ve read. It makes perfect sense, of course, because the book is about optimal experiences. As I’ve been reading it, I notice the concepts described there everywhere around me. For example, one of the theses is that for an activity to be enjoyable it needs to be autotelic, i.e. deriving the meaning from itself. Ultimately, it all comes down to being present, which means paying close attention to whatever one is doing at the moment. Apparently, it helps if we have heightened expectations of the experience and also if large groups of people participate in the same activity. Csikszentmihalyi gives an example of live music performances, and I think that any kind of group activity or event works in a similar way to focus our attention. I see it regularly at my own kendo practices, tournaments and gradings. It is often difficult for me to convince myself to go, but it is seldom a question whether it was worth it once I am there.

Most recently, I saw an example of this effect last Saturday. I was taking photos of a rehearsal of the Christmas parade routine that will be performed by my daughter’s dance school next weekend. From an objective point of view, taking part in the parade should be a miserable experience. Last year, for example, it was pouring cold rain all through the event, and there is every indication that the weather could be the same this year. The rehearsal itself is also tough – more than 150 people cramped together in a dance studio for more than an hour. Yet, the dancers evidently have been having tremendous fun. My photo gallery of the last year’s parade is the most visited of the entire school year coverage. The camaraderie between the different age groups is amazing to witness. My daughter was eager to be part of the parade crew just for the experience of spending time next to the older dancers, whom she admires, and doing something together. I also cannot help but feel lucky that I have an opportunity to have an insider’s look at this collective experience and also to contribute to it by attempting to capture the elusive atmosphere of “flow”. An important part of any experience is our recollection of it, and photos not only capture memories, but actually shape them.

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Risk-taking and fun

Rock climbing is a lot of fun. After our daughter tried it at our university’s climbing gym, my wife and I were compelled to take a belaying course the very next weekend, so that we would be able to assist her. As a lunch-hour workout though, it’s pretty inefficient compared to a run or a weightlifting session. Still, I concede that the fun factor is more important for sustaining a long-term interest in the activity.

On the other hand, there is the risk factor. How does one handle the choice between doing something inherently risky (but fun) and something much less risky (but possibly better for your health)? I think that if one takes the path of avoiding all risks, not only the life would be incredibly dull, but one would end up unprepared for the eventual situation when the risk simply cannot be avoided. So we need to practice taking risks, but do so safely enough to avoid injuring ourselves all the time.

I am very new to climbing, so cannot say anything about it with authority, but take kendo as an example. It is a fairly low-risk activity, as far as martial arts go, but injuries still occur (I am recovering from one right now). Kendo is also a very high-impact activity. I don’t think it is good for one’s health from a cardio perspective either. The exertion level is too uneven to be beneficial. You both overload the cardiovascular system too much (at times), and do not sustain the useful load level long enough. So would one be better off going for an easy run or lifting some weights instead?

“But kendo is more about building character, rather than muscles or stamina!” some say. I agree. There is no argument against this. For this reason alone, it is worth taking risks in general and practicing kendo in particular.

…as long as we can avoid replacing “character” with “ego” somewhere in the process.

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Be indifferent to where you live

I am rediscovering Miyamoto Musash’s writings for myself. “Go Rin No Sho” (“The Book of Five Rings”) and “Dokkodo” (“The Way of Walking Alone”) are some incredible texts. It is amazing how universally applicable the specific teachings are, way beyond kendo. Actually, when I first came across these books many years ago, I did not even practice kendo, and it was the universal nature of Musashi’s advice that caught my attention. Now, coming back to these books (though “Dokkodo” is probably too short of text to be called a book) from a different point in life, I find them even more impressive.

But the Path that Musashi pained so clearly is tough to follow. Any one of the 21 precepts of “Dokkodo” is deceptively simple in its description, but challenging if you look at it closely. Take “Be indifferent to where you live,” for example. I kind of like Victoria. Just yesterday, on our daily commutes around town we saw eight deer. Not in a group, but eight separate deer sightings! Actually, deer are viewed a bit like pests here, but if I think about it, it’s a pity to take this proximity to wildlife for granted. Also, the fact that I can simply put on my running shoes during a lunch break and in a few minutes be in a forest (well, it’s a park actually) so old and dark that it’s cold even in the middle of a sunny day is fantastic. I really missed my usual running path when I was in Milan last year.

My kendo sensei says that there is a good argument in support of the hypothesis that Musashi is a synthetic or perhaps even a completely fictional character. I hope this is not the case. Regardless, the teachings that are attributed to Musashi are remarkably cool in their directness and generality, so he is an inspiration, whether he physically existed or not.

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Crossing cultures

“Named must your fear be before banish it you can.”
— Yoda, from Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

Yesterday, I noticed I’ve had this quote by Jigoro Kano, the founder of judo, hanging in an open Safari tab on my phone for the past year or so:

Face your fear, empty yourself, trust your own voice, let go of control, have faith in outcomes, connect with a larger purpose, derive meaning from the struggle.

I like it probably because it is so ambiguous that it seems all-encompassing and applicable to every aspect of life. As with many Japanese quotes, particularly in English translation, who knows what each part of Kano sensei’s writing really means?

It is curious how closely it resembles some of the western philosophy. The first part, about facing fears, for example, is similar to the stoic ideas of fear setting that Seneca wrote about:

Set aside a certain number of days, during which you shall content with the scantiest and cheapest fare, with coarse and rough dress, saying to yourself the while: “Is this the condition that I feared?”

Seneca was a contemporary of Jesus, but his work was largely unaffected by Christianity. Kano’s martial arts teachings are, essentially, modern, and they are also outside of Christian influence for obvious reasons. So absence of Christian influence is one commonality, but otherwise, the historical and cultural settings where these ideas came from could not be more different. Extrapolating my own experience as a foreigner practicing a Japanese martial art, Japanese culture and its Buddhism-based philosophy is initially attractive to westerners precisely because it is foreign and novel. But as one looks deeper, the same cultural gap makes it unapproachable at a more advanced level. So every now and then stumbling upon western counterparts to the foundational ideas of the East is useful and somehow comforting.

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Developing new skills

At the last tournament, I repeatedly tried to hit the opponent’s kote (lower arm just above the wrist), but judges gave me no ippons for any of the hits. I think this is because my strikes were not sharp enough. There is a particular quality of hits that’s needed to score points in kendo. It is not the force that counts, or even not the speed per se, although speed is important. It is precisely sharpness, snappiness of the hit. And I cannot do it at my current level. At least not consistently.

This presents a conundrum that applies beyond kendo to learning any new skill: how do you practice something that you cannot (correctly) do yet? If you practice using your current, incorrect, form, you risk reinforcing bad habits.

One option is to break down the skill into its constituent parts and work on them one-by-one before trying to connect them. This is how I work on the basics of violin-playing: First, work on the rhythm of a new song using a single open string. Second, get the left hand into position for playing correct notes without paying attention to rhythm or quality of sound. Third, focus on the sound quality (bow movement). Fourth, try to connect everything together and circle back to the rhythm.

In the case of a kote strike, however, the overall motion is already so short and simple that it doesn’t make sense to break it down further. But the overall quality of my kote hit is lacking, so something needs to be done. According to my sensei, the answer is to practice a different, but related, motion, which will eventually support and enable whatever you are trying to perform. In the case of the kote strike, the supporting exercise is matavari suburi – large-amplitude, straight swing of the shinai with maximum speed and an abrupt stop at the end of the swing. I’ve began doing it as my morning warm-up, but haven’t done enough yet to see any qualitative difference in my kote strikes. If anything, it will teach me not to over-extend my elbows at the end of a strike – something that’s annoyingly painful and potentially dangerous.

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The best part of tournaments

In the past, when we went to kendo tournaments, driving at 5:30 am through the dark town on the way to catch the first ferry to Vancouver, we used to joke that it takes some kind of especially weird people to willingly get up that early and go somewhere to get hit by bamboo sticks, while having others scrutinize every inch of our movements. I think somewhere along the way I myself bought into this story and lost track of why we actually like doing this. I stopped noticing the best part of tournaments that makes all these things worth it.

It took me physically going to a tournament yesterday (lack of enthusiasm being no match to the force of habit) to recall what the best part of the competition was. For me personally, it is not winning matches (I wish it was one of the reasons, but unfortunately I mostly lose my matches), but the experience as a whole. I realized that I like meeting up early to carpool to the ferry, talking about kendo over ferry food, noticing the sunrise over the islands through the window and running to the upper deck with the camera to take some shots of it. And then, at the tournament, searching for my name in the lineup (it is fun to realize that I recognize many names after the years), feeling how adrenaline pushes away sleepiness right before my match, taking photos, watching matches, trying to see if I follow, and agree with, the shinpan’s decisions. On the way back, more kendo talk – what went wrong (inevitably), how things are not like they used to be, what we need to work on.

Overall, I am glad that we can to it every now and then. The actual best part? It’s hard to put a finger on. If pressed, I would have to say, it’s hanging out with others, who, for some weird reason, also find value in being hit with bamboo sticks.

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Missing shots

Today, I once again confirmed for myself that being a shinpan (referee) at a kendo tournament is more exhausting than actually participating in a match. When you fight, you control your own actions, so you can anticipate at least 50% of what’s going on (the opponent controls another 50%). But when you referee, both competitors can strike at any time, so you cannot relax even for a second – or you will miss a shot. It is kind of similar to photographing kendo. Only the responsibility of missing a shot (or ippon) is higher when you are a shinpan.

I was both refereeing and taking photos at the Intercollegiate Taikai today – not literally at the same time, of course, but enough mixing of the two activities that I was often thinking about judging while shooting and about shooting while judging, missing shots in both cases as a result. It was still a great practice, both in terms of kendo and photography, not to mention a great time with friends.

Oh, and as a bonus – our club had two teams in the tournament, and they both met in the final! (No, we were not judging our own dojo’s teams, in case you were wondering…)