Seminar learnings: Hey, Dummy! and Ah ha! by Tim Schmelter

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0 height="100%"><tr> <td valign="top" width=235 BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000" background="ed246283.jpg"> <bR> <div> <TABLE BORDER="2" CELLPADDING="10" CELLSPACING="1" WIDTH="208" BORDERCOLORLIGHT="#999980" BORDERCOLORDARK="#666600" FRAME="BOX" RULES="ALL" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" BGCOLOR=#FFFFFF > <tR> <tD VALIGN=TOP BGCOLOR=#FFFFFF HEIGHT= 305 ><NOBR><div> <B><IMG SRC="11acaf520.png" border=0 width="175" height="82" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></div> <div> <A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="South Austin Aikido"><B>Home</B></A></div> <div> <A HREF="what_s_new.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Whats New"><B>Whats New</B></A></div> <div> <A HREF="2006_events.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="2006 Events"><B>Events</B></A></div> <div> <A HREF="about_aikido.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="About Aikido"><B>About Aikido</B></A></div> <div> <A HREF="about_our_dojo.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="About Our Dojo"><B>About Us</B></A></div> <div> <A HREF="stories.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Stories"><B>Media</B></A></div> <div> <A HREF="links.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Links"><B>Links</B></A></div> <div> <A HREF="contact_us.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Contact Us"><B>Contact Us</B></A></div> </NOBR></tD> </tR> </TABLE></div> <bR> </td> <td valign="top" width="100%" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000" background="b4676763.jpg"> <div> <B>Seminar learnings: Hey, Dummy! and Ah ha! by Tim Schmelter</B></div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>Seminar learnings: Hey, Dummy! and Ah ha!</B></div> <bR> <div> So Sunny Skys Sensei has been and gone, the mats are put up, the potluck food is eaten, the goodbyes are finished. The seminar is over and the long process of physical and mental recovery begins. The physical is pretty quick. A day of relative rest, lots of water, maybe some ibuprofen, and I'm ready to get back on the mat. The mental aspect of recovery is much longer and more drawn out. This is a good thing. It's drawn out because I take away two kinds of learning from the seminars I've attended: my "Hey, dummy!" and "Ah ha!" moments. </div> <bR> <div> <B>Hey, Dummy! </B><I><B>or, I am Tim's Spine </B></I></div> <bR> <div> The "Hey, Dummy!" learning, for me, is usually something so obvious and simple that it makes you feel like a nincompoop for not having seen it before. This seminar, the "Hey, Dummy!" moment sprang from Sunny Sensei's repeated focus on keeping your backbone, both in the metaphorical and literal senses. </div> <bR> <div> You can't have beliefs without backbone. You can't have presence without backbone. You can't have attitude, bravery, chutzpah, daring, ego or any of a hundred other adjectives without it. Without backbone, I flinch, I cower, I withdraw. I cast away my partner instead of connecting with her. </div> <bR> <div> You can't have good posture without backbone. You can't have strength without a spine. You can't safely or easily pick up a box, move a table, or throw an attacker without moving from your own point of strength and stability--that line running from your posterior to the base of your skull. When my spine bends, my muscles ache, my shoulders hunch. I push my partner instead of blending with him. </div> <bR> <div> These are not new concepts. These are things I've heard a thousand times, from a thousand different sources. "Have courage." "Stand up straight." "Be brave." "Don't slouch." Yet somehow, hearing it on the mat, in a different context, opens up a whole new dimension of understanding for me. </div> <bR> <div> Instead of "be brave", the exercise was "Don't flinch when uke attacks with a shout and kick right up near your face." Instead of "stand up straight", the exercise was "Don't slouch when you're blending with your partner in tai no henko." Just a slightly different perspective, a more specific application of the concepts, but suddenly I'm smacking myself in the forehead. Of course, how simple! What an insight! Later, of course, I recognized this as what it is: my "Hey, Dummy!" moment. The words that had been hammering my ears for years finally penetrated my cranium and found a nice place to settle down. </div> <bR> <div> And the benefits! I corrected my posture on the mat constantly throughout the rest of the seminar, and really focused on being present for my partner. The payoff? An increased feeling of stability and groundedness. A feeling of confidence, not in my technique (please!), but in myself, in my ability to handle things better. And it didn't hurt that, when I was practicing a particular entering technique with Leslie Sensei, she remarked how stable I seemed. Luckily, I was developing a strong spine, because it suddenly had to support a head that had swollen to at least three times its normal size. </div> <bR> <div> The "Hey, Dummy!" moment is something from which I can derive immediate benefit, but also keeps paying dividends in the future. "Relax" was my "Hey, Dummy!" moment from the last seminar. Yes, I heard it 20 times per class before, but something about the way Tres Sensei presented the concept made it stick. Now it's a part of my practice, and I can feel myself growing slowly more relaxed and sensitive as I progress through my training. I can already tell that the combination of backbone--in both the poetic and physical senses--and relaxation is going to make a huge difference in how I conduct and perceive my training. </div> <bR> <div> <B>Ah ha! </B></div> <bR> <div> My "Ah ha!" moments are harder to pin down, simply because of their nature. The "Ah ha!" moment is something that I hear, maybe even practice during the seminar and training afterwards, but it doesn't really sink in. But some time later, I'll be training and suddenly have a moment of "Ah ha! So that's what Sensei was talking about!" It may be something very simple, and it's often connected to my "Hey, Dummy!" moment. </div> <bR> <div> During the last seminar, my "Ah ha!" moment was when I suddenly performed a very, very soft and slow forward roll during warm-up. Hey, that was just like what Tres Sensei was trying to get us to do! I was relaxing through my roll! Ah ha! </div> <bR> <div> I'm not sure what my "Ah ha!" moment will be from this seminar. I may have more than one, if I'm lucky--there were certainly enough juicy tidbits there to provide a lot of learning. Entering. Penetrating. Softness. Connectedness. Staying with my partner. Possibly one of those, or possibly something entirely different, but in a week or a month or a year or five years, I'll have that flash of "Ah ha!" </div> <bR> <div> And I'm told that it doesn't stop. Even the most senior people I've been lucky enough to discuss this with say the same thing, that the flashes of insight and learning keep going on and on. Even O-Sensei was reported to have said in his dying days that he was really just beginning to understand ikkyo. </div> <bR> <div> And that's enough to keep me coming back.</div> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>