Weapons

Last night we trained bokken for weapons class. It was a big class for us and nearly everyone on the mat was a beginner. What was so interesting is to see how many different ways people have of doing the exact same thing. Although I only taught it one way, each person had a different interpretation of what they saw. This led me to think about my own teaching and my own journey as a student.  

I taught the most basic cut last night and as I looked around the room it was amazing to see how differently each person did the technique. With body art it's more difficult to see, each nuance or idiosyncrasy isn't as pronounced, but with weapon's work, especially bokken, all these little body anomalies start to appear.  You ask someone to stand up straight, and eight people will stand up straight eight different ways. Then you ask them to hold this somewhat strange looking object, and swing it in a very prescribed way and you get as many different versions of it as you have people on the mat. Certainly this isn't a criticism, just an observation. 

What we try to teach in weapons is that each part of a strike should be completely natural. What that means is that the body should move in a way that allows the weapon to move as it is intended without any interference. The more human qualities that are added into the movement the less that weapon is able to function as it was intended. So in a way it's like stripping away all the things that a person brings onto the mat and allowing the weapon to entirely take over. But at first the body leads and the weapon follows, and later the weapon leads and the body follows. 

As I stood on the mat looking out at my students I wanted to laugh and tell them how funny they looked. Certainly not in a mean way, but I wish they could see themselves through my eyes. Even though I try to show them in the clearest way that I can, they will never see what I see and I will never see what they see. If I could see my self through their eyes I'd be a much improved teacher, and if they could see themselves through mine they would be improved students. But all we can do is look at what we are doing and then see what the outcome is. They do suburi and look at my reaction; that's how a student improves. I look at my students, and they reflect what I'm doing; this is how a teacher learns.   

So everyone on the mat was standing in some funny posture, some way their body was taking over and not letting the weapon move, and I realized that my teaching is probably just like that. I'm not sure I can articulate just what I mean, but my teaching is probably like bad posture, too much muscle and improper angles. Through practice their cuts improve, and through practice my teaching improves. I'd imagine if you asked eight different teachers to stand up straight you'd get eight different interpretations of what that meant.  But through practice, just like in bokken, I think that we try and eliminate, or at least minimize our own concepts of what's right and wrong and try to find out what's natural. 

At first the student tries to force the bokken to do what he or she wants it to do, and I see my teaching just like that. I try and impose my will on my students; I tell them do it just like this, or just like that. But the weapon cuts with less efficiency the harder a student tries to swing it, and I'd imagine the harder a teacher tries to force his students to learn the less able they will become. But with no body the sword doesn't move, and with no teacher the student doesn't learn. So like the weapon's student learns to let the weapon cut, I think the teacher needs to learn how to let the student learn. Each person is like a new weapon, in a way, and in order for it to work properly or work efficiently it must be moved the right way. This is how I see my job and the job of a teacher in general. I need to see how a student learns and then I can teach them. The students lead the teacher in this way and not the other way around.