msneen said:
. . .I have never met anyone who could do it without years of training. I have been training for about 25 years, and I doubt if I "get it" to your level.
As you sort of implied, it's more a matter of how you've trained than how long you've trained. Hatsumi sensei, for years now, has been harping on using
kukan (space). It's something I stress right from the beginning in fundamental
kihon training.
It is almost unworkable for police / military training, which was the context of the original post.
Likely so, for at least a couple of reasons. One is the time/budget constraints of military/LEO training, requiring a certain quantifiable proficiency level within a set time frame. The kinds of things they're taught are, as I see it, comparable to
kihon-level to, at most,
shoden-level training in a classical ryu. (And the same time/budget constraints were in effect during the
Sengoku Jidai or "Warring States" period in Japan, too!) These kinds of things can be learned fairly quickly; in their basic form they work pretty well most of the time; and it's time- and cost-effective to teach them to large numbers of young, strong men who can heal quickly (or if they do bite the big one on the battlefield, it's no great loss because you can always conscript -- or nowadays, hire -- more).
As far as I can tell, it
does take a fair amount of time to reach what I would call a "high" level of proficiency. How much? Well, years ago Jack Hoban asked Hatsumi sensei how it was that Takamatsu sensei had been able to teach him all this stuff from 9 historic ryuha in only 15 years. His answer was indirect: something along the line of, "
I can teach you in
ten years -- but you have to trust me, do as I say, and train the way I tell you to train."
Another reason this kind of thing is problematic for military/LEO training is the "mental shift" required. It's akin to that required for, say, fully
seeing certain optical-illusion drawings and paintings like
these or some of
M.C. Escher's work.
Hatsumi's budo uses, as has been said of Russian Systema, "a different operating system". That doesn't mean it's inherently difficult, but it does mean that the differences are likely to generate mental and emotional resistance.
Jack Hoban has had a lot to say about this whole "space" thing over the last few years, but I really like what he had to say about it in his "New Year's Message" on the
first of January, 2001:
I'd like to re-explore the concept of kyojitsu, or the juxtaposition of truth and falsehood, in light of what we learned last year.
It will take some consideration to move from where we are to where I think we can go. The first step requires a discussion of the concepts of in and yo. In and yo are like metaphysical polarities. Yo is usually thought of as the open, in, the closed. Yo the light, in the dark. Yo the positive, in the negative. Yo the full, in the empty. Etc. Well, how about yo as the opponent and in as the kukan?
I think most martial artists would consider the opponent, the physical opponent, to be the yo manifestation, wouldn't you? The place where the opponent is not, therefore, might be called the in. It is our first inclination to deal with the physical opponent. But what if we juxtaposed that? What if we considered the space the yo and the opponent the in?
This is not really such a bizarre concept in Japanese culture. For example, if you consider the art of Sho-Do (calligraphy), the yo element, the actual drawn character itself, is not light, but dark -- the black ink. The white rice paper on which the character is drawn is seen as subordinate. But a true appreciation of Sho-Do requires that one sees the painting as a whole. Therefore, the white space -- where the ink is not -- is just as important a place as where the ink is. This is really a type of kyojitsu, isn't it?
There is a discussion about in and yo that applies directly to warfare. In warfare, one might ask, which is the predominant element? In or yo? Is it control of the in (space or, more precisely, the key terrain)? Or is it control (or killing) of the enemy that is the yo? One could argue that you need control of both. But what is the best approach? is it the "body count", or is it "control of the most territory with the least amount of killing"? Don't be too quick to answer. Generals have argued about this for centuries.
Closer to the subject of our own training, it is clear (to me at least) that you must control both. Yet, our amateurish application of martial art "techniques" seems to be designed to deal mostly with the yo, or the physical element, which is the physical opponent. What if we made it our goal, however, to control the space as opposed to the person? Well, we began to deal with that last year. But let's go a step further. Let's consider the space to be the yo and the opponent to be the in. Let's use the concept of kyojitsu to juxtapose our very perception of a "fight" to be one of treating space as solid and solid as space. What would this "switcheroo" do to our opponent who, obviously, would expect us to deal with him? (Or her -- sorry about that!)
One last thing about this "Year of Kyojitsu. Kyojitsu is not just some kind of trick. It is as natural as night is to day, as cold is to hot. It is necessary. We just have not been seeing it for what it can be. Rather than being a negative concept, it is just an indispensable part of the whole. And I believe it is a part that we must understand and accept before we can progress as martial artists -- and human beings!
Sounds pretty deep, but it can actually be made fairly simple. Let's say someone is punching at you. That punch is traveling through quite a small volume of space, compared to all the space around it and between you and the opponent which it is
not using. So why stress about the punch -- why not just go to one of the many places it isn't. . .or more appropriately, one of the many places it won't be at the moment you get there?
