Find your center.
Seek that place inside you that cannot be moved.
This is where there is no anger, no worry, and no expectations.
Go to this place for peace, rest, and comfort.
When you find yourself becoming excited, distracted, or disturbed, settle back into this place.
Go to your center.
Make a home there.
FIND YOUR CENTER
By Robert Van Valkenburgh
Meditations of a Gentle Warrior
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When things are going poorly for us, when life is difficult and we are struggling, we are grateful for even the tiniest bit of relief, hoping with all of our being that our circumstances and our feelings will change for the better soon.
When things are going well, however, when life feels easy and things seem to be going our way, we tend to take this for granted as if we deserve it and it will last forever.
The truth is that both the bad times and the good will pass.
Nothing is permanent.
With this in mind, we get to decide whether or not our external circumstances should dictate our internal state.
If the world around us is constantly changing, if it is perpetually waxing and waning between what seems to benefit us and what seems to be harmful to us, chasing one and running away from the other will having us run in circles.
Worse yet, it will have us running in a spiral toward an abyss of unhappiness and dissatisfaction.
If, rather than being led by our circumstances, we focus on our center, on our consistency and our stability, we may find ourselves standing in the eye of the storm of life, observing it as it spins around us instead of being drawn into the winds and the rain of life’s trials and tribulations.
Kindness is never a wasted effort.
When we are kind to others, we begin to change and they begin to change. This change may not be immediately observable, by us or those to whom our kindness is directed, but a small change occurs with every exchange of kindness nonetheless. If applied consistently, these infinitesimal, often imperceptible changes have the potential to add up to something dramatic and powerful over time.
We have our work cut out for us if we want this type of change to stick because we are working against many other, equally powerful forces. Within each of us are a hundred forms of fear, selfishness, and prejudice trying to obstruct or reverse every act of good will with a justification or an explanation as to its insignificance. As we get older, as our beliefs and behaviors begin to solidify, these malignant forces become stronger and more resistant to positive change, but that is why we must be dogged and unwavering in our efforts to be kind to and for ourselves and others.
Of course, we will fall short of this ideal. No one can be kind always and in all ways. Each of us will become tired, hurt, offended, frustrated, and frightened at one point or another, or sometimes all at once, in a way that prevents us from being kind or receiving kindness. The key is to find and consistently return to our center, the place within ourselves wherein there is no fear, there is no anger, there is no selfishness, there is only compassion, generosity, and kindness, the place from which positive change ceaselessly emanates.
Holistic Budo: As it is in budo, so too it is in life. As it is in life, so too it is in budo.
Robert Van Valkenburgh is co-founder of Taikyoku Mind & Body and Kogen Dojo where he teaches Taikyoku Budo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
All photos by Robert Van Valkenburgh unless otherwise noted.
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One of the common themes among all grappling arts is a focus on stability as a fundamental principle.
Whether called base, root, center, balance, or even frame or posture by some people, stability is an integral component of any grappling-based martial art. Whatever name we use for the concept, what we are talking about is the attribute of being unmovable in a direction that is detrimental to our physical well-being, of manifesting the physical quality wherein, whether pulled or pushed, our body remains stable and unaffected.
Leaving our opponent out of the conversation for a moment, stability alone is not really the target. To simply be stable is not the essence or the aim of the grappling body. Dynamic stability is.
True stability in grappling describes a state that is fluid, mobile, and adaptive. It is the ability to remain unwavering in an unwanted direction while also being unstoppable in the direction we desire. It is to have unshakable integrity combined with physical freedom and pliability such that we never find ourselves in a state of resistance, but, instead, exist in a constant state of desirable and advantageous options.
Holistic Budo: As it is in budo, so too it is in life. As it is in life, so too it is in budo.
Robert Van Valkenburgh is co-founder of Taikyoku Mind & Body and Kogen Dojo where he teaches Taikyoku Budo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, as well as a founding member of the Severna Park and Baltimore Holistic Chamber of Commerce.
Street art photo taken by Robert Van Valkenburgh, artist unknown unless otherwise noted.
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“Whoever controls the center, wins.” —Ellis Amdur
Grappling is essentially a negotiation for space, space that one person is attempting to occupy to the detriment of the other. Takedowns, throws, pins, strangles, and joint-locks, are really all variants of taking space so that we are in control of it and our opponent is not. In Japanese martial arts, this idea of taking space is known as ‘irimi,’ literally ‘entering body.’
Irimi, as Ellis Amdur describes it, is a martial form of displacement wherein “[t]wo objects cannot occupy the same space, and I, with greater power/speed/timing/postural stability, etc, take that space.” Whether we are talking about destabilizing an opponent to the point of a fall, like in sumo or judo, pinning an opponent such that he or she can no longer move, like in western-style wrestling, or submitting an opponent with a joint-lock or a strangle, as in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, grappling is measured in our ability to take space and not give it back. It is measured in irimi.
Through irimi, we develop the ability to predict where our opponent wants to be, the space he or she wants to take. Then, we can choose to either be there first, to cut him or her off by making that space our own, or to not be there at all by moving to a more advantageous position from which we can take more space with less resistance. Irimi is the means by which we take space until we achieve our takedown, throw, pin, and/or submission, and it is also the means by which we do not give up our own space in the process.
Holistic Budo: As it is in budo, so too it is in life. As it is in life, so too it is in budo.
Robert Van Valkenburgh is co-founder of Taikyoku Mind & Body and Kogen Dojo where he teaches Taikyoku Budo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, as well as a founding member of the Severna Park and Baltimore Holistic Chamber of Commerce.
Artwork by Ana, except where otherwise noted.
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Meditations on God 