Tag: koryu

• Mercy is Found in Death

  Mercy is the ability to destroy a person at the very moment of his or her error or mistake, at his or her most fragile and vulnerable, but choosing instead to offer compassion to that person, to teach him or her how to be better.

  

  One of the foundational training methods of classical Japanese martial arts is the use of paired kata, partner drills meant to ingrain in the practitioners a specific set of skills, attitudes, and principles. In a kata, there are essentially two positions or roles. Shidachi is the person doing the technique, the person winning, the person killing his or her opponent. Uchidachi is the person receiving the technique, the person losing, the person who is dying.

  Traditionally, the teacher is uchidachi, the losing position in the kata, with the student being shidachi. Uchidachi’s role is not a passive one. Uchidachi does not simply let shidachi win. It is uchidachi’s responsibility to lead and guide shidachi through the kata, by exposing and filling in the holes in shidachi’s technique, balance, distancing, and attitude. The teacher’s goal is not to embarrass or humiliate the student, but to build him or her up slowly by making adjustments, large or small, by adding pressure and resistance, but never too much, to point out mistakes and weakness, while simultaneously helping the student to overcome these along the way to success.

  While the teacher sacrifices his or her own life and body for the sake of the student’s learning, he or she learns as much or more through this process. By being an active observer, by making the macro or micro-adjustments necessary to lead shidachi through the kata, uchidachi becomes hypersensitive to openings and mistakes that, if he or she chose to, could be violently exposed and taken advantage of. Shidachi may never even realize this because the lesson is not his or her to learn, yet. It may seem counterintuitive, but through teaching shidachi how to be more expertly violent, uchidachi is learning how to defeat such violence and, more so, the teacher is learning how to give life instead of how to take it.

  “As in life, so too it is in budo. As in budo, so too it is in life.”

  -Robert Van Valkenburgh is co-founder of Taikyoku Mind & Body and Kogen Dojo where he teaches Taikyoku Budo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu

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  July 26, 2019

  budo, classical martial arts, compassion, japanese martial arts, kata, kobudo, kogen dojo, koryu, life giving sword, life taking sword, Martial Arts, mercy, shidachi, taikyoku budo, tori, traditional martial arts, uchidachi, uke

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• As The Group Develops, So Do I

  Are you training for yourself or something more?

  

  Some activities are individual pursuits, solitary paths for personal enrichment and improvement. Other activities are intended for and best experienced in groups, whether with family, friends, or, in some cases even strangers. Martial arts lie somewhere in the middle of this spectrum.

  Most often, martial arts are sought out as an individual pursuit with individual motivations and goals driving the decision to start. What one finds, however, is that, in general they must be practiced with others. One of the unique characteristics of classical Japanese martial arts is that they are actually designed to be practiced with other.

  The paired kata, partner (and sometimes solo) pattern drills, that are the foundation for classical Japanese martial arts require that, in order for an individual to improve, the group must improve as well. This creates a cyclical process of group improvement leading to group improvement and vice versa. Likewise, as the individual gets stronger, so to does the group and, as the group gets stronger, so to does the individual.

  Selfishness, then, really has no place in classical Japanese martial arts because one cannot, must not, excel past the group and leave the rest behind. The group develops at its own pace because it is more important than individual goals or aspirations. Conversely, if an individual cannot or will not keep up with the group’s progress perhaps that individual is not the right fit for that group.

  -Robert Van Valkenburgh teaches Taikyoku Budo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu at Kogen Dojo

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  March 25, 2019

  group training, japanese martial arts, kata, kogen dojo, koryu, Martial Arts, personal goals, taikyoku budo

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• From Inspiration to Influence (Repeat)

  “For me, after leaving my home and living 13 years in a foreign country, if all I did was go there to come back and replicate what I learned over there, as if I had not returned to a very different world, I believe that I would be failing one of the functions of what koryu was, namely, to influence society. I don’t mean something simplistic like, “Well, I’ll modernize it, and I’ll use a baseball bat instead of a sword,” but it has to somehow fit and contribute to my society as opposed to being just an antique that people visit.”

  —Ellis Amdur

  This quote is an example of how a single idea can change our life’s direction. For some context, the word koryu (古流 ‘old flow’) refers to classical Japanese martial arts that originated prior to the Meiji Restoration in 1868 and Ellis Amdur is a licensed instructor in two koryu: Araki-ryu torite kogusoku and Toda-ha Buko-ryu. Ellis Amdur has had a significant influence on my martial art path and, therefore, my life in general. His writings rerouted me from Korean hapkido to the Japanese martial arts and, in an indirect way, Brazilian jiu-jitsu (something I will write about at another time). He introduced me to my teacher and friend, Budd Yuhasz, and my dojo, Kogen Dojo, is named after an amalgam of Japanese characters 古 (ko), meaning ancient or classical, and 現 (gen), meaning present or modern, that he originally put together for his martial art blog: Kogen Budo. The above quote, the topic of this post, was a seed planted in my mind that led to the creation of my own blog, the one you are reading now: Holistic Budo.

  If a principle is true, that truth, that principle can be extrapolated and applied in other aspects of life. I never lived nor studied koryu in Japan, but I have been a student of martial arts for most of my adult life. Reading the above quote and the two-part interview it is from, I began thinking about all of the principles and object lessons martial art training have taught me over the years. I then began thinking about how the arts in general, music, literature and even the culinary arts, have shaped and influenced my life. If the arts have given me so much and have helped to make me who I am today, what is my contribution to the landscape? How can I pass on some of what has impacted me and influence the culture around me?

  It is not that I like writing, per se. I like telling stories, stories that have meaning to me and may help others to see things from a different perspective. Whether or not anyone reads or finds value in my writing is not my concern. My goal is to have written, to have put my work into the world, to transform what is in my head or in my past into something tangible and potentially useful. For the same reason I show up to the dojo day after day to pass on what has been passed on to me, I do not write for myself, but to be part of a continuum. For me, writing is not about creation or regurgitation, but transformation, the transformation of that which has inspired me into something that may inspire others.

  – Robert Van Valkenburgh is co-founder of Kogen Dojo where he teaches Taikyoku Budo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu

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  January 14, 2019

  brazilian jiu-jitsu, japanese martial arts, kogen dojo, koryu, writing

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