Transmission in Aikido, Part II by George S. Ledyard
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Back in September I wrote a column on "Transmission in Aikido". Since
that time I have traveled a bit teaching seminars in various parts of
the country and I found this to be a recurrent topic of
conversation. Earlier in the Fall I had a chance to sit and talk with
my own teacher, Saotome Sensei, and I found my thoughts on this
subject becoming even more clear.
With the huge growth in the popularity of Aikido around the world, we
find that the number of practitioners, teachers, and dojos has
increased at a much faster rate than the system has been able to turn
out what we will refer to as Shihan or "Master" Level
Teachers. Consequently, the number of people who have had the good
fortune to train under one of the Founder's "direct students" is
extremely small. Even the number of folks who have received their
instruction from a student of one of these deshi of the Founder
is a small minority of the total number of folks training.
So we find ourselves in a situation in which the majority of the dojos
operating are run by mid-level students of the art with ranks in the
second to fourth Dan range. The primary way in which these teachers
are able to continue to progress is to attend regional weekend
seminars, perhaps get to a Summer Camp, and if they are lucky enough
to have a dojo that is large enough or centrally located enough, they
might host a Shihan level teacher themselves.
It is here that I believe the current system is breaking down. In my
experience the best of the Shihan level instructors (those that
trained directly under O-sensei and those that did not) have not stood
still in their own development. I have been doing an archiving project
in which I am burning my library of VHS tapes which go back to the
mid-eighties to DVD in order to preserve them for future
generations. It is clear from watching these videos that my own
teachers have gotten better over the years, that their technique has
become even more sophisticated and refined, that their understanding
of what they knew has deepened. The "Bar" so to speak has risen...
This fact doesn't represent a problem for the direct students of these
teachers, those that train in their own dojos or get frequent personal
contact with them. They are actually pulled along behind their
teachers to higher level practice. But it is my perception that for
the folks that do not have prolonged or frequent exposure to the
Shihan level instructors there is a gap that is becoming increasingly
difficult to bridge. Many, if not most, of the folks running dojos
around the country (US or Canada) are run by people who did not
receive their foundational training under the Shihan with whom they
are currently affiliated (if they are affiliated at all).
Given the fact that in the United States there were originally only
two or three organizations that covered all of the Aikido dojos and
today we have more than a dozen, one can safely say that many of the
folks running dojos originally trained under the auspices of some
other organization. I think it is common place for people to have
trained in more than one style, often with widely varying stylistic
differences and requirements. Some organizations do little or no
weapons work, others put a strong emphasis on weapons. Some
organizations stress many years of basics with little or no exposure
to advanced concepts until fifteen or twenty years of experience,
others offer a very wide technical exposure, encouraging the students
to try more advanced concepts fairly early in the training careers.
In my own organization, the ASU, one finds many students and even
dojo-chos who joined the organization over the years because of
books, videos, and even personal exposure to the Shihan level teachers
who preside over the training. In many cases, although these people
are part of the organization and are ostensibly there to follow the
direction of the organization Shihans, they do not in fact have many
total hours of actual mat time with these teachers. I think this is
very common in any of the larger organizations and even some smaller
ones.
As noted before, the original system for "transmission' was geared for
a small and very personal environment. I can remember a time when my
teacher knew the first name of every first kyu in the whole
organization getting ready to test for Shodan. The majority of the
teachers running dojos were students that either Saotome Sensei or
Ikeda Sensei had trained themselves. That time is gone for virtually
any organization of size with which I am familiar. This has created a
gap in the transmission process.
I see two concurrent trends within Aikido. Both of these trends leads
to a situation in which there are "two Aikidos". In both trends the
art is transmitted to the direct students of a given Shihan
expressly with the creation of future teachers in mind. Here we find
an attempt to transmit as much of the teachings of the Founder and a
given Master teacher's understanding of the art as possible. The
standards are usually strict, the training demanding, and the
Shihan is clearly attempting to pass on the "full meal deal" so
to speak. But then one of the trends is based on the assumption that
most students of Aikido, now that it has grown to such a vast
community, aren't going to be teachers and the material and methods
geared for creating a generation of new instructors aren't necessary
or appropriate for the "masses" who are pursuing the art as a sort of
hobby but not as a serious Path or way of life. So, once the
Shihan in question has created a group of students to whom he
has done his level best to transmit as much of his knowledge as
possible, he then assumes that the "masses" are incapable of getting
to the more sophisticated techniques and principles and he begins to
restrict his instruction to the basics.
One can see this explicitly in Japan in many arts, not just Aikido. In
many cases arts such as Shodo, Chado, Ikebana, traditional crafts,
music etc. are simply culturally relevant hobbies for the modern
Japanese person. But for the foreigner who has packed up everything to
move to Japan and live, these pursuits are serious, life altering
commitments. This finds the arts in Japan in a situation in which
often, the senior practitioner(s) of a given art is a foreigner. In
Aikido in particular, often the training being offered to the average
Japanese student of an art is not done on a model which is attempting
to take that student to "mastery" but rather to make the practice of
the art enjoyable and healthful, interesting up to a point but not so
complex that it would demand too much from the students. The manner in
which the average student trains is quite different from the way in
which the aspiring professional would train both in intensity and
content. And even the young instructors in training are not getting
the kind of broad and sophisticated instruction their own teachers had
received from the Founder. Instead, their instruction is geared to
creating teachers who can present the basics of the art to a public
that doesn't have much need for a high level of sophistication.
I see much the same thing happening in the West. Aikido has here long
enough that most of the Shihan teachers, Japanese and Western alike,
have created a generation of teachers who, at least in the old days
would have been considered Shihan, or Master Instructors. These are
students who have attained a level which in the Classical arts would
have represented the first level of teaching certification. They would
have been given certificates which said that they were fully capable
of teaching the essentials of a style but had not yet achieved the
highest level of sophistication in that style. In modern Aikido this
is represented by a Sixth Dan (although due to the vagaries of ranking
and politics one can find a number of Fifth Dans who are functioning
at this level of sophistication).
In virtually all cases these new Master Instructors are the product of
the own teacher's whole hearted efforts to impart as much of what they
know and possible. Certainly in my own case, I know that any gaps in
my technical education are my own doing and not the product of
anything held back by my teacher. He stuffed us so full of knowledge
that it has taken years and years just to digest it. As best I can, I
am attempting to do this with my own students (at least in accordance
with their desires, capacity, and commitment).
Where I see the problem occurring is when I travel around and I meet
the many dedicated folks who are responsible for the phenomenal growth
in our art. These folks typically have 7 to 15 years of experience
under their belts. Due to some factor like relocation, political
issues, re-affiliation, or some such they have made the commitment to
open their own dojo and take on the responsibility for the "care and
feeding" of a new generation of students. The issue for these teachers
is that they are simultaneously attempting to be the next link in the
"transmission" of the art while still working to master the essentials
of their particular style themselves. Given the extremely high level
of the teachers with whom they are affiliated it is quite difficult
for these mid-level instructors to bridge the gap between their basic
understanding and that of the teachers under whose "direction" they
are supposedly functioning.
If these instructors are lucky, they will have two or three
opportunities each year to train with their own Shihan level
teachers. They will take whatever lessons are offered at these events
(a weekend to a week long in duration) and go back to their own
schools where these lessons will form the basis for their own practice
till the next year when the cycle repeats. During that year they will
impart as much as they can to their own students in the course of
attempting to master the principles / techniques themselves. The issue
at stake is that in many cases the foundation which these instructors
have is not sufficient to allow them to get close enough to what is
being taught by their Shihan level teachers of for them to be able to
work on these things unsupervised. Often their initial understanding
of what was being taught at the seminar was so far from what their
teacher was doing that even with a lot of practice they have little
hope of getting it right by the next year and in fact run the risk of
imprinting some negative elements into their technique which will
later have to be undone.
Internationally, I see little or no evidence that this state of things
is seen as a problem that needs to be addressed. In fact, in my
opinion, the current system serves to institutionalize this
situation. There are "two Aikidos". One is what is taught to people
who clearly are on some instructor track. With these students the
attempt is made to impart as much of their own teachers knowledge and
experience as possible. The other Aikido is a modernized, simplified
version deemed by those at the top to be appropriate for popular
consumption. It is Aikido-Lite. When this is the conscious approach
taken by the leadership, the seminars and camps conducted by the
senior Shihan teachers of the organization become yearly seminars on
the kihon waza; basics, basics, and more basics. Little or no attempt
is made to pass on the more subtle elements of the art along the lines
of what the Shihan received from the own teacher, the Founder.
Some high level teachers have not pursued this approach and do attempt
to pass along as much of their own knowledge as possible. But the
foundation on the part of the mid-level teachers is not sufficient to
allow this process to be successful for the average instructor. There
simply isn't enough regular feedback for them to aspire to this high
level of sophistication by simply taking techniques and concepts they
have only briefly seen and then attempting to work them out on their
own without more than twice yearly feedback. So there exists a
generation of instructors who are "left behind" so to speak. This
means that their students are also left behind and it is extremely
difficult for them to get the foundation required to later attain the
top level of expertise.
I think that in most cases the leaders of the Aikido world simply
accept this as a normal state of affairs. But what I see is that the
mid-level teachers and their students haven't bought into this
model. Most of these folks, in my experience, don't see themselves as
having signed up for Aikido-Lite. They are aware that they aren't
being taught weapons, that they never see instruction on martial
application of technique, that things like kiai and atemi waza get
little or no attention, that there is little or no talk of the
Spiritual side of the art. The folks that aren't being fed the
Aikido-Lite diet are equally frustrated because they recognize that
they aren't moving towards what is being modeled for them in any
systematic way. I am often told how lucky I am to have had the
instruction I have had because it prepared me to have a legitimate
shot at understanding what our teachers have been doing. These folks
often feel left behind by the folks that can train directly with the
Shihan teachers or their direct students.
In some cases folks are happy doing Aikido-Lite, they don't want to
know how broad and deep their training might be because it would
demand that they make a greater commitment to their training. But in
the majority of cases I find that people out there in the Aikido
hinterlands are starving for more input. I teach seminars all over the
country and I find that people are not just receptive but actively
seeking more and better input. From this experience I have formed the
opinion that the current setup isn't working for the majority of folks
at the bottom of the Aikido totem pole. The various Aikido
organizations around need to make a concerted effort to systematize a
teaching hierarchy which "delivers the goods" so to speak to the
smallest dojos with the most junior instructors under their
auspices.
The solution here isn't more exposure to the Shihan instructors
themselves. In most cases these teachers are a resource that is being
utilized to its limit. My own teachers travel almost every weekend,
conduct multiple camps each year in the US and still manage to make a
visit or two overseas to see their students there. I don't see how it
would be possible for the mass of students to get more exposure to
these teachers.
The under utilized resource within the Aikido community, at least in
North America, is the group of senior deshi who have been training
with the top Shihan for thirty or more years. Typically these teachers
are at the Fifth or Sixth Dan level. Most are just starting to travel
around to teach and aren't burned out by the travel. They have
flexible schedules as they aren't in the kind of demand the senior
Shihan are. They are still at the stage of their own training in
which they are just starting to understand what it is they have been
taught all these years by their own teachers and they are excited
about sharing that knowledge with others. In short, these are the very
people who can bridge the gap between the top level Shihan and the
mid-level instructors out in the hinterlands.
The single greatest obstacle to taking advantage of this tremendous
resource is the "Japanese Mystique". While most Aikidoka would deny
any particular bias here, in fact one finds that people vote with
their "training dollars" so to speak. For instance, if my dojo hosts a
seminar with one of the two Shihan level instructors who head our
organization, I can expect to have anywhere between 60 and 80 people
attend all or part of the weekend (90% of our own students will
attend). People will travel form all parts of the US and
Canada. Representatives of at least half the immediate area dojos will
be there. If I hold a seminar with one of my own organization's
"second tier" instructors, perhaps a 6th Dan direct student of one of
our Shihan, I can expect very few, if any, students from outside our
own dojo and perhaps only half of the registered members of the dojo
will attend. This is in an area in which 16 Aikido dojos are within a
half hour driving radius, including other dojos in our own
organization.
In the fifteen years I have been hosting seminars, this pattern has
not changed. It has held true even when I invited a teacher with whom
many of the area dojos had a direct relationship. I would still have
more people from their dojos attend a seminar with a Japanese
Shihan with whom none of them had any formal relationship than
if I hosted one of the teachers associated with their own dojos.
Now some of this phenomenon is understandable. We all wish to keep
some sense of a personal relationship with our own teachers. Most of
us get to train with them only a few times a year, if we are lucky.
But what I have observed is that this infrequent exposure is not
sufficient to accomplish "transmission" of what it is the teachers are
attempting to pass on. As we noted above, not all of these teachers
are even looking at these seminars and camps as a way to accomplish
transmission. They are merely a way to give their organization some
sense of unified identity. But even when the Shihan involved are
trying to pass on the real essentials of their style of Aikido, many
of the students are not at a high enough level to see what is being
taught. Many times the mid-level instructor will attempt to take his
lessons back to his own dojo where he can work on them till the next
year, perhaps pass these lessons on to their students. The problem is
that what they thought they saw the Shihan doing was not close enough
to what he was really doing for these folks to make a creditable
effort to perfect the techniques later on.
What is needed here is not less exposure to the Shihan level teachers
with whom we are all affiliated but more exposure to the students whom
they have been training for thirty or more years. In most cases in
North America these students are non-Japanese teachers. In my opinion
training with these teachers has a distinct advantage. In most cases
Western teachers are more verbal; they simply explain more. The old
model of "stealing" the techniques of ones teacher was designed for
close personal and frequent association between teacher and
student. It is just plain inadequate to pass on an art with the
breadth and depth of Aikido to people who will only see their teachers
two or three times a year. Someone needs to "oversee" the training of
these folks in a more direct way than is currently being done.
The model I am proposing would involve establishing semi-formal
relationships between the dojos out in the hinterlands and various
second tier instructors in a given organization. Regular, periodic
exposure to a couple of the second tier instructors would allow the
mid-level teachers to train people who would have the time and
inclination to nurture them and bring them along, specifically helping
them move towards a place at which they can begin to appreciate and
benefit from what the top Shihan teachers are doing. This model would
also allow the top teachers to focus on something other then just
basics when they come for seminars or preside over camps. Given that
the second tier instructors regularly attend many seminars and most
camps, they are in a unique place to help interpret what is taught at
those events. It would be their responsibility to take what the Shihan
are focusing on at a given time period and reinforce that teaching
throughout the year as they travel around.
In some cases this is already happening on an informal basis. My own
dojo has a relationship like this with Gleason Sensei. He comes out
from Boston every Fall and has for over five years. He knows my senior
students, has a sense of how they are progressing and they also can
see, not just repeated coherent presentation of his interpretation of
the principles of the art, but also the fact that he is changing as
well. We have established a symbiotic relationship in which the dojo
serves as a source of support for him as a professional teacher and we
benefit from a very close and personal relationship with a gifted
teacher.
I myself have this type of relationship with a few dojo heads around
the country. This has happened because the head instructors of these
dojos want someone senior with whom they can actually interact, ask
questions hear the old stories passed on, etc. They want to be able to
ask someone "what was that thing Sensei was doing last camp?" or "how
is that sword work done that is in Sensei's video?" They need someone
to see what their interpretation has been of what the Shihan have been
doing and steer them back on the right track so that the direction of
their training doesn't go too far astray.
What I am proposing is a model which would be overt and formalized in
which the various organizations, regardless of style, attempt to
promote the second tier instructors (5th and 6th Dans) as a necessary
resource for the majority of folks in the organization to utilize in
their attempts to follow along behind their Shihan Teachers. It is
necessary that the folks out there in the hinterlands treat this
resource as an important one for their own progress. It is necessary
that people recognize that, in trying to get to the highest level
training, a second tier instructor might be more useful to a mid-level
practitioner than simply more exposure to the top Teachers
themselves.
Of course, I have a stake in this since I am one of those second-tier
instructors. But this is the way I view my function in the Aikido
hierarchy. It seems to be the only way in which I can adequately repay
my own teachers for the tremendous gift they have given me. So far,
people seem, not only extremely receptive to this idea, but they
really seem to be benefiting. I can see distinct changes taking place
with those folks with whom I have had a relationship for a while. The
feedback I have gotten is that, at least the instructors are finding
their exposure to the top Shihan teachers to be more fruitful because
the training they have done with the second tier instructors has given
them a framework to understand what is being done at the higher
levels.
So rather than accept the "two Aikidos" model in which a small group
of serious people get the "real" goods and the rest of the Aikido
population just gets Aikido-lite or are simply left behind to fend for
themselves, we make a concerted effort to give everyone in Aikido who
wants to make the effort and wishes to "go the distance" the means to
progress as far as their abilities will allow. In thousands of dojos
around the world people are investing the most precious resource they
have, their time. It is our responsibility as senior practitioners to
do everything we can to give these people our best efforts. It is the
responsibility of every person training to be "hungry", to go after
the teaching wherever offered, to take advantage of the resources that
are available for their development.
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