Plan B, part 4

Really, there should be no Plan B.

Plan A is Aikido, which is part of Budo, which theoretically consists of all possibilities. Plan A gives precedence to those actions that de-escalate, reduce harm, and resolve conflict. If my Plan B is a potentially lethal strike to finish the game, that’s just too easy–at that moment I’ve stopped practicing aikido and completely broken with Plan A. Was Plan A just a ruse or a trick? Why bother? Aren’t we just training? Am I really in any danger?

Plan B is also legally problematic. People die in relatively minor scuffles now and then, and the one left standing can go to jail.

There is a term from Alexander Technique called end gaining. It refers to the natural human habit of focusing on the end-point of our actions and becoming frustrated when we do not immediately achieve our aims. Consciousness of this tendency in yourself allows you to inhibit it and focus instead on the moment. The ironic side effect is that achieve your aims more easily and with less stress when you aren’t directly obsessed with them.

For me, the aggressive Plan B in aikido is a kind of end-gaining. It sets up a habit of escalation in more things than aikido. It reminds me that I’m thinking about *me* winning, not a win for the situation. That can carryover to personal interactions off the mat.

I remember an exercise from when I was about 12, in a karate class. Your parter shoves you, and you do nothing, but stand your ground. He does it again. You again do nothing. He does it a third time. You take him out.

This exercise is very basic for a reason–it’s for children. And I’m sure I learned a bit of calm and patience from it. But I also learned [unfortunately] that past a certain point you can stop caring for the other person and just win. This has been my impression of most martial arts (aikido excluded). The idea being that a good defense isn’t just a good offense. A good defense is a perfectly timed rapid-fire highly targeted devastating attack that obliterates your opponent. Our culture, especially action movies, seems to encourage this thinking.

Outside of Hollywood fantasies, reality is more prosaic and bureaucratic. Training for police officers and emergency responders includes considerations of levels of force. Justifications for their use are laid out in detail, and woe to the officer who uses lethal force in any but the most obvious of circumstances. A mountain of paperwork, mandatory time-off, and possible legal action awaits. This is as it should be.

In our day-to-day life often the most dangerous situation we deal with is getting cut off in traffic. There are few immediate penalties for just being a jerk. There is unfortunately no dope-slap angel to appear and correct us when we go over the line. But training to be compassionate in a violent situation can, I think, mitigate some of our negative, though natural human responses.

Darwin Day

We’re trying to institute a new holiday in our lives–Darwin Day. I took the day off Feb. 12, and we managed to go out for a short hike in nature with our toddler. Later, it was out to dinner for fish ‘n’ chips.

We had originally planned to have friends over and make roast beef tenderloin with potatoes, carrots, yorkshire pudding, and a nice bottle of bordeaux, but their little boy came down with a bad cold. When two families with babies/toddlers want to do something together, a cold can nix it. Hard for those without kids to understand, but it’s serious stuff for the sleep-deprived. If you get my kid sick, you’ve just fogged my brain with sleep deprivation for the next week. So we deeply appreciated their consideration and I only looked longingly at the wine and beef tenderloin in the grocery store, then proceeded to pick up milk and sandwich meat.

The hike was nice. We discovered a great place that is nearby, and our daughter discovered she really likes riding in the Kelty carrier I picked up at a garage sale for $2 a couple months ago.

Didn’t get to reflect much on Darwin or being a naturalist for a day. But it’s a start.

Plan B, part 3

Example 3

Plan B Becomes Intention

Aikido can seem frustratingly nice. So many opportunities to do damage fly by during every technique, without the time to savor them, much less try them. Most techniques are designed to do no permanent damage, even when executed full force. A flickering black and white movie of O’Sensei shows him walking around flapping his arms while being attacked, seeming to expend no effort, much less give off macho malice. What fun is that?

Now and then something snaps and I toss all the peace and love and de-escalation talk out the window. Plan B becomes Plan A. I toss in light atemis to the ribs, groin, solar plexus. Oooh, sooooolar plexuuussss. My favorite! Is my angle right for gut punches? Uppish for floating ribs, straight in for compression, downish when at or just below the belt. For fun during knife practice I’ll add a few extra slices to cripple or finish uke off. While doing a standard ikkyo pin I sometimes run through my mind the many continuations that I might need to do if I found myself in this position on the street with someone I knew would not stay down. Strike to sweet spot where the jaw, ear, and neck come together. Hard knee down on the arm between elbow and shoulder to break the bone. Kidney punch. Rear choke.

These alternative plans fill my mind and make a mockery of the idea of aikido as a moving meditation. When I do this it’s more like fantasy target practice, and ultimately, as fun as it is, I feel like things have gone off the rails and I’ve erased whatever gains I had made in recent days.

A teacher once referred to aikido as “riding the dragon”. He may have been quoting O’Sensei. I don’t know. But now I’m thinking, to paraphrase a hackneyed joke about the Soviet Union, “In Aikido, dragon is YOU.”

Plan B, part 2

Example 2

Aikido pins take a lot of practice to get right, and are not really so fool-proof or rock solid as they seem to the beginner. Sure there are people who can pin anyone. But in reality, no pin is permanent against someone who a) doesn’t feel pain, b) is abnormally flexible and strong (or simply much stronger than you can physically handle), or c) who happens to know a good reversal to the technique you are using. Moreover, the grips and positioning that pins and joint locks depend on are set up long before you actually “see” them as a spectator, long before it is applied.

Nonetheless, when a pin fails, especially if there is ego at stake, the next move is often what the pinner believes is a really badass pain-compliance technique. Or the pinner points out uke’s exposed vulnerabilities, as if knowing about them would be enough to take advantage of them without any real practice doing so.

Suppose you have uke in what is referred to as a ‘high pin.’ Uke is lying face down, you have one of his arms essentially vertical as you kneel at his shoulder and torque the shoulder and elbow while pushing toward the head and screwing his arm into the mat. For whatever reason he manages to tuck his shoulder and will momentarily roll out of the pin. Do you take the hand that is still under your control and start bending fingers? Do you roll back to get your legs around him and do a jujitsu arm-bar? Do you politely point out to him that you could break his neck from this position? Would you really do that to someone?

The completely ‘aiki’ way seems to me to be to blend with whatever uke does. If he squirms out of the pin and just sits there, the game is over. If he attacks, you do more aikido.

But if he squirms out and pushes it to so-called ‘ground work’?

Sometimes this happens with aikidoka I know well (we know what to expect from each other) and only rarely with aikidoka I don’t know so well. But it almost never happens, and certainly not to a great degree if a high-level sensei is teaching the class. We know instinctively that we have diverged from the usual training, that we are not ‘doing the technique’. Not good in front of the boss.