The Great Spiral 1/22

The Great Spiral

Judo throws are round, not flat. They begin round and end round. They begin open and end tightly wrapped. At their centers are fulcrum points. 

Ippon seoinage is an excellent example. It presents a physical dynamic that almost all  throws clearly do. Many judoka do it square instead of round, because that is what they think it should be. Here is legendary Koga with his famous seoinage. He might end up rolling through this, due to the overall dynamic, but this throw for ippon is already complete. (Of note, his powerful pulling pocket grip with his left hand and how relaxed his right grip is.)

Look at the spiral. Notice how his left leg drives up and into the outer rotation of the carrying across the back. This is in no way a driving or diving throw. 

      

               

You get to be in a contest where the big money winner is the first to pull the above uke onto his back. Which uke do you want to use?

You say you don’t think you can do this. Can you do a front roll fall? Tori’s back is a bit too flat here, but it is going to go round as he continues. Note the knees in front drop line of the toes, chest in front of that and the head going in front of the chest. This has to happen. This throw can now end with tori standing and in a kime that has zanshin (final position with full composure).

Here’s the same thing. The upward pointing arrow from the left foot shows where the dynamic of the power happens. Note that the head looks up and over, in line with the spiral, and not across and around. 

As much as this can be a study in seoinages (both styles), it is really using a throw to understand and improve your judo. You can take any throw you want and put in the spiral. If every throw contains the elemental aspects of the “judo logic”, then each throw can inform us about making our judo work.

An aside: This is where a well taught study of the inner workings of nage no kata can be very useful, although difficult to find. These "inner workings" are about "Thinking Inside the Box". If you don't know how a clock works, you can't build one.

 

 Shu Ha Ri

This interim mini-blog is an esoteric, philosophical, yet pragmatic and functional treatise I had the inclination to share with you on the first day of the year. It is an idea that is becoming clearer to me after 64 years of judo. 

How can I tell you about a future you’ve yet to experience, since it is the experience itself that is the important part of the message?

The Shu Ha Ri process can make you a better physical judoka. More importantly, it can make you a more self-fulfilled one; and, as Kano would appreciate it, a more fulfilled person, over time.

If you are consciously or unconsciously currently involved in the process of Shu Ha Ri in your judo life, you are fortunate. If not, no problem. All of the obvious judo benefits you are already enjoying are always there for you.

Shu Ha Ri has a powerful irony attached. To benefit from it, you must know that you are involved in it. That is the first step of itself.

Over the decades we have seen the vulture-like tendency of Western profiteers to swoop down upon esoteric Eastern thinking and apply it as a newly found wisdom in the business world. This has happened to Shu Ha Ri and its inclusion in the “agile” thinking world. Double the irony, this happened over a couple of centuries in Japan as it was applied to the adaptations of its strongest primary origins, the tea ceremony.

Not a Thing, but a Process

 Shu Ha Ri can happen for you without you ever having heard of it. It is a learning process that is very akin to the “competence” process. Unconscious Incompetent>Conscious Incompetent>Conscious Competent>and Unconscious Competent. The consciousness analogy is just here for a comparison and frame of reference. 

Shu: A state of learning where everything is new. Think of a jigsaw puzzle.  Where to begin? What in the world is this little jagged blue and brown piece? I didn’t even know it was there. 

Ha: A learning process, where you’re being taught the best ways to most efficiently locate and place the puzzle pieces. The methods, the tools, always apply to the same principles, which you are doing, even though not appreciating yet. You might know their names, be able to duplicate them, but you haven’t truly internalized them. Internalizing them isn’t the same now as in the competence levels analogy; because here the internalization does not lead to unconscious application. Unconscious application is a stage you are yet to go through on the way to Ri.

Ri:  Have you ever sat outside on a day when the sun was covered by clouds, and then suddenly there was a break in the clouds and the full strength of the sun’s totally uplifting warmth completely engulfed you with a special pleasure? Your brain doesn’t tell you the pieces of the event. It presents you with the wonderful feeling.  In Ri, not only do you get the feeling, you get the awareness of how and why it is different from all the other moments of having been bathed in sunshine.  It speaks to you of your own biology, your place in the cosmos, perhaps. That sunshine will always have this new awareness for you. It could even be a wordless essence.

Now, you can also go back to the basics that were essential to having first moved beyond Shu and you have an understanding of how they really work, at their core. You can both understand and utilize them beyond the way you have ever before. You also realize that you cannot simply explain this to somebody who is in the state of Shu and have them incorporate it now. (As this mini blog is doing)

Not only does the Ri apply to this moment, it applies to the overall study of judo and all its aspects, beyond just the physical.

You will have to wait many years for the full Shu Ha Ri experience to bring you in. I’m reminded of the story of the 70 year old woman who told her friends she had decided to get a law degree. One friend said, “But by the time you do, you’ll be 77 years old.” The ambitious woman replied, “And if I don’t, I’ll still be 77 years old.”

Shu Ha Ri doesn’t apply only to judo. It applies to the endeavors to become a master of any worthwhile skill. Shu Ha Ri has been forever.