“The most important thing is to make your mind like the Taiji ball.”
Randori (pron. “Ran-door-ree”) is one of the more rigorous training methods in the art of Aikido. You begin by standing in the midst of a circle surrounded by several “attackers.” One by one in increasingly rapid succession the attackers rush in towards you with strikes and kicks and grabs from various angles and heights. It is your job to fend them off by ducking under, moving away from and throwing them off as rapidly – well, more rapidly, than their attacks. You actually do not wait for them to attack you, instead you sense and perceive their aggression and strategy and move in towards them to derail their intention, sending them on their way before they penetrate your space. The training ensues for as long as your aerobic capacity and mental acuity can last. It builds tremendous capacity to concentrate, move quickly under stress, problem solve and outwit. It was gobs of fun. It was among my favorite Aikido activities. Little did I know how useful this training would become.
You don’t need me to tell you all the “attacks” that have been coming our way over these past six months. We all know the Pandemic is not just one virus, but itself the circle of attackers moving full throttle into our circle. Pick anything: public health crisis, systemic racism, poverty, crumbling economies. Pick anything: inequities in online schooling, short supply chains, an unwelcome personal health diagnosis. Birth, Death, and all if it in-between is surrounded by a big circle of strikes, punches and kicks coming into our field, in increasingly rapid succession. How many of your friends and you comment about the weird sense of Time right now? it’s as if the video was on slow motion for a bit, but now has kicked into fast forward. It’s the Matrix. And it’s the red pill.
I, like you perhaps, made the blue pill mistake of thinking last March that in a month or two the circumstances would change for the better. That we could all wipe the sweat off, shower up, go home and toss our soaked uniforms in the wash. We could sit around the table in our favorite restaurant with our posse of pals, each telling our stories about our weeks in lockdown. “And wow wasn’t that something. Thank goodness we nailed it fast and that’s done and dusted.” Nope. Here we are six months later still dealing with flinging limbs of life ever faster coming our way.
All students and many friends of mine saw me and my little blue wagon this summer. I carted it from class to class and park to park. It was full of techniques intentionally designed to meet the opponents coming my way. The punches and kicks of class location & size restrictions, distancing requirements, mask requirements, some people wanted in person, many still stayed online, all this threatened to derail not just me, but those under my charge. I could have just stayed online or held just in person classes, but that would have severed our community and I was not willing to do that without a good fight.
And so in my wagon were my ways of meeting these opponents: my computer and phone, two hotspots, a large car charging battery, two microphones, an HD camera, a tripod, adaptors, chargers, a clock, a folding table with chairs, hand sanitizer, toilet paper, masks, garden flowers, water and a copy of Lao Tzu. Before I went into battle I thought a lot about what I needed. Luckily I had training, luckily I also had back-ups and luckily I had a team of fellow trainees who were game for the fight. I planned very well. My team showed up in person and online. Still there were attacks we could not foresee: sprinkler roulette, grids dropping, microphone, camera & Zoom glitches, volleyballs, kids and dogs rolling around amidst our class. One day I even forgot my computer. And yet, still our team managed to not be taken out. Honestly, it was at times a sweaty, exhausting endeavor, but we did it. We grew, and there was not one day we didn’t laugh at the audacity of it all.
I didn’t quite see how applicable my years of Randori training were to become decades later in the then unimagined Pandemic future. Yet somehow over these past six months I recognize the usefulness of that training and all my training in ways I have not before. There is the obvious: the mindfulness, the breathing, the relaxation, the concentration and especially there is shared time with the community of incredibly gracious and open-hearted people who are similarly attracted to these practices. There is more though. There is the capacity to problem solve when confronted with the unknown and unimagined. There is the capacity to keep moving, physically yes, but more so, mentally. There is the capacity to always look for a different approach when one thing doesn’t work. This cultivated aptitude is perhaps the hidden treasure within all martial and internal arts practices.
Techniques of Battle, Summer 2020