inquiry « Integral Dojo Blog

Posts Tagged ‘inquiry’

Aikido: Practice and Inquiry – Cully, Switzerland May 9th ~11th, ‘08

Tuesday, July 8th, 2008

Aikido: Practice and Inquiry – Cully, Switzerland
May 9th ~11th, ‘08

Last May I was in Cully, Switzerland to teach another “Aikido: Practice and Inquiry” seminar together with Patrick Cassidy of Aikido Montreux. This is the 4th time that Patrick and I have taught this seminar in Cully (plus one at the Dead Sea in Israel – see earlier post below) and these seminars continue to evolve and deepen. Not just in the way Patrick and I are teaching but also among the participants. The seminar keeps growing and this time we had over 60 participants who joined us from around Europe, Canada, and the U.S.

It was clear from the opening meditation that the group was quickly dropping into the present as a preparation for the practice. After we bowed in Patrick set the context for the weekend by touching on our API training guidelines:

Keep an open mind
Suspend judgment
Allow yourself to not know
Listen deeply
Include others
Feel yourself (body, heart, mind and spirit)
Commit to your highest intention
Accept all that is

I followed by evoking a wish from an old African proverb:

If you want to go fast, go alone.
If you want to go far, go together.

As usual Patrick and I set out to unify the intention of the group from the outset so we can move forward – together. In our past experience with these seminars it would take a day or so for the group to drop into the context of inquiry as a whole. But now it is as if the group shows up already in that space. With each year we are seeing a clear shift take place in the culture and context within which we meet. The groves we have been laying down are making it easier for all to slip into the context and collective intention.

We usually choose a theme for these API seminars and this weekend we looked into the question “What is evolutionary aikido?” Both Patrick and I have been exploring this question independently for a few years now and we have come up with our own slightly different models for evolutionary aikido. However, even though our models are different they both take in the integral perspective. Patrick calls his modal “the evolution of uke/ nage”, and I call mine the “evolution of response”.

On Thursday we began the training/ inquiry by looking into our most basic instinctive “low road reactions” of fear and emotions, and basically identified with the resistance. We did several practices working with our lower base responses in order to become familiar with these innate tendencies we all have in stress and conflict.

After becoming familiar with the way resistance and fear arise in the practice rounded off the evening with a jiyu waza practice in order to open up the energy and give us a taste of the direction of the weekend. A direction towards free and spontaneous movement that reflects our higher evolutionary capacities.

The next day we continued with our inquiry and proceeded to move up the evolutionary scale with different centering and connecting practices. Patrick led us in several exercises that worked to bring us into alignment with the intelligence of the system.

I introduced exercises where we worked on relaxing the tendency for fear and emotional based responses and worked towards remaining in centered awareness and tapping into the intuitive connection of the partner.

After training on Saturday we all gathered for dinner up in the mountains above Lake Geneva. We continued the conversations and inquiries into the night while enjoying the fresh mountain air, the beautiful view and the delicious goat cheese fondue.

On Saturday we had great weather so I took the group outside to give a bokken jyuwaza class by the lakeside.

In this class we continued our exploration of the evolution of response through a series of exercises that focused on the stages of centered awareness and intuitive response.

After Patrick lead the final training we ended the seminar with a group dialogue on three questions: 1) What did you feel? 2) What did you see? 3) What was the communal experience?

Thanks to Patrick and his students who did a wonderful job of organizing and hosting us all. Our next API seminar will be in December at the Dead Sea in Israel. We hope you can join us!

~~~

Tags: aikido, aikido montreux, cully, inquiry, integral, Miles Kessler, patrick cassidy, switzerland
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The Dead Sea Seminar, Dec. 2007

Saturday, January 12th, 2008

Aikido: Practice and Inquiry

At the end of last year Integral Aikido hosted a special 3-day international seminar at the Dead Sea here in Israel. About 50 people gathered from various aikido groups in Israel, as well as several visitors from abroad including Germany, Denmark, Switzerland and the U.S., for an “Aikido: Practice and Inquiry” seminar taught by myself and Patrick Cassidy. Patrick and I have been teaching these seminars in Switzerland for the past 3 years and from some time now I have wanted to bring this seminar to Israel. I’m very happy to say that it was a special experience that far exceeded my expectations.

The natural raw beauty of the Dead Sea and the breath taking views from Metsoke Dragot were the perfect environment for a seminar that was about entering into a process of exploration and discovery. It was as if the creative forces of nature supported, nurtured and infused our inquiry throughout the seminar. From the very beginning it was clear that this seminar was going to be something different.

The training was held in a tent dojo called the “khan”, a large round Bedouin tent, which was sitting at the edge of the cliff overlooking the Dead Sea and Jordan mountains across the water.

This “tent dojo” was by far the most unconventional dojo I have ever been in as it was a large round tent with a shomen in the center. Because of its shape instead of sitting in a traditional straight line we all sat in a large circle which gave a sense of community and contained space.

For the purpose of our inquiry we worked with practice guidelines that supported the weekends exploration. These guidelines were:

1.    Keep an open mind
2.    Suspend judgment
3.    Feel yourself (body, heart, mind and spirit)
4.    Listen deeply
5.    Include others
6.    Commit to your highest intention
7.    Accept all that is

Although these guidelines can be a challenging practice they proved to be helpful in setting the context of the seminar’s inquiry.

This was an unusual seminar in that it was not about learning “the way things should be”, but rather we all entered a collective exploration into the nature of aikido itself. The very context invited each person to directly discover for themselves the principles that underlie all techniques and practices in aikido. All of us were given permission to come to new understandings and ways of expression in Aikido.

Class by class, as the seminar unfolded, tangible shifts in the collective consciousness could be felt resulting in a release of excitement and joy. And with this release many of us felt the emergance of a greater sense of Aikido’s meaning and potential.

In one class Patrick led us through the “evolution of responses”, in which he showed the hierarchy of responses in the face of conflict. He simplified it into 4 basic types of responses that can come up in conflict:

1.    “Oh shit” – the resistance response
2.    “OK” – the relaxed and centered response
3.    “Oh, wow” – the intuitive response
4.    “Oh, thank you” – the co-creative response

Practicing from these different perspectives allowed us to identify our lower tendencies and orient ourselves for making the shift towards our higher potential.

One of the classes I led was on perspectives. It was based on the “I”, “We” and “It” (1st, 2nd and 3rd person) perspectives of Integral Theory. The purpose was to identify how these three perspectives are always available and identify how both individuals and specific aikido styles have a tendency to fixate on one, or two, while giving little attention to the other(s). The purpose of the class was to create the distinction of these three perspectives and then create the ability to freely flow with full awareness between them as needed in the training.

It happened that the Friday of the seminar fell on the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. Even though it was the shortest day of the year we had a full day a of acitivites with a morning weapons class at 6:30 plus 5 1/2 more hours of training during the day.

But it wasn’t all aikido. On top of the days 6 plus hours of training, that evening we had a very enjoyable “contact improvisation” class taught by Itay Yatuv. Itay is a student at Integral Aikido as well as a teacher at “The Group in Jaffa” (Hakvutsa be Yafo) school of dance. For many this was their first experience of “contact improvisation” which is a method of dance and movement that has its origins in Aikido. Itay’s clear and relaxed teaching style, and his light sense of humor was the perfict way to finish off a full day of training.

After the “contact” class, as a way to aknowledge the longest night of the year, we had a “tribal bonfire” at the edge of the cliff outside the “khan” that lasted late into the night.

Not everyone made it to the weapons class early the next morning, but those that did were greeted with a beautiful sunrise and spectacular view.

morning weapons class overlooking the Dead Sea

We ended he seminar with dialogues in small groups in which all shared what was discovered over the weekend and how the practices touched us personally. It was the common experience of all of us that a great excitement and joy was sparked during this weekend and it has continued to follow us for quite some time after the Dead Sea seminar.

I’m looking forward to the next seminar I’ll be teaching together with Patrick in Cully, Switzerland in May (see Aikido Montreux). Both Patrick and his wife Dominique had a very special time on thier first visit to the Holy Land and I am happy to say that they have agreed to return this December for another “Aikido: Practice and Inquiry” seminar. I hope that you can join us!

More photos: to see many more photos of the Dead Sea seminar go to Olga Vigini’s web album on Picasa here.

Tags: aikido, dead sea, inquiry, integral, metsoke dragot, Miles Kessler, partick cassidy, practice
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Video - “Aikido: Practice and Inquiry”

Monday, December 3rd, 2007

Hello All,

Welcome to the blog of Integral Aikido. I’m happy to be opening this blog with a 3 part film that was taken of a seminar I taught together with Patrick Cassidy in Cully, Switzerland, in May, 2007 . Patrick and I have known each other for close to 20 years and we spent several years training together in Iwama, Japan under the guidance of Morihiro Saito sensei. Those were literally our “formative years” in aikido and having gone through an extended and rather intense process of development together we quite naturally grew close. In fact, you could say we are Aikido brothers.

Since leaving Japan, both Patrick and I have continued our individual searches for growth and development which has led our aikido to evolve in different ways. None the less, both our view and relationship to the path continues to be remarkably similar.

It is very satisfying after all these years to share the mat together with Patrick again for the “Aikido: Practice and Inquiry” seminars. It is a creative process that truly inspires. What better way to open a blog on Integral Aikido than with a film of a seminar about integrating perspectives. Enjoy.

~~~

Aikido: Practice and Inquiry - Part 1 of 3