Kate, Ben, and Ed attended the brown belt practice at the Shotokan Ohshima Dojo in April 2002. After a night camping on the beach and an excellent practice, lecture, and tea, we left quite reluctantly. In the hope of not letting what we learned fade when we returned to normal life, we spent the first hour of the drive back to Arizona compiling a list of everything we remembered from the practice. This is the results of our collective memory.
We did the following practices:
Shoulder exercise: rounded shoulderblades, don't let your energy go out through your shoulders.
Side up kicks to the side: Tighten the opposite lat, and try to make the standing leg land at the same time the kick reaches its target.
Front kicks: don't let the standing foot move, because it makes the kick slow. Three in a row makes the speed difference evident. Don't let the hips lock up. Jump up and down to loosen up, jump into front stance, and kick immediately to get the loose feeling. Breathe through the toes.
Bassai: Make a triangle with the arms before the first kiai. The hands are not grabbing, they don't pull up. Slide the feet during the turn (from the scoop into tetsui-uke), don't stomp. On the very first move don't let the hands come apart. Two hands together are much stronger. This works in the double rising block as well. The three double punches must come up and over to work. It's okay if the hips move the feet when you twist, but don't move feet before hips.
Kumite: Twisting motion of the upper body while the feet stay planted, to let the fist slide by in an attack. We practiced this with one attack and three.
Other things Mr. Ohshima mentioned during practice: Breathing is the link between the subconscious and conscious. You can't make the mind and body one, and not be thinking about every random thing, unless you understand the breathing. While kneeling, keep the back straight and breathe deep in the abdomen and exhale through a pinhole in your nose, so you can hear it but others can't. Relax your shoulders.
Being relaxed is much more powerful than being strong. If you have a confident, relaxed feeling, people can sense it, even drunks. You can tell people's thoughts by their body movements, more so than how much you might know them.
Ma is a combination of rhythm, tempo, and ranking. Ranking is not your belt but rather your mentality and how you come across to your opponent. In general, you need to keep a distance where they just can't reach your eyes, because that is the easiest way for them to disable you.
You don't hunt birds by coming up to them and then drawing the bow, or they see it and take off. You hunt with the bow already drawn so that you just have to make the slightest movement and release it. Strength is not necessary then. (He demonstrated this by holding his first finger back with his other hand so that the tension would snap his finger forward the instant he released.)
Find the shortest and most efficient path to move. It makes no sense to make it more complicated. (He demonstrated this by reaching over his head to scratch his ear with the opposite hand rather than just reaching up with the same hand.)
It's no real use to just admire yourself; you must face yourself strictly.
Brown belts are Mr. Ohshima's favorite practice, because they are striving for a goal. Never lose the feeling that you cultivate as a brown belt.
You must do 5,000 Bassai before you grade. Bad ones don't count. A very talented student once didn't grade because he only had 4,500, and he knew he wasn't done. You can lie to your seniors, but you can't lie to yourself. By 50,000 the kata might be pretty good. Practice until you pass out when you're young. Practice slow as you get older.
After practice we cleaned the dojo and went down to the residence for tea and a lecture. Following are some of the ideas Mr. Ohshima talked about.
Never practice something that hurts you: practice should be for life, so don't practice in a way that causes damage.
Everyone is going to die: approach that day with no regrets. We don't have to face death on a regular basis, so we don't like to think about it. We need to appreciate every day so that we will be content with our lives when we die.
Maturity is knowing what other people are feeling, knowing that what hurts you would hurt them.
See yourself strictly before criticizing others. It's easy to be harsh on other people while you baby yourself, but you need to look at yourself with the eyes of a devil. You may think that other people's kata are awful and yours are fine until you see yours on video. You should always think that you need more work…never be satisfied. The ideal is to think that a kata was not very good and then see a tape and find that it was better than you thought.
Skillfulness in not something to envy. Repetition brings understanding…repetition is how something will become automatic enough to be useful in a crisis.
There are three tragedies in life:
1. To lose a child before you die.
2. To lose your spouse.
3. To have too much money when you're young. People are never happy that way. You should have to work hard. Put your full effort into everything you do, whether it is work or studying or practicing. You'll still have time to do all that and still have fun.
Humility vs. inferiority complex: Humility does not mean a lack of self-confidence. An inferiority complex does.
It's good to face mean people now and then, everyone else seems much easier in comparison. The ideal is forceful but nice.
Leaders sacrifice themselves. True leaders are the first to die. They aren't comfortable. Instead they make other people comfortable so people want to be with them. They are always willing to sacrifice themselves.