Hidden in Plain Sight: Esoteric Power Training within Japanese Martial Traditions

By Ellis Amdur

Ellis Amdur's writing on martial arts has been groundbreaking. In Dueling with O-sensei, he challenged practitioners that the moral dimension of martial arts is expressed in acts of integrity, not spiritual platitudes and the deification of fantasized warrior-sages. In Old School, he applied both academic rigor and keen observation towards some of the classical martial arts of Japan, leavening his writing with vivid descriptions of many of the actual practitioners of these wonderful traditions. His first edition of Hidden in Plain Sight was a discussion of esoteric training methods once common, but now all but lost within Japanese martial arts. These methodologies encompassed mental imagery, breath-work, and a variety of physical techniques, offering the potential to develop skills and power sometimes viewed as nearly superhuman. Usually believed to be the provenance of Chinese martial arts, Amdur asserted that elements of such training still remain within a few martial traditions: literally, 'hidden in plain sight.'

Two-thirds larger, this second edition is so much more. Amdur digs deep into the past, showing the complexity of human strength, its adaptation to varying lifestyles, and the nature of physical culture pursued for martial ends. Amdur goes into detail concerning varieties of esoteric power training within martial arts, culminating in a specific methodology known as 'six connections' or 'internal strength.' With this discussion as a baseline, he then discusses the transfer of esoteric power training from China to various Japanese jūjutsu systems as well as Japanese swordsman-ship emanating from the Kurama traditions. Finally, he delves into the innovative martial tradition of DaitŠ-ryū and its most important offshoot, aikidŠ, showing how the mercurial, complicated figures of Takeda Sokaku and Morihei Ueshiba were less the embodiment of something new, than a re-imagining of their past

• Language: English
• Publisher: Freelance Academy Press
• Release date: Aug 9, 2018
• ISBN: 9781937439378

Ellis Amdur

Ellis Amdur received his B.A. in psychology from Yale University and his M.A. in psychology from Seattle University. He is both a National Certified Counselor and a State Certified Child Mental Health Specialist. Amdur has trained in various martial arts systems for the past fifty years, spending thirteen of these years studying in Japan. He is a recognized expert in classical and modern Japanese martial traditions and has authored three iconoclastic books on the subject, as well as one instructional DVD. Since his return to the U.S. in 1988, Amdur has worked in the field of crisis intervention as a pioneering instructor for law enforcement. He has written eighteen books on the subjects of crisis intervention, hostage negotiation and the art of psychotherapy, many with subject-matter expert co-writers, as well as several works of fiction. He is a dynamic public speaker and trainer who presents to people working in a variety of professions throughout the United States and internationally. He is noted for his sometimes-outrageous humor as well as his profound breadth of knowledge. His vivid descriptions of aggressive and mentally ill people and his true-to-life role-playing of the behaviors in question give participants an almost first-hand experience of facing the real patients in question. In addition, Amdur has developed a range of consultation services, as well as a unique style of assessment and psychotherapy. Amdur's professional philosophy can best be summed up as: The development of an individual's integrity and dignity is the paramount virtue. This can only occur when people live courageously, regardless of the circumstances, and take responsibility for their roles in making the changes they desire.

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Revised, Expanded Edition

Freelance Academy Press

Wheaton, IL 60189

www.freelanceacademypress.com

©2018 by Ellis Amdur

Original Edition

Edgework Books

20126 Ballinger Way NE, #85

Shoreline, WA 98155-1117

[phone]

[e-mail]

www.edgeworkbooks.com

©2000 by Ellis Amdur

All rights reserved. Published August 2000

No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means without prior written permission of the publisher.

Editor:

Greg Mele

Cover design, interior layout & production:

Rebecca Smith

Printed in the United States of America

by Publishers’ Graphics

109876543210

ISBN: 978-1-937439-37-8

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016951773

In memory of Bob Barrett, my first teacher of Japanese martial arts—a man for whom the term ‘stand-up’ was created.

In memory of Stanley Pranin, groundbreaking scholar—he brought sunlight to the shadow of myth, and remarkable men to a wider world.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Author’s Notes

Forward

Section 1 - The Cultivation Of Power

1. Physical Culture: A Uniquely Human Preoccupation

2. The Development of Specialized Martial Skill and Power

3. Six Connections—Comprehensive Power Development

Section 2 - Heaven And Earth Within Man

4. The Chinese Connection

5. Kitō-ryū: Rising and Falling

6. Yoshin-ryū: A Garden Of Willows

7. Tenjin Shiny ō-ryū: Heaven and Man

8. What Happened To Jūjutsu?

Section 3 - Daitō-ryū: The Past is Future

9. Aizu Bujutsu: Takeda Sokaku’s Birthright

10. Takeda Sokaku: Opening Our Eyes To True Budō

11. The Heart of Aiki Is The Sword: Takeda Sokaku’s Legacy

12. Aiki Nitō Hiden

Section 4 - Aikidō and Ueshiba Morihei: More Than A Martial Art & More Than A Martial Artist

13. Is The Heart Of Aikidō The Sword?

14. Aikidō is Three Peaches

15. Hidden in Plain Sight

16. Triangle, Circle, Square: How To Be O-Sensei In Sixteen Easy Steps

Epilogue

Appendix A

Appendix B

Glossary

Photo Credits

Acknowledgements

I am neither a researcher nor a historian. I simply pay attention, often seeing a larger pattern among small bits of evidence, creating speculations that later research establishes as true. Speculation does not mean ‘to fantasize’; it comes from a root word, speculum, which means ‘mirror.’ To speculate is to hold a mirror up to something so that we can see it—at least part of it—from a different angle.

This book will not, therefore, follow strict academic standards. I credit some people and some sources explicitly, but not all. I have protected some informants’ privacy because that is what they requested. In other cases, I may have drawn conclusions that I believe my informant may not have intended or agree with, or that might bring undeserved criticism their way. In such circumstances, not quoting them is part of my expression of gratitude.

There are debts, however, that I must acknowledge:

I thank the late Stanley Pranin, who had no idea what I would do with his incredible research once he invited me to begin a blog on the Aikidō Journal website. Without Stanley, there would be little information on Daitō-ryū and aikidō in the English language worth speculating about.

I also wish to offer my deepest thanks to Mike Sigman. Mike and I met in the mid-1990’s on an internet newsgroup called ‘rec.martial arts,’ an electronic lacunae, like some backwoods creek where one guy in a canoe says to another, Did you notice that the sounds of the banjos keeps following us? Hey, what’s that behind the trees! It’s troubling that Mike and I found ourselves so at home. Mike tends to approach things like a sugar-cane cutter hacking his way through an orchid farm, but nonetheless, he had long proposed an idea that there once was a substrate of subtle skills within Japanese martial traditions, similar to those referred to by such terms as ‘internal strength’ within Chinese martial arts such as taijiquan and xingyiquan. I disagreed, having seen nothing of the kind among the arts I observed and studied in a thirteen year period in Japan, and furthermore, finding most of the claims by aikidō, Daitō-ryū, and other Japanese martial arts practitioners to be either bogus, or dependent on ridiculously compliant partners. However, with his questions provoking me to look at things anew, I began to see traces of what once must have been there, like a shadow that somehow remained on the ground long after the sun had set. I began to consider that it might be possible that such training methodologies still remained extant, like isolated pockets of nearly extinct honeycreepers on the Hawaiian Islands, living jewels almost crowded into extinction by mundane birds imported from the mainland.

Mike, who has trained decades in Chinese martial arts as well as having some past history in Japanese combatives, did me one more significant service. When we finally met, he showed me that his knowledge was not merely academic, and very generously taught me invaluable information of how to train these skills myself. My own research eventually led me to the opinion that teachings on internal strength were once relatively common within Japanese martial traditions, and I felt the weight of years wasted, as this was one of the things I’d gone to Japan to find, only to end up disappointed. Although my own skill in this area is still rudimentary, I can now distinguish frauds and poseurs from those who are genuine when I lay hands on them or they on me. Mike has given me an opportunity to learn what I thought long lost, and it has utterly transformed my own training in the martial traditions whose legacy I am responsible.

Furthermore, now that I know where to look, I see it in a number of places, often attenuated, an echo of a voice no longer sung. These skills are rare—perhaps they always were, because they require an incredible dedication and intensity of practice—but they can be found when we know where to look.

Deepest thanks also to:

Kuroda Tetsuzan, Dan Harden, and Akuzawa Minoru (and his students in the Aunkai) for allowing me to experience, first hand, powerful versions of internal strength training from within the Japanese martial arts paradigm. Dan, in particular, was also posting on the Internet about internal training in the mid-1990’s, insisting that it was at the core of both Daitō-ryū and aikidō. Dan has been open-handed and generous with me: as a sounding board; as a source of vital information based on his training history within Daitō-ryū, part of an over forty-year history of study in Eastern and Western martial arts; and as someone well-versed in these skills.

Equally deep gratitude goes to Peter Goldsbury, whose breadth of knowledge and academic rigor has provided a challenge of another sort. Whether he believes me right or wrong, Peter demands that I establish what I claim, something I fear that in many areas I may have failed. Nonetheless, my work would have been far more impressionistic without his severity. Subsequent to the publication of the first edition of this book, Peter published an exhaustive critical engagement with the work. Many of the revisions in this edition are a response to his challenge.

Josh Lerner, Liam Keeley, and Jimmy Sorrentino also read through the first edition of this manuscript, Jimmy numerous times, forcing me to question my ideas in a way that others would surely do if they had not gotten there first.

Marnix Wells, Yawata Tomō, William Bodiford, Allen Pittman, John Stevens, Takashima Saburo, Robert Mustard, Takatsuka Eichoku, Russ Ebert, Gernot Hassenpflug, Chris Laughrun, Lance Gatling, Steve Delany, Chris Li, and Derek Steel for critical reading of chapters, critical research information both large and small, and/or translations of primary texts.

Shelly Gelfand, Mathew Rogers, and ‘Seakyu’ for letters that sparked ideas I surely would never have found without their questions.

Wang Shujin, Mrs. Gao Fu, Chris Bates, Su Dong Chen, Bob Galeone and Qian Timing for all too brief periods of instruction in Chinese martial arts.

Tobin Threadgill, Dennis Hooker (too soon departed), Meik Skoss, Nathan Scott, Mark Raugas, Fred Little, and Ken Good for the opportunity to bounce ideas off of people who have something to say.

Allen Pittman, Ivan Bel, Antoine Camilleri, Tim Cartmell, Douglas Walker, Pedro Escudeiro, Mark Murray, Robert van Valkenberg, Budd Yuhasz, Rob John, and Mike Sigman for critical readings and vital information of various parts of the second edition of this book.

To Budd Yuhasz, who collaborated with me experimenting how far one can technically refine modern aikidō, without doing violence to its core principles, and the opportunity to work with him in setting up a technical curriculum most congenial to learning internal strength training within that paradigm.

There are others as well. They were kind enough to provide me with vital information, but they prefer to remain anonymous so as not to get embroiled in political repercussions that might result were their names made public.

Thank you, one and all.

As another man once said, you have

‘opened my eye to budō.’

Author’s Notes

All Japanese words, (excepting place names and person’s names) unless they are so common that they have been fully integrated into the English language, are italicized throughout the text.

Appendix A, "Extended Discussions,’ includes ‘footnote-essays,’ extensive discussions of certain points in the text.

Appendix B offers suggestions for further research. This book should be regarded as a beginning, not an end.

Appendix C has all the names of individuals mentioned in the text, divided in several major categories. This makes it a little harder to immediately find each person, but makes it easier to associate the names with their martial discipline and/or historical role.

Finally, there is a Glossary, which provides a definition of each Japanese term used in the text.

Forward

We start with a riddle: Why are there stories throughout Japanese martial arts history describing men (and in a few cases, women), like this?

His skills at kumiuchi (combative grappling) were said to be unparalleled. During a visit to Edo to Kondo Tonosuke, a high-ranking official, (Honma) Sengoro lay facedown on the ground with five of Kondo’s retainers pinning him. In the next moment he suddenly sprung up to his feet. Tonosuke was so impressed that he asked for the trick to be repeated five times, and Sengoro succeeded without apparent effort."¹

Perhaps such stories were fantasies, exaggerations far beyond mortal capabilities, like the Anglo-Saxon poem of Beowulf, or the American tales of Mike Fink, the semi-legendary riverboat man of the Mississippi.² If so, why did many of the best martial artists from the late Meiji period onwards, already well-trained in a variety of martial arts, flock to study with Takeda Sokaku, who was reportedly able to exhibit abilities thought only to reside in legends and myth? Why did some of Japan’s most influential military men, as well as some of its strongest and most knowledgeable martial artists, view Ueshiba Morihei, a student of Takeda and the founder of aikidō, with awe? Why were a few of Takeda’s other students—a very few—regarded with respect equal to that of Ueshiba? They presented a kind of power quite unlike that of a weight lifter or other strong man, a power so out of the ordinary that it is referred to by its own terms: nairiki (‘internal strength’); aiki (‘unified energy’); or kokyu-ryoku (‘breath power’). Those experiencing it did not just describe being overwhelmed by someone of greater strength. They found themselves stunned or bewildered, unable to explain why they were suddenly on the ground and their opponent standing. Concluding our riddle: Why is it that most practitioners of modern-day Japanese martial arts, aikidō and Daitō-ryū included, do not seem to have even a scintilla of that legendary power? They lost—or never acquired—something that was not a matter of specific techniques, but rather a qualitative difference in how the practitioner used his/her body, and a tangible difference in how s/he could affect others.

It exists. I have experienced different types of remarkable power at the hands of a small number of individuals. Some, using minimal movements, express unbelievable energy, as if detonating a controlled explosion in a small space. Others exert an inexorable force, like a boulder slowly, unstoppably rolling down a slope. Others ‘disappear,’ leaving you feeling as if you have clutched smoke or stepped into a void. Others seem to reflect my own force back into me, so that I am unbalanced and redirected, bouncing off at a different angle from the direction of my attack, without my feeling anything at all coming from them.

A so-called external martial art uses very sophisticated methods to enable an individual to use his or her body at the peak of its natural reflexes and potential. An internal martial art, on the other hand, transforms the body’s natural response to force, in such a way that the opponent’s attack becomes ‘additive’ to one’s own power. At a higher level, one strives to change how one’s neuro-muscular system functions. Not all remarkable physical abilities should be classified as ‘internal strength’ – in fact, it is a unique, very rare set of skills. Vasyl Lomachenko, for example, is a boxer of almost otherworldly brilliance, but what he is doing is athleticism at its finest, not internal strength. The same could be said of such transcendent ballet dancers as Fernando Bujones or Natalia Makarova. Just because they move brilliantly, that they evoke awe, does not define what they do as internal strength.

Various aspects of internal strength training probably emerged worldwide—there are hints of aspects of such practices in accounts from Greece, Persia and Indian, to name but a few—but to the best of our knowledge, martial internal strength training in its complete manifestation originated in China. Some aspects of Chinese training methods were transferred into Japanese martial arts, particularly in hand-to-hand combat systems generically known as jūjutsu, but also in weapons-based practices such as kenjutsu (martial techniques with the Japanese sword) and sōjutsu (martial techniques with the Japanese spear). The Japanese altered such methodologies to suit their own requirements. Regrettably, such training was abandoned—in fact, it was mostly lost in the 19th century—leaving jūjutsu, for the most part, a compendium of armed and unarmed techniques utilizing the aforementioned external methodologies. Among the few traditional schools that have retained internal strength training, most have very few remaining practitioners, and it is regarded as a secret not to be exposed to outsiders.

These skills are available to us today. Not only are there schools and teachers explicitly carrying on such training within one or another tradition, there are other traditions where the teachings lie dormant, only waiting for committed practitioners to bring them back to life. Furthermore, there are others who have attempted to distill core principles of internal strength training beyond one or another martial art—in essence, ‘hacking through the brush to get directly to the spring.’

What makes things problematic, however, is that the level of fraud and self-delusion in this area is almost without peer. If one peruses films of alleged experts or visits the schools of many so-called masters, we often see an absurd collusion between students and teacher, in which the former have been trained to unconsciously react to cues and gestures, all the while believing their teacher’s power to be superhuman. Even more astonishing is that many of the teachers believe it too! What I would submit, however, is that these imitations are based on something once genuine—the abandoned skills of those from generations past. That they were lost is due to a number of factors:

1. A cult of secrecy on the part of genuine experts of these tradition-bound arts, in which their actual training methods were, at best, passed on to a select few. If one’s livelihood, or even, in some cases, one’s life were dependent upon the possession of extraordinary skills, it is quite understandable that one would be loathe to share them.

2. Culture-based teacher-student relationships, in which many instructors who truly possess some level of skill, required their students to unconsciously anticipate what they wanted. The students move, react, or even throw themselves where they were ‘supposed to’ end up. From the teacher’s success at achieving small advantages of body displacement—invaluable in real combat—the students responded as if they had contacted a high voltage power line, rocketing away through the air, or staggering and flopping about. Ironically, the teachers would sometimes begin to imagine they were far more powerful than they really were, assuming that their students’ increasingly exaggerated responses were the result of an amplification of their own power. In essence, students-and-teachers create a mutually supportive delusional system.

3. Such skills are best built up within a group of highly trained practitioners—a collective of professionals, so to speak. Many experts, however, became the sole authority of their own group—or cult—and this narrowed the knowledge base significantly, generation after generation. Furthermore, if such experts were parsimonious in sharing their skills or if their abilities were limited to begin with, the next generation received, at best, a simulacrum—they knew how they were supposed to react , but they did not learn how to enact . Training became an ‘as-if’ activity, often ‘irrationalized’ with spiritual doctrines, or claims of potency unproven because their ‘techniques’ were allegedly unendurable by any human body when unleashed.

4. Such abilities are intoxicating. All too many real experts end up feeding off their student’s adulation— or money—and are very careful, therefore, to ensure that their students never learn what they know.

5. There are a number of tricks that one can use to glitz up one’s apparent abilities, including sleight-of-hand, and physical tricks that are extraordinary only to someone uneducated in how such things are done. The difference between ‘medicine–show’ trickery and real skills is vast, but it can be hard for the uninitiated to tell the difference.

Just as most practitioners of form-based pugilism who have never been struck in a fight are, despite their beautiful moves, shockingly incompetent against a boxer, many so-called experts at internal strength training, who have never been tested outside the circle of their own students, do not really have the abilities they claim. At least if we are discussing martial internal strength, one should be able to express these skills against top-level opponents, or at minimum, against unarranged powerful attacks, not just against one’s own trainees in ‘grab-me-here’ scenarios. But just as the fact that there are a lot of bad musicians does not prove that there are no virtuosos, this is equally true in the realm of martial arts training. The virtuosos in this day and age may be rare, but they do exist. One experience that stands out in my mind is this: pushing on the arms of an unmoving man in a (light) sparring situation, and finding that the harder I pushed, the more I found myself pushing myself away on a tangent (!) to the direction I was pushing, although he was not moving at all. Then, in the midst of this, I found myself drawn inwards, only to be hit with a shoulder strike that started with our bodies in contact, with no discernible windup whatsoever. It felt like he almost caved in my rib cage, as powerful as any kick I ever received in my days training muay thai.

As I mentioned above, there is, today, little evidence of these types of abilities among practitioners of classical Japanese martial traditions, and this has been true since the Meiji period, in the mid-1800’s. Such teaching might remain within a martial tradition with no living person left who is able to enact—or even understand—it. On a number of occasions, I discussed various specialized training methodologies with such individuals and they stated something like this: Those particular forms require a specialized breathing method and are required to be done in the for an hour a day. It is said to develop a remarkable level of power (or other abilities that they described as embodying the essential character of their school). I would ask, "How often to you practice them in your dōjō? The answer invariably be something like: About five minutes, as a warm-up, or It’s a kuden (‘oral teaching’), but no one really trains with that kind of discipline."

However, like a kind of subterranean energy, the knowledge of internal strength (as well as other specialized methods of expressing power and technique), has emerged on several occasions. The first was in the first decades of the 20th century, with the appearance of the wildly eccentric Takeda Sokaku, who humbled some of the best martial artists of his era, both with weapons and without. Then, in the 1920’s, his equally remarkable student, Ueshiba Morihei, appeared in Tokyo. His abilities were so startling that Kodokan jūdō, fabricated a reworking of their own history in order to claim that he wasn’t doing anything new. Ueshiba was even the subject of a conference in the presence of the Emperor concerning the deficiencies of jūdō and other modern martial arts to prepare soldiers for the battlefield.³ Takeda and Ueshiba, in turn, cut swathes through the Japanese martial arts world like two successive comets in a foggy night. Today, their influence has ignited renewed interest in this area, otherwise nearly lost. These two men are the main subject of this book, because they blazed paths we can follow, and through them, we have a possibility of rediscovering paths nearly overgrown and lost forever, as well as blazing new paths of our own. To accomplish this, however, we must go far back in time, eons before their birth.

Why, however, does any of this matter? The world will still spin quite adequately in its orbit whether we understand the obscure history of Chinese martial practices in Japan, the roots of Daitō-ryū, or how Ueshiba Morihei of aikidō used weapons-training to develop his power. And internal training? Even if it exists, how can one recover what is so inaccessible, and why bother anyway? Are not the martial arts practices we have, as we have been taught, more than sufficient to our needs?

In considering what we had and what we have lost, a Hassidic story, which hallows good intentions, is illuminating. A teacher once said:

The Baal Shem Tov went into the forest and sang the songs and said the prayers, and found the Holy Spirit, Blessed Be His Name. His student lost the way to the forest, but he remembered the songs and said the prayers, and it was enough. His student’s student forgot the songs but remembered the prayers and it was enough. We no longer know our way to the forest and we have forgotten the songs, and when we say our prayers, we no longer remember the exact words, but it is still enough.

When considering the incredible vitality of original Hassidism as opposed to the sclerotic, narrow, rigid fanaticism of today’s sects, we can see that it is not enough! Such a story is beautiful sentimentality—nothing more. A teacher of integrity is responsible for handing onwards a tradition to the highest level that his or her students can achieve. This is only true, however, if those students refuse to be satisfied with merely studying under a wonderful teacher, or claiming a wonderful heritage and lineage. Such smug satisfaction at being under the aegis of a master is the opposite of the hunger for mastery itself, the latter requiring that the prayers, the songs, and the way to the forest are all preserved and, if lost, they must either be found again or blazed anew.

Section 1 -

The Cultivation Of Power

1.0 Civilization meant backbreaking labor, and the only way to survive was to transform this labor into an art in itself.

Chapter

1

Physical Culture: A Uniquely Human Preoccupation

Intrinsic Potential

We do not arrive into this world as blank slates, ready to be inscribed upon as others choose. We are born, acorns, the tree already present in our tiny forms.⁴ Each of us has an intrinsic life force, a given capacity for health or illness, strength and resilience to some degree bequeathed to us by genes and the fortunes or misfortunes of our early years. Some have ‘sensitive stomachs,’ where others can survive on rotten flesh and water from stagnant pools; some cringe in pain in reaction to cold, heat or injury, while others rip a blade from deep within their flesh, and grin with bloody lips as they step forward towards that which hurts most; some have bones as dense as quartz where others are fragile as honeycomb. Some chew fear and turn it into courage, where others are crushed by far less. In short, some of us are born tough as tree roots, where others are merely twigs.

We are not, however, merely genetic formulae, our fate and form predetermined. We have an enormous capacity for change, a potential that resides within each cell. Intrinsic strength can carry us far, if we are so blessed, but even those less fortunate can rework themselves through an internal alchemy, using specialized means of building power, literally changing the substance of which we are made. (See Appendix A.1)

Natural Potential, Primordial Skill

Some people speak of ‘natural strength,’ that, like a gibbon or octopus, we are born to a certain environment and will move and express power in a given way. They envision almost all other ways of using the body as ‘unnatural,’ a product of artifice and somehow inferior to that ‘natural power.’ This is incorrect—anything a body can do is ‘natural,’ part of our potential. Only that which is impossible—flapping one’s arms and flying, walking on air, diving through a solid wall—is unnatural. The question is not what is natural to us—it is what our potentials may be.

1.1 Dayak Hunter - in Borneo and Amazonia, humanity found the same ways to hunt and survive

For most of human history, wherever on earth we might have been, we lived in much the same manner: within hunter-gatherer groups. We integrated ourselves within our world to survive, something only possible when we took best advantage of the resources around us. On the face of it, a polar Inuit lived a very different life from a Waorani in the Amazon jungle, or a Bajau fisherman of the Philippines, but this is not really so. All, through a combination of intelligence and the incredible plastic ability of humanity to adapt to our environment, developed ourselves to be perfectly suited to the conditions within which we lived. This exquisite amalgam of mind, body and nature can be called ‘natural potential.’ When survival is at stake, an animal, no matter what kind, responds by growing: branching and coordinating its nervous system to meet the world on its terms. What makes us humans such superlative beasts is our ability to adapt to the requirements of different environments in order to survive in a variety of conditions far beyond any other animal. Rather than evolving over millennia, we can change within a single life.

1.2 From frozen immobility to perfect motion: one cast, one life.

I have seen films of indigenous Amazonian hunters shooting darts into a monkey with a four meter long ironwood blowgun, holding it to their mouth effortlessly with two hands at the base, then following the monkey for at least a mile as it flees through the trees. The hunters run over the rough ground, twisting and turning through the brush, placing their bare feet perfectly, avoiding roots and rocks, writhing and dipping, stark naked, to slip unharmed past whipping branches. They are more graceful than the finest modern dancer. Not only are such hunters nimble and fast, but they are also capable of killing and carrying home wild tapir and boar weighing hundreds of pounds, walking miles on that same ground.

Let us also consider a polar Inuit hunter, standing motionless beside a seal’s breathing hole, a spear upraised—breathing quietly, smoothly, waiting for the seal to raise its head momentarily to catch a breath, and throwing that spear unerringly, like a spark from flint-struck steel. From frozen immobility to perfect motion: one cast, one life.

Consider also the Bajau of the Philippines, who free-dive twenty meters deep and stride on the ocean floor for five minutes, hunting, able to see without goggles, due to an adaptation of the eyes when exposed early enough to the sea.

1.3 Bajau child

And the Kalahari !Kung, running after a gazelle in the desert, sipping water from a gourd, mile after mile, until the animal collapses from exhaustion. Withal, there is no rest for the hunter— now the animal must be butchered, and quickly too, for the meat rots in the heat, and scavengers gather, not just pests like jackals and vultures, but lions and leopards too.

In these ‘first nations,’ people learn skills by emulating their elders, through both play and tutelage. They surely repeated skill-building moves again and again, but in a fluid context, not by rote or regimen. What they did was of a piece with who they were.⁵

1.4 !Kung hunters, born to run

Chaotic Strength

We have the capacity to ‘explode.’ Suddenly, without any warning, a leopard or a lion pounces, and grabs you by the neck. You are half-drowning in your own blood, and unable to breathe. Some people give up—others explode in pure undifferentiated, chaotic action: clawing, biting, ripping, and screaming violence. A sudden rush of adrenaline shuts off responses to pain, fatigue, the sense of wounds or other damage, and with nothing left to lose, one fights until victory or death. The power one can exert is almost beyond belief in such situations—it is a kind of delirium, a madness to live whatever the cost.

It is very difficult to get an account of chaotic strength, because thought largely or totally shuts off, so that one is not distracted from the pure act. One of the best I’ve ever received is from a training brother and student, Thannasis Bantios, describing a one in a million event where, injecting insulin for perhaps the ten thousandth time in five years since he was found to have Type I diabetes, the syringe found a small vein in the abdomen and the entire dose of insulin went directly into his bloodstream.

My blood sugar was unreadable in less than 5 minutes… If you do not counteract immediately, there is a chance that you are going to die… When something like this happens, the body produces enormous amounts of adrenaline in a desperate attempt to save itself, and pushes them into the bloodstream…

1.5 A kind of delirium, a madness to live whatever the cost.

This is what I experienced:

•Uncontrollable shaking - I could not control any of my limbs

•Extreme tunnel vision - I could not see clearly even in two meters in front of me

•Time was kind of distorted

•I could not speak. If I tried to talk, my belly locked up (it is like I could only speak with brief sounds, not vowels)

•I could not hear or execute ‘orders’ from other people, or answer to them (things like Should we call an ambulance? or You should lay down. was all noise to me)

Unlike what I believed is the ideal in emergencies, relaxation was not even an option; rather, clenching my fists, my belly and all my body very tightly helped a lot. It gave me a sense of somehow taking control of myself. For example, my arm was shaking uncontrollably, and if I clenched my fist and arm very tightly it was as somehow I could control it a little bit. Screaming helped a lot, as well as breathing very deep and quickly

My body took over. I KNEW, even not in my conscious thought, that I had to eat everything with carbohydrates available in sight. This started a frenzy that lasted for 5 minutes. where I uncontrollably ate everything that was near me.

Speaking of martial value of the incident, if I had to fight in such a condition, then most of what we believe we can do just vanishes away. The most important things: I kept screaming (it helped immensely) and kept a very tight body. I know that this goes against all given advice of keeping relaxed. I was also unable to see, hear, or think; the best I could possibly do is rage, screaming, and using my uncontrollable limbs to hit a very big target. There was no way that I could distinguish details and target something specific: for example, the eyes.

It was, as an endocrinologist friend of mine said to me, like a lion attacked you out of nowhere.

Note, however, there is order within chaos—Thanassis shoved sugar-laden food down his throat, not the first thing he could grab. The mother of my children, many months pregnant with our first son, was going very fast down a hill on her bicycle, and the brake caliper snapped and seized the front tire. She flew over the handle bars, and landed in a perfect jūdō mae-ukemi, on her forearms and toes, the force distributed so perfectly that not only did her belly not touch the pavement, but she did not have any injuries, even scrapes to her forearms. At the time, she had been training aikidō for perhaps six months, but her emergency brain recognized the survival value of that technique when she learned it, and it was there for her when she and our child needed it most. In other words, even our capacities within chaotic strength are trainable. Our chaos is never pure.

Dancer’s Skill

We’ve been dancing since before we were human. Dance is one of the primary methods of eliciting desire from another to mate. Dance also enables us to tell stories: what the badger did when the bear tried to dig it out of the log, and what the bear did when she bit his nose. We also see some animals that pick up rhythm and dance—there is a pleasure in repetitive movement, particularly accompanied by a backbeat.

1.6 We’ve been dancing since before we were human.

Human dance takes us beyond the utilitarian, introducing something arbitrary—movement for effect, for artifice, for aesthetics and at its highest level, to communicate feeling and experience. Dancers learn to move within an ideal form and then train to make this often ‘unnatural’ movement natural to them (creating a ‘pseudo-instinct,’ a movement pattern so engrained that it becomes second nature).

Dance introduces creativity into movement, the possibility of developing new patterns that thrill or entrance others, or makes something difficult easy to do.

1.7 Human dance takes us beyond the utilitarian

Herder’s Strength, Wrestler’s Skill and the Birth of Martial Sports

We associated ourselves with dogs—initially, somewhat docile wolves—about fifteen thousand years ago. This was one of the most revolutionary occurrences in the history of humanity. Dogs became our guardians, our hunting partners, our first beasts-of-burden. In turn, dogs outsourced much of their safety and shelter to us.

About ten thousand years ago, we domesticated other animals: goats, sheep and eventually cattle, and dogs were, for much of humanity, an essential part of this process, as both herders and defenders of the flock. We learned to project intent, imposing our will on other living beings through subtle signals: a shift of posture or stance, a whistle or whisper, even a look. We lived in a symbiosis so intimate that we were, at times, nearly a single organism.

Herdsmen must take down animals to shear, to castrate or slaughter. A herdsman, therefore, must be both powerful and quick, a master of leverage, with a willingness to endure pain and struggle: in other words, a wrestler. Belt wrestling, the first martial sport, seems to be universal among herding cultures, particularly those that herd cattle.⁶

1.8 The first trained body was a wrestler’s body: an amalgam of power, flexibility, explosiveness, mental agility and intuitive response.

Martial sports enable men (and women, though historically, far less frequently) to exert all their power in relative safety, the rules ensuring that most will survive the encounter. Furthermore, rules and limitations allowed practitioners to research further refinements of skill, something humanity did not have the luxury of doing within lethal encounters, or before systematic military training was developed. The first trained body was a wrestler’s body: an amalgam of power, flexibility, explosiveness, mental agility and intuitive response.

Farmer’s & Laborer’s Strength

Farming started about twelve thousand years ago. It changed everything about us. With a supply of food more or less assured, larger groups of people could live in close proximity. We became civilized, which, in practice, meant that what most of us did, incessantly, was work. Farming is only successful when you bury your gaze into the ground, stooped and bent, digging earth, prying roots and rocks, poke-bend-plant-move and do it again. The life of the farmer is labor, and that transforms the farmer’s body.

1.9 Cursed is the ground for thy sake; in toil shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life. (Genesis 3:17)

Once we began farming, though, we had surplus food, enabling us to gather together in bigger groups. And bigger groups need leaders, and leaders need power, and farmers, when they weren’t working in the fields, were put to work elsewhere: building walls and temples, digging canals, threshing grain, pounding roots, on and on and on. Civilization meant backbreaking labor, and the only way to survive was to transform this labor into an art in itself. Within a short time, agriculture was organized beyond one’s own plot. With such organization arose social hierarchy and with that, the state itself.

It is startling how little we used to work as hunter-gatherers—many anthropologists currently refer to the hunter-gatherer lifestyle as the ‘original affluent society.’⁷ That cannot be said of farmers. There may be days off during fallow season, but when one needs to plant, glean, harvest or winnow, there is no such thing as a vacation or sick day. Work or die.

Physical exertion for a hunter-gatherer could be viewed as a kind of constant improvisation; even though they used tools and sometimes honed specific skills, every day was different; every act was new. Note how fluidly an animal moves—they may tire, but unless they are injured or old, they are never stiff. The same is true for hunter-gatherers, because whenever an action is tiring, one simply does something else, quite unlike the necessarily repetitive nature of farm life. These grinding repetitive actions of farming and laboring were something new and in many ways, something awful and inescapable. Once a culture shifts to farming, it is impossible to shift back to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle—too many of the skills of hunting must be learned first-hand, parent to child. Once forgotten, they are irretrievable. Furthermore, once one starts farming, there is a population explosion, due to the relatively constant availability of food. There are now too many people to survive by the hunter-gatherer lifestyle. As it says in the Tanakh – Cursed is the ground for thy sake; in toil shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life.⁸

To be sure, ‘work’ was not absolutely unknown to hunter-gathers—they chopped down trees with stone axes, carved dugout canoes with adzes, but this was not an everyday action. Hunter-gathers also had the luxury of simply stopping and resting, or walking away to take up the task later. In such a society, no one had the authority to tell a man what to do. Farming was different: with corvee labor, one could be drafted to work in another’s fields or in the big man’s town. Even with the sun scalding, the rains soaking and the wind blowing dirt and sand into the eyes, your fatigue and your misery did not matter. In a single day, you might squat, dip, plant a seed, stand, step, squat, dip, plant a seed, thousands of times, or swing a scythe, chop clumps of dry grass with a dull sickle, poke a stick in hard ground, shake grain and fling it into the air, dig a maze of irrigation ditches, heft and pour water, over and over and over again. You and your mates might lever a stone the size of a truck onto a wall comprised of similar stones, or you may have chiseled that form out of the rock yourself. The only way to survive the requirements of repetitive action was to become more efficient.

A farmer or a laborer, at least one with his or her feet actually in the ground, found the line within each movement to save the most energy while exerting the perfect amount of force necessary to best accomplish each specific task. Of course, even with this efficiency, they were irreparably damaged. I recall old Japanese men and women bent nearly double from a life in the rice paddies, their hands gnarled and knuckles huge. Nonetheless, a life in the fields developed farmer’s strength, farmer’s endurance and farmer’s efficiency. A life as a laborer built the same.

1.10 I recall old Japanese men and women bent nearly double from a life in the rice paddies, their hands gnarled and knuckles huge.

Here are some examples of pure laborer’s strength, from the book The Super Athletes:⁹

In 1940, Irvin Bauman husked 46.58 bushels of corn in 1 hour, 20 minutes in Davenport, Iowa.

In 1959, Lino Brenz-Verca, a 32-year-old miner, transferred 2000 pounds of ore from the ground to a truck in 2 minutes, 2 seconds, with a 19 second penalty for tossing 95 pounds entirely over the truck.

In 1961, William Hardy laid 5,469 bricks consecutively in an eight-hour working period (one brick every five seconds).

A market ‘carrier’ in Paris was required to be able to run 200 meters while carrying 440 pounds on his head.

Notice that in each of these examples, one has to deal with variable loads, ballistic force, and shifting postures while under a lot of physical stress—quite different from the controlled application of force in weightlifting.

I once participated in a carrot harvest in northern Japan. I was at the peak of my physical power. I had recently bench-pressed more than my body weight multiple times and picked a six hundred pound barbell off of a rack in