by Nick Lowry
In 2001 I instituted “black belt choice” weeks into our dojo curriculum– this helped develop autonomy and creativity amongst my senior ranks and helped them grow into their own as teachers. It was an experiment and I liked how it worked and wrote the following:
So I turned you loose and let you fly – threw you into the deep end of the pool. What did we learn this week in aikido?
When left to our own devices to create aikido practice I think most folks did an admirable job— a lot of really fine teaching and practice was going on. The environment stayed mostly bubbly and safe, but also some gaps appeared that you might not been aware of; some rough edges and sharp points came to the fore front and in some ways that is the really really useful stuff. As black belts we learn that we are just beginning to get it; we have learned enough to maybe learn, and if we have the patience and the ethics and have enough drive, any black belt can expect mastery — and we find that through the process of teaching, we learn what real mastery is and how to get to it.
Our own failures and blindspots present themselves regularly to the self aware and self honest teacher and those are precisely the areas that need attention. This week maybe you found out you couldn’t do something you thought you could. Maybe your fantasy of skill failed under pressure, or maybe you found out that you knew a lot more about something than you knew you knew, you are better than you think, or maybe you found out about how you step on your own ego and get in you own way and didn’t even know you were doing it. Maybe you had to confront your temper, maybe you had to confront your need to be helpful. As teachers, we have to watch out for the treachery of helpfulness—we are not running a kindergarten, more often than not the dojo is more like grad school.
The budo path uses a Confucian model of teaching that is designed to stimulate self confidence and self mastery. The method is this: that in describing a square to the student, the master will give the student one corner and expect the student to come back with the other three. The spoon-feed approach is only useful in the very beginning at the lower kyu, and as you progress to teaching higher grades it becomes more and more necessary to under-teach – to give only one corner.
In fact, at the highest levels, I expect my highest ranking people to be sensitive enough to respond to a glance or gesture and make corrections. All valuable stuff – As black belts you have got to define the practice of aikido in your own terms, and look for your blind spots, as a student and as a teacher, and shine a little light on those spots – find out about the rough edges and smooth them out – lean in to the sharp points and learn to pay attention to your actions.
Build your self confidence in what you know and learn how to support others on the way without getting too much in the way – as teacher of aikido you pass on lessons of great value—stuff that can and does save lives both from violence on the street and from self destroying life patterns – self destructive behaviors.
When you teach aikido, you’re not just engaging in a hobby – you are inspiring people in ways you cant even imagine. You are stimulating change in your interaction with the world, you are teaching people how to treat you and you are learning that while situations are fluid, principles are solid. Becoming a master, a great aikido teacher is simply a matter of getting very principled and seeing your self and your world very clearly and acting in a way consistent with that principle and that clarity.