September 15, 2009.

Tonight I came home from one of the most pleasurable evenings that I've had in 10 years on the aikido mat. Richard Strozzi Heckler (our sensei) had us training in slow motion something called gaichiwaza. Technically speaking it is "reversal" -- the attacker becomes the attacked. But in reality it is literally a conversation of body, in which one is neither leader or follower, but is in total contact with self and partner, and simply, yet profoundly becomes a listener. And from that place a profound outcome occurs.

Anyway I arrived home, ate dinner and listened to the San Francisco Giant's whup up on the Colorado Rockies. (I often listen to baseball at dinner time on an old Phillips tube radio that was my grandfather's.) As the game wound down I checked email (that's done on my Mac ibook G4 - something my grandfather never imagined and never had the chance to see), and noticed an unopened message dated Sept 12 from Chuck Root. Chuck, a good friend now of 15 years, is a giver. Now and then he will shoot me an email out of the blue that touches me and makes a difference to my day. And so it was tonight. Chuck left me a link to hit and with only a short message saying "this is profound, very nice - listen"

http://www.ted.com/talks/benjamin_zander_on_music_and_passion.html

I don't know if you watch "TED" videos. I use two of them at my retreats - one with Sir Kenneth Robinson and the other with Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor. After tonight I'll use this one too. There is, for me, a direct connection between what Richard Strozzi Heckler offered us on the aikido mat tonight and what Benjamin Zander offers here in this video. As I watched and listened I heard/saw the journey of aikido through the testing stages from raw beginner to 5th Kyu, 4th Kyu and on and on. If you don't know anything about aikido and the testing stages, just remember these words you're reading right now as Zander addresses "impulses" in the video that you're about to see and hear.

I thought of Richard (my sensei) and how he advises us on the training mat to "not have to put a punctuation on" a technique or movement. In the video Benjamin Zander proposes, "I don't move my body ... the music moves me". Tonight on the aikido mat Richard referred to something the founder of aikido, Morihei Ueshiba called "hidden aikido", and asked us what we might consider that to be. Some hours later, sitting at home and watching this TED video I thought ---> perhaps it (hidden aikido) is what's always existed and is informing us from the inside out and from which we take form; and tho we don't know it yet, we are coming to befriend it a day at a time. Fortunate would we be if we befriend it before draw our last breath.

I hope you enjoy what you will see and hear - and I hope that you'll find & remember at least one thing will serve you and what it is that you have to offer.

-Lance