A Short Instruction:
The purpose of this article is to apply the Ki principle (mind moves the body) which is the fundamental of Shin Shin Toitsu Aikido to our daily life.
It is not enough just to read, but it is important to positively practice the subject given each month. Learning through practice will be your lifelong asset.
Continue to Learn
I teach in seminars and give lectures many times throughout a year. All weekends and national holidays are used to teach, and only a few weekdays are left for me as non-teaching days.
Consequently, it is absolutely necessary to set aside time for my own training and learning in addition to the time I spend for teaching. The time for teaching is like the small, visible segment of an iceberg, and it is necessary for all of us to have a greater amount of time for learning, which is like the invisible segment of an iceberg.
For example, let’s talk about “the way of communicating”.
“If you want to become able to communicate well, go to the Yose (a vaudeville theater, where comic storytellers perform)”. This is what I was told by Koichi Tohei Sensei when I was an Uchideshi. Fortunately, there was a Yose called Shinjuku Suehirotei near the Tokyo
In the Yose, inexperienced performers show up during the first part of the show. The audience often realizes that the inexperienced performers do not have much confidence, so the audience becomes quiet and shows no reactions. As time goes on, the experts show up. The moment that the particularly great performer shows up (more correctly, even before he shows up), something changes. The atmosphere in the audience is also different. We can only feel such an atmosphere in the theater, not by watching TV or listening to CDs.
At the beginning, I could only think “This is fun!”. As time went on, I began to wonder “Why is this best performer so much more fun?” and “What exactly is the different from the other performers?” And I considered “the difference from myself” and recorded what I found in my notebook.
Finally, I found that the very best performer takes great care in such details as his eyes, facial expression, motions, pauses between words, loudness of voice, and so on. And, to this day, I apply what I learned there in my teaching. Of-course I am neither a professional comic storyteller nor a professional entertainer, so making my audience laugh is not my purpose. So even though the practices of a good comic storyteller may seem unrelated to us, there is a similarity with our work of “communicating to others”.
I repeated my usual practice of “watching carefully”, “thinking it over”, “practicing” and “verifying”, and out of this I came to my current way of teaching. Before, it was hard for me to teach many people at the same time. However, now I can teach thousands of people. I understand well the real meaning of Koichi Tohei Sensei sending me to Yose.
Several years later, there is still one problem waiting for me.
Now I teach my uchideshies “how to communicate” and what I have learned from Yose in the past. However, there are still those who do not improve well. These are the ones who do not go to Yose, while offering some excuse or other. It is probably because their learning attitude is “being taught”, rather than “seeking”. While we have the attitude of just being taught, nothing will be mastered. Something can be mastered only by repeatedly “watching carefully”, “thinking it over”, “practicing” and “veryfying”.
Anyway, in order to teach people as well as master the techniques of Shin-Shin-Toitsu-Aikido, it is essential to continue to learn. If I do not continue to learn, I should not be in a position to teach. “Only those who continue to learn can teach”, this is the general principle for the instructors of Ki Society.
Those who continue to learn can be called ____________.
Let us continue to learn together.
The following is the subject for this month.
[Subject]
・ What phrase could be inserted in the underlined blank above? There are countless answers.