Grass Valley's Family Martial Arts School -- Focus, Fitness & Fun
Rachelle attended Passion into Action today. She said it was great.
Our Food Bank really needs help. With all the demand, they’re running out of food and rationing food to those in need.
So while at Passion into Action, Rachelle announced that the Food Bank needs help. With that one announcement, she gathered $590 in donations!
Please help the Food Bank. If you can’t get there to make your donation, please come by the dojo and we’ll get your donation to the Food Bank.
Thanks!
Often I am asked by people to talk about aikido tournaments. They are genuinely shocked when I tell them that aikido has no competitions. I explain that our training is cooperative.
Aikido uses cooperation (not competition) in all of its training. For example, consider how we train together. Most training in aikido is done with a partner. After the instructor demonstrates a particular defensive technique from a particular attack, the students partner-up and practice the attack and defense.
The person who attacks is called “uke”. The person who performs the aikido technique is called “nage”. Uke’s responsibility is to attack in such a way that nage can perform the technique perfectly. Likewise, nage’s responsibility is to perform the technique in such a way that uke can receive it perfectly.
From this understanding of the uke-nage relationship, you quickly can figure out why aikido has no competitions. Aikidoka are not trying to beat one another in practice. We are cooperating. Aikido training builds and nurtures trust among its practitioners. We learn as nage to blend with a very vigorous attack so that uke can receive our powerful technique safely. Learning to be trustworthy in this way changes our lives in deeply profound ways.
Rather than learning to impose our competitive will on our partners, we free ourselves to learn how to blend with all sorts of challenging situations. Indeed, by training vigorously and not insisting on personal victory, aikido practitioners achieve mutual victory.
In honor of his day, here are some Martin Luther King quotes. I am afraid that simply quoting him somehow trivializes what Dr. King accomplished. But his quotes are so powerful that they are worth considering on their own. As you read these, please keep in mind that Dr. King always rejected violence.
Please never think that the ideas Dr. King offered could possibly be a basis for violence. Indeed, to use violence would be to completely reject Dr. King’s teachings.
• Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.
• I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.
• Let no man pull you low enough to hate him.
• Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars . . . Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.
• I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.
• When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.
• Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
• The good neighbor looks beyond the external accidents and discerns those inner qualities that make all men human and, therefore, brothers.
• I submit to you that if a man hasn’t discovered something he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.
• The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
Will Smith’s success is no accident.
One of the really big problems in our society is people’s belief that they can be anything they want, have anything they want and do anything they want — if only they believe hard enough. This type of thinking is promoted in the book “The Secret.” With all due respect to the authors and fans of “The Secret” – It’s pure nonsense. Actually, it’s worse than nonsense.
The idea that you or I can have what we want by just thinking it, is deeply harmful to ourselves, our families and our society.
Dream great dreams. Believe great believes. That’s wonderful. I am very sad for anyone who doesn’t hold wild dreams. We simply cannot soar among the stars if we don’t first dream that reaching the stars is possible.
But we won’t fly among the stars without doing the hard work of getting there. And that’s the lesson that Will Smith is teaching.
Notice how close he gets to wishful thinking. He says that thoughts and beliefs are “physical things.” He says our thoughts and beliefs have powerful physical consequences and that we can bend the universe to our liking.
That sounds like “The Secret.” But he doesn’t leave it at optimistic, powerful thinking. Will Smith is saying that our thoughts and beliefs begin moving our bodies in the direction of those thoughts and beliefs. But that’s only the beginning.
You have to dream your dreams. Then make plans based upon those dreams. Act on those plans. Work your plans with remarkable, unbelievable diligence. Work your plans with a laser-like focus.
And you will make magic will happen.
“Legend has it that in the ancient world, a poetry contest was held each year. The third-place winner received a rose made out of silver. The second-place winner received a rose made out of gold. But the first-place winner received a real rose, a beautiful living rose that soon wilted, dried up, and died. I ask you, is there a single one among us who would not choose the living rose?”
Ted Kennedy on loss and maintaining our humanity, from his book True Compass: A Memoir