Do we all have to be David Bowie now?

The compound verb "to reinvent oneself" was created to describe David Bowie's career moves. I'm absolutely serious. The expression didn't exist before that. Either out of a restless inability to keep working in the same mold for more than an album and the subsequent tour (i.e. he gets bored easily), or a prescient grasp of the idea that pop music will cannibalize anything that stands still too long, he would regularly transform both his visual appearance and his musical style totally. He "reinvented himself" as the press described it. And as we all know, it worked. When he was playing his best game, he got ahead of the curve and he was the one creating the changes. 

What can we learn from this regarding disruptive ideas and disruptive technologies, and especially what it means to the question: how do I, as an individual, navigate the fluid world created by all this disruption?

Bowie was reacting to a disruptive influence: pop music. In the sixties and seventies recording technology (the eight-track recorder), musical instruments (the synthesizer and all the permutations of the electric guitar), studio technology, stage equipment, marketing methods, network television, and high-speed long-distance travel were all bringing about rapid changes in the entertainment business. On top of that, there were disruptive ideas affecting music: war protest, exploration of psychedelics use, resistance to authority, questioning of sexual tabus, resistance to the power of capitalism. Bowie could see that you had to ride this wave or be drowned by it.

When you talk about disruptive ideas and technologies, it's hard to determine which is the chicken and which the egg. The materialist view is that the technologies enable the rise of ideas (i.e. television enabled people to question authority, since it was letting people see the Vietnam war in ways that contradicted the official version of events). It is impossible to prove, but I would suggest that the technologies also come into being in response to ideas arising on deeper, non-material planes. The idea of equality has been percolating in the back of humanity's mind for centuries (millennia?). Technologies that give people equal access just bring that impulse into being in the physical world.


Equality and decentralization are seriously disruptive ideas. Take for example this presentation Sugata Mitra gave a few days ago at an education conference at the Universidad Francisco Marroquín in Guatemala. In essence (anticipating all the TL;DW reactions), his research shows that groups of children given networked computers, the proper atmosphere, and unstructured time can, as teams, teach themselves nearly any subject if they are given the right questions to research. There are many arguments against this, but one of them is NOT that children don't learn this way. The studies and the data are copious.

This is more than a little scary, considering that until recently it has been assumed teachers and trainers were among the few traditional professionals in the world that couldn't be replaced by computers. Add to that the trend toward e-learning (computer-based, interactive teaching programs) in industry, and it looks like there will be far fewer teachers and trainers in the future.

Often -- as in the trend toward e-learning that I cite above -- the driver for these changes is financial; decision makers are either trying to save money or increase profits. But I'm sure you'll recognize that there are frequent examples in which the driver of the change is ideological, spiritual, or simply a desire to be in harmony with the zeitgeist. 

In my own life I have found myself questioning how aikido and other martial arts classes are taught. Japanese martial arts are a seriously top-down, authoritarian affair. Class starts by bowing to an image of the art's founder (the "shomen", or the "head" of the room), and then the students bow to the teacher. During the brief time I had an aikido school in Davis, California, I adopted a radical practice of assembling in a circle. We turned and bowed to the shomen (which I see as more of a spiritual practice -- acknowledging the kami, or spirit, of the school), and then we turned toward the center of the circle to bow to one another. No bowing to me, as the teacher, per se. It may seem like nothing to you, dear reader, but I assure you it would be seen as sacrilege by many.

There are other areas of my life I have felt compelled to introduce more equality into, and I find that I also am less and less comfortable with accepting the right of "authorities" to dictate the agenda. 

There are no easy, absolute answers. I do believe that children, up to a certain age, need authority. Being allowed to determine everything for themselves is actually a source of stress. In Waldorf schools (which all of my children attend) the idea is that the teacher is firmly in control during the first few years, and as the children are trained to use their freedom, the reins are slowly loosened. 

And I don't believe in being my children's "best friend", either. I'm their father. They need that.

The problem we as individuals have is that all of this disruption, all this abandoning of traditions and institutions for good or bad reasons and adoption of new practices at a rapid pace, is moving at a speed that's outstripping our economic and political systems' ability to react. If you watch the Mitra video, you'll see someone in the audience, a teacher, ask the inevitable question: what happens to teachers once this catches on? I think he fudges the answer and suggests teachers will have a marvelous new "meta" role in education institutions. I'm not convinced. I think there will be lots of teachers out of work.

So what is our choice? Writers can't make a living creating articles for magazines anymore. Small dairy farmers can't live from the milk their cows give selling it at government-set prices meant for mega dairies. Librarians are dropping like flies as libraries close. The list goes on and on. Everyone has to innovate; such as the small dairy farmer starting to make specialty cheeses from her milk that she can sell at farmers' markets, or the writer maintaining a company's blog. 

Do we all have to be David Bowie now? Do you know how to reinvent yourself?        

Yoga is a batch of fried rice

Pranayama, ruler exercise, pepper, soy sauce...

I confess I stole this idea. Well... maybe not stole it; just recognized the truth of it.

You see, I once attended an aikido workshop in Sacramento in the late 1980s taught by Hiroshi Ikeda, the last uchi deshi (apprentice) of Morihei Ueshiba, the founder of aikido. Ikeda sensei started the workshop out explaining how every household makes fried rice differently. (Fried rice is one of the solutions to the ubiquitous Far-East Asian problem of having lots of leftover cold rice.) He went on to talk about how, over the years, one learns various things from the many teachers and from the various experiences one has in life. If someone wants a presentation of what you know/practice, you throw pieces of your different life lessons into the hot, oiled pan (making sure that they harmonize with each other), stir them around, add fresh ground pepper (I put chopped garlic and ginger into the oil) and some soy sauce, and (voila!) you have your version of fried rice.

"So today, I humbly offer you MY fried rice," he said with a winning smile.

Now, I have never been the type of student of martial arts or any other physical discipline to be satisfied with only practicing in the school. That's partly because I'm not a particularly graceful or coordinated individual. I have to put more effort into learning physical movements than other people. But mostly I practice at home on my own because I want to make things my own. It's one thing to do something in a classroom while many other people are trying to do it and the clock is ticking away. It is totally another to be by oneself, out under the open sky, or in your own home, and having the time and peace to concentrate on what you wish to teach yourself, to absorb it into your bones. It's also satisfying to go back to class and be able to move on from the last lesson, rather than spend time and effort trying to remember what you learned earlier, or didn't learn, as the case may be.

So, for thirty years now, I have exercised every morning. And over time, the routine has constantly changed. The red thread running through every routine is that the exercises have to address breathing, balance, flexibility, and moving from the center. Depending on what my needs are in a given period of my life, I put together different routines that include elements of what I have learned from aikido (my primary discipline), tai chi, kigong, yoga, and systema (a Russian martial system). It is my fried rice. It includes the things I find at hand, combined with an eye toward harmony, with the ultimate aim of nourishing my body, mind and spirit.

When I was younger, if the subject of my morning routine came up, I disliked telling people that I "excercise". It conjures images of somebody doing push-ups, jumping jacks and sit ups. It didn't matter so much what kind of an impression this made on other people as that it didn't make me feel good about it. Sometimes I tried to describe what I do and it would be too complicated, and people's eyes would glaze over with incomprehension or boredom.

Finally I just started saying I do morning yoga. Which is actually the truth. Here's what you'll find about that word in the Online Etymological Dictionary:

...from Hindi yoga, from Sanskrit yoga-s, literally "union, yoking" (with the Supreme Spirit), from PIE root *yeug- "to join" (see jugular).

I do these exercises to integrate myself internally, and with my highest ideals. They are my yoga. They are my fried rice.

If you ever come to one of my Dream Warrior Training workshops, I'll serve you a helping.

Warriors rise to challenges

Theo Hemmingway working on next posting

Reading the announcement gave me a frisson of fear. So I knew it was a good idea. Scary, but good. Good precisely because it was scary (Jeez! I'm starting to sound like a bad Hemmingway parody.)

The challenge is to write a blog posting (not just link something or publish a picture of your lunch, but write something) once a day for a week. The challenge is being organized by Winnie Kao, who works for Seth Godin. Seth is all about "shipping", meaning sending the product of your efforts to someone else; delivering, publishing.

As some readers of this blog might know, in the distant past I once had a weekly newspaper column, for two years (and later for a few months at another newspaper). If you've never done it before, you have no idea how much pressure it is (mostly pressure you put on yourself) to produce clever, publishable (what your editor considers publishable) material every week by deadline.

I've never done daily.

But I'll tell you why I want to try it. I read blogs on a feed reader. That means I download blogs onto my phone in the morning, and I read them during the day when I get the time (typically while commuting on public transport, or while eating lunch). Every morning, without fail, there is a posting from Seth Godin. Every day. That means I think about him, and about the things he's thinking, every day. That's an amazing presence. That's powerful.

It also means that he's gotten very good at short posts. That man can say in three short paragraphs what most people need ten for.

So, here it is that I very publicly commit myself. Starting tomorrow (Monday, 19 January) I will post each day for one week.

Banzai!

There is power in paradoxes

"Spiritual Warrior" by Rita Loyd. See more at
 http://www.nurturingart.com/index.html

"I think you should come up with another name," said my friend Nick, when I told him about my plans for the Dream Warrior Training workshops. "I don't like the trend toward militarization in contemporary world culture. You should find a better word than 'warrior'."

I explained that in other languages the word for warrior doesn't necessarily refer directly to war. "Well it does in English, doesn't it?"

I thought about this for a while, and although it conjures difficult images, I decided to stick with the name. Not in spite of the problematic nature of the title "warrior", but because of it. It's a paradox that needs to be embraced.

There's power in paradoxes.

Let me give you an example.

In the art of aikido, along with the empty-hand techniques -- consisting of joint locks and throws in reaction to a physical attack -- we also learn how to fence with wooden swords shaped like the traditional Japanese samurai sword. These moves be can reproduced with no weapon in the hands, and are still amazingly effective in influencing the motions of another person, either throwing them or locking them in a pin.

"As opposed to true contradictions, paradoxes only "seem" to cancel each other out. Instead, they are a fruitful marriage of opposites."

Once, when I was attending a workshop taught by Koichi (Larry) Barrish, he described these empty-handed motions that imitate sword movements (called aiki sword) as "the sword so sharp it cuts things back together again." Logically, it makes no sense. But for me, this paradoxical statement perfectly captured the ability of these techniques to resolve conflict without perpetuating disharmony.

I noticed the power of paradoxes in my early twenties. Ever since, I've been on the lookout for things that seem to be contradictions, but actually act as a mask for a profound truth. As opposed to true contradictions, paradoxes only "seem" to cancel each other out. Instead, they are a fruitful marriage of opposites.

It makes me think of the time a friend stated, "The martial artists I know are some of the friendliest and kindest people in my life." I contemplated that remark and realized it was true of the people in my life, too. (And, yes, the few asshole martial artists I know are the exception that proves the rule.)

I am a warrior. I am a man who lives from the heart and seeks to express love in his actions.

I am a paradox. I embrace that.

A thousand years of Dream Warriors

This falls into the category of, "I'm not making this stuff up, folks!"

At first I thought combining dreamwork, martial movement and writing practice under one umbrella as "Dream Warrior Training" was a brilliant, revolutionary new idea. But slowly it dawned on me that there have actually been many traditions through history in which trained warriors were expected to also be refined individuals with skills and sensitivities honed by the arts and sciences.

Your average Roman army officer, for example (at least during the Republic period, and the early Empire period)  was a nobleman who'd been raised on poetry. He was familiar with and could recite a catalogue of verse. And very likely he evened penned a few himself occasionally.

But more immediately relevant to the themes of Dream Warrior Training is the lifetime of Chen Tuan (10th century AD). Chen Tuan is revered in Chinese culture as one of the great Taosist sages. He is credited with inventing and/or refining the movements that have come down to us as kung fu (which the Chinese actually call wushu; wu=martial + shu=art) and qigong. He is also famous for being a pioneer and master of "sleep meditation"; a cousin of what is popularly known as "dream yoga" nowadays. Dream yoga is the version of this discipline practiced by Tibetan Buddhist monks.

There is a surprising amount material on the internet about Chen Tuan and his sleep meditation practices, since he was as central a figure to Chinese spiritual history as, say, St Francis or Martin Luther are in the West.

Dream warriors have existed since the beginning of the human race.

Just imagine a prehistoric man sleeping with his companions by the embers of a fire. The stars sparkle over their heads, as he dreams of stalking a magnificent elk with golden antlers. In his dream he quietly raises his spear to shoulder level. Takes aim...   

The dream of the two dojo

When I woke up that morning and realized I'd had the same dream for the third time, I knew this was a deeper life issue.

The dream, entitled "The Two Dojo*" in my dream journal, starts out at a very traditional Japanese aikido school. The decor is spartan, and the only colors are black and white (like the white uniforms and black hakamas of the students). The teacher is painfully strict, and everyone is deadly serious. They practice with stony sober expressions on their faces. Later in the dream I find another school, where the environment is as colorful as a rainbow, and everyone is laughing and having a great time while they train. I instantly feel this is where I'd rather train.

Initially, this recurring dream affected where I chose to train and how I taught aikido classes at my own school. But, as with all "big dreams", there were multiple levels of meaning within it.

Now, almost a quarter of a century later, I realize this dream heralded the path I would follow later in my life once I had conceived of the unique self-development mode I've dubbed Dream Warrior Training. The essential principle behind DWT is that martial training**, dreamwork, and the discipline of journaling (writing for the purpose of exploring the mind), have potent powers for transforming the individual who practices them in combination. My mission is to lead workshops that enable people to benefit from the insights this combined activity can deliver. It is nearly impossible to spend time doing these three disciplines together -- even if only for a day or two -- without coming to some new, life-enhancing realizations.

This is the colorful dojo where everyone laughs and trains joyfully, even though the subject matter is of vital importance.

Whether or not you wish to, some day, participate in this mode of training, the purpose of this blog is to share with you my own insights gained from a life informed by the daily pursuit of these three treasures. If you are interested in dreams, in the wisdom that can be found within our bodies, or in the power to be discovered in using the written word (or any combination of the three), the postings to come in this blog will be just the sort of thing you're looking for.

And though I will engage in a certain amount of curating -- that is: linking and commenting on things I find on the internet -- my well-established blogging habit consists of telling stories relating to my own experience. I know that my own taste in blogs runs to the writers who generate original material, not those who just echo the rest of the cyber noise. I suspect you, astute reader, have similar tastes. If you have a feed reader, perhaps you should subscribe now, to follow this story from the beginning.

Welcome to The Dream Warrior, where insights are inevitable, and laughing is encouraged.  

*A dojo is a place where a spiritual discipline (in Japanese "do", like the Chinese "dao") is practiced.

**specifically the motions and breathing practices that awaken consciousness and enhance one's energies, which I call "martial yoga"