By Martin Yonn
As a child in my Aikido classes, my instructors would remind us on occasion to treat every example of a technique shown, as if it was the first time we were seeing it. While I have no doubt this was a way to combat the short attention spans of elementary school children, the meaning of shoshin, or “beginner's mind” is a concept at the heart of martial arts, and one which we revisit on a greater level over and over again.
Fundamentally, attempting to see something with new eyes is a way of focusing our attention on the mat, by discarding presumptions and observing absolutely in the present. Some might view it as a meditation, or even a type of self-hypnosis. By beginning the sequences of recognition that let us treat something as new, some might feel the same sense of eagerness or elation which comes with encountering the unfamiliar. For some it might have a clarifying effect, washing away the regret of a difficult day on the mat, or the lingering pain associated with an ukemi gone wrong.
Beyond the immediate however, meditation on shoshin touches on some of the deeper and at times difficult questions we face as martial artists. What does it mean to begin anew? What does beginning anew require of us? What things do we have to let go of, and what are the implications of letting go?
In this way shoshin also has to do with something ending. Like so many great mysteries, it also has a paradoxical nature. We willingly discard the progress we have made, because sometimes this is how we move forward. We forget the assumptions we have about movement, response, footwork, and sequence, so we can remember something that we have missed.
For new students entering Aikido, one of the greatest hurdles that many encounter is having to relearn things that we take for granted in our everyday lives. A new way to step, a new way to fall. A new way to sit, to watch, to listen. The first weeks of practice are sometimes the most difficult, not just physically but emotionally. Confronting an inability to do something we have taken for granted, requires us to accept uncomfortable facts about our individual capabilities, and also sometimes, truths about who we are fundamentally as people.
Many practitioners, myself included, sometimes find it disheartening that after spending months or even years correcting something, another inefficiency becomes apparent. The mountain you thought you were climbing, is revealed at the summit only to be a foothill from which you can barely see the peak. This act of relearning which is the most difficult in the first part of any Akidoka’s career, is neither the first nor the last. My colleague Kasmir in his article once described the experience as a rollercoaster. Just when one struggle concludes, its ending signals the start of a new one, and you plunge down again, only to rise up a little farther. The truth is though, that both the person who has just stepped onto the mat and the teacher instructing the class, are both engaged in a process that has no clear start or finish. Both are in a constant struggle at different levels, of grasping for something while also learning to let go.
As a child there would be days that I struggled to understand something being shown, even to the point of frustration. Other days, I would struggle just to stay engaged with a technique I had seen before. As an adult, there are times on the mat where my mind falls between one of these two feelings, though sometimes there is also a place beyond either of those responses.
Somewhere where a sense of history and anticipation is lost in the moment of sailing through the air, or watching feet glide across the tatami canvas. This is, I think, shoshin. To some extent it remains as mysterious to me now as it did when I was a child. Or maybe, it's just that I’ve let go of it.
Martin Yonn practices aikido and iaido. Having started both of these practices at another dojo, Martin joined Multnomah Aikikai in 2019 - an opportunity to approach the arts with “new eyes”
Martin Yonn throwing (uke is Sean Sheedy)