Aikido Westchester NY: Sugano Sensei

Sugano Sensei (excerpts from December 2000 interview)

What are the most important technical, mental and spiritual principles that students should observe in their practice?

The question is how to study the important things. Obviously it is very important to carefully observe what the teacher is showing, how the  teacher is applying technical points, so that's how one learns to carefully study what they're teaching. The basic principles are distance  and direction. With any technique, you need to know the clear distance and direction. Those you can apply to any technique in your  training. Without those, there are no techniques.

In general training, we are not really teaching or including the spiritual aspect, so the only thing you can do is just point out how to study,  how to carefully observe. Sometimes you describe your eyes, the gateway to your mind. The mind guides your body, so you should  carefully observe.

During general training we are not providing teaching of the spiritual aspect at all. Aikido training is based on the idea of a unique  harmony, so the system is supposed to be teaching that way.

It comes down to the point that it depends on how you practice: how you approach practice makes a difference. The technique itself is one  thing, obviously, you practice to kill someone or control someone, or defend yourself. That's a result, it's there, and it is a result of your  training. However, the only way to make something different is to change how you approach these objectives through your training.

You're aiming at applying the concept of harmony et cetera. Then the process of practice changes into sort of contemplation of your  moral spirit, it changes the direction of practice. The technical result won't change, but just how you approach the practice makes a  difference, so you can approach the practice as if you are just as martial artist, and learn to kill someone or defend yourself, or you can  apply the principle of harmony, etc.

Those processes cultivate your spirit and the moral sense, and so they have some kind of value in daily life. Then you're not just training  in the context that technique equals the use of these arts for killing, instead you're approaching it in different ways which cultivate different  things.

Technically the result won't change, but by following this way, probably you can evolve to a different purpose, I suppose. That's why you  don't overly concern yourself about the result of how you apply the technique. In that case you're just training in using a fighting  technique, you're only concerned with the result in terms of how strong you are, how to defend or kill, so you're training that way to start  with. But this way eventually contradicts O-Sensei's ideas. So when you're starting in Aikido, what makes a difference to how you  approach the practice.

General training is not really encouraging the spiritual aspect, but therefore it makes more important how you view your training, how you  approach the training, really, how you come to training every day. If you are just always thinking about how to throw someone, or how to  defend yourself, obviously you develop a certain attitude, or a certain mental process.

But if you're just purely coming to training to learn about harmonizing with others, obviously you develop good coordination of your body.  You have good coordination of your body even if you're not looking for it, and a technical efficiency is there. The way you are coming to  training depends very much on what you want to get out of Aikido, rather than the Aikido giving you something.

Again, it's difficult to say, but a high percentage students come to training very much for recreational purposes, ...that's as far as it goes. If  someone wants to study more deeply, that's another thing, but generally, people are coming to train just to have fun.

To understand how to approach the training, individuals have to find what they want to get out of Aikido. If you are looking at the strictly  martial aspect, that's the way you want to train, that's the way you train.

In most cases, in any technique or system, as long as you keep moving, it probably becomes technically more effective, rather than  becoming formalized or a kata.

If you continue, part of the training is not fixed. That's the way of training like O-Sensei, who made a break with the traditional idea of  martial arts. Most traditional ideas pretty much fix the kata forms. Even now people tend to think that this is martial, so training tends to  become more formalized or static rather than moving. O-Sensei broke with that idea by spontaneously moving, that's why he never fixed  them.

Ikkyo is there, but each time you do ikkyo it is not exactly the same, as opposed to the kata form which requires the technique to be this  particular way, with precision. A part of Aikido training is that each time it repeats not quite the same.

Individual students have to find what they want. That's why, probably, more students tend to see teaching as primarily the teacher giving  out information, rather then the student having to take information out. Then there is the issue that some teachers will say it has to be a  certain way, you must do it that way. Again, students are probably the same way; some students need to have clear, strict guidance in  order to follow; other students need to have more room.

It depends on how you do it, on both sides. In Aikido there are so many different things, that's why technically I very much more focus on  the study of distance and direction. As far as the details of the technique, how to do the technique, everybody has a preference or  someone does it this way, someone else does it a little bit differently. But no matter how you do a technique but you must have a concept  of distance and direction.

Can you say something about ukemi?

Ukemi at present is also affected by developing an idea of teaching something or developing a system to teach, as well as the student  also expecting to have instruction. That all has affected the idea of ukemi, and of how to do ukemi.

Originally there was no such system, just you attack, you get thrown, so you gradually develop the perception of how to do it, and you  have to be receptive. Ideally, if you start younger, you don't have to worry about it, it takes care of itself automatically whatever situations  come up. In that case there isn't a system or way to develop ukemi, it's just naturally there. But now some people are thinking more about  how to do ukemi in what situation. Already it is influenced by the idea or notion of teaching and getting instruction. Particularly with ukemi  you have to be receptive.

So again, ideally you're supposed to be younger so it's physically possible to take care of yourself if someone throws you or something. If  someone just starts training it's probably not the same as for the young ones. You're just training, so automatically your body becomes  more receptive to the movements. There's no need to have uke have to move this way or that way.

I think that's the way we first learned ukemi, if I can remember back that far.

Now, I don't know, people start talking about how to do ukemi. Even in Europe, in some groups they teach people to jump. They teach the  uke, for iriminage, jump forward. Ideally it should be you just train, and it just automatically takes care of itself. Ukemi is basically a  heightened perception and reaction of your body. Once you formalize it, it's already artificial.

One thing is that obviously you have to be able to roll backward and forward. The main idea for backward and forward rolling is to  condition your muscles because you're not used to such training. It gives you a certain exercise, and that gives the conditioning for  muscles, so forever you need to roll to maintain that conditioning, but that's the only reason you teach rolling backward and forward.  That's how your muscles get to know how to react, and your body is not used to moving in that way. Once you establish that into the body,  you roll forward or whatever, it's physically easy to take ukemi.

Hitting the mat isn't necessary, unless you really need it. Without knowing exactly why, people get the idea from judo. In judo they have  reason to slap the mat, that way they reduce the shock. But in Aikido's case, we use rotary movement to reduce the shock, so the two  approaches are different. But once you make habits, it's difficult to stop.