“The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus.”.

-Bruce Lee

In Japanese, focus is translated to Kime, or "spiritual focus." According to the Way and the Power by Frederick Lovret, "the purpose of Kime is pure and simple: Power. By focusing your strength on one point, you greatly increase effective power...to achieve physical kime, take each of your techniques and practice them slowly, as in T'ai Chi ch'uan. As you do this study each muscle in your body to be sure its helping the action not hindering it." What is meant by this you are using your body more efficiently. As you learn your wazas, we tend to muscle through the techniques. Don't do that! It should be done very relaxed (internal power and Kime combined). There was a saying in the Marine Corps while I was learning to shoot my weapon, "Slow is smooth, smooth is fast." Study this well and intently.

Hai Sensei!

Focus has at least a couple of meanings for our purposes. First is the type Perez Sensei speaks of above. Daniel Kahneman (winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002) pioneered the “fast” thinking brain and the “slow” thinking brain. “Slow is smooth” is the work of slow, analytical, but inefficient brain. “Smooth is fast” is the intuitive, fast, and efficient brain. The trick is taking techniques our Sensei gives us into the slow part, and transferring that knowledge over time and with much practice, to the fast part.

But there several more facets to focus. Another, less obvious one, is the ability to filter out distractions. This is also a part of the martial arts and is not as easy as it sounds, especially on the mat.

Many of us began our martial arts journeys as young people. When I was a young man at the Yoshitsune Dojo circa 1979, Sensei Doc Cohe would end each class with “dessert” which was essentially putting us in the middle of the mat, in front of the rest of the class and the instructors, surrounding us with 2 or 3 attackers, and asking us to demonstrate what we had learned that night. And no matter how well we did in front of sensei that night, and not matter how many times we did the technique correctly, and our partners either fell down are tapped out, no matter how confident we were, we always botched it up in front of the whole class. Somehow, when you’re in the middle of a technique and Johnny Bradle is barreling down on you, it’s hard to remember what you were doing, and the project goes south. Mickey Bradle, sitting to Shihan Cohe’s right, would yell “Don’t worry about him, worry about your move!” And yet, somehow Doc Cohe never seemed disappointed, and only encouraged us to, as Sensei Perez ends with above, “study this well and intently.”

Soke Sensei has always had a keen sense of focus, how illusive it is, and I suspect has always understood the biology involved. And that brings us to this month’s “Good Read” which is Daniel Goleman’s “Focus.”

Good Reads

Embedding this learning in school lesson plans erects the conceptual scaffolding for systems thinking that can be elaborated on more explicitly as children at higher grades engage the specifics in greater detail.
Page 155

(Whenever I thumb through any of the color belt books of the Tsugiashi-Do series, I always marvel, knowing what I know now, how brilliant their “conceptual scaffolding” is. I treasure my Tsugiashi-Do manuals, and I’m always happy when I see them, as I frequently do, being referred to during Sensei Mike Wilson’s classes with his Brown belts.)

At least at first. But as you master how to execute the new routine, repeated practice transfers control of that skill from the top-down system for intentional focus to bottom-up circuits that eventually make its execution effortless. At that point you don’t need to think about it—you can do the routine well enough on automatic.
Page 164

Another key of improvement is in selective attention, inhibition the pull of distracters. This lets us focus on what’s important rather than be distracted by what’s going on around us…
…this is the essence of cognition control.

When I was Nidan and teaching my own class in Stamford, CT, Soke Cohe and Sensei Mike Wilson attended my first yellow belt promotion. The next night we had a party at my home where all my students and many of my fellow blackbelts came. During the party, Sokei Sensei pulled me aside to show me something. As he took my wrist, I realized with great excitement that he was going to give me Mochi Mawari, one of the key moves for Sandan. I remember it distinctly as being a very unusual move, and I did it a few times on Sensei. I distinctly and perfectly remember that we were alone in a back room, where it was very quiet as I received this waza that I had waited for 20 years to learn. Some years later, when practicing Sandan waza in Kent Island, MD, I recalled to a group how Soke had given me that waza, and exactly when and where we were. Soke waited until the group had dispersed, took me aside, smiling widely, and said in a low, amused voice “We were in your kitchen, and it was full of people. You just didn’t notice them.” Soke Sensei has not just a martial artist’s sense of focus, but also a psychological and biological understanding of it. To be a Soke Sensei is to master not just waza, but also to master all the variables, one of which is Focus.

And that’s the onions of Focus.

Closter, NJ.  Circa 1981.

Standing left to right: Shihan Cohe, Yondan Mickey Bradle, Shodan Johnny Bradle.
Kneeling, Sensei Michael DePasquale Jr.

Shodan Johnny Bradle was one of the usual and scariest uke’s deployed for dessert.

Thank you for reading this newsletter. More are coming and your feedback will make them better.
Faithfully,
Sensei Scot Lynch
Yondan, Tsugiashi Do