jujitsu thoughts....

First things first:

Dear Meghan,

I am writing to inform you that the Rutgers College Scholarship Committee has chosen you to receive a Rutgers College Academic Excellence Award in the amount of $750.00 for the 2005-2006 academic year. We are pleased to award you this Academic Excellence Award in recognition of your distinguished academic record and your service to the Rutgers College community. Congratulations.

!!!!!! eeee! Wow. I didn't think I'd get it. Awesome.

Ok, the other thing i was going to write about was jujitsu. Barb opened by saying that one of the black belts (a former student, one I'd never met) passed away. But the way she described it was really interesting. It kind of hit me in the stomach. In jujitsu, we have something called sutemi. It involves letting go of everything that makes sense so that you can accomplish what you want to accomplish. For example, X is attacking Y. Y allows X to throw him because being thrown that way puts Y in a better position to come out on top. Its making a small sacrifice for a greater goal. Anyway, Barb described the death of this black belt as the ultimate sutemi, because she didn't just slip into a coma and hang on to her life with just the kidney functioning and nothing else, like a lot of people do. She wasn't afraid to just let go. Not that she chose when to die, but when the time came, she didn't fight it.

And that really just sort of hit me. Because I knew that you could apply jujitsu to other areas of life, but when I heard that, it was sort of like, "Is my life a sutemi?" What am I doing in my life that might apply to jujitsu? Is there anything I'm holding onto, that maybe I shouldn't be? And then, right after that, I had to lead the warm ups, and I've always been kind of nervous about doing the stimes (aerial flips, landing in a sidefall position), but today I just sort of let go and went with it, and even though I still landed crooked like always, I think there was less emotional struggle in doing it. And it was really cool to just kind of... let go. Its like flying. I've always thought the stimes and throws were like flying, but today when I did the stime, it was more mentally flying. It was still scary, but it was a stretch, to just say, "scary isn't bad."

The other thing I thought was interesting in jujitsu was Barb doing more of the psychological aspect of jujitsu. It was stuff they said she taught in black belt class. About how, "yes the technique is important, but if you think about doing it and set your mind to it, you can do the technique by barely moving at all." She said there's a difference between hard thought and soft thought If you try to have a "hard mind" when you do a technique, your attacker wants to fight it. If you have a "soft mind," uke doesn't know what's coming. It took a couple of tries, but really, there is such a tiny difference between hard and soft thought. No big movements or anything, just think about a smile, which will soften everything, and then suddenly, your attacker is on the ground and you're on his carotid. Its surprising.

I'm thinking that when I get back to work on my prompt book that's due tomorrow, I will have a soft thought, and maybe that way I'll get so lost in thinking about smiles that all of a sudden I will find myself choking it out. That would please me greatly. Or burning it. With lightning bolts out of my eyes. I wonder if Barb can teach that.