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Some Notes on Terry Dobson's Teaching by Ed Pincus Terry Dobson had been an uchi deshi and student of O Sensei in Japan for ten years before returning to the US. After teaching on the West Coast, and having been diagnosed with a serious illness, he returned to Grand Isle, Vermont, where his family had a summer residence, to die. He lived a lot longer than expected and during this time he would do occasional teaching in Burlington at Vermont Aikido. Two pieces follow (with a few updates). I wrote them in the fall of 1992, soon after Terry Dobson died. I plan to write more about Terry in future issues. — Ed Pincus I thought it would be a piece of cake to write about Terry. It hasn't been. I lost a friend. The Tuesday night before he left for the West Coast [he died in San Francisco after teaching a class], Hugh [Hugh Young, formerly an instructor at Vermont Aikido] couldn't teach and Terry filled in. It was a great class and I was riding high. Terry was exuberant. He talked about doing a regular class again. I thought, I'm not interested in waza (technique) any more -- I just want to learn what Terry has to teach. Years before I asked a student why she wasn't going to Terry's Tuesday night class anymore. She said: he always teaches the same thing. I said: I know, but I haven't gotten it yet. Well, for the first time there was a glimmer. Maybe I was getting it. What was it Terry had to teach? Takemusu aiki. What is that? Every teacher seems to give a different answer -- ranging from love, to the budo of protection, to something like "knot in an oak tree." People often train in aikido to learn power, grace and harmony. This was something Terry loved to see but never quite taught. He admired Hugh's strength and grace. So much so that many years ago when he resumed doing West Coast seminars after stopping practicing aikido for several years, he asked Hugh to come with him. Now it was staring me in the face. About a year before, he had been worried about kicking and how rarely we practiced defense against kicks. He stood up in front of class and said that the night before O Sensei talked to him in a dream. He pointed to O Sensei's photograph on the kamiza. He said he thought it was literally O Sensei talking to him in the dream though we could make of it what we wanted. He asked O Sensei about kicking and he was told "non-resistance -- that's all you have to know." Terry would tell of the time he asked O Sensei about the circle, square and triangle in the practice of aikido. O Sensei studied him for a while and finally told him he should find out for himself. Terry would comment wryly, "Ten years of study with O Sensei and I only asked him one question - and that was his answer." I was beginning to find a teacher of the do (the way) in aikido. So I lost a teacher too. Terry's "technique" was to harmonize so as to disrupt. Traditional aikido involves harmonious movement that allows the uke to fall gracefully. Yin and yang, throughout the movement. Not so with Terry - drooling, picking your nose, stepping on uke's foot, grabbing the balls (if present), grabbing a ponytail, flicking the hakama, jumping down, uttering "your mother!" were all part of aikido if they worked. Movement could be stopped and disrupted. It didn't always look beautiful. Whenever Terry saw the beautiful aikido movements and sensed nage's pride, he as teacher would disrupt. "Now do that move as though you're in a bar and can't do any foot work." Terry was teaching that takemusu aiki -- the "aiki of protection" -- was not the tremendous feeling of power and euphoria that comes from good waza, but was a blending that caught another's energy and treated it with love, caring and protection. MORE NOTES ON TERRY'S TEACHING Terry demonstrates katatori nikkyo with no foot movement, no ki extension in the hands. Limp hands and the nikkyo bow. Uke is on the ground. Terry stands over. It's over fast as lightning. Terry to the uke: "Are you OK? Something the matter?" He looks at the class. "Doing a martial art technique in a bar is an invitation to fight. Here it's all over. No one saw anything. No one at the bar wants to see it again, since there was nothing to see. I know. I know. We all want to look good. But looking good is not the point." Practicing with Terry you await his attack with hands extended in a traditional martial stance. Terry: "Cut out that martial shit." Terry felt that aikido tapped into the biology of human kind -- we were animals for a long time before being civilized. Softness of touch gives the attacker nothing to fight. It is as though uke is in his/her mother's arms. Stand behind uke, hands on his/her shoulders. Uke is brought down by gently resting the hands without ki and guiding them down to the mat. Terry's lunch/punch exercise: Uke approaches nage either planning to punch or hand over an (imaginary) lunch bag. Nage has to decide whether the approach is friendly or hostile. Terry would say it is what we knew as animals. We have to regain that instinct. Everything mattered. You had to be aware of each detail. It mattered how you entered the dojo, stepped on the mat, bowed. You never were wrong to bow: One icy evening Terry was running by a movie theater and skidded on his knees into a woman. He looked up to see here big boyfriend looming over him. He did a formal bow and said he was so sorry. The boyfriend was embarrassed and said, "It's fine, man. Get up." I went through a practice run of my shodan [first level black belt] test. I asked him if I should start off by bowing. He said, "Sure." We spent the next fifteen minutes going over my bow. I felt annoyed, wanting to get onto techniques. During my test, before randori (multiple attacks), all I thought about was bowing properly. During randori I was totally relaxed. All worry was gone.