Apply Yourself

One of the really cool things about Taido is Shukumine’s under­stand­ing that the mea­sure of a mar­tial art is in the behav­ior of its prac­ti­tion­ers. Outsiders will judge Taido by the things they see Taido black belts do. Shukumine always taught that Taido should serve us in soci­ety as well as in combat.

As a young man, I remem­ber hear­ing him speak about the neces­sity of equal­ing our Taido achieve­ments in soci­ety. He told us once that a Taido black belt should be a black belt in his career as well. He said a school-age stu­dent should study his courses and prac­tice Taido with the same degree of com­mit­ment and atten­tion. A busi­ness per­son should apply Taido’s phi­los­o­phy in nego­ti­a­tions (some busi­ness schools require stu­dents to read Musashi’s Book of Five Rings). In short, we should be apply­ing the lessons we learn in Taido to our daily lives in soci­ety as well. What I’ve been think­ing over the past few years is that, maybe we should also start apply­ing the lessons we learn in soci­ety to Taido.

I think there is a vast amount of knowl­edge and wis­dom float­ing around in the world, and it’s silly to seg­re­gate our expe­ri­ences in one arena from those in another. Taido com­prises a com­plete phi­los­o­phy in con­cept, but it’s imple­men­ta­tion has some major holes — I out­line many of them on this web­site. All of us bring expe­ri­ence and knowl­edge from out­side Taido that can help fill those holes by refin­ing our meth­ods of practice.

Those of us who are teach­ers should apply our skills to the way Taido is taught. Those of us who are in busi­ness should be work­ing on fix­ing the prob­lems with Taido’s orga­ni­za­tional struc­ture. Those of us who know some­thing about mar­ket­ing should be busy mak­ing Taido bet­ter known and more pop­u­lar. Those of us who are doc­tors should be mak­ing Taido prac­tice safer (”first, do no harm…”) and con­ducive to health. Those of us who are stu­dents can look for ways in which our stud­ies can influ­ence our train­ing (geom­e­try and cal­cu­lus were huge influ­ences on the way I under­stand Taido).

Everyone has a tal­ent, and every tal­ent can be use­ful to help­ing Taido grow and ful­fill its promise as the 21^st cen­tury mar­tial art. How can you help?