How Do I Learn Taido Theory?

Gabriel wrote this:

I feel that in recent years there has been a move away from (in US Taido) teach­ing the the­ory and under­ly­ing prin­ci­ples (i.e. why mov­ing a cer­tain way is effec­tive). I’m not say­ing that this reflects poorly on the instruc­tors, who I hap­pen to look up to, but i def­i­nitely feel that the vast major­ity of par­tic­i­pants have lit­tle or no under­stand­ing of the­ory or even all the ter­mi­nol­ogy. I will say that there has been some efforts in the upper level classes to address this, though most of the learn­ing is based on learn­ing the Japanese names of more advanced tech­niques. I feel that i am woe­fully behind where i should be as far as the depth of my knowl­edge (I find myself look­ing up some of the terms on this site). As a shodan i think that it def­i­nitely time to get seri­ous about learn­ing and apply­ing the the­ory behind tech­niques. if you have any sug­ges­tions of where to start study­ing I would appre­ci­ate the advice. I have some resources (such as the Taido binder my father com­piled), but am not com­pletely sure the best method for acquir­ing this knowl­edge. I feel that under­stand­ing the prin­ci­ples will help me become more cre­ative as far as expand­ing my tech­nique base and becom­ing a bet­ter instructor.

Here was my reply:
Your best bets for learn­ing the­ory are the mate­ri­als from your father. I say this because I know that good deal of those mate­ri­als orig­i­nated with me. I can vouch for their accu­racy. Also make sure you down­load the .pdf files from Taido​.net (which I’m pretty sure your father also had col­lected), as these are a more-official-ish version.

The impor­tant thing is not mem­o­riz­ing the terms though. It’s learn­ing to apply the ideas to your prac­tice. I sug­gest read­ing through the mate­ri­als you have and high­light­ing things that are either inter­est­ing, important-sounding, or directly related to move­ment. Keep these sheets in your bag and review a few of your high­lighted areas before each prac­tice and again after prac­tice, just for a cou­ple of min­utes or so.

This will func­tion­ally con­nect the infor­ma­tion with your prac­tice. You can think about what you have read while you work out and then reflect on your prac­tice in light of more read­ing. Only two or three min­utes is enough. The key is to become aware of the con­cepts that con­sti­tute Taido’s the­ory. See them in action. Then, you will find that mem­o­riz­ing them is no prob­lem because you already under­stand how they work.

Additional Thoughts

I want to add a lit­tle to this, because I feel it’s an important point.

Making a func­tional con­nec­tion between Taido the­ory and what you actu­ally do in prac­tice is vital. oth­er­wise, your the­o­ret­i­cal knowl­edge is mean­ing­less. Yes, mean­ing­less. Meaning is the result a piece of knowl­edge has on events in the real world. If your knowl­edge is purely the­o­ret­i­cal, it is not act­ing on real­ity. this is not nec­es­sar­ily the oppo­site of prac­ti­cal knowl­edge, but it’s still pretty close to useless.

There is an old say­ing that knowl­edge is power. I agree with the dozens of oth­ers I’ve encoun­tered who insist that knowl­edge is only poten­tial power. It can become power only if applied. Furthermore, knowl­edge must be applied selec­tively and con­sis­tently in order to have its max­i­mum power real­ized. Selectively because not all knowl­edge is always applic­a­ble  —  some prin­ci­ples are more applic­a­ble to cer­tain sit­u­a­tions that oth­ers. Consistent because out­comes are cumu­la­tive  —  there are no such things as endings.

As Taido/Blog read­ers are well aware, I spend a good deal of time think­ing about Taido the­ory. Some of the results of that thought are recorded here  —  though I spend much more time think­ing and prac­tic­ing than I do writ­ing. I obvi­ously believe that the­ory serves a pur­pose in Taido. I believe that pur­pose is mea­sured by the extent to which the the­ory improves application.

The exer­cise I advised Gabriel to fol­low above is one exam­ple of a dis­ci­pline I have per­son­ally fol­lowed for a good num­ber of years now. I always have a spe­cific bag for Taido prac­tices in which I carry my uni­form and a cou­ple of belts, a small towel, note­book, pens, chalk (for mark­ing the floor), med­ical tape, and a bev­er­age. The note­book is for writ­ing my prac­tice log and any ideas I have while work­ing out, but stuffed between the pages are always a few print­outs from the archives that form Taido/Blog’s resource database.

I usu­ally review these notes while chang­ing before and after prac­tice. When I used to have a four hour train ride to the dojo, I had ample time to review any quan­tity of mate­r­ial en route. I actu­ally learned kat­sumei hokei in one evening by study­ing the Taido Kyohan on the train and then get­ting Fukunaga Sensei to cor­rect my form and breath­ing. More often, I’ll read an unre­lated book on the train, but sit down for a cup of cof­fee before prac­tice and decide what I want to work on dur­ing the evening’s prac­tice. I often envi­sion spe­cific com­bi­na­tions I want to attempt in jis­sen or think about ways to improve some spe­cific move­ment I’ve been working with.

Indeed, it is impor­tant to study the the­ory that makes Taido what it is. I present my “two guys shar­ing a car” para­ble, orig­i­nally posted in my bot­tom eleven arti­cle:

Suppose two men share a car. They can do this because one of them works at night and the other works dur­ing the day. Both of them drive the car and have no prob­lems get­ting to work every day (or night). One of these two men under­stands the con­cept of the inter­nal com­bus­tion engine. The other man believes that there are gasoline-drinking elves liv­ing under the hood of the car who spin the wheels by means of var­i­ous levers and pulleys.

Both men get to work, but one of them is stu­pid. Let’s not be the second man.

On a related note, I have a post called Less Talk, More Rock which stresses the need for more “doing” in Taido and a refo­cus of our talk­ing about Taido. This arti­cle takes the appar­ent con­verse to the atti­tude of what I have writ­ten here, but they are really just two sides of the same coin.