The Inevitability of a Technique

When we practice budo we hear a lot about "empty mind" and "let the technique happen" and "don't think of which technique to do" and how the best technique is "no technique". This has always been a good and laudable goal and is reminiscent of the way you drive or walk or do those many things that don't require conscious thought.

Of course, while practicing we do think about the individual points of a technique and our instructor will tell us what technique to work on and what aspects of a technique to think about. The thought above is held as the goal in an actual application of a technique in a non-practice situation.

I'm going to take the simple and easy to understand thought expressed above and make it a little more complicated and a lot more alive:

I had a long and rambling and fantastic discussion with a fellow Yoshinkan person the other day and we started talking about how a technique sucks or carries shite along as part of the technique. My friend made the excellent point of that if you are in the midst of a movement and then you decide to apply "a technique" then you have changed what the technique should have been. I equated this to the "observer syndrome" where the process of observing changes what you are trying to watch.

Which lead me to the idea of the "inevitability of a technique". This idea is that a technique will manifest itself if you let it. If you apply thought in the midst of the technique manifestation and try to decide which technique to do or when to apply it, you will have added something new and different to the technique and it will no longer be the technique that "should have been".

To me, this is a good way to describe what is probably meant by the term "empty mind" or "no technique". Accept that a technique is an inevitable consequence of an attack and actively go along with it...like a kayak in a raging river you stay balanced and ride the crest of the technique all the way to the end.

The inevitable end of the technique is uke ending up splatted or sprawled or somehow no longer a threat. As the technique progresses from start to finish it gets to the point where all the energy of the technique needs to be released. I would liken this point to the compression of a spring, or to the winding up of a toy because there will come a point where the technique can't be "compressed" or "wound" any further.

It is at this final point in the technique that the dynamic power of Yoshinkan appears because you add your "human spirit" to that final explosive moment and push all your power and all your focus to that single point at that single time. You haven't changed the technique by thinking of what to do or when to do it. Instead you ride the technique and at the very end focus all your power at the point where/when the technique must be completed.

It is often said that "spirit" is the most important part of Yoshinkan. This concept of the "Inevitability of a Technique" holds spirit as the only addition a person makes to the technique and is used to fuel the technique rather than to change it.