As much as any transformative practice that commands a significant
followingtoday, certain martial arts facilitate a many-sided integral
development of human nature. At their best they simultaneously promote
moral sensitivity, athletic abilities, and a degree of unitive awareness.
Some, such as aikido, are superior to modern sports in their reliance
upon spiritual principles, and superior to quiet meditation in their
cultivation of stillness in action. The transformative power of martial
arts can be seen in the influence of aikido on the great Japanese
baseball player Sadaharu Oh.
Oh hit 868 career home runs, to surpass Hank Aaron's American
record, and won 15 professional home-run titles in Japan during a 22-year
career. He also helped the Tokyo Giants vein many national championships,
including nine in a row from 1965 through 1973. But he might not have
achieved his great success without special training with Hiroshi Arakawa,
a baseball instructor. Oh has told his story simply and
eloquently.
Though he had been a high-school star as a left-handed pitcher, Oh
was assigned to first base as a professional because he was a powerful
hitter. But during his first three years with the Tokyo Giants, he did
not fulfill his great promise and often drank to excess. The Giants'
manager hired Arakawa to work with Oh in 1962. Arakawa extracted a
promise from Oh that he would stop drinking and smoking, and during their
first months of training introduced him to Morehei Uyeshiba, who offered
them insights from aikido. Uyeshiba taught Oh about ma, the "psychic time
and space" in which a contest occurs, and other aikido principles. But
these first lessons did not have an effect. Not until Arakawa made Oh
adopt an unusual one-legged tatting stance in his hitting. This change in
style helped focus Oh's aikido traning. The athlete wrote:
"I had reached a point where aikido had become absolutely necessary
to what I did. Without aikido, I would not learn to stand on one foot, I
would not 'understand it'.
One of the first things a student of aikido learns is to become
conscious of his `one point.' This is an energy or spirit-center in the
body located about two fingers below the navel. While many martial arts
make use of this center, it is essential in aikido, [which] requires
tremendous balance and agility, neither of which are possible unless you
are perfectly centered. So much of our early work was getting me to pose
simply with the one point in mind. I would get up on my one foot and cock
my bat, all the while remaining conscious of this energy center in my
lower abdomen. I discovered that if I boated my energy in this part of my
body I was better balanced than if I located R elsewhere. If I located my
energy in my chest, for example, I found that I was too emotional. I also
learned that energy located in the upper part of the body tends to make
one top-heavy. Balance and a steady mind are thus associated with the one
point."
Besides centering, Oh learned other things through aikido, among
them awareness of ki and the power of waiting.
"As long as I had [a] hitch in my swing, I could not begin to think
of using ki in my batting. But posing on one foot, ki did not seem so
far-fetched--if I could learn to steady myself.
Earlier in the season, when we had simply been trying to overcome
my hitching habit, Arakawa-san had had yet another discussion with
Ueshiba Sensei about the problem.
`Look,' he said, `the ball comes flying in whether you like it or
not, doesn't in Then all you can do is wait for it come to you. To wait,
this is the traditional Japanese style. Wait. Teach him to wait.'
During the 1962 season, Arakawa incorporated concentration, ki,
centering, balance, and waiting into Oh's baseball technique, so that he
would achieve the "Body of a Rock" described by Musashi, the legendary
Japanese swordsman.
"The image entered my mind as simply as a bird alighting on a
branch. The goal of perfecting what was in my body seemed entirely
natural."
Sometimes Oh practiced in front of a mirror, visualizing the many
kinds of pitches he would face. To strengthen Oh's form Arakawa had him
imagine that his body was a gymnast's bar that could bear immense
pressure without breaking. Oh practiced his stance with this image in
mind until his blisters callused over. But his form was still imperfect.
With his teacher's help, he realized that his upper body and bat position
also needed to be reorganized. Only after months of practice could he
balance his entire body so that his power was fully concentrated.
"Our training enabled me to hit thirty-eight home runs,
twenty-eight d them coming alter lute raised my batting average to .272
and my RBI total to eighty-five, both career highs. Most important, I won
the home-run and RBI titles for the Central League that year. [But] I
received no particular praise from the Master of the Arakawa School. I
accepted mat. I knew he had his reasons.
"`Think of it this way, Oh,' he said to me. 'Gain and loss are
opposite sides of the same coin. it is beat to forget them both.
"It turned out that Arakawa-san had been making his own plans.
These had little to do with my having won a title or two. His mind was
already in the future."
Tags:
aikido,
aikido principles,
arakawa,
athletic abilities,
baseball,
baseball player,
handed pitcher,
hank aaron,
hiroshi,
integral development,
japanese baseball,
ki,
martial arts,
moral sensitivity,
national championships,
quiet meditation,
Sadaharu Oh,
school star,
spiritual principles,
stillness,
time and space,
tokyo giants,
transformative power,
transformative practice
