Way back in my first days of graduate school, I was lucky to have an excellent professor for a class on alcoholism and drug addiction. In one of his lectures, he described how most clients would come to a professional under some kind of duress: a judge, boss, or spouse had forced them to choose between therapy and jail, unemployment, or divorce. So your client walks in to your office with all the resentment and resistance of a lion forced into a cage. Not an ideal situation for creating therapeutic rapport, to say the least.
The professor explained how important it was to try to fully appreciate the perspective of the client, the sources of his anger and shame, to get a feel for the texture of his or her rage -- and to respect it. Not just pretend to respect it, but to actually honor it.
His point, which seems to obvious now, is that you can disagree with someone without disrespecting them. Furthermore, if you disrespect them, they'll never join you -- even if your ultimate goal is to help them.
I'm sorry to say this simple insight came as something of a revelation to me -- especially given my familiarity with Buddhism and a few martial arts, where this understanding of paying tribute to opposing force is fundamental (what's ying without yang?).
Anyway, after class, I approached the prof and told him that his lecture had reminded me of aikido, in its emphasis on trying to incorporate the client's energy into the therapeutic process (even if it takes the form of anger or resistance). He said to me, "Listen, I've been studying aikido for twenty years and I can promise you you'll learn more psychology in a year of aikido than you will in your entire doctoral program here or anywhere else."
He then gave me the name and number of his aikido teacher in San Francisco, where I was living at the time. When I told him there was no way I could pay for aikido classes on top of everything else (grad school and living in SF while making $18,000 a year working for a non-profit in 1993 -- good luck!), he told me to at least drop by for a free class.
So I did. I quickly realized that Richard Moon wasn't just an aikido teacher, he was something of a star. But after the class, he came over to me and asked if I'd be coming regularly. When I explained that it wasn't financially feasible for me, but that I appreciated the free class, he said, "Come to the class if you want to. Keep track of what you owe. Some day, when you have some extra cash, send me a check. If I'm gone, use the money to help someone who needs it."
That's aikido.
The word incorporates three Japanese characters:
合 - ai - joining
気 - ki - spirit
道 - dō - way
I was reminded of all this reading Andrew Sullivan's thoughts on Obama's ascent to the presidency this morning. Sullivan writes, "What [Obama] gets, what he seems to intuit, is how to make others feel as if they are being heard. This is simple enough in theory but hard to pull off consistently in practice. His model is to figure out what another person needs and, if it helps Obama to get what he wants, to provide it."
Do you see the aikido spirit in that? In karate, an attacker's energy is typically blocked and countered; in kung-fu, it is parried before a rapid and lethal counter-strike; in aikido, the aim is to sense the line of attack and grant it -- get out of the way of that energy and try to reshape it as it passes harmlessly by.
Sullivan continues, "He sensed that Hillary Clinton needed independent respect in defeat. He couldn’t give her the vice-presidency, which she desperately wanted, because it would have given her a dangerous rival power base if they succeeded. So he offered her the next best thing, and she, unlike her husband, was smart enough to say yes.
"He realised that Rick Warren was an egomaniac and wanted some kind of platform, so he gave him a largely symbolic role at the inauguration and allowed Warren to preen. He knew that what Washington pundits really craved was not the truth, but a sense of their own importance. So he let them throw him a dinner party."
In aikido, you learn to care for, honor, and protect your opponent -- who is really your partner in learning the techniques. Often, you'll cradle his or her head in your hand as they hit the mat. The point is not to dominate, but to resolve the conflict with minimal damage to everyone involved.
Sullivan writes, "He sensed that McCain was in deep emotional withdrawal after his horrifying and crude descent into raw partisanship last autumn. And so he celebrated the old, bipartisan McCain and asked for his support in the Senate."
Whether he knows it or not, Obama is a master in political aikido.
