Bodies
This started as a comment on a friend's LJ, but I think I'll expand it into a full-blown rant.
I remember when I first got a keikogi. I was really excited, because now I had the strange uniform that made me fit into the strange new dojo environment. It was heavy, double-weave, unbleached cotton. I put it on and had two distinct thoughts that I remember. The first was, "Holy shit! This thing is way too big!" That is pretty natural, because keikogi ("practice clothes") do a lot of shrinking in those first few months you own them, since they're 100% cotton. The second thought, and the one that is the subject of this little rant, is "Augh! It shows a vast expanse of my pale, hairy chest!"
That second thought mortified me. You see, I was a sophmore in college and I was not particularly athletic or good-looking. My musculature was slight and I had a healthy amount of pudge from a self-indulgent gamer diet. I cringed at the thought of my teacher and training partners (whose respect I desperately desired) would see how unpleasantly formed my body was.
Right there in my bedroom, I came up with the solution to the problem. I wore a tee-shirt under my keikogi. While doing so did make me stick out, I certainly preferred it to the alternative (having my body exposed).
No one really mentioned it until about a year later, when I flew out to Arizona to train with my school's founder. One of his senior students (who I really, really admire) asked me straight out, "Why are you wearing that thing?"
Having spent a year dreading the question, I had a response ready. "Well, I sweat a lot, and this allows me to get a couple wears out of a gi before washing."
"Let me ask you a question. Why wear this stuff at all? Couldn't we train just as well in tee shirts and shorts?"
I stopped for a moment and thought. I had no real answer.
"We wear these things because they connect us to our past, our teachers. And I'm pretty sure that the old Japanese teachers didn't wear University of Florida tee shirts under their keikogi..."
I felt my cheeks flush with embarassment. He had a good point. And in my heart of hearts, I knew that the real reason I wore the shirt was because I was self-conscious about my pale, hairy chest. Determined to get back to the founders' experience of training, I took his advice and showed up the next day sans undershirt.
I felt practically nude. There was my pale, hairy, flabby, acne-scarred chest... sitting there for everyone to see, framed by the deep V-shape cut by my gi. I stepped onto the mat, cringing as I anticipated the looks of scorn and stinging comments. Oh wonder of wonders, that scorn never happened . As near as I could tell, everyone kept training just as they had before, and no one gave a damn.
From that point onward, I never wore a tee-shirt under my gi. In retrospect, I consider it to be just another one of the buttons that the dojo environment pushes on a person in the course of their training.
Time passed, I continued training. As my journey went onwards, I trained in almost every type of dojo imaginable. As a result, I got very used to communal changing rooms, and even dojo that did not have changing rooms. I got fairly comfortable taking off my clothing in front of whoever happened to be training.
My change in "body attitudes" really became apparent when I started training with girls again. One of the girls that I've trained with had a lot of experience with Shuri-Ryu Katate-Do, so after going through our basic kata, I decided to play a little bit. I told her to come in and knock my block off. Do whatever she wanted to.
The two of us tussled throughout the dojo. She was a striker, so I managed to throw her off her game by getting in close and throwing her around. She hadn't had a lot of experience with close body contact, and certainly didn't expect so much judo from an aikido practitioner, but we both had loads of fun. I recall giving her a big, sweaty hug at the end because so few people from other martial arts have been willing to just say "fuck it" and come after me.
I didn't consider until about two hours after the session that I'd had my hands all over a woman. In the course of throwing her around, I'd probably touched her hips, buttocks, and at least brushed her breasts a time or two. I didn't really feel even a bit awkward about it, and neither did she, judging by her reactions.
I guess the dojo environment has just taught me a sense of physical contact which has nothing to do with sexuality or the invasion of decency. It is just part of budo, which is primarily a collection of body-on-body artforms. People are gonna get touched. You just kind of accept it.
When I really knew that I'd gotten over my body issues, though, was a few weeks ago. We've got some new students in the dojo, and one of them as young Hungarian man. I was trying to explain how you could knock someone on their butt while keeping the major muscles in your shoulders and arms relaxed. He just didn't seem to get it (largely because of the language barrier, I think), so I finally just stripped down, grabbed his hands, and put them on the bare flesh of my back and shoulder and said, "Feel this."
That is really a far departure from the old days of agonizing about my lack of tee shirt...
- Ken
I remember when I first got a keikogi. I was really excited, because now I had the strange uniform that made me fit into the strange new dojo environment. It was heavy, double-weave, unbleached cotton. I put it on and had two distinct thoughts that I remember. The first was, "Holy shit! This thing is way too big!" That is pretty natural, because keikogi ("practice clothes") do a lot of shrinking in those first few months you own them, since they're 100% cotton. The second thought, and the one that is the subject of this little rant, is "Augh! It shows a vast expanse of my pale, hairy chest!"
That second thought mortified me. You see, I was a sophmore in college and I was not particularly athletic or good-looking. My musculature was slight and I had a healthy amount of pudge from a self-indulgent gamer diet. I cringed at the thought of my teacher and training partners (whose respect I desperately desired) would see how unpleasantly formed my body was.
Right there in my bedroom, I came up with the solution to the problem. I wore a tee-shirt under my keikogi. While doing so did make me stick out, I certainly preferred it to the alternative (having my body exposed).
No one really mentioned it until about a year later, when I flew out to Arizona to train with my school's founder. One of his senior students (who I really, really admire) asked me straight out, "Why are you wearing that thing?"
Having spent a year dreading the question, I had a response ready. "Well, I sweat a lot, and this allows me to get a couple wears out of a gi before washing."
"Let me ask you a question. Why wear this stuff at all? Couldn't we train just as well in tee shirts and shorts?"
I stopped for a moment and thought. I had no real answer.
"We wear these things because they connect us to our past, our teachers. And I'm pretty sure that the old Japanese teachers didn't wear University of Florida tee shirts under their keikogi..."
I felt my cheeks flush with embarassment. He had a good point. And in my heart of hearts, I knew that the real reason I wore the shirt was because I was self-conscious about my pale, hairy chest. Determined to get back to the founders' experience of training, I took his advice and showed up the next day sans undershirt.
I felt practically nude. There was my pale, hairy, flabby, acne-scarred chest... sitting there for everyone to see, framed by the deep V-shape cut by my gi. I stepped onto the mat, cringing as I anticipated the looks of scorn and stinging comments. Oh wonder of wonders, that scorn never happened . As near as I could tell, everyone kept training just as they had before, and no one gave a damn.
From that point onward, I never wore a tee-shirt under my gi. In retrospect, I consider it to be just another one of the buttons that the dojo environment pushes on a person in the course of their training.
Time passed, I continued training. As my journey went onwards, I trained in almost every type of dojo imaginable. As a result, I got very used to communal changing rooms, and even dojo that did not have changing rooms. I got fairly comfortable taking off my clothing in front of whoever happened to be training.
My change in "body attitudes" really became apparent when I started training with girls again. One of the girls that I've trained with had a lot of experience with Shuri-Ryu Katate-Do, so after going through our basic kata, I decided to play a little bit. I told her to come in and knock my block off. Do whatever she wanted to.
The two of us tussled throughout the dojo. She was a striker, so I managed to throw her off her game by getting in close and throwing her around. She hadn't had a lot of experience with close body contact, and certainly didn't expect so much judo from an aikido practitioner, but we both had loads of fun. I recall giving her a big, sweaty hug at the end because so few people from other martial arts have been willing to just say "fuck it" and come after me.
I didn't consider until about two hours after the session that I'd had my hands all over a woman. In the course of throwing her around, I'd probably touched her hips, buttocks, and at least brushed her breasts a time or two. I didn't really feel even a bit awkward about it, and neither did she, judging by her reactions.
I guess the dojo environment has just taught me a sense of physical contact which has nothing to do with sexuality or the invasion of decency. It is just part of budo, which is primarily a collection of body-on-body artforms. People are gonna get touched. You just kind of accept it.
When I really knew that I'd gotten over my body issues, though, was a few weeks ago. We've got some new students in the dojo, and one of them as young Hungarian man. I was trying to explain how you could knock someone on their butt while keeping the major muscles in your shoulders and arms relaxed. He just didn't seem to get it (largely because of the language barrier, I think), so I finally just stripped down, grabbed his hands, and put them on the bare flesh of my back and shoulder and said, "Feel this."
That is really a far departure from the old days of agonizing about my lack of tee shirt...
- Ken