How Japan Solved my Problem in the Edo Era (1603 to 1867)

“So Jeremy, is your training part of the STAT-affiliated societies, or more ATI ?”

I had to laugh.

“Neither” I replied, “It’s Japanese”

***

The Sakoku Edict of 1635 endeavoured to cleanse and purify Japan of any foreign influence - including making it a capital offence to leave Japan. No kidding - you’d lose your head if you tried to leave. Today - just as the civil war still rages in the minds of many Americans - so Japanese remain an isolated people. 

They mostly like it that way.

For example, at last year’s Berlin Congress, about 550+ teachers and trainees attended. Of those - can you guess how many were Japanese? 

I counted one.

Yet Japan is home to more than 200+ Japanese Alexscovery teachers. There are 10+ teacher training schools. You have no idea what is going on here - and you are never likely to either. Except for my noisy English voice spreading the word to the West.

Of course, I am not Japanese, but I have lived here for 23 years. I have two daughters with Japanese passports, but that doesn’t count. I am a registered alien - that’s the translation - and my daughters are “Hafu” - a Japanese rendering of the English word “Half” which is considered mildly insulting these days.

BodyChance - the training school I designed over 23 years - is a Japanese phenomenon. It does not resemble any other school in the world and I have the Japanese to be grateful for that. They forced me to…

“Think Different”

And as I wrote previously, in response to individual Japanese needs over two decades, my school had become bloated and convoluted and hard to understand - being based more on a Western concept of learning.*

How could I simplify it? And I realised, Japan already had the answer for me: Tea Ceremony, Karate, Flower Arrangement, Akido - what do all these things have in common?

They all offer a graduated process of development, where a person can study for their own individual pleasure or take a serious, professional approach and become leaders of the art. This approach embraces both approaches in one simple system. I suddenly realised that this form was eerily hidden within the bloated structure of my school. Over the decades - in order to succeed - Japan had forced me to create this. All I had to do was arrange a few of the jigsaw pieces around and Voila! 

BodyChance’s complexity evaporated to expose a simple underlying process of 7 stages that gradually moves you towards an expected outcome: becoming a black belt Alexandrian. i.e. 7-White -> 6-Yellow -> 5-Orange -> 4-Green -> 3-Blue -> 2-Brown -> 1-Black!

Teach only if you want to.

Under this new plan, Zen BodyChance will run more like a martial arts dojo than a would-be-if-it-could-be-but-will-never-be medical training course (thanks for that Wilfred).

Japan has developed institutions with training protocols that have survived for hundreds of years because they meet the needs of everyone - from the hobbyist to the vocationist - and they are wealthy institutions, with property and capital that our poverty-stricken Societies can only dream of. 

One feature embedded into Japanese training protocols is that no one learns at the same pace. As David I. Anderson confirmed at the Berlin Congress, science-based research into learning methods is catching up with this common-sense insight into human skill-acquisition abilities. 

The Japanese figured this out centuries ago. 

The idea that everyone can learn a skill over the exact same number of hours is, well. I don’t want to be rude. The Japanese even managed to inject this kind of flexibility into their Universities, which function as more as a stepping stone before entering into lifetime learning within Japanese companies - which give you the education they need. Contrarily, Universities are generally quite relaxed in Japan. Companies are not.

But that’s another post.

*Sadly, other schools in Japan try to copy the Western model and - I believe - suffer because of it. I did the same thing initially, but after about 3 years, I realised that this model wasn’t working. I had two little daughters to support. I couldn’t afford to be a good boy scout - I was forced to learn and adapt. And besides, who knew what I was doing anyway?