I recently encountered David Bohm’s concept of the undivided whole while reading a Substack called Fragments of Coherence.

As I read, I wasn’t thinking, This explains Aikido.

Instead, I found myself thinking, This gives language to something I have been struggling to put words to on the mat for decades.

To me, the magic of Aikido has always been “us.”

We appear to practice as two separate people:

• nage and uke

• attacker and defender

• winner and loser

• self and other

These distinctions are useful. We need them to describe what we are doing. But they also create division.

Perhaps they are only abstractions.

Bohm argued that we naturally divide reality into separate parts and then mistake those divisions for reality itself. The distinctions help us talk about the world, but they do not necessarily describe the deeper nature of what is happening.

I wonder if something similar happens in Aikido.

The movement does not really belong to nage.

Nor does it belong to uke.

It belongs to the relationship.

The relationship is not something that happens after the movement. It is what gives rise to the movement.

The more coherent the relationship, the less the movement belongs to either of us.

When I force a technique, I create a different relationship.

When uke resists simply to resist, the relationship changes again.

What I have spent decades trying to understand is not how to become a better nage or a better uke.

I have been trying to understand the “us” that exists before we call one person nage and the other uke.

Us is what coherence feels like.

Not agreement.

Not sameness.

Not the loss of individuality.

Rather, the experience that the relationship itself is primary, and that both people are participating in something larger than either one alone.

David Bohm did not teach me something new.

He simply gave me a language for something Aikido had already taught my body.

We saw Willie Nelson perform last night in the wine country with his son, Micah Nelson, who performs as Particle Kid.

Before they played If I Die When I’m High (I’ll Be Halfway to Heaven), Micah told the story behind the song. He said he and his father were sitting together playing dominoes when Willie casually remarked, “If I die high, I’ll be halfway to heaven.”

Micah looked at him and said, “That’s a song.”

Willie smiled and replied, “Write it.”

For those of you who know me, you’ll understand why I love that story. For those who haven’t had to listen to my little anecdotes after class or over coffee, you may not know that I spend a lot of time playing dominoes with my wife. There is something about that simple image—a father and son playing dominoes when a song unexpectedly appears—that immediately felt true.

Truths often appear through ordinary life.

Sometimes I hear something and instantly recognize it, not because I have thought about it before, but because I have lived it. The words don’t teach me something new; they give language to something I already know.

That is very different from collecting profound ideas.

We can spend our lives analyzing the words of famous people, debating what they meant, or trying to extract wisdom from clever quotations. Yet ideas that have only been intellectualized rarely change us. They become something we understand rather than something we know.

This is why Aikido has always been so important to me. It is a playground of experience.

My body almost always understands something before my mind does. Through training, I experience truths long before I have words for them.

This is also why I treasure my community. Whether we are having coffee after class with people I have just trained with or spending time with friends and family, those conversations help refine what my body already understands. The words don’t create the understanding; they simply help me recognize what practice has been teaching me all along.

Perhaps that is why stories like Willie’s resonate so deeply with me.

They don’t feel true because they are clever.

They feel true because they have been lived.

Seeing the Us Before It Exists

Ben Zoma asks, “Who is wise? He who sees what will be.”

I thought about that after watching some of the Wimbledon quarterfinals, the United States lose to Belgium in the World Cup, and then teaching Aikido class this morning.

At first, these things may not seem connected. Tennis, soccer, and Aikido are very different activities. Yet I found myself noticing the same limitation in each place: the inability to stop operating as though the other person, or the other team, was separate.

What also struck me was something I have noticed before. In tennis, basketball, and certainly Aikido, the truly extraordinary performers seem to welcome an opponent who rises to a higher level. They are trying to win, but winning no longer appears to be the entire point.

At some point, the competition itself becomes a collaboration.

Their performance depends upon the quality of the other person’s performance. The better the other person performs, the greater the possibility that something remarkable will emerge. They are no longer trying simply to defeat one another. They are creating something that neither could create alone. The audience is fortunate enough to witness it.

Perhaps that is the beginning of “us.”

The highest level of skill requires seeing something that is not yet obvious.

That, to me, is where Ben Zoma’s wisdom lives.

A wise person is not simply someone who understands what he sees. A wise person understands what cannot yet be seen. He recognizes the relationship before it fully appears. He sees what is possible before it becomes obvious.

In Aikido, I think of this as creating the “us.”

This does not mean uke and nage pretend there is no conflict. Uke attacks sincerely. Nage responds sincerely. But the moment nage experiences uke only as an opponent—or worse, as an opportunity to perform a technique—something important is lost. The attack becomes something coming from someone else rather than something we are now responsible for together.

The same thing happens in sports. When a player is only trying to win the point, beat the defender, or impose his will, he may still be highly skilled. But he is operating from separation.

The truly great athlete experiences the whole situation. The opponent becomes more than an obstacle. The opponent becomes information, possibility, and ultimately a partner in creating the moment.

Perhaps this is what Ben Zoma meant.

Most people wait for “us” to appear. They wait until there is agreement, cooperation, or harmony.

The wise person begins acting from “us” before anyone else can see it.

That does not guarantee success. It does not mean you win every tennis point, soccer match, or Aikido exchange. But it changes the nature of the encounter. It allows something more intelligent than force to enter the relationship.

Watching those matches, and then watching class, I wondered if many failures come from the same place. We keep trying to solve the problem from the position of “me against you.” We try harder, push more, move faster, or become more clever. But we remain trapped in separation.

Aikido offers another possibility.

It asks us to see the relationship before the relationship is obvious. It asks us to move as though “us” already exists, even when the other person has not yet seen it.

“Who is wise? He who sees what will be.”

Not because he can predict the future.

The future is not simply something we predict. It is something we help create.

We create it by seeing relationships before they are obvious.

The wise person sees the “us” before anyone else does.

And by acting from that “us,” helps bring that future into being.

Jalal Aineb was a great friend and a great martial artist.

A feeling that still haunts me is that I didn’t go to his funeral or see him during the last month of his life. My father died at almost the same time, and I was overwhelmed by that loss. I simply wasn’t able to be with Jalal. I still wish I had been.

I think of Jalal often. He called me “Bubba” and always greeted me with that wonderful smile.

When I taught morning classes in San Francisco, Jalal would often show up. He even made it to my Danville classes on occasion. He had a habit of leaving his gi in the car. If Jimmy Sensei or I was teaching, he’d go back and get it. If someone else was teaching, he’d usually stay, watch, visit with everyone, and enjoy the community.

The reason I’m thinking about Jalal now is that it has been almost ten years since he died, and I still miss him.

Jalal was one of the finest martial artists I have ever trained with. His skill was matched by something equally rare: he understood the realities of violence. He was street-smart in a way that few martial artists ever become.

Yet when he came to my class, there was never a sense of comparison between us. Neither of us was wondering who could take whom. I knew Jalal could have handled me physically, but that was never our relationship. He never came to prove anything.

We simply trained.

Looking back, I realize how unusual that was. Our relationship didn’t require measuring. It didn’t require either of us to be more or less than the other. It simply allowed us to meet on the mat. So much of martial arts can become an unspoken ranking system. With Jalal, it never did.

Perhaps that is why I still think about him so often.

Jalal understood this. His movement never felt like he was proving something. It felt like he was listening. Whatever happened simply became the beginning of the next response.

Some people leave behind memories of what they could do.

Jalal left behind the memory of someone whose relationships didn’t require measuring.

Even ten years later, he is still teaching me.

My dog Rudy died three years ago.

I wrote something similar back then, and recently I came across the note again. What surprised me was realizing that it is still true. Rudy has had a greater impact on my Aikido journey than even the most skilled Aikido sensei I have trained with.

To be clear, he never improved my ikkyo, refined my technique, or taught me how to throw anyone. That was never his interest.

What Rudy taught me was something far more valuable: the experience of us.

Life was never a separate experience for him. There was no Rudy, my wife, my son, and me. There was simply us.

If I was unwell, Rudy seemed to feel it. If I was hurting, he hurt too. He experienced our joys, frustrations, and routines as something shared rather than individualized.

What fascinated me most was how he interpreted the actions of others. If someone did something to Rudy, he rarely experienced it as something being done to him. Instead, he seemed to experience it as a request and responded with gratitude.

When my young son would playfully put Rudy in a headlock, Rudy never appeared offended or threatened. He would relax into it as though my son was asking him for a stretch. When my son let go, Rudy seemed grateful that the request had been fulfilled and would often respond with a lick to the face.

Rudy did not organize the world around self and other.

He lived in relationship.

Many years of Aikido training have led me toward the same lesson. The moment I become preoccupied with what someone is doing to me, separation appears. The moment I return to relationship, there is only us.

One of my greatest teachers of Aikido never stepped onto a mat.

Actually, that is not entirely true.

During COVID, when classes were being held in my garage, Rudy would occasionally wander in at the beginning of class. More than once, he arrived just as we were lining up and bowing in. He would walk to the front of the mat area, sit quietly, and wait.

In his own way, Rudy bowed us in.

Perhaps that was fitting.

After all, he may have understood the lesson better than the rest of us.

Who we are is who we are.

We show up on the mat carrying our history, our habits, our strengths, and our limitations. The goal is not necessarily to change who we are.

The goal of training is not to remake ourselves, but to understand our nature and not allow it to create false ceilings.

The easiest place for me to see this for myself is size.

As an Aikidoist, I am bigger than at least 98% of the people I have trained with. It would be easy for me to become a “big Aikidoist,” someone who relies on size and strength to win. If I did that, I would lose a great deal of growth potential.

At 6’5” and 250 pounds, I started with the ability to overwhelm people physically. I grew and learned by becoming quiet enough to feel my disconnect from people who were smaller and weaker than me.

If I relied on strength, I could make techniques happen.

If I paid attention to relationship, I could learn something.

This lesson started very early in my life.

I was born deaf, although it was not discovered until I was nearly three years old because of my inability to learn to speak. Just before my third birthday, after two surgeries, I became one of the first children in America to successfully receive tubes in my ears and regain my hearing.

Because the procedure was so new, the doctors assumed that once I could hear, I would simply begin to speak.

It turned out to be more complicated than that.

As a child, I quickly learned that many people formed an impression of me based on my difficulty speaking. Over time, I made a good living communicating with people because I did not allow those first impressions to determine the relationship.

Just as training was never about becoming smaller, life was never about becoming someone who had never been deaf.

It was about not being at the effect of either.

Perhaps maturity is less about becoming someone new and more about understanding who we are well enough that our nature no longer determines our limits.

I was listening to an interview between Norman Farb and Shankar Vedantam. Much of the discussion centered on how we create mental maps and how those maps shape what we perceive.

I won’t pretend I fully grasped everything they were talking about. What struck me, however, was how much our narrative interpretation influences how we experience the world, and how this shows up for me both as an Aikido teacher and as an Aikido student.

When teaching, I can completely change an exercise, alter the attack, modify the technique, or even abandon technique altogether in an attempt to highlight a particular principle. What I notice is that regardless of what is being explored, we tend to interpret it through the lens of what we currently understand. I see it in senior students helping junior students, and I see it in myself whenever I am the student.

This process does not seem to come from a lack of effort or ability. It comes from being involved with my own narrative, which a lot of times leaves little room for what is actually being worked on or for improving the relationship with my partner. The more I operate from my own narrative, the more that narrative is reinforced, and the harder it becomes to understand both my partner and my sensei.

Perhaps much of Aikido training is not about learning something new. Perhaps it is about becoming aware of the maps we already have. Only then can we begin to see what was present all along but hidden by our assumptions.

The more I teach and train, the more I suspect that growth occurs when we become aware enough to realize that what we heard through our narrative filters is not necessarily what was trying to be communicated.

As a final point, I sometimes wish I received a royalty every time someone said, “Wow, why didn’t you tell me that before?” after I had been saying the same thing for a decade.

Then again, I have had the same experience with my own teachers.

The older I get, the less I think learning is about being told something new and the more I think it is about becoming able to experience the same thing differently, free from at least some of the assumptions I brought to it before.

At our first meeting, she evaluated me by saying I spoke in a monotone and that my face was boring to look at. This was in the early ’80s, so I told her she reminded me of Nancy Reagan.

Here is the Aikido part of the story.

Between sessions, she wanted me to practice by recording myself on a tape recorder. At the same time, my job required me to make cold calls. Instead of measuring success by how many appointments I booked, I shifted my attention toward the clarity of my speech, my tone, and the quality of my presence during the calls.

Ironically, once I stopped obsessing over the result and focused on the quality of the interaction itself, I became a very effective cold caller.

This is where I find myself now with Aikido.

The moment I become too focused on “making the technique work,” my attention narrows and the relationship begins to disappear. But when I focus on the quality of connection, when I move from doing something to someone toward discovering the “us,” my balance begins to organize itself naturally with my partner.

I think this is what O Sensei meant when he said, “You are wrong. I am constantly losing my balance. My skill lies in my ability to regain it.”

Perhaps what makes Aikido an art is the transition from doing toward being.

Growth comes from experiencing things differently. And when I truly allow that to happen, I am no longer standing in the comfort of the familiar.

I sometimes think in Aikido either everything is henka waza or nothing is. Henka waza is usually understood as changing from one technique to another when the first technique does not work. But for there to be a “change,” there first has to be an intention to do a specific technique.

If technique instead emerges from relationship, then perhaps there was never really a failed technique to begin with, only a continuing response to what is happening.

That response requires constant adjustment from center. In the case of O Sensei, those adjustments may have been microscopic because he could feel imbalance immediately and respond before it became large.

So maybe what we are really training is the ability to feel the need to adjust and change rather than the need to perform a correct technique. It is the willingness to notice my balance waning and return to center.

Done correctly, uke is not my opponent but my teacher.

If I can shift from needing to be right, which is a fixed desire, to being in the moment and responding to what is, then uke, whether in life or in Aikido, is no longer making me wrong. They are helping me make needed adjustments

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What I want to explore is the idea that “these and those are the words of the living God.” It’s a well-known Talmudic phrase suggesting that opposing views can both carry truth, and even something of the divine.

To me, this suggests that reality is not singular or fixed. It is larger than any one perspective. Each of us may touch something real, but because of our limitations, we experience, express, and understand it differently.

Each of us already has a relationship with the world—one that, in some ways, predefines what we see.

This is one reason I love the practice of Aikido. My goal in the practice is to be with my partner without judgment. Because it is a physical practice, that judgment shows up as a lack of fluidity.

Aikido constantly lets me know when I am acting from a world I’ve already created, rather than responding to what is actually happening now.

And maybe that is the practice, to stay present enough to let “these and those” become something closer to us

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I’ve been thinking about Alasdair MacIntyre and his book After Virtue, and how his views on virtue both align with and differ from my own thoughts about Aikido.

Reading and reflecting on his work has helped clarify my thinking about practice. It feels similar to training with a senior Aikidoist—where understanding grows through both agreement and disagreement.

MacIntyre suggests that a real practice is grounded in what he calls internal goods—qualities that only arise through participation in the practice itself, for its own sake.

For me, this feels like practicing Aikido as a way of understanding the relationship between my partner and myself. That relationship might take the form of a technique such as ikkyo. But once I start trying to do ikkyo better—as opposed to understanding the relationship—I don’t deepen

the practice.

I lose it.

When I focus on doing better technique, the practice shifts outward. What begins as inquiry becomes repetition, and it’s easy to organize around what can be seen and judged.

Aikido makes this visible. Technique is easy to see. Relationship is not.

So we train what we can see—and miss what matters.

When this happens, the practice changes. We move away from what Alasdair MacIntyre calls internal goods and toward getting it right, making it work, being effective.

MacIntyre helps name that shift. But I think something else is happening too.

It’s not just that we lose sight of internal goods. We lose contact with the relationship that makes them possible.

We begin with technique. Or with an idea of what should happen. And then try to act correctly from there.

When I was younger, I spent time in Paris. I remember writing that most people traveling seem to learn more from their Michelin Guide than from their experience of being there.

We come to know the map better than the place—the technique better than the relationship.

For many people, after that much time, the goal becomes clear.
They want to feel good.
Or look good while training.
They want their technique to be flawless.

I have a different goal.

My goal is to feel my awkwardness—and to grow from it.

To me, that is very different from having a goal of being better, stronger, prettier, or faster.
Those goals feel more aligned with jutsu than with do.

I use the word awkwardness intentionally.
Not wrongness.
Awkwardness.

Wrong suggests something to fix—a discrete problem that can be refined and overcome.
It also suggests there is a right.

Awkwardness suggests something to feel.
A kind of awareness that lets me know there is still room for growth.

As I continue to train, my awkwardness does become less.
But it never disappears.
I keep finding it—in smaller and more subtle places.

That’s the point.

If I stop finding it, I’ve probably stopped looking.
I’ve created an engraven image.

To stay in contact with that awkwardness, I have to find quiet.
A kind of quiet that lets me notice what is actually happening, instead of what I think should be happening.

In that quiet, awkwardness is not a problem.
It becomes a guide.

And in following it, there is growth.

Just as “more” is an abstraction that does not serve me—in life or in Aikido—“more of less” does not serve me either.

I like to think I practice acceptance. But acceptance does not mean submission.

I will be quiet enough to hear you without being overwhelmed by you.

In that quiet, there is the possibility of “us.”
But “us” does not mean I disappear.

In Aikido terms, my center is connected to the ground—so I can be gentle, but not moved.

So let me try again.

If I do ikkyo, the first technique in Aikido or any technique, I’m not really doing Aikido.
I’m performing a technique.

But if ikkyo emerges from the relationship I have with uke, if it arises from a sense of quiet and an appreciation of the “us,” then I am coming closer to Aikido.

The difference might appear subtle, but it changes everything, because one is about doing more, and the other is discovering the us.

When I do more, there can always be objection, resistance. The aim of Aikido is to dissolve that resistance, because in the absence of doing, there is only relationship.

I’ve been thinking about the idea of “more.”

It seems like a deeply human concept.
We are constantly reaching for it.

More speed.
More power.
More technique.
More knowing (in the sense of discrete knowledge, as opposed to deeper understanding).

I even went looking for quotes about “more.” After reading a few dozen, it struck me how directional our thinking about more is. More is better.

But when I look at nature, I don’t see “more.”

A shark doesn’t think about how to get more out of being a shark. It is simply a shark, fully.
Bees don’t try to produce more honey. They produce honey.

There’s no sense that something is missing.

In Aikido and in life, I’ve started to notice that when I add “more,” I often take away alternatives.

More narrows things.
It defines me within the construct of my “more.”

On the mat, I often see us chasing it.

More technique.
More speed.
More power.

But I’m not sure “more” is what’s needed.

Our attention shapes our perception. Our mindset influences our behavior, our decisions, and ultimately our outcomes. And when “more” becomes the focus, it can pull us away from what is actually happening.

It becomes a construct not related to the moment.
A kind of noise.

So I’ve been wondering.

What if the practice isn’t about more?

What if it’s about less?

Less interference.
Less assumption.
Less need to obey the ego, allowing the moment to exist as it is.

When I meet someone on the mat, I’m not trying to do more. I’m trying to see the “us” that is already there. The connection is already there.

The question isn’t how to add to it.
It’s whether I can stop disrupting it.

Maybe Aikido isn’t the pursuit of more.

It’s about disturbing less.

Last Saturday, a student asked me, “Have you learned something from each of the many dojos you’ve trained at?” I said no. But I also told her how deeply appreciative I am of the hundreds of mats I’ve stepped onto. She paused and asked, “Why?” What came to me was this: A single, wide strand may look strong. But a braid made from hundreds of smaller strands is far stronger. Training at many dojos hasn’t given me hundreds of separate answers. It has given me something more valuable: a clearer view of my own assumptions. Each mat, each teacher, each partner quietly challenged what I thought I knew or assumed was true. Not always by replacing it, but by grounding it in experience. When you train under one teacher or within one organization for a long time, it’s easy to stop questioning what is being taught. The assumptions of the organization, the sensei, and the dojo begin to align so completely that there is no reason to question them. It becomes the water you’re swimming in. Stepping onto different mats doesn’t necessarily give you new truths. But it does make it harder to hold onto old ones too tightly. So the circle is the “us.” Always working toward turning the other into us. The square begins to take shape through this process. The strand becomes a braid. Each new mat helps reveal why I am training and what truly matters to me. For me, this shows up as lowering the volume of noise, trying to be as simple as possible. Training across many dojos doesn’t create confusion. It clarifies what remains when everything unnecessary falls away. And what remains—that is your structure. Which leaves the triangle. The triangle recognizes the reality of conflict. I might like the “us.” I might like my square, my assumptions. But if I do not understand the reality of the situation—if I do not practice what actually works—then none of those things matter.

These three symbols appear in many places. They show up in martial arts such as Aikido, in beauty and design education, in Zen and Japanese symbolism, in sacred geometry and Western philosophy, and even in popular culture through Harry Potter created by J. K. Rowling.

What I realized is that through training these shapes have become personal to me, and the order matters.

Circle is the “us.”

Aikido begins with the possibility of turning the other into us. The circle represents the willingness to enter relationship rather than opposition.

Square represents my roots.

Community, values, and moral grounding remain intact. The need for connection and acceptance does not require abandoning a moral code. Stability still exists.

Triangle acknowledges reality.

I cannot meaningfully practice nonviolence without understanding where violence could actually occur. The triangle represents clarity about direction, structure, and the point where conflict might emerge.

So for me the shapes become a sequence.

Circle invites relationship.

Square preserves integrity.

Triangle recognizes the reality of conflict.

Only when all three are present together does nonviolence become real rather than imagined

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I remember reading this quote sometime in the 1980s and thinking I should start training in Escrima so I’d be prepared for World War IV.

Of course, that wasn’t really the point of my Escrima training. But the image stayed with me. It is a very unsettling thought. And in light of current events, like the 2026 Iran conflict, it feels a little less abstract than it once did.

What has stayed with me all these years is not the idea of sticks and stones. It is the idea of escalation.

Large conflicts rarely begin large. They grow out of small moments where reaction meets retaliation and pressure meets resistance.

This is one of the reasons I still find Aikido so engaging.

On the mat we constantly encounter moments that could escalate. Someone grabs, pushes, or strikes. The instinct is to oppose and overpower.

Aikido offers another choice.

Instead of escalating, we look for agreement — the “us.”

Not surrender, but alignment with movement and timing so the encounter does not become a collision.

In that moment, escalation dissolves.

And perhaps that is one quiet lesson of Aikido: learning to recognize the moment when escalation begins — and choosing relationship instead.

One of my favorite Elvis Costello songs came to mind this morning. I was in Newport Beach, looking out at the ocean, walking with my phone that I use as my camera and a macro lens. I bent down to photograph something small made even smaller by the beauty of the day and ran into the snail shown here. The song surfaced not because I suddenly understood the snail better by getting closer. The close-up did not reveal the snails soul or heart to me. What changed was not my understanding. It was ,I gained an appreciation for the beauty of the snail. This is where Aikido comes in. I do not think I ever understand uke. Most of the time I don’t understand my wife. But I can appreciate the moment, the fact that something disrupted there balance, or their mood, or just something. That appreciation of what is moving them is not an understanding of who they are. It may come from allowing what I observe to be what it is without the need of my understanding.

I’ve loved photography for over fifty years.

Today, while walking with a friend, we passed a little girl riding a scooter beside her mom. She wore an oversized green helmet, slightly crooked, completely adorable.

She wasn’t “traditionally beautiful” in the polished, magazine-cover sense. She was something better. She was real. Fully herself.

I turned to my friend and said, That’s who I want to capture.

Authenticity.

Normally, I would use this moment to draw a parallel to Aikido. I would talk about presence, about removing excess, about allowing something genuine to appear.

But today, I don’t want to explain it.

I only want to say this: authenticity is enough.