The Real Value of the Go-Dai no Kata

The most common mistake regarding the purpose or value of studying the five elements is to believe that we can somehow "choose" or "pick" a particular element in the middle of a fight.

Such a rational decision-making process would be totally impossible for the vast majority of people under the effects of the cortisol and adrenaline stress chemicals that flood the bloodstream under the blast of a survival threat. If you have ever been in a real death-or-injury-was-possible fight, you may remember that it is hard to remember the details of what happened moment to moment afterwards. That's because the rational brain was overpowered by the survival brain at that time. You "default" to your most base nature, your base "element"..

The real value of the elements as a subject of study is that you have a chance to preview the way you might respond under pressure. Some people bolt down and hold their ground when under siege. Some bail out and head for the advantage of higher ground. Some "see red" and blow up. How do you respond? Do you know? If you did know how you are most likely to respond to pressure, you might have a chance to see how to use your "That's just my nature" response to best advantage.

Yes, it might be possible to prepare to "assume" an elemental feeling or tactic if you had enough warning that a fight was imminent, but even that is questionable for most folks.

My biggest complaint with martial arts training in the 1960s and 1970s was that there was no training for dealing with the mind and fighting spirit when under the pressure of threat. All we got was technique. And struggling to get a technique to look good in the dojo is a far different thing from struggling to gain control over a fast-changing situation in which some maniac wants to see you humiliated, harmed, maimed, or killed.

What I in effect introduced to the martial art world in the early 1980s was a "discussion" of the fact that when the survival brain takes over, we had better be prepared for what will emerge from the base of our own personal habitual operating method. In the early 1980s, I presented the Bujinkan taijutsu basics through the interpretation of those emotional charges that shape the response while under stress. I believed then, and I believe now, that the most important lesson is how to USE the training to prepare honestly for the possibility of what would happen in a real fight, as opposed to how to DO a set of techniques.

By the late 1990s, the program had matured and evolved into the To-Shin Do system that is built around teaching people how to best utilize the results of that stress when it happens, rather than fighting the process or pretending that "I'm a super warrior who will be above all that if I ever get into a fight".

Stephen K. Hayes