Comments on Mokuren Dojo: The meaning of your communication is the response ...

Excellent points! Or maybe two other alternatives...

2008-05-05T14:13:00.000-04:00

Excellent points!

Or maybe two other alternatives would be to either use poetic language, as in Chinese martial arts or to just rename things in your native language and ditch the exotic-sounding jargon…

The latter is how it works in BJJ. We use terms such as omoplata, but also refer to throws, chokes and various submission holds in plain old English.

An argument against this practice that seems somewhat pragmatic to me is that it limits my ability to travel to Brazil, Japan, or anywhere else and train without a language barrier. In Judo, as it was explained to me, one can train in Japan and speak no Japanese, but still understand enough to avoid too much difficulty. Makes sense to me.

"I told them that when a teacher encounters dead s...

2008-05-05T06:21:00.000-04:00

"I told them that when a teacher encounters dead silence, it usually means that he's asked the question the wrong way."

Try that one on college students and you'll probably get more dead silence!

:-)

It doesn’t do anyone any good for an instructor to...

2008-05-04T17:50:00.000-04:00

It doesn’t do anyone any good for an instructor to assume that their students are knuckleheads who can’t follow instructions. A better way is to assume good faith on their part...

Hmmm--come to think of it, when I asked a question of my Sunday School class this morning and was greeted with dead silence, I told them that when a teacher encounters dead silence, it usually means that he's asked the question the wrong way.

So I asked it a different way. And you know, it worked!