There is a phrase in Japanese that every dojo eventually teaches you, whether or not anyone says it aloud: shoshin — beginner's mind. It describes the way a new student steps onto the mat: alert, humble, expecting nothing, noticing everything. It is usually spoken of as something to be recovered later, once experience has worn it away.
But here is what forty years of Saturdays have taught us: beginners don't need to recover it. They already have it. Which means that on their first day, in one important respect, they are ahead of everyone else in the room.
The expert's handicap
An experienced student watches a technique and thinks: I know this one. The sentence is efficient and almost always slightly wrong. The beginner watches the same technique and thinks nothing at all — they simply watch. They see the feet, because nobody told them the hands were the important part. Half the time, the feet were the important part.
“In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities. In the expert's mind there are few.”
This is why senior students at Hizashikan are asked to train with newcomers, and why they rarely complain about it. Teaching a technique to someone who has never seen it forces you to see it again yourself.
What this means for your first class
If you are thinking about visiting us, the thing you are most worried about — knowing nothing — is the most valuable thing you will bring through the door. Nobody expects anything of a white belt except attention, and attention is exactly what you'll arrive with.
Come and use it while you have it. The rest of us are trying to get it back.
