Opening Ceremony
PUT A BOW ON IT
In the martial arts, while not ubiquitous, it's common to bookend every class with a bow. In the Japanese arts, this is merely further observance of a broader societal etiquette, but it extends to arts from other countries.
A display of respect and due deference to rank and/or class, this etiquette makes little sense in any martial context, with the students of lower belts — and lesser ability— positioned closest to the entrance. Were you attacked in this moment of vulnerability, any element of surprise would be lost wading through the novices with more senior practitioners, positioned deeper in the space, having time to respond.
Less of a concern for newbies these days, but the tradition remains.
A mark of respect. I have received instruction from teachers who were seriously flawed as humans. I am fortunate to know others that well earn any honour the title ‘Sensei’ might bestow in being fine teachers and people.
Translating to ‘one who comes before’, this is all a bow need acknowledge— You know more than I do. Along with the gratitude that you are prepared to teach me. Really, the only essential qualifications for a teacher.
But in the same way, a soldier can salute the uniform and not the person wearing it, a bow is less about an individual than what they represent— the lineage, the tradition, the process.
That which predates and will outlast you both.
In a day and age when ‘I paid for it’ is mistakenly believed to mark the beginning and end of due respect, this is increasingly viewed as unnecessarily subservient. A humility, I would argue, that is sorely missed in students (and parents) in schools, and in wider society full stop.
Not least because this transactional thinking doesn't just produce bad students — it produces bad learners. Learning is not something you take from but something you take on. Something you are changed by. Insofar as it can be given, it must equally be received.
With teachers as vending machines and students mere consumers, attention thins, feedback is dulled, and all possibility of iteration is reduced.
Humility isn’t subservience; only the accurate acknowledgement that you don’t yet know what you came to learn. And without that, you can’t be taught anything.
Some arts further require another bow when stepping on or off the mat. This imbues the physical space with meaning. A dojo, like studios of any variety—art, music, yoga— has a singular purpose, but it doesn’t come built into bricks and mortar. We bring meaning.
But this also points to how the bow imbues yet another, even more important space with purpose: the one between the ears.
Our modern malaise is a flattening of experience in which everything begins to feel like everything else. Work bleeds into rest. Rest bleeds into distraction. Distraction bleeds back into work. Not an absence of boundaries, but an absence of noticing them. Transitions so weakly defined that in terms of our subjective experience, it becomes difficult to say where one state ends and another begins.
But this same beige, not-too-bad, not-too-great subjective experience of life comes not with an equally ‘beige’ quality of attention humming away but because of it. And quality of attention is not simply a matter of effort, but a matter of structure and without it your mind will continue to serve up the same thin gruel.
The bow interrupts that continuity. It marks a transition. And so here too it signals importance— the shift to intentional, deliberate and conscious. Awake. It directs your attention to why you are here and what you are about to do. It switches the outside world off at the start, and back on at the end. And this commitment and focus demonstrate the highest respect of all — both to the practice and to yourself.
At Leftfield, we begin each session with a breathing drill and close out with a rocking drill, and while there is a sound physiological rationale for both, they serve this same bookend role. I’ll hasten to add that there is no bowing involved, but when it comes to fitness, this is the attitude that will serve you best. One of respect and humility to the practice— that which is greater than us.
Interestingly, this marks both a separation and a continuity, because it has you thinking in terms of ‘practice’ rather than ‘workout.’ A workout is discrete and completable. You do it, and it is done. A practice is cumulative and ongoing. Defined not by completion but by participation over time. It does not reset. It does not restart.
I can’t think of any workout that might have justified a bow, but is there any higher practice than ensuring you are fit for purpose?
That might seem overstated — especially in a society that relegates the value of fitness to the bottom rung of the ladder and then equates it with the grabbing, wanting, dictating, arrogance and mindless bullshit of conventional fitness culture. Quite the contrast. But when the current approach is hard to describe as anything other than a failure, a contrast is exactly what we're looking for.
So try taking a second to bow. It needn’t be formal or solemn, but like the dojo I train in, formality is no enemy of fun — we learn and perform better when relaxed. But ‘fun’ —or any other thing—never comes at the expense of our reason for being there.
Indeed, a bow need take no physical form whatsoever — you can bow in your mind. And not to anybody or anything necessarily, more to yourself. And what you intend to do. You can make anything special; you only have to treat it as such. This intent can bookmark the session but, as we’ll look at next, every set. Even every rep.
An intentional mindset is the fundamental difference separating the endless frustration of exercise and the endless reward of training.
So put a bow on it.
Enjoy your weekend
- OLI