I’ve spent most of the last week in some deep practice with my close friends Toke Moeller, Monica Nissen, Caitlin Frost and Bob Wing. The practice we were in this week is called “Warrior of the Heart” and it’s a combination of aikido, other martial arts and art of hosting, a blend of practices and disciplines that leads to great insight about oneself and helps develop the clarity of heart required to develop our own leadership and our personal capacity to host conversations that matter and to act powerfully for good in the world.

Warrior of the Heart evolved from Toke and Monica’s practice of aikido and sword work with Bob. Bob is a remarkable teacher and sensei of aikido and related samurai arts like iaido (the art of drawing the sword). What makes Bob’s teaching so powerful is that he uses the physical work of learning martial arts techniques to raise questions about oneself with incredible clarity and immediacy. To me this is the essence of martial arts practice, but it has been lost in many lineages in the pursuit of physical domination. O Sensei, Morehei Ueshiba, the founder of Aikido (the way of harmonizing energy) wrote about his style as The Art of Peace: The Way of the Warrior is based on humanity, love and sincereity, the heart of martial valour is true bravery, wisdom, love and friendship. Emphasis on the physical aspects of warriorship is futile for the power of the body is always limited,

The fastest way I know to describe Warrior of the Heart is that it is a martial art that uses physical techniques to generate questions. We work with our hands, with wooden swords and with partners to learn something about the way we wield power, the way we relate to others, the way we address our fears. You cannot lie to yourself when your body is asked to execute a technique, Those that are afraid of their own power let the sword languish in their hands and they fail to engage. Those who are aggressive and overly ambitious find themselves losing their ground an d their power carries them away. Warrior of the Heart makes these things visible to oneself and then uses the Art of Hosting to tap the wisdom of the collective sensei, the group that is training together, to make sense of the questions that are raised.

And what questions they are! What does it mean to stand in your ground while you are filled with fear? How do you find confidence with your own power when you have no idea how much you actually wield? How do you handle attacks in your life? What does real action feel like, and how do I develop the clarity necessary to act wisely?   What does it take to strike decisively in a way that opens space for invitation?

Whenever Toke and I work Art of Hosting trainings together we have worked with aikido and Warrior of the Heart. This week took the practice to another level for me though. Friends and neighbours from my home island joined us as we trained on the beach, in the forest and on mountain tops, and we committed to declaring a Warrior of the Heart dojo open on Bowen Island. It is a dojo that will always be open to anyone who wants to come and train a little together. We can gather anywhere for any amount of time and dedicate ourselves to learning a little together.

Bob gifted us with some bokkens and some support to begin training together, so anyone that wants to join us is welcome. As O Sensei wrote One does not need buildings, money, power or status to practice the Art of Peace. Heaven is right where you are standing, and that is the place to train

Leave me a comment if you are interested in training together some day. Come visit on Bowen and we’ll take the swords out into the forest and practice a little. And let us know if you would like to be a part of a more intensive practice retreat. We’re planning one for this year and we’ll call the teachers together on Bowen for a few days of deep learning and practice.

A request to the blogosphere…

I am organizing a large conference and part of the work we are doing as we sense into the need and purpose of the gathering is to understand the people who will be coming.  The conference is a gathering for a large national movement, and although we know many of the people who will be there, the purpose of the gathering may be different this year, necessitating different participants.

We have a core team designing the gathering and we’d like to use an effective, relatively quick low tech method to map out and overview of the network of people who would be best to include in the invitation and the conference design.

Any thoughts on an exercise for 15 people to accomplish that?

Thank you in advance, blogosphere.

As I promised yesterday, here is my recipe for fougasse.  Actually this comes from Richard Bertinet’s excellent book Dough: Simple Contemporary Breads.  It’s easy and quick and very satisfying.

First the ingredients:

1.5 teaspoons of active dry yeast (or one .25 oz envelope)

18 oz of all purpose white or white bread flour.

2 teaspoons of salt

12.5 oz of water.

It’s important to measure the ingredients by weight to get the proportions correct.  If you don’t have a kitchen scale then use 2.5 cups of flour, but don’t pack the measuring cup full, just scoop it out of the container and sweep the excess off the top.

Mix the ingredients together in a bowl until they are well mixed and then turn out on an unfloured counter and stretch and fold the dough for about five minutes, or just until it starts to become stringy and the gluten strands begin to develop.  It’s important NOT to add extra flour.  You want a wet dough and a light dough to avoid baking bricks.  You also don’t want to knead the dough or it will get too tough.

Richard Bertinet’s stretching and folding technique is excellent.  Watch this video carefully to see him in action.  It develops the gluten and traps a lot of air in the dough.  You can watch him do it in this video, where he is working with a sweet dough, but uses the same technique.

Rest the dough for an hour in a bowl, just as he does in the video.  As the dough is resting pre-heat the oven to 475.  If you have a pizza stone or baking tiles, be sure they are in the oven so they can get hot.  If you don’t, you can use a baking sheet.  Take a little pan of water and put it in your oven so that it can steam while you bake.  This will give the bread a nice crunchy crust.

After an hour, turn the dough out on to your counter, as he does in the video and carefully shape it into a rectangle.  Using a dough scraper or a spatula or a sharp kinfe, cut the rectangle in half, and then cut each half into thirds.  If you cut them into triangles, you can make a nice leaf shaped fougasse.  If you cut them into rectangles, you can make a nice squareish ladder bread.

Next take the pieces like this woman does (start the video at the 4:30 mark), place them on your baking sheet or (a peel if you are using a stone), sprinkle some flour over them  and cut holes in them.  Make them as fancy as you like, just dont cut through to the edges.  Gently stretch the dough so the holes open up. and place the dough in the oven.  Bake it on high heat (at least 475) for 12 minutes.  The breads are done when they are golden brown and starting to get dark in places.  Let them cool on a wire rack and eat!

Happy Bread Day!

Yay.  It is the world day of bread.  What a great idea to celebrate the human ingenuity behind combining flour, salt, yeast and water.  These four basic ingredients are responsible for more comfort in the world that almost anything else.  When I return home from a day of working in Vancouver, I will post a recipe for my standbay easy bread: fougasse.  

In the meantime, enjoy the offerings at my favourite bread site  The Fresh Loaf (including this excellent Daily Bread recipe, and perhaps even try a batch of no knead bread.  If you start it tonight, you can bake it tomorrow for dinner.

Overheard…

FLIGHT ATTENDANT

Something to drink?

PASSENGER

Tea please.

FLIGHT ATTENDANT

Sorry, we’re out of tea.

PASSENGER

Damn these hard economic times.

——-

PASSENGER ONE

Hi there! Where have you been?

PASSENGER TWO

Travelling around the United States by train. I made it as far as Arkansas!

PASSENGER ONE

Really?

PASSENGER TWO

Yeah…I did the Arkansas trifecta: the Bill Clinton library, Wal-Mart headquarters and…and…what was the other one…? (scratching head)

PASSENGER ONE

Texas?

—–

CHECK IN CLERK

Are you staying for two nights with us?

GUEST

No just one.

CHECK IN CLERK

Would you like a casino pass?

GUEST

If I wanted to take my chances, I’d have stayed here for two nights.