From age 6-16, I trained extensively as a judoka.
On the walls of our training hall, there hung two long banners with Japanese phrases on them.
For whatever reason, I spent a lot of hours of my life transfixed on one of these banners.
So transfixed, in fact, that I don’t even remember what the other one said.
But this one, the one I spent so much time staring at as a child, said “Seiryoku-Zenyo: Minimum effort, maximum effectiveness.“
This isn’t a slogan about promoting laziness though. It’s about optimal use of energy.
Some applications of this in Judo are:
1) Using physical leverage points rather than brute force.
Instead of lifting and throwing someone with your back or leg muscles, Judokas use their body parts (such as the hips or ankles) as levers to throw down an opponent. This way they can generate a lot more energy than they expend.
2) Technical precision.
By directing their strength or movement to the most effective points, little energy is wasted.
3) Using the movement force of your opponent rather than generating your own.
If someone comes at you with a punch, you can block them or punch back. This will cost you at minimum an equal energy as what your opponent is coming in with.
A skilled judoka will do the opposite: Dodge the punch and use the movement the opponent already generated by guiding it just slightly towards their (pun intended) downfall.
Whether this is because I spent so much time staring at the phrase or not, I don’t know, but the principle of seiryoku-zenyo seems to be woven through many things I teach.
In essence, it always comes down to working with whatever energy is already here. And over time, becoming more skillful with the way you use it.
For example, when people tell me “I don’t know what to say in situation ___”, my answer will generally be “say the real thing, and if there is no real thing, then the real thing is that you don’t know what to say but want to say something because ___”.
Minimum effort, maximum effectiveness.
Minimum effort, because you don’t even need to think about something to say. You say what’s already here.
Maximum effectiveness because it’s generating more intimacy than anything else you could’ve thought of. You are literally sharing your present experience.
Are there better things to say? Possibly. But step 1 is learning to work with the energy. Step 2 is learning to direct it more skillfully.
In most cases, it’s still vastly better to do this than to come up with something convoluted that hides your experience. Because people will feel the difference in connection.
The way I approach coaching and personal growth, especially some of the more paradoxical elements, in many ways draws on the wisdom of Seiryoku-Zenyo too.
For example:
I was recently telling someone that one of the best things you can do when you feel anger is not label it as bad and allow it to serve you.
They replied with “Yeah but anger is a low vibration.”
Well, here’s how I see it:
What do you get when you react to your anger by rejecting it?
That’s right, if you believe in low-vibrations, now you just added some low-vibration to your low-vibration.
But what do you get when you react to your anger with love and acceptance?
Exactly.
A lot of self-development work centers on what to change and what not to do.
We’re told to get rid of our resistance, fear, limiting beliefs, and all that jazz.
This makes the typical personal growth approach more similar to a boxer than a judoka.
Fight your resistance by resisting it. Avoid your fear and label it as “opposite to love” (aka, be scared of it). Overcome your limiting beliefs (which implies a limiting belief that beliefs can limit you).
What would the judoka approach to personal growth be? An approach that embodies seiryoku zenyo?
It would mean using the energy of your resistance and directing it somewhere useful.
Using the energy of your fear in a way that serves you.
Starting with what’s here and instead of throwing punches against it, guiding it just slightly towards wherever you ultimately want it to go.
That includes what’s here in your external world, your internal world, your relationships, and in every passing moment.
My book, “Effortless” explains in depth how you can do this with goals, emotions and personal growth.
To learn how to do this in the realm of relationships, The Dojo is the place to go.