By Martin E. Hansen, Member until 2018
If there is soon more to report from the RRCAMPs, you might be thinking out there behind the screen. Consider yourself for a moment - you are welcome to go to the mirror and look, do you have more to learn in this life, do you know yourself - no, good. You also don't know what will happen tomorrow, but it might be the best day of your life, so there's a whole lot to tell. It sounds very philosophical, and perhaps it is, but an RRCAMP is both Ryugi and Ryuha, hence the name RR, so it does not stand for Rolls Royce, even though most RRCAMPS have been held at the Hilton Hotel Malmö 🙂 – it is only because Kimu Sensei has really, really good connections and a huge network that gives access to really good prices and upgrades on e.g. Hilton, which makes the room prices approach what a West Jutland would call a really good offer.
RRCAMP11.2 was like the first for me and most of the others except for Jens Kyoshi, the first of 2 days duration. That was pretty much what we knew before we arrived at the Hilton in Malmö - well, there was also a very detailed agenda sent out, which told in detail approximately when we should check in, eat breakfast, lunch (maybe) and dinner and check out out again. Kimu Sensei had sent this in an email a few days before the CAMP with the comment "And who says you don't get to know anything 🙂 " - really good humor. But basically, it also doesn't matter, since it's all about showing up with an open mind and not expecting anything - or expecting the unexpected - in short, try to be in the moment and turn off the earplugs. As you've probably read in previous articles from the other RRCAMPs, there hasn't been much of the luxury of sleep involved, and that was actually pretty much the only thing I was sure about for this RRCAMP – the lovely beds at the Hilton were only to be used for quite a few hours, actually a bit of a shame, but when you are in that learning forum and are high on knowledge, emotions and caffeine, very little sleep is perfectly OK. Can a soldier on active duty in e.g. Afghanistan or could a Samurai in a sword duel for life look at the clock or the sun and say - I am tired and it is time for me to go to bed, not without consequences - life.
We reached the Hilton at 12.50 and the previously mentioned agenda said that we should be there at 13.00 and there would be check-in at 13.01 so we were in good time and could enjoy the wide leather chairs in the hotel foyer while we waited for Kimu Sensei to appear. Of course we had talked a bit during the joint drive from Søren Renshi's residence in Amager, where there are approx. 35 minutes to Malmö, but still we were closer to RRCAMP, so again it was guesswork about what we had to go through. A little past one, Kimu Snsei appeared, and immediately went to the counter and started to check us in and possibly negotiate with the nice concierges behind the desk, in any case, he could tell us with a big smile that we had gotten upgrades upon upgrades and everyone would be staying at business floor (16 & 17 floor). You can only bow in the dust and say thank you and respect the man and his negotiation technique, which is worthy of a Jutland supermarket.
As usual, we were paired together, but to avoid me and my brother - Claus Shisu, having to share a room, my partner this time, Kjeld Renshi-dai, so Claus Shishu had to settle for Søren Renshi and not his brother's snoring, family comments and more. We quickly took the elevator to the 16th floor, where we had 10 min. before we had to meet in the plenum room on the 17th floor, where Kimu Sensei, but also Jens Kyoshi had rooms. The plenum room was to be our training arena for the next 48 hours or so, interrupted only by the sleep that might be allotted to us and quick meals. Quickly the room was organized with 5 chairs, projector and hot water for coffee and RRCAMP11.2 could really get started, you just have to remember that from the moment you meet Kimu Sensei the training camp is on, so it had already started a while.
The first training lesson of the day was to get the new member of Shihan-kai – Claus Shisu updated on where the rest of us were ie. our personalities, strengths and weaknesses, why we trained, what we had been through, etc. So he got half an hour in private with each of us, including myself, because even though we are brothers, I hadn't told my brother everything, since there is familiarity in Shihan-kai and what we train at RRCAMPs. We all felt that we had told the most important thing about ourselves and Claus Shisu had learned a lot about us and RRCAMPs, well supplemented by the knowledge he had from articles like this one on our website.
The rest of the afternoon was spent with Kimu Sensei entertaining with strat 2015(20) and the thoughts he had about development and innovation, and it will be really, really exciting for the next several years, because nothing stands still, only if you choose to that you will stand still. Often people have asked themselves the question, how can I use the 1000 year old art of war that the samurai used on the battlefield and connect it to the modern world - practical and what is needed to do this. Kimu Sensei had the answer to that and the rest of us could only nod in appreciation and look forward to getting started with it in the future, and it will be great, but you will experience that yourself later 🙂 , I am looking forward to being part of it anyway of the. The dinner had to be quick and cheap, after all it is the local schools and thus the members' money that pays for our education and RRCAMP, so therefore the choice has fallen on Sweden and the low rate of Swedish dollars. In advance, Kimu Sensei had identified Burger King as an opportunity when one of the local Burger Kings was celebrating its 3rd birthday, so 6 whopper meals were ordered at a price of SKK 35 each. PCS. incl. drinks, so it can't be made cheaper and it goes fast.
Another tool that was also used on this day was "the hot chair". This exercise involves one of the participants sitting in the chair for a given period of time, e.g. 20 minutes, after which the other participants are "fired" about a topic that concerns the person sitting in the chair. This exercise can actually be considered mental kumite. The subject can be anything from "Why did you fail your last graduation and the reason for this" to talking about your deepest feelings. This exercise is fantastic because you will have to accept many of the things that are said by your training mates, and there is no time to "defend" yourself and the most important thing is really also to capture the other's perception of you as a person and relate for this. I got good input on my recent development and where I can invest mentally to move forward, and it was really nice, even if it was hard.
Now we had spent most of the day at Strat15, but a strategic plan must be backed up by the local schools, as this is essentially where the foundation in terms of membership influx and finances is formed. So that's why the evening's task was to lay out the next year's school plan and satellite school plan, for those who now have to open one. The plan is to fulfill and manage according to the 5 KPI that many of you have probably heard of, which ensures a stable local school with clear goals and healthy values according to Shindenkan's value set. We have tried the exercise before, but it is always important to think it through and especially when you are at a concentrated RRCAMP, where you are always in the optimal learning forum. I will return to the fact that this task had another purpose later. We had the task until 03.00 to decide where we should go to bed, just to rest our eyes and, if we were lucky, get a full 3.5 hours of sleep until 7.00, where we were supposed to meet for the sumptuous Hilton breakfast that was included in the room price. We were also told that during the night we had to do 30 minutes of exercise in the fitness center on the top floor, where access is available 24 hours a day. There must also be room for conviviality, so Kimu Sensei had, as usual, brought 2 bottles of good red wine, which were opened so that we could share a bottle in each room while we worked....Normally I don't drink red wine this late, nor at night when you have to stay awake, and it's precisely the thoughts that are the worst enemy, so it's about throwing them over the right shoulder and just living with it and taking it as it comes. Intensive work was done in the rooms and I reached the training center together with Kjeld Renshi-dai at approx. 02.00. I wasn't quite finished with my presentation at 03.00, but we had to go to bed, so I had to drop it and take the criticism when we had to present after breakfast later that morning after breakfast.
I was roused from my sleep at 06.30 where I had set the clock so that we could both have a shower and be ready for breakfast. I have to admit that there had been a bit of speculation about what I didn't manage to get in and whether the presentation was good enough before I had to sleep, but I still managed to remove the focus and get the scant sleep that you could now get, also an exercise in itself self. Exactly at At 07.00 we met for breakfast, which was washed down with a little extra espresso. After breakfast, it was time for the first lesson of the day, where we met in plenary and looked more at Strat15, but the focus started to turn towards us and leadership development, which was one of the aims of the night's work. So one of the training lessons consisted of us presenting our school plans to the others and receiving all the criticism the others could come up with, where we then had the opportunity to counter-argue, a kind of verbal kumite ie. the mindset should be like in kumite – you hesitate you get beaten. We had 20 min. each in the fire and that was plenty, because we know each other well and eventually you could point out things in the others' presentations that you hadn't worked through yourself. A really good exercise that improves your presentation technique, but also makes you think a lot about your choice of words and argumentation - see it can also be used in our everyday life - kumite at the workplace. So it was very important that we were matter-of-fact and shot as sharp as possible.
Around lunch we were right on schedule, so again we had to find a solution that went quickly, and opposite the Hilton on the square there is a small Chinese grill that has small dishes like fried noodles and various deep fried things, but they also have a counter that turns towards the pavement where you can get a Chinabox with rice or fried noodles and a few accessories on top for around DKK 40. So here we picked up 6 lunch packs and at the same time got some much needed air, because it can quickly get warm in a hotel room with 6 people. We went to the rooms and ate lunch while we continued working on the presentation, as we were soon to present to Kimu Sensei. We continued the afternoon in plenary, but never got around to having to present again, we were however assigned a task that we had a few hours to solve in collaboration, which dealt with challenges when two very different management types at the highest level have to build an organization like Shindenkan and Jokokan is. Before, of course, it had been reviewed by Kimu Sensei, so we had something to deal with. We made a short presentation together, which we brought on a netbook, which we wanted to present during the dinner. A table was booked at 20.00 at TGI-Fridays, which is by now our regular place for dinner at RRCAMPS, it's good food and we get a 20% discount on brobizz, so it can definitely be recommended if you take a trip to Malmö. We had barely opened the computer and started to present the result at the end of a restaurant table before Kimu Sensei closed the computer and became personal 🙂 We got some connections and conclusions, but we also started to get closer to ourselves, which was the prelude to the rest of the evening and the next day's big clue.
The road to and from the restaurant was again a respite, where we had the opportunity either to walk in silence and philosophize and the day's learning or to talk among ourselves about our private lives and what was going on, which I especially used on the way back after the meal, as you quickly can go and get a little tired, and then it's nice to be able to talk to a sensible person 🙂 Back at the hotel, the tiredness had started to set in, but there is a solution for that, so Kimu Sensei ran a power meditation, which is just as well or better than sleep and we had energy to listen further and ready to solve the next tasks, which were set around 22.00 as I remember it. The task was very specific, namely to plan the next 5-year course/training calendar (the one on the website) based on some given conditions such as order, holiday months, public holidays, TG groups etc. This task was a team task and had to be solved in collaboration , and when we were finished we could continue working on our school presentations. If tiredness set in, we always had the fitness center we could use... big smile, but we were not allowed to go to bed later than 05.00. The first task got a little spice when Kimu Sensei said "The rest of the evening you're called something else, so you get military titles, it's better than just getting a number, nobody wants to just be a number." So we were called Colonel Jens, Major Søren, Captain Kjeld and Martin and Second Lieutenant Claus. There was of course an ulterior motive with this, but as usual we jumped in with both feet, and only found the secret the next day. We quickly settled into the roles and the hierarchy that is associated with the army, although I think the atmosphere was a bit loose and we worked on an equal footing. We made a good course calendar and finished around 03.00, when there had also been time for a little training in the fitness center when the eyes got too tired. But it was a really good collaboration exercise under time pressure and some fatigue at night, where the tasks had to be distributed, but where at the same time there had to be a common structure so as not to end up with a result that could not work at all. I have to admit that it didn't take long for me to fall asleep after my head hit the pillow at 5.00 in the morning.
2 hours later the alarm clock rang on the mobile phone and it was time for a quick shower before we met again for breakfast at 7.30, it was Sunday after all, so we got half an hour more 🙂 We had plenty of time to eat breakfast, and only an hour later or so we had to meet in plenary for the last lesson. Here we had to present the course calendar and the structure we had come up with, which didn't take that long, after which I expected us to present our school plans, but no. Here we got a little surprise when it turned out that Kimu Sensei had white manipulated us, this is where the exercise with military titles came into the picture, the exercise with the calendar was tertiary, it was in fact our action pattern that was important. It's hard to explain here in short words, but we chose to take on roles in a hierarchy and thus remove ourselves from responsibility and jump into usual roles instead of just being a number, because nobody wants to be that, so it's more fun to have a high title or rank – you said jantelov 🙂 . Kimu Sensei had white manipulated our subconscious, something you can do as you like as a grandmaster. But he had done this in a good way in a safe learning forum, so that we can recognize it when and not if we encounter it in reality, where there are bosses, colleagues and people who use black manipulation for their own gain. We were all quite puzzled by this conclusion, which was also one of the essences of this RRCAMP. But it was to get even closer when we were once again presented with the warm chair, after a thorough warm-up from Kimu Sensei. After 2 days, most of the defenses are down, and we were told that we had to go to it. That is why we had to work all night with our presentation, again the task was the tertiary, and the result the mental state, that we worked long and under pressure to get tired, the important. I won't go into what we went through during the hot chair exercise, but it was the deepest emotions we each went through from childhood to adulthood and a trip around the ego, and the emotions also came outside the body, but it was liberating to experience and gave food for thought and further processing in the mental self-training.
Kimu Sensei ended by concluding for us on our individual training. We were at the end of the road and had 10 min. to clear the plenary room and check out from our rooms, and we stood in the foyer at precisely 12.00 ready to say goodbye.
This RRCAMP has definitely been the best not because of the length and the good hotel rooms, but because I have reached much further into myself and got to know myself in some new areas. At the same time, I was happy to see that the others also got really far with themselves and not least my dear brother who ended up graduating in the foyer, he bounced a little at Kimu Sensei's comment "It was a really good camp you had Claus, there is just one problem because it will be really expensive for you”….”You have passed your 1st dan senior in Yakami Shinsei-ryu, this has never happened before at an RRCAMP – congratulations on that”. Then you probably don't mind shelling out the few thousand DKK when you get it on the road 🙂 . During this RRCAMP I have also learned that fatigue can be a friend, because your true nature and survival instinct comes out. RRCAMPs is something unique and I don't think there is a better management and self-development forum. Elsewhere you probably wouldn't offer your students 5 hours of sleep in 55 hours and serve red wine at night, but it's not Shindenkan either 🙂 , where we strive to know ourselves, even if we're really under pressure. I am looking forward to the next RRCAMP, which is already 14 days after this one, where I will hopefully reach deeper into myself.
When you get up one morning, try saying to yourself in the mirror "Today is the best day of my life", it will definitely have an effect.
