Mixing it Up

This last seven days I have trained more with strangers than I have my regular aikidoka and it's been a terrific experience.

I spent Sunday morning and early afternoon with the fantastic and formidable Gordan Jones (6th dan, UKA) and at least forty other people studying kaiten (thank you Mark Walsh for explaining, after four hours of practicing it and getting it wrong, what kaiten actually is).

And this evening I have just come back from a two and a half hour class with Nick Doyle (3rd dan, Brighton Aikikai).  So lovely to find eight people throwing themselves round a dojo at half ten on a Friday evening when everyone else is hitting the pub.  Excellent class.

So it struck me this evening that you can tell a whole lot about a person practicing in the dojo that you might never learn from talking to them.  There's a great line in the Matrix that says 'You do not truly know someone until you fight them'.  Aikido is even deeper than that.  You walk up to someone you've never trained with before and make contact by holding their wrist and then you listen to their whole body, down to their very core.  You might not pick it all up on a conscious level at first but you'll pick up everything about them, their childhood, their current mood, their energy level - it's like taking a complete psycho physical profile of another human and giving all that you've got right back.

I experienced this a few times at both practices this week but you can tell across the mat, before you even pair up, who you're going to enjoy training with the most.  You know who you'll come back for more with - who you're favourite play mates are going to be. Because when you strip all the martial art away, that's what we're doing.  We're playing on the mat, risking injury for the buzz of sailing through the air.  And playing is something that the adult section of our society has mostly forgotten how to do.  I prescribe aikido all round.

Training with new people is also a fantastic way of truly testing your aikido.  When you don't know how someone is going to react you have no preconceptions, you have to truly open up to the possibilities and listen to your partner and how they move.  

When someone doesn't know you or how you move you are pushed sometimes to your limit as they sound you out.  I remember, in particular this week, training with a dan grade on Sunday and trying desperately to keep a good grip on his wrist as he moved me very powerfully and incredibly swiftly.  I kept finding myself behind the movement of my arm attached to his, and this resolved itself in my body as a jarring sort of energy, a non too pleasant one that I couldn't leave unchecked.  I really had to focus, breath, stop thinking and loosen up to move fast enough to smooth out the motion.

Sore all over for four days afterwards I kid you not - but there's a masochistic side of me that loves that in a kind of no pain no gain kind of way.

So this year for me, start grading (I haven't graded since my 6th kyu six years ago!) and attend more classes and courses outside my usual dojo.  Loving mixing it up.