Rib damage

So am recovering from misogi finally. Quite achy the last two days! Foolishly tried to do my hundred sword cuts the morning after the 2500 cuts and got to about 25 before I had to stop from screaming wrists. Found a bit of jo swinging much nicer.

After some googling on t'internet I have concluded I cracked a rib a couple of weeks ago falling onto Tom Hume's knee in the dojo! Still quite tender to touch but OK to breath - just every now again I use one particular muscle group and the pain! Ouch.

Jesus - aikido mastery (hah!) does not come cheap!

Misogi

Just back from Misogi. This is a ritual undertaken by aikio practitioners on the anniversary of O Sensei's (Aikido's founder) death every year.

This year we spent 50 minutes doing saburi, or sword cuts with bokken. Interesting when you do something like this in that after about ten minutes, wherever your technique is flawed it will start to give out. But as you've started and committed and everyone else is doing it you must keep going. So you alter your technique and then after about twenty minutes your shouting the count out using aggression to keep going and get through it.

This gets you so far but not far enough. After half an hour your in and out of a state of no mind (mu shin) and egoic reeling and ranting and complaining about the pain and the blisters. It's then that you either join the people wobbling and flailing about but keeping going and getting through it or get really clever with your cutting and improve it enough to make it to the finish. Either way, no one gets off at this stop.

Would be interesting to do misogi more often and take an aikido technique and do that one technique a thousand times, see where you fail, what you have to do to make through the wall.

Backwards Ukemi

Just back from the dojo - another night of the freezing toes at the wildpark.
I am currently vexed by the 'new' backwards ukemi - it feels terrible crashing in a heap on the ground and half arsedly slapping the mats. My head is knocked sideways, my hips hit the mats, I get up unsteadily! It's not fighting!

And yet, I watch Tom Helsby doing it and it looks like fighting, it looks right. I saw so many aikidoka at the weekend doing it properly (and so many not) that I am just going to have to get it down. I'm trying not to think about how many years I've spent so far trying to get forward rolls down!

I think after tonight's practice that I have an idea what I am doing wrong. Like in the forward and standard backwards rolls, there is a circle that needs to be made with the arms, like the rim of a wheel. I have this pretty much down with the flying version of this new ukemi, I need now to reduce that architecture down into the more compact version.

Keiko keiko keiko...

Sugawara Sensei, Edinburgh

Just back from Edinburgh and a two day course with Sugawara Sensei, a Hombu Shihan.
My thanks to Neil Blacknell of Azami Kai Aikido for organizing and translating.

Sugawara Sensei is amazing. Lovely to see him taking ukemi towards the end of the course, right up on the balls of his feet, bouncing around almost - reminded me very much of footage I've seen of Goza Shioda Sensei.

I found that whenever he came round to me it was my ukemi he was correcting. And there was me taking pride in my good ukemi! Always comes before the fall. Aside though from minor corrections in how I take ukemi the thing I noticed from the two days was the almost complete lack of forward rolls. The 'new' backwards ukemi seems to have replaced it almost entirely. And I must admit this saddens me to some extent as I do like to fly away from a strong technique and bounce back up. I believe that is the point though, the flying away from your partner is not fighting. Keeping contact all the way down through the eyes is martially better maybe?

Who knows? I'm thinking maybe the 7th dan Shihan from the weekend who teaches the Tokyo riot police knows a thing or two more than me so I'll shut up and listen and try to do better!

Another point I really liked about ukemi was uke keeps his focus aimed straight at his partner's centre as long as he can, every chance he can, turn, face tori's centre.

On the other side, techniques that is, he spent alot of time stressing the basics and, for me, revealing the stuff I've forgotten because it's so basic. One's hands should never move outside of this rather small locus from the top of the head down and out to either hips and never extended too far out from the body. Sensei's hands never left this space and every technique he did was fast, powerful, unstoppable and looked amazingly easy! The effortless power referred to so often in the martial arts.

Every entering move went straight for the jugular, so to speak. There is no consideration for the limb being swung towards you, just straight in for the centre of the person attacking and then move from there.

Looking forward to getting back on the mats and practicing what I or my body remembers from the weekend and passing it on.

Basic Aikido Techniques

Youtube playlist containing most of the basic techniques in Aikido - demonstrated by various random Aikidoka. Enjoy.

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.

Own the Mat

Am currently reading several books and have put them aside temporarily to go through a nice, if somewhat cheesy, little book by an American sensei, George Leonard.

He writes about this lovely little concept that could be misunderstood as ego manic but is actually a brilliant way to put into practice acceptance or non resistance.

He talks of 'owning the mat'.  So when you step onto the dojo mats you say to yourself, 'this is my mat'.  You treat everyone as your guest and act accordingly, including everyone in your gaze, sending out welcoming feeling or intention toward them, taking responsibility for them.   And you acknowledge that they own their mat also.

But this expands way beyond the dojo.  When walking down the street, try, 'I own this path' and smile accordingly at everyone walking along it.  Welcome to this space I am walking through.

I love this concept and am using it everywhere I go today.  I visit alot of different sites in my job, entering alot of offices as a face that may not be recognized by most that work there daily and thusly encounter spiky energies from time to time that can be uncomfortable.  I am entering someone else's territory if you like.

But when 'I own this office' my energy is transformed completely out of discomfort and into acceptance of all around me and good intention to those I meet in it.

When people are a guest in your home it is your responsibility to make sure they are comfortable and relaxed yes?  If they fall over you rush to pick them up.  If they ask you for something you do your best to get it.  What if everyone you meet is met as though they're a guest in your place?

Recommended practice.

Sinking into Seiza

Training again at the dojo last night when I had an epiphany of sorts.

Taking instruction form Tom Helsby, he told us to place our bodies on the floor when rolling, to see how quietly we could do it.

I went back to my rolling and concentrated on placing my body on the ground and placing my attention there.  I found that, suddenly, my awareness had shifted and I was heavier, a lot heavier and more compact underneath, so to speak.

Let me try to explain.  I have been reading about how to allow one's weight to 'sink down' naturally.  Everything wants to sink down to the earth due to gravity.  Our body is designed through thousands of years of evolution to stand up under this pull, to move under this pull.  Now I think a problem for a lot of people, and certainly for me, is that our minds get in the way and tell us how to stand.   Or we distract ourselves completely from our body awareness and get lost in thought, hunching out of alignment and loping around under the pull of gravity.

So in my reading about sinking weight, I have spent some time just standing and feeling from within, how my weight sinks down into my feet.  Last night I was suddenly able to feel how my weight sunk whilst rolling and it made the rolls quieter, faster, smoother and my stance coming out of them stronger.

Then sitting Seiza (see O Sensei's sitting posture above) at the end of class I could feel how all my weight sank down into the triangulation made by my body.  The weight could be felt almost as a tangible pyramid shape encompassing my body.  Hard to put into words, it's not something the mind can label easily.

I was reminded later after class of a training accident some years back when I was thrown forward, landed on my left shoulder too heavily, snapped my collar bone, continued my roll forward and came out of the roll sitting perfectly and very stably in seiza.  As soon as I felt that bone snap my mind shut up, my body relaxed and the roll and the sitting position happened perfectly naturally.   Interesting to note that my rolling and sitting are only now beginning to catch up consciously with what my body was able to do spontaneously in an emergency some five years ago!

Take the head off

Just back from the dojo.  We were looking at entering into the attack but off the line of attack.  Meeting the attack with our arm as a result of stepping in and placing our hips into it.  Then we turn around to let the attack continue down into the space we previously occupied.

This is called Irimi (entering) and Tenkan (turning).  The technique then happens naturally, and which technique happens depends on the distance and timing (ma-ai) and what the attacker does in response to your movement.

Too often we forget what we're doing.  We meet the attack, then turn away and grab the limb and do the technique.  This is a martial art.  We should meet the attack, stay focused on and into uke (the attacker), take their head off with our counter attack or atemi, our spirit or gaze, then sink under their centre, roll our body around their body movement and finish off with the technique that happens naturally - the last 5%.

Till I forget again!

Ukemi

The practice of Ukemi is, in my limited understanding, the most important part of Aikido practice. This is where you attack your partner and allow them to perform a technique. You lend your body to them if you like, generously and with a big spirit.

If the technique is performed in a fluid, more advanced way than you are literally sucked in and projected back out again. It's a fascinating feeling, sort of like accelerating to the crest of a steep hill before freewheeling down the other side. If the technique is performed staccato, when your partner is figuring out the technical movements, then you allow yourself to be lead, whilst always maintaining a good healthy posture, and a good all round awareness.

My teacher has been saying for some months now, look past your partner's fingers as you take ukemi. Follow the energy that is projecting from his/her fingertips. I feel like I finally got what he's been saying about this last night practicing one of the last techniques, Irimi Nage. You attack, allow yourself to be taken and then follow your partners fingers with your eyes. They sink, you sink, they raise up, you follow, they turn, you turn. Instead of following your partner and thinking, 'Oh what's happening now, this isn't the way the technique should be done, I'd do it othrewise... etc', you end up simply following the line of the fingers, the energy of your partner's movement and much less thought is involved. A flow happens.

The less thought is involved in Aikido practice, the better. It's much like music. You get the basic forms, practice and think about them alot, then you try to throw that away ('cut off your legs' as they say in Japan) and go for flow. Technique does indeed seem to be the last 5% of the action.

In the end it all comes down to the same thing - Ukemi, losing oneself. Opening yourself up to your partner, to life, to the flow, accepting whatever happens and not resisting. Apply it to whatever you want.

Atemi

Reading Musashi's Book of Five Rings at the moment and I am fascinated by the statement, and I paraphrase somewhat, "When you strike at the enemies face, he becomes rideable".

This works. I've been told in the dojo many times, use atemi (strikes) to help focus the technique, or help focus your attention on uke (your practice partner). But it was when I went to practice a more aggressive style, White Crane kung fu, and we did their version of a technique I was familiar with in aikido, Kote Gaishe (outer wrist twist) that I realised how important the strike before the technique is.

If you do not at least jab at your partner (or enemy's!) face there is no way that they are going to go with the technique in a real life situation. They will stiffen when you try to throw or pin them, very few people will relax in a fight situation.

A good smack in the face on the other hand will instantly put you on the back foot, startle you 'up into your head' if you like and make you 'rideable' as my book's translation of Musashi's Japanese puts it.

I enjoy it as uke when someone strikes at your face doing the technique. It's a reminder, yes, this is a martial art. Yes, you are open to attack there. Yes, you could wake up!