Two Hundred and Eight

I've had students who, when I would speak about the necessity of blending and harmonizing with uke in order to create Aikido, would assume that blending and harmonizing necessarily preclude violence; as though they're somehow mutually exclusive. They're not.

Blending and harmonizing refer to how I will interact with uke primarily with regard to our mutual motion. In blending with uke's motion I seek to avoid points of non-tangential intersection along our mutual paths. Successful blending gives rise to a harmonious relationship between uke and myself as it relates to our motion and connection. The result of this interplay of forces is that uke is taken off balance and guided to the mat where I will either disengage from him or seek to immobilize him via a pin or joint lock. The meeting of uke and the mat can be thought of as violent due to its ofttimes sudden materialization leading to the abrupt cessation of his motion. It is violent, and no less blendy and harmonious for being so.

Pins and joint locks involve pain due mostly to torquing and can also be thought of as violent. However, the violence is controlled in that I can bring uke to the point where further movement on his part will cause pain, and stop. If he ceases moving he will feel nothing while continued resistance on his part will induce a painful sensation at the point of application of the pin or lock. In essence he will be inflicting violence upon himself. His choice and a natural consequence of his aggression.

In Aikido blending and harmonizing are procedural ideas while violence can be seen as a consequence arising not out of nage's intention but as a result of uke's aggressive behavior.

Two Hundred and Seven

I'm always finding new Aikido avenues to explore. Lately I've been experimenting with the idea that Ki extension must be accompanied by a relaxed body in order to be effective. The first time I had an inkling that this may not be quite the case was during a demonstration of weight underside. The exercise has 2 ukes, one on each side of nage, grasp nage's forearms and, together, try to lift nage off the floor. I usually demonstrate this exercise two ways. First with my arms held stiffly at my sides with elbows locked. My partners are able to lift me in that position. The second iteration I relax my body, especially my arms and shoulders, and as they lift I let their force circle around, without stopping at my shoulders, and feed it back to them in the form of downward pressure. My feet stay firmly planted on the mat.

As I have continued to practice this exercise I am noticing that it's getting more difficult for them to lift me even while I remain in the stiff armed position. After checking and confirming that I hadn't added 20 or 30 pounds of stealth weight I surmised that something else must be afoot.

I then began to practice the exercise totally stiff and found that I could indeed remain rooted to the mat with ease. To make things more difficult for myself I had my partners drop their centers below mine so they could lift from underneath my center of gravity using their legs and not their back muscles. Same result. In fact the downward force I feel is more evident and active from the stiff armed position. When they try to lift me my partners are literally driven to the mat by the force of their own energy.

I'm now experimenting with katate tori. I have my partner grab my wrist and push into my shoulder. I'm noticing that I can remain immovable regardless of my physical state, be it relaxed or stiff armed. I'll continue to explore this aspect of Ki development and application and most likely will have more to post about it in the future.

Two Hundred and Six

My partner places her hands on my shoulders while facing me. The heels of her hands lie just below my collar bones, her fingers rest lightly on the tops of my shoulders. We begin by having her lightly push allowing me to stabilize my center and become acquainted with the general intensity and direction of her applied force. For her part, in addition to providing the force of her push, she will be learning to recognize when I have centered; it's easily felt. When she can feel my center she will apply more force to her push.

At this point the exercise diverges from the simple static Ki exercise from which it was derived. What I want to do is divide the force of her push in such a way as to make one side of her work against the other. I do this by creating a "positive" point for her to push against on one side and a "negative" point for her to fall into on the other. As a result, her arm pushing against my positive point will cause her shoulder to pop up while her opposite side arm will extend into what feels like a void even though she remains in contact with me continuously. As she corrects her compromised structure I will reverse the direction of my positive and negative points causing further disruption of her posture and balance. As I practice this exercise I can see how the shortening of her arm that pushes against my positive point causes her other arm to lengthen. This makes it difficult for her to apply any kind of effective force at my shoulders. (Note for uke, it's important to apply pressure continuously during this exercise.) With continued practice I will develop the ability to capture her push on contact and compromise her posture and balance from the outset.

I can vary the exercise by allowing myself to be pushed backwards. While moving I can experiment with creating positive and negative points in order to change direction on my terms or simply stop in order to allow myself to be statically tested. I can also have uke push my shoulders from behind or push at my hips from front or back.

Two Hundred and Five

Uke is like an electron. Not the electron of Classical Physics, a hard little ball of indivisible stuff following a predictable path; rather the electron of Quantum Mechanics, until observed neither here or there but both, following a path(?) seemingly of its own choosing.

When I interact with uke I can assume nothing, expect nothing, predict nothing. Assuming, expecting, predicting all distance me from now. Uke can be neither right or wrong. He can't move too early or late. He can't be ahead of the technique or behind the technique. He can only be where he is, doing what he's doing, from moment to moment. Being in the now requires that I simply accept what uke offers me at any given moment. In so doing we provide the fertile environment from which technique may grow.

The moment we connect there is no uke, no nage, no we. Connection is the key. Though our roles are opposite they are at the same time complimentary, each necessary for the entity we become to be fully realized. A coin has two sides. Imagine a coin with no depth. Where is the line dividing one side from the other? Where is the distinction that differentiates me from uke once we have begun to interact?