Saturday night-aikido time! We practiced a series of wazas, but one really stuck out in my mind. It's one of those irminage technques but instead of dropping of the opponent, we guide them onto our knee. It looks a bit like pro-wrestling and is great fun.
I was practicing with a young woman who is new to aikido and a bit unsure of herself. She had difficulty maintaining a straight posture. My 90 kilos didn't help, I might add. She dropped me repeatedly, usually onto herself. Particpants and observers enjoyed the comedic value of the situation.
As I tried the waza with her I had two points to consider. Can I do the waza correctly without injuring this person who is not quite ready to be thrown/dropped? Apparently, yes I can. Going slowly allowed me to focus and improve my own posture while making sure I didn't injure her. The grandmothers present complimented me on my kindness.
Nietzsche said that kindness was a warrior's greatest virtue as it represented his ability to control, even conquer, himself. I could have jumped into the waza gungho and potentially injured my partner (or myself). Instead I went slowly, concentrating on my form and my partner's safety. That was a win-win situation for both of us. Lots of fun, too.
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3 comments:
Hi Steve,
Sensei once said that if you make him wear gloves, he can't do any aikido. Did you ever see a drawing depicting the number of neurons in a person's body? In such picture people have a huge face and tongue, and huge hands. Since hands are the only part of those which you use in Aikido, most fine tuning comes from them. Probably even opera singers use their hands for final fine-tuning, but that is just a guess by looking at them. Anyway, at your and my aikido level we do not often come in the position to do the final tuning. Normally our center is not strong enough and not in the correct position. However, when you do aikido with a physically much weaker person, your hands can control them almost regardless of your body position. It is an ideal chance to practice the sensitivities and positions of your fingers. You may know that Ueshiba-sensei, the founder of aikido, also did calygraphy. Besides being a symbol of deep connection to Japanese culture, I think he wanted to celebrate the connection between ki and fingertips.
Hans
Hi Steve,
One more comment about the fingers. When Yamamoto-san was recovering from hospital treatment, Sensei urged her to do at least the uke-part, since that shouldn't take any force (but of course we 'beginners' do use force). He seemed to stress the healing power of having your fingers irradiate like sunbeams from your ki-center. Again the picture of opera-singers comes close. But for imaginary you probably better stick with Sensei, who always compares it to a flower opening in the morning.
Hans
Hi Steve,
About our bonenkai-discussion last Sunday on how to absorb/grab your opponents hand grabbing your lower arm. From sitting position that is even more difficult than from standing, since in the latter case you can lean into it, and that Sensei was able to do it sitting (after several beer) is just an expression of his high level. The difficulty is that properly dealing with the hand that grabs you concerns several issues:
-You should not be weak, but definitely not push
-You should increase his grip, by kind of feeding him your swelling arm, but you should not concentrate on that contact point (Sensei always scolds me for looking too directly)
-You should connect/melt his center with yours, and then move them together (him a large distance, you a small distance), with your center as the truer center; that is very difficult in regard to breathing (as you more or less operate from a fixed position within your normal breathing cycle), especially if you have an experienced opponent who controls his balance/breath well. If the opponent is very strong in Aikido, the reverse effect sometimes happens with this melting and the center becomes his instead of yours. And often the center-line is broken when 'the owner of the line' has 'to come up for air'; the amount of time/air you have at these contacts seems to be a matter of hard training and often determines who 'wins the line'.
-The straighter and harder they grab your arm, the easier it is to make the center-center contact. If they are very strong, the problem is as above mentioned. Very difficult is when they grab you with power-circles outside of their body-center, for example restricted to the fingers or the ar-shoulder-arm circle.
Probably tenshinage is the waza that allows the easiest understanding of these principles. Sensei often says that you should picture giving someone a hand who reaches that hand over the shoulder of your opponent. This idea probably does three things: 1) You have a direction, meaning that you automatically have a contact between your hand and your center.
2) Your fingers spread a bit, increasing the diameter of your lower arm, yet not focussing on the contact site with your opponent
3) You make a move centered in your attentions, rather than counterattacking him
What I often do myself, and which works to some degree (but not perfect), is to imagine sticks in both of my hands. It has some similar advantages as Sensei's suggestion to imagine the hand above your opponents shoulder.
But after all, it probably is just hard practice that can increase our breath-stamina and fine tune the 'be strong but not pushing' and 'increase his grip while not fixating on it'. And that is all just the beginning before the actual waza starts! During the waza we just have to maintain these energies. In my experience many experienced Aikido players have a pretty good first contact, but then loose it when moving to an actual waza.
Hans
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