SHIHONAGE

Shihonage has long been one of my favorite aikido techniques for several reasons. First of all, it helps as a beginner to be quite a bit shorter than most of your partners while learning this one. As opposed to, say, shomenuchi ikkyo or iriminage, where the short beginner keeps trying to bring the attacker down to her level, in shihonage being small enough to pass under the attacker's armpit without thinking twice means one can focus on the hundred other details.

Second of all, my first instructor taught me an invaluable little trick that also served to get one problem right out of the way: in order to avoid getting pulled off balance, keep your hand glued to your forehead while entering and turning (when I passed this along to my friend, Jo, she got it immediately: oh, the ice cream cone! in a reference to the Dead's Europe 72 cover art). It has been a long time since I actually kept the hand touching the forehead, but the body lesson worked.

Third, there is a beautiful flow inherent in the movements of shihonage. If I'm really tapping into my down energy and staying close enough to uke and maintaining connection, its like a spiral inside an elevator shaft. Just lovely.

Of course every school and style and teacher has its interpretation. Last night I learned one I'd not really played with before. If I were to work at it, it might contradict the "four sword cuts" that I had learned years ago as the essence of the technique. So I'm writing about it today in order to do the thinking needed to write about it cogently and hopefully gain some insight for when I next get on the mat.

The cuts are as follows: Assuming the attack is yokomenuchi. Cut one is the downward cut that meets the attack, blending downward with it. Cut two is a horizontal slash, done with an outward turning hip movement, that clears the space to enter under from uke's back to front. The slash becomes the third cut, an upward cut as one steps and turns. The fourth cut is a straight downward cut that is the throw.

This can be demonstrated as a step by step process that for some newbies is a real "aha!" moment that suddenly makes this technique sensible. It proceeds to be a wonderful flowing movement, with both accurate positioning and lots of extension if one keeps the imaginary sword in hand during the whole thing.

The version presented last night calls for minimal entry. There is a lot of focus on the hip turn (which was described as unsheathing the sword), followed by the turning under. There were two problems I could spot. The first thing I saw, also noted by the teacher, was a tendency of some folks to back into the turning under. This led directly to a loss of extension and being in the wrong place.

The other real problem I saw was that without a strong entry nage ended up very often not having turned fully. This results in nage's center not matching uke's center and therefore a critical disconnect. I'm particularly sensitive to this one because it was my own main shihonage error for years; it was my last instructor who was finally able to resolve it for me.

I know that it is easy to come into a new situation and equate differences with weaknesses. For many reasons, on the mat I keep my mouth shut. I have a tremendous respect for my new instructor and understand her lineage and her perspective. The dojo culture she has created is quite wonderful and thanks to that all the students are good to train with. The sempai with whom I'm training have much to teach me and are gracious about sharing what they know.

But I truly am an "aiki-mutt" of mixed lineage, with the strengths and weaknesses inherent in the breed!