SEMPAI

Something came up. I was asked to stay the last half hour of the class, me and two high school age students, then close up for the night. Work on their yokomenuchi shihonage. And also on shomenuchi kokyunage (iriminage in an aikikai dojo): they are going backwards when they lead the turn.

They are young, a bit gawky and loose-limbed, with great "can do" attitudes. And I wear a brown belt and have around forty years on them, so they are willing to go into our half hour with open ears and eyes and full of trust.

I start by demonstrating shihonage on each of them, then receive technique from each of them and give some pointers, then sit back and watch them practice together. One can feel he is not taking uke's balance. His form looks good, but he's right. I show them how sensei likes us to do a wheel-like rotation by uke's elbow, rather than the lateral stretch some instructors use. I do that, then swing under into shihonage, and stand there, him on his tiptoes and a huge grin as he realizes I totally have his balance and haven't thrown him. Ain't aikido grand? They practice just the elbow thing for a couple of minutes, then integrate it into the technique.

They are too young to know it firsthand, so I describe the guy on the cover of Grateful Dead album with the ice cream cone plastered to his forehead. They laugh at the idea, and I tell them if they treat uke's hand like that ice cream cone, uke will never throw them backwards. I let my invisible ice cream cone get behind my head and one of the kids obligingly throws me backwards.

Fifteen minutes up. Time to move on. Kokyunage (maybe your iriminage). How to explain in a shorthand things I've explored for years on how to maintain forward energy while receiving, on how to find the irimi in a tenkan? Things I can't do consistently.

I try a combination of somatic exercise and then in-the-technique physics: We stand in a line and I have them do a simple tenshi stepping back with the focus on, yep, stepping back. What does it feel like? Like going backwards... Then I ask them to focus on the back leg and to imagine/feel that hip moving forward and, as that side of the body shifts forward in space, to simply allow the front leg to swing back. I suggest that, to me, it feels very much like I've entered towards the front, even though my formerly front foot has stepped back and I'm "off the line." They try it a few times. I don't know if it makes any sense to them.

I demo the technique on each of them, then have them each do it to me, then watch them. They are going backwards. I demo going backwards and they nod sagely.

We parse it out: Enter, get lined up properly: facing the same direction as uke, in shikaku. Don't know if they know shikaku, the blind spot. Demo how easy it is to imbalance uke a bunch of ways. Nice place to be. Be there before you move on to the next anything.

How to move forward when your whole body tells you you are kicking backwards? Extend the lead hand and, as sensei says, actually point your finger forward. I take it a little further, tell them extend forward. Even though that foot is going to feel like its going back, shift your weight onto the inside (back) foot, and let that become a weighted, forward oriented center while the front foot just kind of gets out of the way.

For the next few minutes, it works. All we can ask. We bow out and it feels like all of our "thank you"s are sincere.