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While I have from time to time trained at Ki Society or similar dojos, this Wednesday evening I was really exposed for the first time to "the Tohei hop" and to the effect it can have when done in conjunction with good ma'ai: we were practicing katatori ikkyo, focusing on the initial balance-taking rather than the going to the mat and pinning. The way it is most often taught at Ukiah Aikido, the attacker's grab does not actually connect with nage's shoulder. Nage sees the attack coming and moves back off the line. Very dynamic (and when done by junior students, an invitation to lousy attacks, but that's another story....)
Since with my knees, hopping is competely out of the question, Gayle Fillman Sensei and I had me focusing instead on the intent behind it: essentially, drawing the attack in, blending the attacking arm downward and opening the hip to take uke's balance - a perfect example of Chuck Clark's "hips are effectors, arms are connectors." The common error, of course, being to grab the attacking arm so it is stopped, then raise it and turn it to "make ikkyo happen."
The "oh wow!" moment happened when I was partnered with a senior student. I attacked her and she incorporated the hop into her movement back and off the line. And it had the most uncanny effect of creating a palpable disturbance that drew me in to her, almost falling towards her. She actually had no real need to go into ikkyo at that point. I was so imbalanced and coming forward that any irimi movement on her part would have had me on the ground in a "no touch throw" backfall, or she could have easily projected me into a forward roll.
It was not the surprise factor that made a difference. She was able to replicate it several times (while the hops of junior students had no such affect on me). In its practical application I would have to classify it as a potentially very powerful form of atemi.
Go figure!
One of the most highly ranked and respected teachers of aikido in North America is a modest and mild-appearing middle aged woman named Mary Heiny.
Her background and how she went to Japan to train is well-known in aikido circles. Her teaching reputation is spotless.
Now she is in desperate need of a hip replacement and the aikido community is asking for help in raising the money needed for this.
Don't even get me started on "single payer universal healthcare".....
Please go to FRIENDS OF MARY HEINY for the full story and how to give.
I am donating a weapons bag and a print of a painting to aikiweb's upcoming raffle to help raise funds for Heiny Sensei.
It was 40 degrees out when I got up this morning, and the car, parked in the shade, needed to have its windshield scraped of ice. Last week's rains, which helped turn the rolling hills a near-psychedelic emerald green, left a beautiful coating of snow on the higher peaks over towards Lake Pillsbury.
And yet...here in the valley, the trees are in full bloom. The wild mustard and wild radish blossoms foretell the native wildflowers of April. Little black-faced lambs follow their mothers, and baby goats kick up their heels.
This afternoon the sun is shining and it must be over 70. This afternoon for the first time since we moved I got the urge to wield a sword. After finishing the daily quota of St John's wort pulled out runner by stubborn runner, I put on the homemade black gi top, wrap an obi around my waist, unfold my hak and put it on, and step out the back door into my very own open air dojo.
It has been months since I practiced the standing kata of Suio Ryu. It has been months longer since anyone guided me through them, so it is up to me to recall them as best I can, reinforced by notes and a video. I only ever really got the step-by-step on the first 9.
But I breathe and center and begin. A run-through to start, each of the nine once, to see if the gross movements were there. Then a long time doing repetitions of #1; I suspect it is the universal #1 sword kata: the draw to a lateral cut.
Most of me is focused on the totality of the kata. A small part is auto-correcting a second behind. I try to allow myself periods without auto-correcting, just to move and enjoy. But I'm also pleased that, so many months after, I am sensitive to so many mistakes. Next time I do the kata a tad slower to isolate the movement, the posture, the angle, the energy.
Everything about it feels wonderful.
Spring is in the air.
A wise friend, when I was in the middle of moving and noted that I could neither train nor paint nor sew, commented that "the budo is inside" me now, so that when life interferes for periods of time, it is not so important.
Confession: It is sometimes hard to discern what is mature acceptance of that reality and what is laziness about training. I have trained a couple of times now and this week not at all because of a (definitely non-contagious) laryngitis combined with the fatigue of a brand new day job. It felt like a self-indulgent decision (per the little voice, not stilled by the throat disorder, murmuring "but you'll feel BETTER if you train tonight!") until I got home and pretty much collapsed in a chair. So mature prudence is what I shall call it.
It strikes me that I have never sat in this kind of self-judgment over not painting or sewing for a week or a month. There was one extended period of not painting (about 1975 through 1987) during which I always knew "someday when the time is right I'll paint again," accepted it and went on. In recent years, I've tended to alternate periods of sewing with periods of painting due to the need to earn a living doing a third activity. I might get cranky or weird from not having a creative outlet. But it never seemed like a moral or character based decision.
I wonder why martial arts training has felt different?
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!
Three things noted in the past week:
A small three-legged dog happily bouncing down the street of a small town, tail held high and wagging...
I paid dojo dues at Ukiah Aikido, officially going from intermittent visitor to member...
I read THIS ARTICLE in the New York Times...
All three got me thinking about disability and the ways we frame it or the boxes we put ourselves in.
It has been over two years since I decided that training in aikido was too high risk for me, given not only the highly arthritic and painful knee, but also a history of having spontaneously ruptured a couple of hand tendons. In truth, inside I knew that with certain parameters it could be safe for me to train. But I did not feel that I was in a place or with people that would be consistently conducive to respecting those parameters. Rather than place lots of conditionals in the explanations, it was easier to simply place myself in a box that read "too disabled to train" and walk away from aikido.
I also knew that there was a very good chance that Ukiah Aikido would be one of the dojos that would be safe for me to train in. Indeed nobody looks askance when I sit out exercises that move bodies in ways mine won't, or are done too fast for me to keep up, or techniques that will wear out my knee or wrists too quickly. Folks seem to be happy to have me do what I can in any given class.
So last Wednesday night, having protected my body well during warmups, as the class progressed slowly from static ki testing to ki testing during specific parts of a technique to incorporating that work into the full moving shomenuchi iriminage (called kokyunage in this dojo) I found myself willing and able to take simple slapping backfalls. Darn if it didn't feel good! Felt good during, after, and the day after too.
So my capabilities haven't changed, but circumstances have, and I can take myself out of that box labeled "too disabled to train."
The thing about the three-legged dog is, well, dogs don't know they are disabled. They know if they are in pain or if they feel. But the fact that he runs funny doesn't really seem to influence how he feels about himself in the world, be it in relation to other dogs or people or what-have-you. He knows it is a sunny day and it smells interesting and he is moving freely down the street.
The young man in the Times article, Dustin Carter, being a human being, certainly has the self-awareness to fall into lots of labels and boxes. But apparently he never did.
I think it is time for me to break out my Brooklyn accent to match my Brooklyn attitude, and say "Dis-ability? Hey, I got dis ability and I got dat ability and I got your dis-ability right here!"
