Glimmerscape

Aiki Secret of the Matadors

Old matadors, almost by definition, don't really fight with bulls. They do, however, find masterful ways of just barely getting out of the way.

Goto Sensei illustrated the point he was making by producing a small model of a matador and a bull. the bull's horns were just millimeters from the belly of the matador, whose body was positioned just so that the bull would charge harmlessly past him.

We had been practicing a form of the fundamental technique, Ikkyo, a way of neutralizing an attacker by controlling his body through his arm and elbow. The attack was a common one-handed grab of the lapels called muna-dori. The trouble was that we were trying to force the grabbing hand into turning over to release the grip, but as we stood there facing the attacker trying to muscle the hand into the required 180 degree rotation he was always too strong.

Sensei returned to last week's lesson of going to the edge of uke's power, where he is a little off-balance. Then he suggested that after stepping off to capture uke's balance at this edge we rotate the hips to align our bodies like the matador, so that the grabbing hand and arm could just pass through like the horns of the bull. To do this we had to really open up our hips, but once the hips had turned, then uke's arm came through harmlessly and the grabbing hand was easy to manipulate and dislodge from the lapels.

Paul and I tried this on each other, alternately grabbing as hard as we could. But as nage's hips turned and opened up uke's wrist could be drawn into the vacated space and rotated. For uke it was as though what we had grabbed had suddenly disappeared. Sensei showed how we could angle our toes out so that the hips could open even a little more, and this took stress off the knee. That's Sensei on the left demonstrating it with Paul.

He said, "with a punch you all know to get out of the way, but with a grab like this sometimes people forget the principle and don't turn so that uke's force can go harmlessly by. The application may be different but the principle is always the same."

I looked again at the little model of the matador and bull. A student of Goto Sensei's had sent it to him from Mexico, and I had always wondered why such an apparently alien theme as bullfighting would have a place in an Aikido dojo. Now that I realize that the brightly colored figurines signify the art of getting out of the way, I finally understand why they are displayed so prominently.

technorati tag aikido

Koshi Nage, or Dusting the Mat

Dojos are dusty places, and the inevitable repository for most dojo dust is the training mat. For this reason Aikido students usually sweep the mat after each class, but the effect of this sustained effort on the accumulating dust is about the equivalent of trying to sweep back the incoming tide.

Fortunately, in Aikido there is a method for dusting the mat clean when the build-up gets intolerable. Its' called, Koshi-Nage. It's a technique for beating the deep layers of dust out of the mat in a manner similar to the way people beat out rugs in the springtime. The only difference is that in Aikido the implement used to do the beating is a human body.

Koshi-Nage is a hip throw. It provides a downright scary trip for the attacker. Just as you think you've landed a blow, your victim ducks under you, twists her hips around until the small of her back is plastered up against your belly, extends your striking hand in the general direction you had already chosen, and she launches you out over her hips into the blue. Sooner or later a great dust cloud is spanked out of the mat by the force of your body slamming into it.

Rinse and repeat.

Goto Sensei must have thought the mat was extra dusty this morning because near the end of the third hour of instruction he said, "Well, now that you're all warmed up, let's do some Koshi-Nage."

The young bucks love this; they get to smash each other senseless, back and forth, in a "Survivor"-like drama to see who will be left in the game by the end of class. The older students, like myself, are mostly content to just "load-up" our ukes, which means we do the technique to get them up over our hips, but don't pull the launch trigger. This gentler method is partly because we've already done our quota of dust-liberating crash landings on the mat, and partly because not everyone knows how to smash you into the mat safely when it's your turn to fly.

I paired off with Jeff and Steve, two younger Black Belts who were clearly enthusiastic about the idea of completing the throw, which they did reciprocally with great relish. Splat! went Jeff; Wham! went Steve. Sure enough big clouds of dust swirled up into the muted columns of sunshine radiating down from the skylights. We all calmed down when it got to be my turn, but loading up is really the most fun anyway. It prolongs the period of time uke gets to think about what's coming next.

Five years or so ago, back in the old Rohnert Park dojo with Tatoian Sensei, I was less circumspect about throwing and being thrown Koshi-Nage.

On a Monday night back then one student in particular, Lance, a father of young children, said, "Just throw me as hard as you can; I have to learn how to take this fall." We were training with another student, David, who had a bad back and could only be loaded up. But when Lance attacked I got to exult in just letting him fly, smashing him time after time into the mat with the closest thing to blood lust that Aikido will allow. Lance followed my hardest throws with the irritating immediate response of jumping back to his feet, like one of those round-bottomed, weighted blow up dolls.

Later Lance had his shot at me at an ukemi seminar, during which the instructor told him to do a particularly nasty Judo throw on me. The instructor had asked if I wanted the big, soft mat brought out for me, but, thinking of the pasting Lance had taken from me without the tiniest whimper that night in Rohnert Park, I gulped and said, "no thanks." Lance smiled and proceeded to do some serious mat-cleaning.

Today after class, we all got out the brooms to chase away what remained of last year's dust, but most of it was already airborne and flowing out the door in the soft cross breeze through the dojo. However, soon enough it will be time for Spring cleaning, and another few sadistic rounds of Koshi-Nage.

[Photo of Saito Sensei by Michael Braden]

Technorati tag aikido

Learn One Thing a Day

Tatoian Sensei always encourages students to keep a training journal. He claims that he benefited greatly from keeping one himself during the time he was training at Iwama Dojo.

He tells a story about what Saito Sensei would say to students who felt overwhelmed with confusion over the infinite number of important things to pay attention to during training. They would focus on extending ki and then the hanmi would go wrong, or they would turn the hips but then lose uke's center.

Training Aikido is like an endless game of "Whack-a-Mole," you fix one thing and five others go haywire while you aren't looking.

Saito Sensei would tell students, "If you come to class and get just one thing that will help you, just one thing out of the whole class, then go home and write it down so that you don't lose it. If you end up with nothing at the end of class, well, then you have nothing."

"But if you keep one thing you learned, and then come to class the next day and get one more thing, then you have two things, and at the end of a month you have 30 things. All those one-things start to add up. On the other hand, after 30 days of getting nothing, well, you still have nothing."

That's why I started taking notes after class. All my notes are folded up on separate sheets of different size paper in one of the side pockets of my gi bag. When I write a new one I stuff it in there with all the others.

Sometimes I learn something very cool, write it down, and then I find a note about that same exact wonderful breakthrough already there in the pile, in my own handwriting. Maybe Saito Sensei also had something to say about being organized.

Technorati tag:aikido

The Exploding Gi Technique

On Tuesday morning everyone watched with interest as Tatoian Sensei illustrated Ganseki Otoshi on Jason. Fortunately for Jason, Sensei paused before the part where uke goes like a piledriver upside down over nage's head straight into the mat.

But just as diverting as watching Jason begin the curving backwards journey to becoming four inches shorter was the fact that at the top of the arc, where Sensei paused, Jason's gi jacket seemed to just explode out of his hakama. As he got back to his feet he tried to push the expanses of cotton fabric back into his belt, but most of it, including the little side ties that also seemed to have come undone, still just flapped out over his hakama in a state of maximum disorganization.

At the time I didn't think more about it, and we'd gone back to training, but today I paired off with Jason for a few rounds of katate-dori irimi-nage, and the first time I threw him there it went again, the exploding gi. The whole left side of his gi just popped out from under his hakama and wouldn't stay in no matter how he tried tucking it back. That's a picture of Jason after class looking pretty much the way he did for the whole hour.

I wondered how I was doing this trick of making someone's clothes explode off their bodies, and why I wasn't able to do it back in 10th grade.

The whole thing reminded me of the time that Eric and Rocky, the Brazilian woman I've mentioned here, spent an hour of shiho-nage progressively ripping my gi jacket into shreds. Once there was a little hole they had become like hyenias snarling and snapping at the shredding cloth, ripping it out in big long panels as though it was the very flesh off my back.

Rocky, the woman who when Sensei told her to hit me had knocked my glasses practically the length of the dojo, was herself a now-and-then victim of the exploding gi technique. In the cold mornings she would often wear cute little socks that would just go flying off her feet if she landed on the mat a certain way. At other times her gi jacket and belt would bust loose, though due to her many layers of undergarments there was never any indiscretion.

I can't wait for the day that Rocky shows up again, if for no other reason than to watch her and Jason pair off for a little shiho-nage.

The bokken will answer all your questions

45 minutes into class I realized that Tatoian Sensei was going to let us go another whole class doing nothing but Tai No Henko and Morote Dori Kokyu-Ho.

Two new students, Josh and Matt, showed up to join me, Jor, Jason, and Eric. Josh and Matt are Kempo students who train in the same building as we do, and they decided to try out a morning of Aikido.

During Tai No Henko practice Sensei corrected all of us for dragging uke around. He demonstrated a few times showing how to extend uke in the same direction he is already committed to. He told us we weren't bringing our hips around enough at the end, and he asked, "you wouldn't finish a sword strike like that, would you?" I had to agree that we wouldn't, and worked on getting my hips cocked at the finish like he showed. The photo above shows Tatoian Sensei extending Jor in Tai No Henko, while Josh looks on.

When we got into Morote Dori Kokyu-Ho Sensei walked by as I was practicing on Eric. He made a face, which is a signal that you've done something stupid. He pointed at my feet, all spread apart, and mimiced my body position: all spread out and bent over. "What if someone was coming at you from behind, or some other direction? You'd be all spread apart and couldn't move fast enough to deal with them." Then he showed the proper finishing position, with feet relatively close in hanmi and hands extended, just as though he had finished a sword strike. He gave a quizzical look that he always gives when he expects you to figure something out.

"From this body position I can move anywhere," he said, and then he continued seamlessly from the finish of the Kokyu-Ho throw into a few strikes of Happo Giri, using his tegatana as a sword. The feet came into close hanmi and his arms extended. This was the same position he'd gone to such pains to show us with Tai No Henko.

A pattern was emerging.

A few minutes later Sensei came up and said, "When I left Japan for the US in 1977 Saito Sensei gave me a bokken" (Sensei gestured toward me to illustrate the point, as though handing me a bokken). Saito Sensei said, 'I won't be around for ever, and I may never see you again, so take this. The bokken will answer all your questions'." There was a moment of stillness as Eric, Matt, and I stood watching Sensei walk away toward the others training.

A Tale of Two Spirals

A lightbulb suddenly came on as Goto Sensei said something he must have said a million times. "You are better off making uke light by taking him to the edge of his power and executing the technique from there."

He demonstrated with static Ryote Dori Shiho-Nage Omote. He stepped off 90 degrees and captured uke's balance extending right into his center. But instead of muscling the technique by moving in close to uke, he brought his hip through and raised to extend the contact point with uke's wrist so that uke was stretched out somewhat, from there he turned, giving uke's body the room it needed to twist backward naturally, and then he converged back onto uke's center to make the throw.

As Sensei showed this I remembered how he would always tell us to connect with uke and then find the edge of uke's power by extending. This was always very clear with Kosa Dori Ikkyo, where if you struck back toward uke's center before he or she became light there was always trouble.

His demonstration produced the image of two spirals, first one circling out from uke's center to the edge of power, and then another one converging back into uke's center for the throw.

After class Sensei explained how this idea of two spirals, one beginning at uke's center to take his balance, and then one returning from the perimeter where he is light, spiraling back on his center for the throw, marked an important difference between static or Kihon training and flowing or Ki No Nagare training.

He said, "Kihon training is more fundamental and complete, in a sense, than flowing technique. This is because with a static attacker, one who has already grabbed you from a strong position, you first have to destabilize them and take their balance. You do this by extending directly into their center and moving their body to take their balance. Once you have their balance you can extend them to the edge of their power where they are light to perform the technique, then finally cut back into their center" as the technique unfolds.

I remembered how Saito Sensei would stress that students should primarily do Katai Keiko (static training) until they approached 3rd Dan, at which point they have established good enough fundamentals to begin serious training in flowing techniques. I always thought this was a long time to wait to begin earnest training in a more flowing Aikido style.

But Goto Sensei continued, "it is more fundamental to be able to first uproot a solid opponent and then apply a technique, than it is to just be able to perform when uke is already in motion." To train only in motion requires only the converging spiral, which describes the progress of the technique being applied ending with the throw.

Certainly, Sensei agreed, there are other very complicated arrangements being made by nage to blend with the moving attack, leading the mind and manipulating the balance just so that the connection with uke is sustained through to the point of the throw. But this spiral begins closer to the perimeter of uke's moving power and then cuts back to his center for the throw.

Kihon training: two spirals; Ki No Nagare training: one spiral.

The symmetry of these spirals seemed beautiful and balanced as I left the dojo, a kind of elegant interplay between Yang and Yin, a sort of somatic sine wave theory of training in which emphasis is placed first on the uprooting of uke's strength and then on the inexorable deployment of Kokyu Power.

Swordplay: like waves breaking

After dusting off the ken paired awase Ki Musubi No Tachi just last Sunday, I was delighted when Rex, the Sempai leading weapons class today, demonstrated it for us to practice. In an additional stroke of synchronicity, the attacker's footwork he showed was the same as the main one we practiced last week up in Rohnert Park.

As we began I remembered how Saito Sensei would sometimes go fluidly through the defender's thrust, cover and strike, and final capture up the attacker's center, moving with the energy of a wave propagating between two sides of a large tank. After the initial opening strike he always moved precisely as though into the trough created by the attacker raising to strike, striking, then raising again to strike. It really was like watching a wave repeatedly crest and then break.

The final zanshin of this practice completes the metaphor, as then the waves have all dissipated and the water just spreads out into the ground in all directions.

I got into this wave-like action by accident with Paul, a bright, focused student who knew the form pretty well. After going slow a few times I noticed that I was lagging behind his pace, which wasn't good; the defender (me) should be always matching and covering the energy and pace of the attacker. Paul was going a little faster, so I went with him. As we got into a rhythm I realized that I could mimic the rising and falling of the wave, meeting him always, and as defender, just sloshing a little over the top as though driven by some ocean wind. Alternately, as attacker, I found that my wave rose against a formidable wall of water, his defender's wave, and peaked, then dropped back the other way like backwash off a steep beach. Always, when it was working, there was a rising and falling rhythm to the paired movement, a rhythm created by the complimentary dynamics of both sides moving as one.

Achieving and sustaining just a glimmer of this rhythm, that I had seen Saito Sensei and his senior students demonstrate, was tremendously gratifying. I felt that for a moment I had reached farther into the practice than I'd gone before, and brought something out that I could remember and do again.

Perhaps fluid moments like these are made possible by the years of maddeningly slow practice that describes most of our training. Again I remember the words of Saito Sensei, "If you want to go fast, then first go slow."

In the trenches with Morote-Dori Kokyu-Ho

There was a story circulating around my first dojo that Morote-Dori Kokyu-Ho is a 20-year technique. What this means, as the story goes, is that it takes 20 years of practice to master it. The joke that tagged along with this story was that, no matter how long you've been practicing, it will take you 20 more years to get it right. Once someone quipped that if St. Peter tells him that all he has to do to get into Heaven is Morote-Dori Kokyu-Ho, thats it; he's going to hell.

Goto Sensei's training theme this week is Morote-Dori, so we began the noon class with good old Morote-Dori Kokyu-Ho. Sensei saw that we were struggling, and he stopped us after a few rounds. He asked me to grab his arm with both hands. I did so, being careful to extend him as though holding a sword; otherwise he'd just reach over and punch me in the face. He showed how uke was strong if you tried move at any angle but precisely 90 degrees to his two arms. However, if you entered, sunk, and added kokyu so that your grabbed arm rotated ukes grasp at precisely 90 degrees from his angle of attack, you could rotate him easily around this axis, and it was no trouble, regardless of how hard the grab, to enter so that uke's balance evaporated.

I thought about an experiment that I saw Saito Sensei do with a tanto. He would have uke extend the tanto with both hands, just like the morote-dori grab. He would then show how strong uke was if you tried to pull, push, or uproot him straight on. Then, with just his first finger and thumb he would grasp the tip of the tanto and rotate it along an axis precisely 90 degrees to the angle of both of uke's arms, like a propeller would rotate. This would immediately twist uke into a position from which he could easily be thrown. I wondered if this could be one of those open secrets, to which we've been shown the key innumerable times, only to miss its simplicity and elegance in our quest to make things complicated and difficult.

Goto Sensei's demonstration of this simple tactic couldn't have been clearer, but it may still take 20 years for it to sink in.

Blending with the sword; speaking with the sword

The thermometer in my car read 41 degrees as I pulled into the parking lot for Sunday morning class. Craig and Carmen were the only souls in addition to me either brave or foolish enough to come out to train in the early morning cold.

With bokken we cycled through the ken awase we practiced last week, numbers 1 and 7, and we added a three-part awase base on number one, that Goto Sensei calls Cho-Chiku-Bai. It involves the reception of three shomen strikes, first with a shomen-uchi cut to one side, then with a yokomen-uchi cut to the other side, and finally with a thrust directly into the attacker's center as he raises for the final strike.

We finished out the class practicing two different versions of Saito Sensei's sword partner practice, Ki Musubi No Tachi, which translates roughly as "knotting ki with sword." It is a blending practice in which the receiver (Uke Tachi) moves in perfect synchronization with the attacker (Uchi Tachi) so as to always cover his attack and maintain the advantage, moving in progressively toward the attacker's center. Sometimes people refer to this form as Kumi Tachi #6, and Saito Sensei himself called it this when he would demonstrate it with the kumi tachi practices. But I think he intended it really to be a separate form, and not part of the 5 kumi tachi.

After class, Craig mentioned to me that he thought my left-side hanmi looked off, as though my hips weren't turned enough and that my back foot seemed to be pointing more to the rear, producing an awkward, unconfortable looking stance. I listened to his criticism and observations especially closely because I'd been struggling with my hanmi recently, and have been at a loss to understand how I was landing myself into such consistently poor foot positions.

I also appreciated the way in which Craig delivered his assessment. He was direct and clear, without a lot of disclaimers and unilateral attempts to take care of me whether I needed it or not. His direct approach was like a sword cut, clean and swift, and to the heart of the problem.

The Quality of the Sticky Jo

Since we're winding up our study of the 31 kumi-jo, paired form in the early Saturday class, it was time today to focus more on building a certain "quality" into the form, rather than just doing gross form correction.

Everyone's pretty much got the basic moves, but we still struggle with moving together as one mind, and with smashing the sticks together instead of blending. And, everyone still wants to go fast. Or if we start slow, we speed up for parts of the form and then slow down again.

Today's practice emphasized the quality of staying connected to your partner through the sticks. This required a kind of sticky hands practice, but done with the sticks and not with the hands. If you were supposed to cover your partner's jo with yours, then you did it softly and kept the two sticks in contact as long as possible. The sound of the two jos doing this is a soft, sliding muted click; not at all like the sharp ringing report the jos make in spirited awase practice.

The idea was to fill every micro-second with awareness and focus, moving from one state of connectedness to another without any seam or discontinuity. At one point in this practice the dojo was utterly quiet except for the muted contact of the jos and the sound of slow, measured breathing. As the students deepened their practice into finding this quality it seemed as though the dojo space itself had become a harmonic amplifier, set to vibrating by the measured practice and then feeding back into the tiny singularity of the arising moment, intensifying the blend. Everyone moved slowly, as though in a huge vat of honey.

Once class was over, the spell dissipated. But lingering for me through the day was the quality of individuals moving exquisitely together, with the grace and ease of so many pebbles rolling up and back upon a sandy beach in the shallow, gentle lapping of the sea.