JOURNEY - on Mastering Ukemi (2 page)

“
Yes, Sensei, I’m fine, no problem.” Then he took a fighting stance and prepared to strike again. I stared at him a moment and shook my head in wonder at all that youthful energy. If that had been me, I’d have gone inside and gone to bed for a week.

I turned to the class and began to speak. He immediately dropped to one knee and waited for me to motion that he should return to the attack. Life moves in circles, ever expanding. Once I was a student, now I am the master. Once he was a child, and now a formidable man waited before me. Time passes.

“
Did anyone notice what went wrong with Christian’s ukemi?” I asked the group kneeling before me on the mat. A senior black belt student smiled and said, “He gave up the attack because you didn’t seem to respond to it.”

“
Yes Erik, that’s pretty good.” I pointed at Christian and looked to make sure that he was not suffering any effects from the impact he had taken. His face was bright red, but he seemed fine.

“
Christian didn’t get the reaction he expected from the punch, so he was unprepared to deal with my reaction – which was pretty nominal. When he realized that I was actually entering – attacking – him, he was too late to be able to get out of the way. He got hit pretty hard. Christian, I apologize. I should have had better control. I didn’t mean to hit you. If I had intended to hit you I would have done it harder.”

This got a big laugh; everyone in my school has been hit from time to time.

I continued. “So I want to make sure you understand that I am responsible for my actions and if I intend to strike you in order to teach you something, I will. But to strike you accidentally is something that I am obliged to apologize for. It means I was careless and a warrior is not careless.” I bowed to him and he bowed back.

I really wanted to make a smart remark along with this apology, something funny, because that’s my nature, but when you train people in arts that can kill, you have to keep up some kind of appearances.

It’s good to understand your nature. If you ever learn to keep your mouth shut at inappropriate times that understanding can keep you out of trouble. If you ever manage to learn, that is. I think it was Larry King who once said, “I never learned a damn thing while I was talking…” Even a fish would stay out of trouble if it just kept its mouth shut.

***

I run a martial art school that is called Shoshin Aikido Dojo. It is situated on about 65,000 square feet of land covered in bamboo, orchids, and orange, lemon and cumquat trees. There are many varieties of ginger, impatiens, and other flowering plants, tress, and bushes. There are grape vines that produce big, delicious grapes in the early summer and a garden that grows sweet potato and collards almost year around. We have a nice situation. The dojo sits behind my home and next to a luthiery studio where I build mandolins, violins and guitars from wood harvested from my land in the great northern state of Maine.

The wind was blowing cool, humid air through the open screens of the dojo when class resumed. The aikidoka (aikido students) formed into pairs and began to practice the techniques that I taught. First, one student (uke) would attack
nage
and be pinned or thrown. He would repeat this four times and then it would be repeated as they changed roles. The two parts -
uke
and
nage
- mean different things to different instructors. Oddly, there doesn’t seem to be much consensus about it.

Oh, I don’t mean the details. That’s pretty apparent. One person attacks the other and is either pinned or escapes into a roll. Sometimes players will switch roles during the play, counter a move and attempt a move of their own, but for the most part it is fairly straightforward. No, I’m talking about the ideas behind the ideas. That’s what this story is about. I have been thinking long and hard about the far bigger picture and it seems to me that very few bother to think beyond the point of a break fall.

I watched Christian attack Erik and he seemed a bit distracted, but his falls were clean and precise. He even seemed to be pushing Erik a bit, which is rare and not always the smart thing to do. Erik is my chief instructor among the black belts who train under me. He can be a fierce practitioner and is enormously strong and talented. But tonight he seemed content to let Christian gain some small ground on him and train at Christian’s intensity level. I moved over to where they were throwing each other about. I watched until Christian stepped off the mat to get a drink of water.

“
Erik, is Christian okay?”

“
I guess so,” he replied. “He isn’t hurt if that’s what you mean. But he does seem to be a little puny, if you get my meaning.”

“
Yeah, I do. Tell him I want to see him after class up at the house, if you don’t mind.”

“
Yes, Sensei,” he said, and went back to train some more.

The breeze was coming a bit stronger now and I could smell ozone in the air. The ceramic bells, trees and towering stands of bamboo were singing and there was a steady rattle of debris on the tin roof of the dojo. My dogs were wandering around restlessly outside the screen door and the sky rapidly grew dark. The first drops of rain hit the tin roof as I clapped my hands to halt training. Everyone went over to the side of the mat to sit and watch the next demonstration. I again called Christian to be my uke and motioned for the attack I wanted.

He struck over and over and I demonstrated the technique that I thought would be a logical continuation of the previous one. I wanted to explain how moving the hips to place the nexus, or joining of energies, into the center established the center, but the rain was so strong that I could not make myself heard. I looked at everyone and shrugged, pointed to the ceiling rafters and shrugged again, then motioned for them to train. The sudden, total humidity was like a blanket and at the same time the temperature seemed to fall a bit to compensate. That’s Florida.

***

Celine stuck her head in the door and asked if she could come in. She is a lovely young woman who had started her training with my friend Mustafa Aygun in Turkey. She now trains here with us at Shoshin Dojo.

“
Hi,” I said. “What’s up? Want a coke? A beer?”

“
No. No thank you, sensei. I just wanted to know how I am doing; how I am fitting in. Sometimes I feel that some of the others would rather not train with me.”

I couldn’t really imagine that. I’d been young once and she was very attractive. “Who, specifically, if you don’t mind telling me?”

“
Oh, Sensei, I’d rather not say, please.”

I motioned for her to sit down. She shrugged off her back pack and shook her hair loose. .

“
Well, okay.” I said. “You are fitting in very well. Remember that Mustafa Sensei and I are really very different. I am over six feet tall and heavy. Mustafa is shorter and comparatively thin. We have different aikido. We have different techniques that appeal to us. He is young and strong and fast. I am getting old and am not so athletic anymore. All these things combine to give our aikido different looks.

“
O’Sensei looked much different when he was younger than when he grew older. It’s quite natural. And you have learned from Mustafa. So you are not familiar with the way we train or the things that I teach, but Celine, it’s still aikido. You’re doing very well.”

“
Okay. Thank you. I think I am having trouble getting used to the mat. We have a much softer mat in Turkey where I trained.”

I had noticed that she took slow and tentative
ukemi
. “Well, now that you mention it, your
ukemi
is much softer than I prefer.”

“
Please?”

“
See, a really large part.., or maybe all of a person’s training for a lot of years is not aikido at all. For many years you just train muscle memory. Uke attacks and is very cooperative while nage figures out what he has been taught and learns how to do it. You repeat the motion over and over and finally you learn how to do
kote gaishe
, the wrist twist. Or you study
ikkyo
, a rotating arm bar. But you have to take the time to do it over and over until you can do it anytime. This is training muscle memory. It is not aikido.

“
So in my dojo, here, there are a number of people who really want to train at aikido. They already know the techniques. And I see you attack with a nice, smooth
yokomen
or
shomen
.., uchi... slashing cuts aimed at the head, and they don’t really experience the flow of ki, or the intensity they would like. See what I mean?”

“
So I am not a good
uke
?”

“
You aren’t an
uke
at all, yet. Just because you play the role of an
uke
doesn’t mean you have a clue what you’re doing. You are training muscle memory as well.”

“
Who should I learn from? I want to be a good
uke
.”

“
Erik, Curtis, Christian, Bill, Ron… Chris is very good… but what you have to understand is that it will come naturally. Once you gain the confidence in your rolls and reverses and counters you naturally start attacking with more ki and with more heart. You’ll get it. I promise. Besides, being a great
uke
is a state of mind. A great
uke
can never be overcome.”

There was a knock at the door. I saw Christian waiting outside. Celine stood and gave me one of her thousand watt smiles and waved as she bolted out the door.

“
Sensei, did you want to see me?”

“
Yeah, Christian, come on in. Why don’t you go get us a couple beers.”

“
I’d appreciate a coke if you don’t mind.”

“
That’s fine, but ask my wife first about the coke, I’m sure it’s fine, but she kind of runs the kitchen and I run the bar.”

“
Thanks, Sensei.” He went off to find my wife and get the drinks. I looked at the important computer work I had been doing and closed the lid. I never win, anyway.

When he came back I told him to sit down. “Christian, is everything okay with you?”

He looked down and then around my wife’s office, the front porch, really, but where she likes to work and where her desk and computer and files were kept. He scratched the dog’s head and then tried to find a place to set the coke down, where it wouldn’t leave a ring or get knocked over, but gave up.

“
Christian, I get to know the students here pretty well after five or six years and I can usually tell when something is bothering one of you. If you don’t want to talk about it, I understand. I just want you to know that I’m here for you and that I don’t want a lapse of concentration on the mat to result in an injury.”

“
Sensei, it’s not that I don’t want to talk to you, it’s just not really all that important when you consider what‘s going on in the real world.”

“
Okay,” I said, “But you should know that the real world is what is perceived. Man is the measure of all things, like that. So what you’re feeling might not be much in the whole scheme of things, but if it affects your life, your perceptions of your self, and your happiness, well, I think it should be looked at. Don’t you?”

He looked at the coke can for a few moments and then said, “Linda and I broke up. I don’t really know why. I’ll be graduating from Rollins in two months with an M.B.A. and my workload right now is ridiculous, so I haven’t been spending a lot of time with her. I will be able to, in, like, seven lousy weeks. I’m working and going to graduate school and practicing aikido with you and still try to see her as much as I can, but she broke up with me. I don’t know what to quit doing to find more time for her.”

“
So you feel like you’re to blame?”

“
Yeah. She keeps saying that she never sees me and that we can’t have a relationship that is all one-sided. She needs to feel needed.”

“
Do you need her?” I asked.

“
Of course,” he said.

“
For what?”

“
I love her.”

“
Why?”

“
Why does anyone love anyone?” Christian asked and then shrugged. I smiled and shook my head. Men. We are such jerks, I swear…

“
Christian, I’m not asking why anyone would love anyone else, I’m asking why you love her.” I looked him over for a moment. “I mean she’s good looking and sweet, and she probably does nice things for you… but what about her is special for you?”

“
Sensei, I’m just really tired. I don’t get a lot of rest and this is all too much for me right now.”