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December 13th, 2009

aikido [transentient]

09:15 am I just passed my nidan test yesterday. John Messores once told me that for the Shodan test, they want candidates to be able to basically manifest some decent Aikido through the complete corpus of basic waza. Then, for Nidan, they wants candidates to manifest some pretty good Aikido, again through the basic waza, but this time, under a very high degree of pressure and intensity. Now I always thought that the intensity was going to be because the big tough seniors were going to get up and try to break my nose with their strikes, or try to reverse all my techniques. I had seen that enough times at tests to fear it: full power shomen strikes breaking noses, knife attacks that open deep gashes in foreheads, I even had a friend's ACL give out in the middle of his test because he tried to fight a reversal. But I have mastered most of these problems - I spent the last year asking for seniors to give me that kind of ukemi and I was totally prepared for that. So I am really surprised where the intensity came from - it wasn't fear of injury or fear of totally screwing up that did it, it was this pure and total awkwardness. The testing board called for some specific techniques but for the most part they called a strike and told me free application. I got a sequence of ukes who all had some quirk as to what would and would not work on them. I tried to stay present, give clean entries, take my partner's balance smoothly, and I was pretty good at all that. But the follow through where I was supposed to do some kinda technique was generally pretty awful. There were a couple of times I swear an uke went down because I had simply confused him or her so much there was nothing else for them to do. The testing board put me through my paces for about 11 minutes then I did a three-man randori with empty hands that was AWESOME - until one of my ukes rolled away from me on an arc right into the place I was about to step and I fell on top of him. The board called stop before I got up, though it would have been cool if the ukes had piled on top of me and made me struggle to get up. Then I walked directly off the mat without bowing out, which was bad etiquette but nobody called me on it. Then they called me up to do sword katas 1-12 and jo katas 1-6. With my friend Tim. Who I had always thought was a nidan. He was testing for sandan, but I thought that you had to test before one of the Shihans for that, so I figured he must be testing for nidan, and was therefore more of a peer, which in a terrific example of bad Aikido spirit meant he was a "rival" and I went into competition mode a bit, which is very very lame. The board called for "katas one through five." So we did those, then Tim got the memo that we were really on the normal program, but I hadn't, so I was like "Chuck, did you say kata one through five?" Basically it was up to me and Tim to figure out what we were doing and in what order to do them. And since as I mentioned before I had slipped into this cranky competitive mode with Tim it was hard and I got to feeling pretty foolish. Then when actually doing the kata, all kinds of things went wrong, we ended up kata 6 with Tim actually tapping me in the mouth with the end of his jo (by accident, he wouldn't do that to me on purpose!) which shocked me quite a bit and I ended my test by bowing to Tim, then the board, then the Shomen, which is the backwards order that etiquette requires. I am still processing the whole thing but I am surprised at how strong a lesson of "relax into the flow of events" I learned as opposed to some kind of "be precise and strong in your technique" thing.

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December 10th, 2009

aikido [lrc]

10:52 pm - techniques and choreography vs. principles I returned to the dojo a few months ago. I'm at that fun stage in my training where things are starting to fall into place, it occasionally feels like I didn't totally screw up the technique, and it is easy to see and feel improvement. Tonight was one of those nights where something that I should have learned 37 years ago, or at least any one of the half dozen times it's been mentioned to, or in front of, me in the past three months fell into place and I started taking one of the big annoying thumps out of my rolls. On the flip side, I've been ending classes feeling all warmed up and ready to start training. Unfortunately, I haven't had as many chances to practice after class as I'd like. I usually train Monday, Wednesday and Thursday nights, and for the past couple of months one of those nights has been a special brown and black belt class after the general class, and since I've only been told to train for my 2-kyu exam, I'm not invited to play. I should be more assertive about finding people to practice with after the general class, but unfortunately training after class is the exception, rather than the rule. Over the past 10-12 years I've gone dancing at least once, almost every week, often twice or more, though never more than 7 days in a single week. The classes tend to start at a much easier time for me to get to (8 or 9). Also, the classes are intended to give you materials to work with, but the dancing rather than the class is usually the primary focus of the evening. In contrast, I find it very frustrating that in aikido the culture seems to be to show up, go through an hour and a half of stretches and choreography, then usually get dressed and go home. When belt tests are imminent, there's a bit more extra training, but I'd much rather the culture was different. Another difference that I'm really noticing between aikido and dance, is that in "vernacular dance", such as swing (lindy hop) and blues, there may be basic moves, the equivalent to ikkyu, or kotegaeshi, but for the most part choreography is only done in classes, and on the dance floor it is a lot more, if not entirely improvisational. It seems to me that O sensei showed some small number of basic techniques (maybe a dozen, or so) and a somewhat larger number of blends to get into the techniques, and that was pretty much kept as the definition of aikido. There are a wide variety of principles behind those techniques, and myriads of ways to apply those principles and to express those techniques. But lately, I've been feeling that we've got things backwards, the principles aren't something we should use to help us express the techniques, that those principles really are aikido, and aikido isn't ikkyu, nikyu, sankyu, shionage et. al. but that it should be the goal of every student to apply those principles to each attack and let the technique flow from that, whether it is a blend or throw that has ever been done before, or will ever be done again. It's very possible that this is something that the black belts get to do, and it's just a quirk of my intermittent training that leaves me at 3rd kyu 37 years after I started aikido that has given me the warped perspective that randori and giuwaza, which come close to my improvisational ideal, really are not the rare exceptions that they seem to be. Even so, I still wish the culture encouraged more open and improvisational practice at all levels.

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