Aikido - Caught Up too!

11/08/08
Eighth Aikido lesson with Pat. We began the lesson with tegatana, and we went a little faster than normal. I found that poor balance showed up a lot more when moving faster. Not sure if my balance actually WAS worse, or if my poor balance was being magnified by the speed. Probably both. Pat said to imagine a line pulling me up straight from the top of my head, as well as a line pulling straight down from the center.

Next we worked on the releases, 1-8. I was having trouble with releases 5 – 8 (I haven't practiced 5-8 in over a year); it felt like I was forcing the technique, and even then it wasn’t working. Yet again, the idea of continuously walking with uke showed up. Pat demonstrated how the techniques came more naturally as a result of flowing and blending with uke. It’s an amazing thing to feel working, and another thing that wasn't really explained to me that way in my previous dojo.

Pat then introduced Chain #3. It begins with release 3, and has a near and far kotogaeshi and a near and far wakigtame. Pat showed me an exercise with kotogaeshi – if you take up the slack in uke’s arm (with his hand held in kotogaeshi), then bump him, and just gently and subtly “ratchet” the slack out of his arm when he tries to get up, he eventually collapses into a nice kotogaeshi throw. Good, good stuff.

We then talked about what happens when uke really clamps down hard (in release 1, for instance), and how you can use uke’s strength to not only escape, but to really put him in a bind. THAT was the really amazing part. It’s based on the way a person can’t be strong in 2 directions at once. You feed uke information, and use his response to effect what you’re trying to do to him. It works like magic, but it will be a WHILE (centuries?) before I’m able to pull this off automatically.