Openness

Hiding one whole self from
another whole self encumbers
full meeting. It is difficult enough for
naked bodies to meet wholly.
When two selves are clothes in
pretense, they cannot come together;
there is separateness in their
togetherness, not togetherness in
their separateness.

- Ray Grigg -

Opening up to possibilities

One of the hardest things to do is to open up in the face of an attack. It feels counter-intutitive. All of one's defensive mechanisms scream in protest at the impending doom. And yet that is often what aikido demands of one - to step into the space before that attack is complete, to face it and to work with it.
Doing so requires that you open yourself to the possibility of being hit, of being hurt. And therein lies the difficulty. None of us wants to be hurt.

And so often, as the one leading the class I have demonstrated how to execute ikkyo against shomen-uchi, how to enter directly under the attack, how to lead it upwards in a spiral so as not to clash.. And over and over I have exhorted students to open up, to enter fully with the body (the true meaning of irimi)...
But recently I realised that in order to open up there has to be a willingness to open up; that the hard work lay in the moment before the opening up. The challenge is not so much in executing the technique, but in the moment before - within ourselves.

The difficulty with holding back, of not engaging fully is precisely that - you do not engage fully. Very often I see students' posture shift completely as they over-extend their arms while retracting their centre in an instinctively defensive mechanism. So too in life when we fail to open up, we fail to engage fully - and we rob both ourselves and the other person of the full benefit and beauty of that engagement.

So next time on the mat, become mindful of the quality and nature of your interaction with uke and check that you are in fact fully present. And in your day-to-day dealings with people, explore what it feels like to open up - and the depth and quality that brings to your engagements and your relationships.

See you on the tatami soon....

Training with Joy....

For a while now I have had a gnawing feeling that something's been missing from our practice - or to be more precise, from my own practice.

And it struck me that perhaps over the last little while the lightness has not been there. O-Sensei exhorted us to train with Joy; one's aikido practice should be an en-lightening experience.

This last while has been stressful, filled with aggravation and even aggression. And filled with human suffering. And in the midst of all that, it was easy to forget the good in life, the fundamental goodness of all human beings that O-Sensei often spoke of; the Universal Love that is at the heart of aikido - and should be present in our practice.

In our daily lives, beset as we are by work pressures, exams & deadlines, relationship woes or other challenges, we often close ourselves down, reducing our focus to the immediate problems. In focusing that narrowly though, often our whole experience becomes reduced to that issue.
Similarly on the tatami, we focus on the attack, ready ourselves for our response - and get drawn to the fist or strike or get locked in the grip - often anticipating the attack before it is formed.

And unsurprisingly, we find ourselves stuck, or blocked - or worse.

The challenge is to find the lightness, the joy in the movement, the ease that comes from the point of stillness at the centre of our being, rather than the dis-ease that comes when life threatens to overwhelm us.

Our internal state does and will influence our external practice. By the same token though, our external practice can and should serve to shift our internal state. Forcing it though does not help. Focusing so hard that you frustrate yourself is not the answer.
The challenge is to relax into the movement, to reach out to your partner, to be grateful for the opportunity to learn that is being presented - especially to learn about yourself, and the joy that burns within.

So here's looking forward to taking up our practice again - with a smile on our face - that comes from deep within.....

See you on the tatami soon