Aikido Metaphor

During a recent Aikido class, I looked around the room and noticed that I’m wearing clothing that’s older than most of the people on the mat. It was a mixed teens/adult class, beginner level and so when the instructor demonstrated the first technique as a Katetori Koshinage, I was quite amused amid the wide-eyed stares of most of my fellow students. By way of explanation, the attacker (uke – the person who ends up receiving the technique) grabs the attackee (nage- the person who ends up executing the technique) by the wrist, pushes her hip/butt into the uke’s midsection so as to drape him over her back and tosses him onto the ground (not gently either). One does not as a rule do a whole lot of koshinage in a beginners class – (koshinage essentially meaning your ass is dangling from a perch atop nages hips and then you as uke get pulled into a roll off of nage’s back which is pretty high up from an ‘oh shit, I’ve got to fall from here’ perspective) because most beginners don’t know how to fall from that kind of a height. In Aikido, it’s essential to learn surrender because if you struggle against gravity you can get pretty badly hurt, where as if you work with the known outcome of gravity (i.e. ass meet mat, mat meet ass) you can generally stay safe. It’s not natural for human beings to surrender to the sensation of falling or having their balance taken from them, you are fighting many atavistic tendencies to do it and to do it safely surrender is key, as is tenacity. Aikido provides many opportunities to practice surrender, being completely in the moment, and taking what life dishes out. The technique we ultimately ended up practicing for the night is called nikkyo, (second technique) with nikkyo nage’s wrist ends up bent in upon itself and the way to maintain balance and connection as well as endure less pain is to turn into the source of the pain and support your center from there. Again, like so many other of life’s lessons this was an Ah-ha moment for me. Avoiding pain doesn’t rid us of it, it just allows it to crop up in more places in life. To face pain head-on and be with it in the moment allows us to maintain some control in the midst of surrender.