JOURNEY - on Mastering Ukemi (9 page)

***

This is a lot like doing back rolls during the warm up section in an aikido class. It is practicing to do something with absolutely no thought at all. We practice rolling up and back onto our shoulders and then over all the way, and then standing and rolling forward all the way until we do it without thought. If we needed to think before responding we would get hit, hurt, or broken. An
uke
that has mastered the art is automatic unless he is initiating the response as well as the attack; unless he is controlling the
nage’s
movement as well as his response to the attack. But when an
uke
reaches that point he is a master of aikido as well as
ukemi
and he can do anything he wants with no thought at all. It is by whim, desire, recalcitrance, meanness or fun. It is his choice.

But the root of the growing that becomes mastership is in the repetition of simple exercises. Every class begins at some point with
ukemi
exercise, and advancement in years and rank does not exclude anyone from participating. This is why I was packing and repacking my gear. My wife understood and let me alone although she was becoming less cheery than she usually is as the days wound down closer and closer to our departure date.

“
What are you planning to wear in Paris?” she asked.

“
I intend to stay casual,” I said.

“
That’s not like you. You usually wear a sports coat when you travel.”

“
Yeah, but I notice more and more that most people dress pretty shabby when they travel and even a nice pair of trousers and a decent shirt make you seem dressed up any more. I don’t really need the sports coat in Paris, I won’t be going to any of the fancier places for dinner and why drag it to Nepal?’

“
Okay. Whatever, I just asked,” she said. “But it doesn’t take any extra effort to have it along. And you should really have a black shirt and black trousers if you are in Paris. It’s almost a French law. And you never know when you might want to look nice. You’re going to leave it all in Kathmandu anyway.”

“
I know,” I said. “Honey, I’ll be alright.” She came over and put her arms around me and we stood like that until my dogs came into the room and insisted on getting in the middle of the big hug and then they got all the attention like they believed they should.

***

The airlines’ new security regulations make it both easier and harder to fly than it used to be. It’s harder because of all the lines and waiting and searches of your athletic bags and shoes. And easier because you say goodbye to your loved ones back at the curb or the ticket counter or the main concourse. Once you get over that hurdle, that saying goodbye, then your trip has really begun and everything takes on a different look and feel. You might still be right there in your hometown and be able to look out the window and see a building or a lake or a mountain range that tells you that you are at home, but you’re already gone. The momentum has begun. The rush of travel picks you up and gets the old adrenalin pumping and you feel a little giddy, your heart pounds a little harder and looking back is something you don’t even consider for a moment.

I think that this has to do with commitment. The decision to engage in travel or any endeavor that moves you from one place to another (both literally and figuratively) is not one that is undertaken lightly by most people. We decide to do something or engage in something or undertake something and then plan, envision, anticipate, organize, worry, imagine, fear, long for and finally commit to it. But once the commitment is engaged we tend not to look back. Or at least those who are warriors try not to look back.

Ukemi
is attack and escape. The idea of attacking half-heartedly is dangerous at best and lethal at worst. In aikido we must temper the knowledge of what
nage
is going to do with us (and we usually know what this is) with the need to commit the attack with beginner’s mind. That is, we know we are going to be pinned, thrown or rolled; yet each time we attack we need to do it as if we are going to be victorious in our attack. We need to maintain the notion of suspended disbelief. To do otherwise we would be uncommitted. To be a proper
uke
, we need total commitment; otherwise
nage
cannot feel and experience the flow of ki and movement necessary to train to mastership. We need it for ourselves and therefore it must be reciprocal on the part of all who study aikido. Think about getting on an airplane.

October rose up through the sweltering summer heat like mountains rising above Highway 70 heading west across Colorado. At first you don’t want to believe it, that it could be true, but then driving up across a small mesa you see that first clear sight of a huge fourteener rising high into the western sky and you finally give in and admit that those images aren’t a bank of clouds but the Rocky Mountains. In Florida you finally admit that the hint of coolness on the wind – that first hint of fall – is the harbinger of the end of summer’s heat. October arrives like that in Florida. At first it is just another sweltering hot summer day, but by the time you turn the calendar leaf the nineties are gone and the first good strong cold front has drifted through and you begin to believe that the long hot days are finally over and that reason has come into the world once again.

So finally on the eve of our departure let me at last be completely honest. Let me say the thing that I have to say and that has bothered me like a hangnail for the last 60-odd pages. Okay, here goes.

Christian could not take true
ukemi
if his life depended on it. There, it’s that simple. How a young, athletic guy with all his coordination and skill could be so bad at this thing, I don’t know, but there you are, and this is why I really want to go on this long-ass road trip with him; to see if I can turn him around.

I want to see if I can get through to him, make the scales fall from his eyes, open his heart, show him the way and guide him down the tunnel to the light. Oh, he falls fine. He takes beautiful soundless rolls and his timing is nearly perfect. What he lacks is the ferocity and willingness to kill or die. He just cannot attack as if he really wants to harm you. His attacks are practically feeble and no one can actually feel them in the quiet place in the center. And that is essential to mastering
ukemi
. It is essential to mastering aikido

And it is something almost every 6
^th
dan has to some degree or other. Because they were all, at one point,
ukes
for their own senseis. They have it and understand it. They might deny it, but it is there. And God knows Christian needs some guidance in this. I’m hoping that the two best
ukes
in the dojo, Curtis and Chris, can help him understand what it is that he is missing.

I had a student in Denver years ago; let’s call him Jake. Jake couldn’t take
ukemi
either, the physical act. He was simply the worst, but he had an unusual physique and that contributed to his inability to fall down and get up properly. He was six feet and seven inches tall, weighed two hundred fifty pounds and had wrists like a ten-year-old girl. He was huge yet so delicate it was simply hard to believe. Behind his back some of the students referred to him as Baby Huey because of his size and delicacy. I tended to discourage that kind of thing in order to embrace the notion of unit integrity. Still, seeing this giant with his huge belly and towering height try to grab your wrist with his smooth and narrow fingers was odd to say the least.

Jake stayed with it; I’ll say that for him. I know it was hard for him though and actually would not have been surprised to see him quit. Somehow he had made a decision to change his life and had decided that he was going to do that by studying aikido. He believed a martial art could erase three decades of his mother’s constant attention and devotion to her little man and his “sensitive” ways. Face it, he was a mama’s boy and had finally rejected her attentions and had decided to become a man, by God. The problem was that he simply did not know how to break the chains that held him to earth. He didn’t understand that his pain was a warning signal, not the end in itself and that pain was something that could and sometimes needs to be endured if only to prove to ourselves that we can stand it. He couldn’t look another man in the eye and stand up straight and tall. He slouched, and sometimes, I can’t be sure, but sometimes during training I actually thought I heard him whimper while being pinned.

But he stayed. After a couple years, and failing each test a time or two, he had made it to fourth
kyu
(level). He was changing and we would see the changes every once in a while, but he was fundamentally the same. There was no pride, no fire, no machismo, and for a martial artist – until he assumes the mantle of humility – those things are dearly important. You must believe, make that BELIEVE, that you are the toughest, strongest, quickest, wiliest, smartest, and most ferocious. Why walk into a battle believing that you can or will fail? It just doesn’t make sense. Even in aikido. Can you imagine
O’Sensei
(the founder of aikido) not believing in his invincibility?

But Jake was certain that he was weak and small. His mother had told him often enough and that was his mountain. He had to climb it alone and to this day I believe that Jake was my most successful aikido student. I believe that his training in aikido allowed him to change his life in a more significant way than any other student I have encountered, and I have encountered many whose lives were radically changed and improved as a result of their training.

The day Jake became a man started like winter days, Saturdays, often did in that Denver dojo. We had open mat time. People came and went, worked out, worked on weights, hoped someone would come by to do aikido for a while, and sometimes we would have a sensei on the mat for an impromptu lesson.

Jake was there. So was Ron, a
nidan
. After a while Bruce and Jack came in and dressed out. We were on the mat just doing a free-style kind of relaxed training when Ron threw Jake in what should have been a high fall.

It was a disaster. Jake came apart at the height of the technique and crashed to the mat in pieces. First his leg, then his elbow, and then maybe his back followed by all the rest of him. He screamed. We were all a little embarrassed, but Ron was angry. When he threw you, Ron liked you to crash hard on the mat with a resounding whack as you landed. It was totally misplaced ego. He did not like to look as if he was not completely in control. Ron could hurt you and really not care that you were hurt. In fact, he would get angry that you did not continue attacking him even if you were hurt if he was demonstrating for someone he wanted to impress. Ron was not the best example of an aikido black belt, but that is secondary to the story here. It’s only important to understand what happened next.

Ron yelled at Jake to get up. Jake did. Ron yelled at him to attack again and reluctantly Jake did as he was told. Jake flew high and landed, if anything, worse than previously. Ron yelled at him to get up again. Over and over, I could see Ron getting angrier and angrier, as if Jake’s clumsiness was an affront to his manliness and martial prowess. He threw Jake until he was too tired to continue and then ordered Bruce to throw Jake. He tried to go easier on the big guy, but Ron would not hear of it. He kept growling that we were going to teach this candy-ass how to take a break fall if we had to kill him in the process. I believe that what happened next was not the result of Ron’s intent, but a moment of true enlightenment brought on by Jake’s dedication to his training.

Ron grabbed him away from Bruce and literally lifted him up over his shoulder and threw him to the mat. He started screaming at Jake to get up, but Jake was all done. He was finished. Jake could not rise up one more time. His body screamed at the mean treatment and his ego and pride, what little had developed over the last two years, was now finally completely ripped out of him. He lay there and I was suddenly terrified that he would start to cry.

He was a thirty-year-old man who had a good job, was a fine handsome man with no bad character traits or at least no worse habits than any other man, yet he had never been on a date with a woman. He had never had the courage to walk up to a pretty woman and ask her out for lunch. He had never felt the quiet joy of a woman’s hand slipping into his in a darkened theater. He had never sat at a table in a fine restaurant with wine and crystal and linen between him and a lady he wanted to impress and then once impressed taken her home. Not Jake, not once. He had no courage and no ability to deal with rejection. The mere idea that a woman would turn down his attentions kept them bottled up inside him. He was thirty years of frustration, misery, ineptitude and fear.

So when Ron pulled back his leg and kicked him in the back, I was shocked. I should have then, at that moment, stepped forward and pushed Ron away and dealt with all that would have entailed right then, but Ron suddenly screamed at him to get up and then kicked him again.