Do You Know Where You're Going To?

Everybody who has attempted to learn a new skill has experienced the awkwardness of the beginner phase.  

In Aikido, the very common beginner questions are: "What do I do?  Where do I go?  I don't know what to do."  Regardless of their role during practice -- uke or nage, beginners tend to stand in place with straighten knees.  They lean forward, allowing their body to overstretch in an uncomfortable manner.  Because of how stiff their bodies are, it is very hard for them to follow their partners' movements.  When they finally run out of slack in their bodies, they lose their final bit of balance and fall down in a big, heavy thunk. 

It feels clumsy, awkward and painful.  I know it because I was not a very good beginner.  I have done more than my fair share of just that.  It was a perplexing and humiliating experience.    

At the other extreme, some more experienced students, who are so eager to give their best performance that, when called up to take ukemi, they start speculating what is to come and plan for a response ahead of time.  Sometimes they guess right, but sometimes they guess wrong.  When they are wrong, they often put themselves in an unsafe place.  In addition, because they are responding to some imagined idea in their heads, they give a "response" to something that is not there and end up taking exaggerated big falls.  While I understand the students' motivations and that they are at a disadvantage because ukes often do not know what is coming, I really wish people can just respond to what the nage gives them, like an organic, real conversation.

For a long time, I have been wondering how I can help them so that they can allow their bodies, rather than their brains, to respond naturally and swiftly to their partners' moves.  Is this really something that has to be taught?  How does one learn or teach such a thing?  On the drive home from an evening of having several students doing ukemi in extreme ways, an imagery comes to me . . . 

We all have been a passenger inside a moving vehicle.  Be it a car, train or a boat that we are riding, we don't always know what is to come.  One thing we know, however, is that we want to stay in our seat.  Intuitively, we bobble along when our boat goes over a wave.  When our car goes into a turn, we tilt to go into a turn and then we right our torso back up as we get out of the turn.  We do all that without thinking.  Our life experience and innate instinct kick in naturally to restore our posture.  It feels easy.

Aikido ukemi is just a more stylized expression of the same mechanism as riding a moving vehicle, though with a more defined application.  When riding a car or a boat, we connect with the seat with our butts.  In Aikido, we usually use other body parts, like hands, wrists or shoulders to touch our partners instead.  But if even our butts can do such a fine job of sensing and connecting, I suspect that our other body parts can do just as well, if not better, without engaging too much of our analytic brain.

To conclude:  Aikido students, if you are capable of staying in your seat while riding a rocking boat, you know how to take ukemi already.  If you do not have to stare at your butt while riding a car, you don't need to stare at your hands when you are interacting with your partners.  Oh, and please leave your brain inside your skull.  Not at your hands, and definitely not at your butt.