GIFTS

Tonight I was offered two wonderful gifts at the dojo: time to work with a beginner and time to work with Sensei. It struck me on the way home that they are two sides of the same coin. Each serves as a reality check of my assumptions, a challenge to pay attention, and an opportunity to stretch my brain.

The beginner is a middle aged man with the stiffness of body and level-headed determination that older newbies often seem to come in with. I've worked with him a little 1:1 on rolling and very basic weapons but this was our first opportunity to pair up for technique. It was shomenuchi ikkyo. Like a lot of dojo, our protocol is that the senior student is nage first. So I figured if he was going to start off as uke, that's the lesson he needed, more than how to do the ikkyo. We worked on the shomen cut, the idea of a slow but committed attack with intent that would slice through me if I didn't move. We worked on the idea of staying together through the middle sections and how to safely make the transition to going to the ground. When it was his turn I reminded him to start with the same shomen blocking exercise we do at the start of every class, and that I'd slowly go into the shape of the ukemi so that if he stayed connected with me he'd get the ikkyo. I knew that theoretically this "leading by ukemi" is supposed to work but in practice I'd never had it actually work very well, so the truth is I didn't have high expectations. Well, either he's a very good student or I've gotten a lot better!

Sensei came into class a little later and had us work on a jo nage, holding the jo in gyakkutai and offering it to uke. It was a very simple maneuver she wanted: using the hand at the center of the jo as the fulcrum, let the grabbed end tip down, then lever the end you are holding down to raise and turn uke and send him back in the direction whence he came. And as with all so many "simple" maneuvers, I insisted on making it more complicated. I couldn't seem to avoid incorporating a slight turn of the jo here and a bit of a spiral there. Very pretty, I suppose....but not at all what was being demonstrated and asked for. I finally figured it so I can practice it at home and make it my own.

Working with juniors makes me very aware of what it is I know, what it is I don't know, and where my weaknesses lie. It reminds me of what the implicit training assumptions of any given dojo are. It makes me think about what I am doing and why I am doing it - and helps me examine what parts are essential and what might not be. Not wanting to overwhelm a person with corrections, it helps me develop a sense of priorities. And it helps me exercise my empathy and compassion.

Working with seniors shows me how much room for growth there is in my aikido. It shines light onto any bad habits of posture or positioning I've fallen into. I'm challenged to push my boundaries a little harder and not take any shortcuts.