AikiWeb: The Source for Aikido Information AikiWeb's principal purpose is to serve the Internet community as a repository and dissemination point for aikido information.
Hello and thank you for visiting AikiWeb, the
world's most active online Aikido community! This site is home to
over 22,000 aikido practitioners from around the world and covers a
wide range of aikido topics including techniques, philosophy, history,
humor, beginner issues, the marketplace, and more.
If you wish to join in the discussions or use the other advanced
features available, you will need to register first. Registration is
absolutely free and takes only a few minutes to complete so sign up today!
Sensei talked about flow, and energy, and how one of the keys to Aikido was to make your energy bigger, and invite the Uke or attacker into your energy, and then guide them in the direction that you wanted your energy to go. I tried on the mat to get my energy bigger, can't say that I accomplished it, but it was not for lack of trying. Kate Dori Ikkyo in motion, trying to flow.
We also worked on getting rid of the piling up of the energy that happens in techniques…. Occasionally I could feel that I had less of a hump in energy, and maybe once I even got rid of the hump altogether, for one throw….Then it was back, and I could not figure out how I had managed to alleviate it.
The parts of this that are body related are the hardest part for me. I can understand what is happening on some level in my mind, but my body does not seem to have that connection (yet?). Especially flow. Occasionally I feel it, but it is rare, and the feeling is good, but wholly alien. I have spent 35 years powering through things, and not flowing with them…. (Hmmm There are some non physical manifestations to this too, sitting here, I realize that I need to take this lesson out of the purely physical, into the way that I look at and solve problems in my life.)
We did two stepping while thinking of one of our hands as Yin and the Other as Yang, feeling what that energy would be like, how it would apply to the world, and to inviting Uke into our energy. It was neat, I could feel it occasionally, the one hand being the receiver of the energy that the other hand was generating, and both of them being in the same system.
At the end of class I tried to help a friend with an emotional issue they were having. It was a dismal failure…As those things so often are. However in doing it, I realized that I was sharing a story that I had of pain and betrayal. I left the dojo thinking of that story and the emotions that it brought up for me. The thing that I realized, is that I should have asked my friend a question if they would have done the same thing again with the knowledge that they had at the time. I realized that I had never asked myself that very same question. Not knowing anything more than you knew then, no wisdom gained from the experience, no knowing where the relationship was going to go, noting but what you had then, would you do the same thing over. The answer to this question almost has to be yes. So what I learned from trying to help this friend, was that I did not even have to forgive myself for the portion of the events I was recalling which I had considered "my fault". This put the whole event in a different light. I could release myself from the pain that I was carrying around being upset at my part of the relationship…I did the best that I could. That is all that I can ask of anyone else or of myself. So strangely like the Yin and Yang of the two step that we were doing, in trying to give, I received more than I could have hoped for.
03-06-2004 08:54 PM 