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Remember the last splinter that you had in your hand. Maybe one that was not easy to get out, or one that you had for a while before you noticed it. It probably came to your attention when your hand brushed across something, you felt a slight snag, and the splinter pushing painfully deeper into your hand.
Recently I took a part time job. I was talked into it by a wise and kind gentleman, he asked for help and told me the needs of some others where he worked. The wise gentleman is great to work for, and has a heart even bigger than I thought when I first met him. Truly one of the best people that I have ever worked with. Some of the other people that work with me though are less wise, less kind, and have a lot less social skills. One of them energetically jumped me on Friday. I listened to what he had to say, apologized for causing him an issue, and then blew a fuse in private. I was so mad I could spit nails, and I couldn't even understand why I was mad.
Today on the mat, I asked sensei to help me with my nikyo pin. Something has been wrong with it for a while, something that I have tried to get my sempies to help me with to no avail. So sensei said; "What's wrong with it." I said "It hurts peoples elbows. I am trying not to put any pressure on their elbows, only hold their shoulders on the mat." "AHHHH" says Sensei "We don't want their shoulders on the mat. We want to pin them so they can't move." A long lesson about body physics, and what needs to be done instead of what I am doing ensues, until sensei says "Otherwise you are going to make them feel like they are cornered, trapped, and hurting at the same time, then they are going to be really pissed off and fight back really hard….."
WOWOWOWOWOW My brain starts playing the movie of the Friday incident!!! I realize that the person that energetically jumped me did it while he had physically cornered me!!! I pop a fuse, and have to stop training to pull the splinter out of my soul…. I think that the original splinter had been there for a while, the person at work was only my snagging it on something, the latest painful reminder that the festering splinter had been there for a while. Not understanding my physical instinctual reaction to being cornered, and trying to make sense of it without addressing the real physical aspects of the situation in the past has left me confused at my own perceived over reaction to the situations.
It felt great to be able to pull out the splinter. Just like the feeling of relief that you didn't know you needed when you remove the splinter from your hand, my soul relaxed once I knew what was happening, once I had found and removed the splinter. Training went so much smoother for the rest of the class, and the next class. It was amazing!!!! It really felt a lot like having a splinter removed from my soul.
I also realized that I had let myself be physically cornered by someone that I do not like and do not trust twice now. This is not good in my martial practice, it alerted me to the martial aspects of being aware that I have let slip. Not being hyper aware or paranoid, but know better where I am in a room, and where others are in that space too. Thinking and knowing where I want to be in physical relation to others around me.
Working with some of the new people in the dojo tonight really gave me the sense of how much the Nage is responsible for the safety of both parties. There were times when I knew the stability of my base kept both my uke and I from falling over each other, and kept us both controlled in a safe manner.
11-02-2005 09:39 PM 