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Just when I thought my high falls and general ability to take falls was improving, i realised today that I'm still too fearful. My instructor did a move I've only seen once before with me as the uke and I just completely stopped and that was even though I kinda half recognised it and it was a perfectly safe fall to take. But i just got scared and stopped. And then after I got up and tried again, a few times into ukemi, I managed to hit my head on the mat. Not enough to get hurt but enough to bump it. And I realised just how bad it was that my fear was getting the better of me.
I watched the other uke take falls and he's very good so the instructor threw him using a lot of techniques and throws we often don't practice so the class could see how the ukemi worked. All I can say is that I'm just disappointed with myself but also am sitting here wondering where's the balancing point for me between safety and fear. Fear has a role to play by stopping me from doing things that can be too difficult for me but it also means I don't take a chance when I should and then it paralyses me and stops me from growing. And this time around I'm pretty clear that it wasn't that nage was going too fast, at least not physically, but that my fear simply got the better of me, my brain then kicked in and over-rode my reflexes and I stopped to think .
11-30-2007 10:24 AM 
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