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Badger Stops Looking Up, Finds The Sky Within
Badger Stops Looking Up, Finds The Sky Within
by The Mirror
06-25-2012
Badger Stops Looking Up, Finds The Sky Within


Above image - © Green Dreams Photography, All Rights Reserved
This month's "The Mirror" column was written by Janet Rosen © 2012, all rights reserved.

Five times in the past eighteen months, highly experienced practitioners or teachers of budo have stopped short, cast a critical eye at me, and pronounced my posture a problem. Not, mind you, my stance or my "finishing" pose; nope, just me standing there, being me.

Since working with structure and internal issues has become the key focus of my training, it struck me that I'd better act on the problem so that I'm not fighting myself or trying to graft new skills onto a poor foundation. I had received some sound advice early on, including a referral to a good book. But simply paying attention and selecting some exercises was clearly not doing a darn thing, since I kept hearing the same critique from these folks both within and outside of aikido.

I had already been thinking about Rolfing® for a while because of a twenty year history of chronic neck pain that has proven unresponsive to pretty much every other non-invasive modality. While living in San Francisco, the price tag had kept me from pursuing it. Now, living in a rural area, thinking about the time and the gas money to get to the nearest practitioner sixty miles away made it even more daunting.

But being at the end of my rope on the neck pain plus feeling that my aikido training was going to be as firmly stuck as some of my muscles if I didn't address my posture finally tipped the scale to where I had to reframe the expense as something essential to my health.

As I write this in late May, I've been to three sessions. My practitioner's initial assessment was in line with what everybody else sees: my head is held far too forward and tilted up (well, what posture do you expect will be developed by a pugnacious, severely myopic runty little girl from Brooklyn?) and my shoulder are nicely "down" but roll forward too much. She also noted what I have seen, which is that I'm starting to develop an upper back hump. My lumbar curve has flattened, which is pretty funny, because at times in the past it has been too extreme and at times too flat - a reflection of my very odd ability to feel incredibly slight differences in my body yet lose the sense of where to find neutral. She has also identified the odd holding and skewing patterns I've been aware of yet could never undo via other bodywork for more than a few days.

Most interesting to me, though, was something she asked at our second session. Longtime readers of The Mirror or the Aikiweb forum will know that I often refer to myself, only half jokingly, as a badger: small, round, low to the ground, generally inoffensive but not to be messed with. My energy is always earthward; my natural tendency on the mat is to find the downward spirals.

Carole, my practitioner, knows nothing of this. She has no martial arts experience. She moved her hand here and there while I was standing still, getting me to make a couple of small adjustments at the knee, low back and neck. I felt like I was getting taller. She very casually asked if I had a tendency to be more focused on "down" than on "up." My roar of laughter sent her stepping back, blinking in surprise...

So while she has focuses on the palpable problems that are holding me back, she has already given me valuable feedback to take directly back to training. My baseline posture is a work in progress, but I can better activate "up" when working on solo standing forms and I'm trying to keep that activation with weapons kata and when training with a partner.Janet Rosen
"The Mirror" is a collaborative column written by a group of women who describe themselves as:

We comprise mothers, spouses, scientists, artists, teachers, healers, and yes, of course, writers. We range in age from 30s through 50s, we are kyu ranked and yudansha and from various parts of the United States and styles of aikido. What we have in common is a love for budo that keeps it an integral part of our busy lives, both curiosity about and a commonsense approach to life and aikido, and an inveterate tendency to write about these explorations.
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Old 07-10-2012, 07:56 AM   #2
Susan Dalton
Dojo: Greensboro Kodokan
Location: Greensboro
Join Date: Mar 2004
Posts: 346
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Re: Badger Stops Looking Up, Finds The Sky Within

Thanks, Janet. This concept is something I've been working on for a long time. Years ago one of my teachers told my flying son he could use some of my "down" and I needed some of his "up". I want to be grounded, but I don't want to be stuck.
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Old 07-27-2012, 01:35 PM   #3
R.A. Robertson
Dojo: Still Point Aikido Center
Location: Austin, TX, USA
Join Date: Jul 2002
Posts: 346
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Re: Badger Stops Looking Up, Finds The Sky Within

After many years of practicing being grounded, centered, immovable, I finally discovered what a joy it is to let go and float.

If I want/need to deliver or receive power, I still need to know how to be grounded. It's just that when floating, there's much less need for power.

Things are looking up.
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Old 08-04-2012, 03:54 PM   #4
Janet L.
Dojo: Obiji Ki-Aikido, Lawrence, KS
Location: Lawrence, KS
Join Date: Jun 2011
Posts: 17
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Re: Badger Stops Looking Up, Finds The Sky Within

Posture has been my cross, causing me persistent back trouble for decades.

Aikido has done far more to correct my posture than all the chiropractors, Alexander technique instructors and my mother's nagging put together.

My sensei has regularly corrected my posture, showing that quite small deviations can cause a technique to fail. I guess that has somehow gotten through to my subconscious that it really IS better to have good posture in the first place.

It still isn't perfect, but none the less it is so much better than I can remember. I sill have to stop and straighten myself up several times an hour, but it's so much better I'm impressed

- Janet L.
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Old 08-04-2012, 09:16 PM   #5
Janet Rosen
 
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Location: Left Coast
Join Date: May 2002
Posts: 4,339
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Re: Badger Stops Looking Up, Finds The Sky Within

Thank you all for your feedback....I've now had seven Rolfing sessions and continue to improve...and had a very timely moment during a seminar w/ Wendy Palmer Sensei a few weeks ago: she suggested before we essayed a particular technique (iriminage) that we literally look at all four ceiling/wall corners of the dojo to help find the up-and-around space surrounding the nage-uke unit. It is one of those quick integrative tips that I find helpful.

Janet Rosen
http://www.zanshinart.com
"peace will enter when hate is gone"--percy mayfield
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