Posted by: wristtwister
Understanding Aikido - 04/01/07 12:43 PM
First of all, Aikido is never what people expect it to be. It IS a martial art... it DOES involve fighting... and it is an excellent SPIRITUAL method of development. What it is not, is the NON-martial art it is advertised to be. It is not all about "getting along with everyone"... and while it has techniques, the focus of training (in good schools) is on principle.
Like a good airplane ride, Aikido techniques have two parts... the take off, and the landing. Outsiders only concentrate on the take-off part (self defense), and the landing (ukemi) gets overlooked, or viewed as the "just rewards" of an attacker.
Insiders understand that you learn as much from the landing as from the take-off, and the principle of blending with your attacker is as much "self-defense" by the attacker as it is an attack. In many cases, the defender simply leads an attacker to a point where it makes more sense to fall than to resist the defense... which reverses the roles of the players in "mid-technique".
Since all techniques in our school begin with a strike, the roles are reversed early on in the techniques, so our training regime is very focused on the ukemi and "follow through" of the techniques (into pins, etc.) Sometimes, we practice in "short spaces" so you have to find a different way to dissipate the force, and do "short rolls" to make your ukemi work... so the methods differ in many schools, but the ideas of "blending and redirection" are always upheld.
Coming from a Judo and Jujutsu background, I'm prone to "short cut" a lot of the "flowing motions" of Aikido when practicing, and while I still do pretty good Aikido, it's clearly a bit different from the Hombu style we practice. Having different perspectives is always helpful, and my training partner trained with Sogunuma Sensei, who was one of Ueshiba's ukes, my good friend Toyota Sensei was deshi to Tohei, and my senior student has been affiliated with a Yoshinkan dojo for some time, and each of those three perspectives of Aikido technique is different. What they maintain, is the principles of training, and the technical aspects of those principles.
Kind of like an accounting report, you can take the numbers and do different things with them, and redirect the focus of the reporting, but in the end, they still all add up to the same thing. How you get there, is where the training comes in...
Like a good airplane ride, Aikido techniques have two parts... the take off, and the landing. Outsiders only concentrate on the take-off part (self defense), and the landing (ukemi) gets overlooked, or viewed as the "just rewards" of an attacker.
Insiders understand that you learn as much from the landing as from the take-off, and the principle of blending with your attacker is as much "self-defense" by the attacker as it is an attack. In many cases, the defender simply leads an attacker to a point where it makes more sense to fall than to resist the defense... which reverses the roles of the players in "mid-technique".
Since all techniques in our school begin with a strike, the roles are reversed early on in the techniques, so our training regime is very focused on the ukemi and "follow through" of the techniques (into pins, etc.) Sometimes, we practice in "short spaces" so you have to find a different way to dissipate the force, and do "short rolls" to make your ukemi work... so the methods differ in many schools, but the ideas of "blending and redirection" are always upheld.
Coming from a Judo and Jujutsu background, I'm prone to "short cut" a lot of the "flowing motions" of Aikido when practicing, and while I still do pretty good Aikido, it's clearly a bit different from the Hombu style we practice. Having different perspectives is always helpful, and my training partner trained with Sogunuma Sensei, who was one of Ueshiba's ukes, my good friend Toyota Sensei was deshi to Tohei, and my senior student has been affiliated with a Yoshinkan dojo for some time, and each of those three perspectives of Aikido technique is different. What they maintain, is the principles of training, and the technical aspects of those principles.
Kind of like an accounting report, you can take the numbers and do different things with them, and redirect the focus of the reporting, but in the end, they still all add up to the same thing. How you get there, is where the training comes in...
The point I wanted to pick up on was that the "landing part" of ukemi is really only one aspect of the beginning. Ukemi in itself has many layers. The literal meaning of ukemi means to "receive with the body". Receive what? Aye, therein lies the question.... 
