What Does Uke Want?

There’s a mystery in aikido about the role of uke, the attacker.   When I’m uke, what is happening?  What do I intend?  Is my intention always the same? Is there a beginning, middle and end to the process of ukemi with subtle differences as the technique progresses?  What is going on here, anyway? In my own case, there are different answers to that one, and they are all right or partly right at different stages of my understanding of aikido.

What does uke want?   Like the legendary question, “What does a woman want?” there are different ways of thinking about that.  And the answers all are “right,” in that they all have a certain validity.

1. Since I’ve brought all my competitiveness as a human being to my practice of aikido, as Uke I want to “win”;  I definitely don’t  want to “lose.” This desire was strongest when I was a beginner at aikido, though it undoubtedly influences my practice even now.   Deep down, there’s something in me that takes falling as a sign of “losing” and failure; I don’t really want to fall.  I want to be the winner, and although I know that as uke I’m supposed to fall, in subtle ways that I may not even realize myself, I resist that. Sure, I’ve been told that uke means “receiver,” which means to receive the throw and to fall. But I want to win this one.  So I will try to thwart nage, to resist what he or she is doing to unbalance me. This often means that I drag my feet, and make my partner pull me after him.  Somebody who’s stronger than I am who really wants to win can bring the movement to a standstill with this kind of resistance. Advanced aikidoists may sometimes welcome such a heavy level of resistance, for they get to use all their skills of centering and selecting an appropriate angle of response to unbalance a determined uke. But a beginner  may be stopped  in his tracks. Still, the wish to win is something we bring into aikido; it may not be a particularly developed attitude but it’s still there.  And it has its place; I just need to find out what that place is.

1. As Uke I want to challenge nage. As I continue to practice aikido, something changes in my attitude, and my competitiveness takes a more helpful turn. I still  want to “win,” but my partner has become more real to me, and I have this idea now that aiming a strike at him or her as accurately and fully as possible will provide a suitable challenge  and allow him to improve his accuracy and timing.   I realize that it’s what I myself  want  when it’s my turn to be nage. And eventually I learn to persist in this challenge deep into the technique.  I try to maintain the attack as long as I can, even if I’m already going off balance.   If I have grabbed one of my partner’s arms from behind, I won’t stop at that but will  try to grab the second arm.  I begin to realize that my old habits of resistance and thwarting often really amount to holding back. No half-hearted measures!

1. As Uke I want to respond to my partner. It dawns on me now that as uke I myself am received, over and over again, by my partner. Whenever I have attacked, he or she has opened to my attack, to however I present myself, from whatever angle or approach. I have first of all  been responded to, and then led into a new direction. There is something joyful for me in being received in this way.  In a sense, I feel welcomed into going off balance,  welcomed to respond to this new direction, which comes to take the form of falling.

1. As Uke I want to regain my center..   After many stints as uke, I have come to understand that I  give up my center at the moment of the attack and that a skillful nage never lets me have it back. I have become more sensitive to the fact that a continuing awareness of my center is at the heart of aikido. To regain my center,  it seems necessary first to accept what it means to lose it, to be unbalanced–an unavoidable and endlessly repeated human situation, though perhaps increasingly subtle. I begin to appreciate that my partner, by unbalancing me,  has given me the opportunity to return to the center of myself, to experience what it means to regain my balance.  From this point of view, falling becomes a necessity!

1. As Uke I want to be part of the movement of aikido. I now sense that each aikido technique offers an opportunity to be part of a unique movement, the gift of O-sensei if you will.  It’s an elusive thing, this rare experience of simply being in this movement.  More and more I have the wish to watch, to be alert to the moment that I share with my partner.

So I start over each time, still carrying all my “wants” with me, perhaps in somewhat changed relationship to each other—the desire to win,  to challenge, to respond, to find and re-find my center,  to be in the mutual movement of aikido.

And of course there’s a danger in thinking I’ve found “the” answers! Can I keep on asking this question about what I want in aikido, keeping it alive as I move through each moment of practice?

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