New Questions 2
People’s comments on my blog about falling in aikido were a bit of a surprise. There was wonder that I can fall at all, and also Peter S.’s droll inquiry: what are you, some kind of a wimp, giving up falls and somersaults in your eighties? That made me laugh–and made an impression.
At my next aikido practice, a day or two later, I saw that these comments had jarred loose some of my expectations and preconceptions about “real aikido” and what I “ought” to be doing on the mat. What did I really want, anyway? Whatever it was had something to do with participating in shared movement on that mat, something about freedom and ease in relationship that might outwardly look “powerful” but was more like inhabiting a musical phrase full of grace and energy. For that, it seemed to me, a certain boldness was needed, something like a decisive stepping away from all my fears about correctness, which now seemed rather imaginary. I could let go the assumption that real aikido meant you had to be constantly falling.
So sometimes I did fall that morning, but more often I didn’t. The movement of falling was there, either way–that sense of a wave breaking at the end of each technique. When I fell, the wave’s motion overwhelmed my balance. When I didn’t fall, the wave still surged and crested, bending my spine out over space. When I peeled away from the breaker just before it sent me into a fall, there was still an acknowledgment of it, and an acceptance.
