More on 'Ukemi'

Many people experience vulnerability and consequently discomfort from doing (“taking”) ukemi. It of course involves falling down. It also involves being tipped over and one’s balance being disrupted. It involves one’s body and balance being manipulated, and consequently giving up of control. Often, even doing the tori, or nage, role and manipulating another person’s body and balance can be uncomfortable and intrusive.

 

Virtually all dojos address one aspect of the vulnerability of falling down, by spending some time teaching and achieving some level of competence and confidence of falling down. This in itself is a positive as it involves a person developing a more comfortable and broad relationship with their own body, gravity, and the ground.

 

The split or variety among dojos starts to appear when we look at how they each teach and practice the interactions, specifically the disrupting and manipulating of other people’s bodies. One extreme is “harder” and addresses the physics and geometry aspects, and treats the uke as an object; the cost of this extreme is less sensitivity - possibly even growing numbness - and resulting less adapting and adjusting. The other extreme is “softer, mushier” and emphasizes feeling and imagination to evoke desirable feelings, mental states, and relationship; the cost or danger of this extreme is complacency, increasing of expectations, and over-sensitivity without mindfulness or discernment.

 

In the kind of practice we do at Aikido Hibiki, which might be known in the larger world as “Kimusubi Aikido”, we emphasize inquiry, self-confirmation, and genuineness. The physics and geometry are important, but we also prompt new students and remind others to confirm how they feel, or how one person or occasion might feel different from another. Safety and comfort are important, and we acknowledge why; feeling good it not the goal; loosening, softening, and relaxing are important  - to learn, heal, change - and it is presumed that we naturally create or maintain rigidity and hardness - therefore safety and comfort are things we create in the practice, not things that just exist in the space.