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For such a foundational practice of Aikido, I think that many students, even more advanced ones, don’t fully grasp the spirit of ukemi.

I practised other martial arts besides Aikido. For them, ukemi was what happened to you when you were defeated. It didn’t really matter how you did it, apart from trying to minimise the damage to your body.

One of my favourite quotes from Kawahara-sensei was that “Your technique will never be better than your ukemi.” Ukemi is at the very heart of Aikido practice, the ying to the yang.

A few points:

• Ukemi is a continuum. It begins with uke’s intention to attack, a correct and sincere attack, the resulting body relationship and the final movement leading to a fall or a pin. Each part is crucial.

• Ukemi is a vital aspect of learning. Without good partners, you won’t progress. This is particularly so because many Aikido techniques are complex. If your uke is resisting or uncooperative, you are not getting a chance to experience the technique. It’s not uke’s job to make you “prove” that the technique works, but to partner with you in learning it.

• Ukemi is for safety. I have seen bad injuries result from bad ukemi. Protect yourself with correct ukemi.

• Don’t be stupid. Grabbing nage’s wrist with an ironlike, vise grip and stiff arm is just asking for injuries. It’s not a smart attack in any context, inside or outside the dojo.

• Be responsive. With wrist attacks, hold the wrist firmly but in a relaxed way, so you can react. Your arm should be as flexible as a rope and your grip as soft and connected as a knot. As you become more experienced, this kind of grip will enable you to “read” nage, to feel what’s coming in terms of timing and movement. This is self-preservation 101, a basic self-defence skill.

• Ukemi is active, not passive. Uke is not the victim of practice but a participant in it. Uke should follow actively, not limply or stubbornly. Don’t be lazy, wishy-washy or stiff. Uke should stay glued to nage, continually trying to maintain a surviving position, moving naturally according to Aikido principles, blending with nage.

• Advanced students may run through various possibilities for kaeshi waza mentally as they follow a technique — WITHOUT executing them, to give nage a chance to practice.

• A good uke adds energy and enthusiasm to the practice. Even a hard, committed attack becomes joyful for both parties.

Ukemi is not something that happens to you. You are not a tackling dummy. You spend half your time in Aikido taking ukemi. Don’t waste it.

There’s a big difference between knowing what you’re doing and doing what you’re doing. That sounds cryptic, but bear with me.

In the first, you have an intellectual image of the steps involved in performing whatever the activity is – tenkan, for example. 

In the second, through hundreds if not thousands of repetitions, the understanding transcends your conscious mind and settles into your body.

The only way you can learn to swing a bokken is by relentlessly swinging a bokken with presence of mind, not by intellectually thinking about how to swing a bokken.

Once you have grasped a movement, you no longer need to think about it. You simply know the feeling. It becomes as natural as scratching your nose. When you improve, it’s by fine-tuning the feeling, not the algorithm.

“At some point, self-consciously ‘understanding’ why you do what you do just slows you down and interrupts flow, resulting in worse decisions,” to quote educator Barbara Oakley.

Think about teaching a beginner to ride a bicycle. You can talk yourself blue in the face — “Hold the handlebars like this, sit like that with your weight just so, keep constant pressure on the pedals, shift your balance when you turn etc.” But until that person actually climbs on the seat, starts to roll, maybe falls down once or twice and finally gets the feeling of riding a bicycle in his or her bones, no real progress will be made.

As an Aikido instructor, it can be easy to slip into the “explaining” mode instead of emphasizing practice, where the learning actually happens. This is one of the reasons that students talking during class is such a negative… the wrong part of the brain is engaged.

One of my favourite quotes about Aikido practice came from a sempai who was known for his graceful, fluid ukemi.

I asked him for his secret. He said, “There’s no secret. When I attack, I have no expectations, so I’m never disappointed.” And by “disappointed,” he meant the ugly, painful falls I sometimes took by guessing incorrectly about what was about to happen.

As nage, you need to feel the same way. Although we practice in ways that could be described as drills — prearranged attacks — never take your attacker for granted. 

Uke may attack on the “wrong” side, or may have misunderstood the attack altogether, or may be executing the attack in a way or with ma’ai or timing that you didn’t anticipate. To quote another favourite adage, “Uke is never wrong.” Nage has no excuse.

Don’t let the rhythm of practice lull you to sleep. 

Mushin is an important concept in budo. It literally means “no mind” — being free from thoughts, emotions and ego. It is the basis of spontaneous, natural and immediate action.

Practice freestyle against a variety of attacks. It is also revealing to practice with beginners (gently, of course). They will often surprise you with strange interpretations of the ukemi that seem to come from out of nowhere.

Keep an empty mind, be aware, relax and have no expectations, if you want to practice Aikido as a martial art.

I realize that choosing grammar as a topic is going to result in a fall-off of about 95 percent of potential readers. However, language was my study in university and I’m a retired writer, so it’s an easy lens for me to use.

Every language has a grammar, as does every martial art — or every human activity, for that matter.

Aikido has a vocabulary of nouns (techniques) and verbs (body movement). How these are connected in practice is the grammar of Aikido, which includes timing and distance. In a sense, Aikido practice is communication, a shared understanding between people and a set of mutual expectations.

Each of us has an idiolect — the way we normally speak and the way we like to practice in the dojo. Every dojo has a dialect — a collection of idiolects that the members take for granted and often come to accept as an objective standard.

Some are tempted to feel that their dojo’s dialect is correct and that all others are therefore wrong. You may be practicing with someone from another dojo at a seminar and get the feeling that there is something weird about what they are doing. You recognise the technique but somehow you feel outside your comfort zone. (The urge to discuss this can be intense, but resist it.)

It’s the same with language… a Texan can be talking with a Scot and they understand each other, but they are very conscious of their differences.

I won’t even get into other martial arts… a karateka may have a completely different technical vocabulary and grammar than you do. It’s a different language. And as we sometimes see in foreign countries, shouting at them in your own language won’t help.

So, to get to my point… love your own language and become fluent. Embrace the technique as taught in your dojo. But don’t assume it’s somehow objectively the “correct” dialect or language or practice. Develop an ear for new information. Expand your vocabulary. As is often pointed out, learning a new language is good for the brain. 

Seminars — practising with people from other dojos — are a good place to start.

What is the point of testing?

I don’t know too many students who look forward to testing. Some it makes self-conscious, others get performance anxiety, some view the test prep training as a grind and so on.

At least in our dojo, there’s no competition and rank usually makes no difference in who you are going to train with. You won’t get a different coloured belt, except maybe black if you train sincerely for a few years. Regardless of your rank, you are only as good as you are on the tatami.

But testing is important. I use the analogy of the goldfish. They say that if you keep a fish in a goldfish bowl with nothing but water and the occasional feeding, it will eventually die. But if you put a rock in the bowl, the fish will swim in circles around it and live.

I think that’s one of the purposes of testing – to give you some kind of concrete focus in your training. It gives a focus for your sensei, too, to make a point of periodically reviewing your progress and advising you on areas that need improvement.

After you pass or fail a test, you’re still the same person you were the day before. A new rank doesn’t make you a new person. Students that chase rank often quit once they get a black belt — a ridiculous attitude, in my view.

I think that many students misunderstand what it means to fail a test. The examiners are not criticizing you or saying that you are a bad student. They are saying they believe you can improve and you should try again. I don’t believe that any good student wants to pass a test that the observers thought he or she should have failed.

I know many great Aikido practitioners personally who have failed tests along the way. 

As a matter of fact, I considered myself to have failed my shodan test. The examiner was extremely generous in passing me, but the process brought home the fact that I had to make significant improvements before I even thought about taking another test. It was a valuable experience and very useful feedback. It opened my eyes and motivated me.

Gaining rank is not the purpose of Aikido. Testing is just one tool in the ongoing process of “sharpening your blade,”as they used to say, and it is the test itself, not passing or failing, that does this.

Testing is a snapshot of you at one point in time. It’s not a judgement – it’s information on where you should take your training next.

Many thanks to our guest instructor, Rob Carroll-shidoin, dojocho of Aikido Tendokai, for his instruction today. The class was informative and enjoyable, with several techniques relating to nikkyo.

We were happy to welcome two special guests to practice as well— Alex Loo-sensei and Rika Murota from Aikido Kensankai.

I have been working through the Dokkodo, Miyamoto Musashi’s final list of precepts for his students.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dokkōdō

They’re all brief, thought-provoking and well worth considering in depth.

But number 16 really surprised me.

“Do not collect weapons or practice with weapons beyond what is useful.”

That’s counterintuitive, coming from a renowned swordsman.

But Musashi was  not one to follow convention, deceive himself or waste his time.

I think the crux is “what is useful.”

What is the purpose of your practice? Are you getting sidetracked with non- essentials? Or does every practice take you closer to your goal? Is your weapons practice frivolous or useful to you?

If not, it is not useful to a martial artist. Focus on what is important and what matters to you in your training. That’s all you really have time for.

In any practice, there’s the excitement and first rush of enthusiasm, that first toe in the water and seeing the vast potential of what lies ahead. 

That’s true of music, art, chess, a sport or any other human pursuit, including Aikido.

Once you get past that first sense of engagement and awe, though, you often face the Slog, the Plateau.

That is the hundreds and thousands of hours of repetition needed to internalize basic skills. Often, it isn’t particularly fun, it doesn’t feel rewarding, it’s hard to stay motivated, sometimes it’s boring – it’s the void in which you question why you are putting so much effort into this and what you will have to show for it. 

Everyone has this experience. Don’t give up.

It’s up to the student to find joy in what he or she does and to offer and draw enthusiasm from partners. The instructor’s role is to be a guide through this tough period — sometimes by encouragement, sometimes by example. 

It’s important to stay fresh, make a point of learning and remembering at least one new idea in every class, to learn something from every partner no matter what level they are.

Keep Beginner’s Mind — and remember that excitement you felt as a beginner.

Human perception can be misleading. We always tend to see what we expected to see. We have to work to go beyond that, to see what is actually there… to have the vision of a beginner.

“The purpose of today’s training is to defeat yesterday’s understanding.” — Miyamoto Musashi

Don’t miss this opportunity to train on May 31 with leading instructors and students from across Toronto.

Full information and registration is here.