Feeling Aikido
I’ll start by being a little controversial: Most Aikido instructors in the world today don’t teach Aikido.
The reason I say that is they focus on doing technique to their partners. Aikido on the other hand by definition, is about doing technique with your partner and this involve feeling – harmony (ai) with energy (ki) way (do). Aikido is where you feel your partners movement, structure and intention, and then respond appropriately – i.e. it involves listening and blending. Anything other than feeling aikido doesn’t work practically, unless you are stronger or faster than your attacker. As a live-in student at a dojo where I was regularly the smallest (and tiredest) on the mat, I‘ve experienced this fact repeatedly. To be fair perhaps many Sensei do feeling Aikido, they just don’t teach it, and set forms are one valid method for learning the basic vocabulary of aikido. As well as Being In Movement I’ve been studying Aikido with Paul Linden Sensei for the last month, who wrote a book with the same title of this article is. I’ve also been lucky enough to attend two seminars with other teachers of the sensitive (I.e. not clashing) kind of Aikido: Bertram Wohak Sensei and Kevin Choate Sensei.
Bertram Wohak is a senior German member of Aiki Extensions, bodyworkers, and 4th an student of Watanabe Shihan’s from Aikikai Hombu Dojo. Watanabe is a controversial figure for his seemingly magic no touch throws. In Aikido, ukes – partners who attack and then receive an Aikido technique – are more or less programmed and/or compliant. In some schools they are instructed to lock out and make life hard for the thrower, in others to go with the flow an maintain contact. If you are used to the former the latter seems fake and if you train the latter the former seems belligerent. Both can be useful training methods.
What I liked about Bertram’s Aikido is his emphasis on health and balance, though much of it was technically unfamiliar. Bertram used some wonderful draws/lures and made fascinating wiggling movements which he described as “tuning in to ukes body” before contact. The subtle and powerful nature of Bertram’s technique was at times some of the best Aikido I‘ve experienced. At other times it simply didn’t work and seemed to slip into the world of wishful thinking. Talk is cheap but a smack in the face from an honest shomen uchi (front strike) is not. Despite this, I would encourage any Aikidoka to experience a class with a teacher in this lineage as there’s definitely something to be learnt, especially if they Sensei is as vital and generous as Wohak Sensei. Thank you Bertram.
A few days later I traveled to Oberlin, Ohio to train with Kevin Choate Sensei, one of Saotome Shihan’s senior students. I’ve trained with Choate Sensei a number of times in his beautiful home dojo in Chicago. In recent years he has been influenced by the fluid Russian martial art of Systema and Ushiro Sensei who practices a subtle form of karate.
Again, Kevin’s emphasis was on reading uke and acting in a appropriate non-resistant way – “Which doors are open, which are closed?”. He started with a exercise where one wrist was grabbed but the potential of the seemingly inactive hand to strike was the crucial piece. Throughout the day he showed how the ability to strike showed the appropriate positioning for Aikido techniques. He also described grabs as “in the past” whereas potential strikes as “present”. I particularly enjoyed it when he said something like, “Accept the grab, it’s historical, deal with what’s going on now!”
The really interested part of the seminar for me was the crossover with Paul Linden’s bodywork. Kevin was mirroring the body of his ukes, tensing the part of the body that corresponded to tension in his partner, then relaxing them both. Similarly both Paul Linden and advanced NVC teachers feel and replicate what is going on in other people’s bodies. I suspect this is an extension of a natural mimicry skill we have as social coordinating animals, biologically based in mirror neurons.
Another comparison between Paul Linden and Kevin Choate’s work, is that the latter’s emphasis on striking and feeling into/through uker’s body, is very close to Paul’s BIM bodywork. On the mat, Paul can move various parts of your body through a lock on one wrist, by “pushing links”. Similarly Paul, Kevin and Bertram all demonstrate an expansive quality. Paul talks about reaching intentionally in 6 directions, Bertram discussing opening the body and Kevin just does it. Getting out of a friend’s Mini Cooper after three hours driving to the seminar I felt the opposite – compressed. My understanding now is that we need more space than the dimensions of our physical bodies encompass in order to avoid negative psychological effects. Similarly I notice when I’m happy I subjectively feel like I’m taking up more space and others notice me as bigger.
One off the more enjoyable parts of a very fun course was practicing making contact with the lower body. Normally in Aikido power is derived from the hips and knees, but the hands make contact. Instead we learnt to enter deeply behind or between our partners legs, and make use of aiki trips, sweeps, knee collapses and body-checks.
Kevin’s made some comments that stuck in my mind re. Training time. To paraphrase: “It shouldn’t take years to learn. When we say we need 30 years under a guru we wont learn quickly. Sports people don’t need that long, the war’s next year.” On the other hand, “Aikido is a process that requires a long-term student-teacher relationship, and not just a set of techniques.” Interesting.
Kevin had a playful creative demeanor throughout the day, smiling and joking frequently. In this way, he would change a standard Aikido practice to take us out of our habits. For example, normally in three person randori we try and keep one uke between us and the other, and even delight in colliding them. He taught 2 person attacks where we tried to protect both ukes, keeping them away form each other. Then practice application being, “looking after your jerk friend in the bar who wants to start a fight.”
Towards the end of the day as a the setting sun was dressing the seminar in orange light, I started getting the hang of “coating” my awareness around people’s bodies. Paul talks about this explicitly and I suspect Bertram and Kevin both do it. This cloaking of others in my own bodymind felt weird and I fluctuated between joyful welling and nausea at one point. I think we experience the self (esp. unconscious) of another person when we mirror them, and that our boundaries are very porous. After a month at Paul’s, it feels like I’m a colour mixing into all the other tones around me these days. Now where did I leave my pills….☺
Later over a meal I had my third class with Choate Sensei. He said, “I hear a lot of talk about Aikido principles being used off the mat, but what exactly are these principles?” As he’d been demonstrating them all day, teaching very little formal technique I was a little taken aback. In the end I said, “Non-resistance, non-violence and embodied practice.” We agreed that you couldn’t learn Aikido from a book and that many other paths had these core features. It was also useful for me to make the distinction between skills I have learnt in aikido and now teach “off the mat” and “aiki-principles” whatever they are…
Kevin also talked about who the shape of Aikido was an ellipse and how Aikido was “quantum” in the sense you could not know both the strength and direction of an attack – but I didn’t get either of those points too well. In conclusion, I highly recommend a seminar with Choate Sensei who is easily one of the most capable and unique students of O’Sensei’s students. Warm thanks also to Jim and the other friendly, well-organised hosts of Oberlin.
Disclaimer- I may have completely misinterpreted much of what these two teachers were doing based on limited experience. Please accept my apologies if this is the case.