JOURNEY - on Mastering Ukemi

One day he stands on the summit rejoicing in his accomplishment, and then realizes that far off in another cordillera there is another higher mountain and he still has a long way to go.
This does not deter him, because he has matured and realizes that all life is a journey that we must continue to travel until we die. Or worse, we give up and continue in the shadow of what it is to exist, but not to live.
This is my image. The journey, the passions of living and of mastership are all part of the same poem that we continue to write all the days of our lives. These things are as entwined as they are eternal.
Train hard, and good trekking.

Chapter 1
1972
The first punch almost broke my nose. I could hear the buzz and smell the musty odor of a hard strike to the face. Tears welled unbidden to my eyes. Struggling to my feet I launched another attack at the small man in front of me and again he struck then simply disappeared. This time I jerked my head back away from his fist and took the fastest ukemi of my life and was rewarded with a crushing fall to the mat, but no pain in my face. I had escaped.
Once more I stood and Akira Tohei Sensei turned to address the assembled aikidoka who were training in Lake Geneva for a summer seminar. Not sure what was expected of me, I stood dumbly waiting for a sign. At the edge of the mat one of my school’s senior students was motioning for me to get down. I nodded at him and went to my knees. Tohei Sensei (teacher) finished speaking then motioned for me to attack and I again launched my best tsuki at his face. Again he seemed to disappear, but the crushing hand to the side of my head told me that once again I had failed to react sufficiently to avoid the blow.
With a disgusted gesture he motioned me back to the sitting crowd of students and called to a more experienced uke. I had been dismissed for my incompetence. With shame burning across my face, the two strikes faded away into nothingness. The bruises only lasted a couple weeks, but I still remember how humiliated I felt at that moment forty years later.
Ukemi is the art of attacking and then avoiding being hurt (arms or wrists broken, being thrown to the mat or being struck) by a person doing aikido. This is so difficult to explain that I will seem to contradict myself over and over while I discuss this aspect of aikido. However, it all makes sense once you grasp that it has nothing to do with you and everything to do with the instruction. You finally understand that it has nothing to do with falling down (other than the physical fact) and everything to do with communication. Yes, it’s a people thing.
As a young Viet Nam veteran I did not understand ukemi at all when I began aikido and regret all the trouble I made for those poor partners who tried to practice with me. For me it was about winning. I did not want my partner to succeed in making me go to the mat and my sensei was most insistent that I should do so. I wouldn’t let him take me to the mat without a struggle and so after nearly five years of hard training had never been allowed to test for even the lowest rank.
Ukemi is what I should have been taught, but back then one did not ask questions of this sensei and most of the other students I trained with were able to grasp this concept. I did a nice irimi nage with one of the senior students after a couple years of training and when he reacted with his feet high in the air and a rush to strike the mat in a hard break fall I suddenly understood the basic concept. It came slowly for me but by the time another Sensei arrived in the United States I was pretty good at it. Not good enough for Tohei Sensei who had never again called me for uke, but as I decided to move to Florida and train with the newly arrived teacher, I was damned determined that I would be good enough for him


Chapter 2
Present
Christian punched fast and hard. I reacted slowly, and gently raised my left hand as he breezed into my center. His face met my raised hand and his head snapped back, feet flying forward and the first thing down on the mat was his shoulder, followed by his neck, back and then all the rest of him. It was brutal.
“Christian, are you okay?” I bent over and asked.
He shook his head to clear it and I could see that his neck was not hurt, my first concern. His eyes crossed and uncrossed and then he jumped up to his feet.
“Yes, Sensei, I’m fine, no problem.” Then he took a fighting stance and prepared to strike again. I stared at him a moment and shook my head in wonder at all that youthful energy. If that had been me, I’d have gone inside and gone to bed for a week.
I turned to the class and began to speak. He immediately dropped to one knee and waited for me to motion that he should return to the attack. Life moves in circles, ever expanding. Once I was a student, now I am the master. Once he was a child, and now a formidable man waited before me. Time passes.
“Did anyone notice what went wrong with Christian’s ukemi?” I asked the group kneeling before me