JOURNEY - on Mastering Ukemi

She is a lovely young woman who had started her training with my friend Mustafa Aygun in Turkey. She now trains here with us at Shoshin Dojo.
“Hi,” I said. “What’s up? Want a coke? A beer?”
“No. No thank you, sensei. I just wanted to know how I am doing; how I am fitting in. Sometimes I feel that some of the others would rather not train with me.”
I couldn’t really imagine that. I’d been young once and she was very attractive. “Who, specifically, if you don’t mind telling me?”
“Oh, Sensei, I’d rather not say, please.”
I motioned for her to sit down. She shrugged off her back pack and shook her hair loose. .
“Well, okay.” I said. “You are fitting in very well. Remember that Mustafa Sensei and I are really very different. I am over six feet tall and heavy. Mustafa is shorter and comparatively thin. We have different aikido. We have different techniques that appeal to us. He is young and strong and fast. I am getting old and am not so athletic anymore. All these things combine to give our aikido different looks.
“O’Sensei looked much different when he was younger than when he grew older. It’s quite natural. And you have learned from Mustafa. So you are not familiar with the way we train or the things that I teach, but Celine, it’s still aikido. You’re doing very well.”
“Okay. Thank you. I think I am having trouble getting used to the mat. We have a much softer mat in Turkey where I trained.”
I had noticed that she took slow and tentative ukemi. “Well, now that you mention it, your ukemi is much softer than I prefer.”
“Please?”
“See, a really large part.., or maybe all of a person’s training for a lot of years is not aikido at all. For many years you just train muscle memory. Uke attacks and is very cooperative while nage figures out what he has been taught and learns how to do it. You repeat the motion over and over and finally you learn how to do kote gaishe, the wrist twist. Or you study ikkyo, a rotating arm bar. But you have to take the time to do it over and over until you can do it anytime. This is training muscle memory. It is not aikido.
“So in my dojo, here, there are a number of people who really want to train at aikido. They already know the techniques. And I see you attack with a nice, smooth yokomen or shomen.., uchi... slashing cuts aimed at the head, and they don’t really experience the flow of ki, or the intensity they would like. See what I mean?”
“So I am not a good uke?”
“You aren’t an uke at all, yet. Just because you play the role of an uke doesn’t mean you have a clue what you’re doing. You are training muscle memory as well.”
“Who should I learn from? I want to be a good uke.”
“Erik, Curtis, Christian, Bill, Ron… Chris is very good… but what you have to understand is that it will come naturally. Once you gain the confidence in your rolls and reverses and counters you naturally start attacking with more ki and with more heart. You’ll get it. I promise. Besides, being a great uke is a state of mind. A great uke can never be overcome.”
There was a knock at the door. I saw Christian waiting outside. Celine stood and gave me one of her thousand watt smiles and waved as she bolted out the door.
“Sensei, did you want to see me?”
“Yeah, Christian, come on in. Why don’t you go get us a couple beers.”
“I’d appreciate a coke if you don’t mind.”
“That’s fine, but ask my wife first about the coke, I’m sure it’s fine, but she kind of runs the kitchen and I run the bar.”
“Thanks, Sensei.” He went off to find my wife and get the drinks. I looked at the important computer work I had been doing and closed the lid. I never win, anyway.
When he came back I told him to sit down. “Christian, is everything okay with you?”
He looked down and then around my wife’s office, the front porch, really, but where she likes to work and where her desk and computer and files were kept. He scratched the dog’s head and then tried to find a place to set the coke down, where it wouldn’t leave a ring or get knocked over, but gave up.
“Christian, I get to know the students here pretty well after five or six years and I can usually tell when something is bothering one of you. If you don’t want to talk about it, I understand. I just want you to know that I’m here for you and that I don’t want a lapse of concentration on the mat to result in an injury.”
“Sensei, it’s not that I don’t want to talk to you, it’s just not really all that important when you consider what‘s going on in the real world.”
“Okay,” I said, “But you should know that the real world is what is perceived. Man is the measure of all things, like that. So what you’re feeling might not be much in the whole scheme of things, but if it affects your life, your perceptions of your self, and your happiness, well, I think it should be looked at. Don’t you?”
He looked at the coke can for a few moments and then said, “Linda and I broke up. I don’t really know why. I’ll be graduating from Rollins in two months with an M.B.A. and my workload right now is ridiculous, so I haven’t been spending a lot of time with her. I will be able to, in, like, seven lousy weeks. I’m working and going to graduate school and practicing aikido with you and still try to see her as much as I can, but she