JOURNEY - on Mastering Ukemi

back. It drives women crazy when you don’t chase after them, but you have to get on with your life. Sometimes women break up with men just to get their attention.”
“See? Yeah! That’s what I think might be happening.”
“Then definitely do not go back to her. You don’t need a life partner who is so cavalier with your emotions. Anyone who would put you through that in order to get what she wants is not someone you want in your life. Think of the games she would be capable of playing with your emotions if she is able to do something like this. Talk about emotional blackmail. Move on, Christian.”
“I never thought of that. It makes sense.”
“It does make sense,” I said. “It’s ukemi. Go forward forcefully and with pure intent. Attack from your heart to the heart of your opponent. Be prepared to die or to escape, and when it’s over, it’s over.”
“Thanks, Sensei.”
“Now, if you’re not going to drink with me get the hell out of here and leave an old man in peace.”
“Okay, and thank you very much, really.” He picked up his bag and went off to say goodnight to my wife, pet the dog, comment on the new rug, pet the other dog, and finally leave.

Chapter 3
Ukemi
I’ve spent about forty-five years studying martial arts in one shape or another and going on forty years in aikido alone. You get to know something about a subject when you have been at it longer than Christ walked on the Earth.
My dojo is hot in the summer. What the heck, my dojo is hot for much of the spring, all of the summer and nearly all of the fall. It is situated outdoors in Florida. The winter can be pretty cold during those few months when the evening temperatures drop into the forties and sometimes into the upper thirties. The dojo is out of doors and we wear wool socks and sweat suits under our uniforms of gi and hakama. Consequently the people who train here are pretty tough when it comes to comfort and take what comes in stride. Somewhere, someone has a picture of me teaching class wearing fur-lined slippers and a down vest over my gi. Someday I’ll figure out who’s been showing it around.
Christian started training here when he matriculated into the University of Central Florida about seven years ago. After graduating with a degree in business and a minor in computers he worked for a year and then decided to get his M.B.A. at the prestigious Crummer School of business at Rollins College. He is what I term, a ‘nice guy’, someone most anyone would want for his or her best friend.
Of course, that could be said about anyone who trains here at Shoshin Aikido Dojo. I hand pick each student from the hundreds of applicants I get each year. Veterans get preference, of course. After that I screen for education, talent, perseverance, and once in a while attitude and charisma. Each student is different and is considered and treated as a unique individual.
Aikido is a martial art that tends to develop differently in each person. Body shape and size, strength, attitude, education, ethics and many other attributes affect the development. Consequently I look for certain things in the students I select, but the most important is that indescribable quality of friendliness. I don’t mean a big smile, or being talkative, or a joke teller; I refer to that quality that makes a person want to develop a genuine friendship with another. It is, I admit a pretty elusive and difficult to describe attribute, but when I see it, I know it. And those men and women who train here have that quality. Christian could well be the poster boy for that quality.
Everyone who meets him just likes him. He is not special; he just has that Opie Taylor kind of genuine likeability that made him such a favorite on the Andy Griffith Show. Christian is a serious man at the same time and is wickedly intelligent. As a shodan, a black belt, he is popular with all the students and is one of the inner core of students who train here.
So that’s why I got concerned seeing him in the dojo one night pounding on the heavy bag. He was stripped to the waist with only a pair of ragged gym shorts hanging sweat soaked around his skinny hips. He’d lean in and hit the bag and I could see the hand wraps and gloves strain with the power he was putting into the effort. Wham! Wham! He threw a jab, then another and followed them by a series of right hands that drove deep into the canvas and rocked it against the back wall. He threw big hard punches over and over until he had to stop and then began with stinging left hooks interspersed with jabs. I stepped back away from the screen and slipped into the night away from where he could see me. If he needed to exorcise some demon, he had the right to do it in privacy, even here at my home and in my dojo.
I eased down the boardwalk until I came to the steps that lead up to the railed deck behind my home. My old Labrador retriever met me there and I scratched his ears as we made our way up and over to the cushioned chairs surrounding the big table. Key West lights twinkled in the darkening while the evening sounds came interrupted by the synchronous pounding of the bag in the distance. I wondered how long he would keep this up, but knew from experience that it would not be for long. No one can hit the heavy bag for long; it wears you out. It requires a lot of power to make a big bag