Aikido from the Inside Out
The Techniques
What are they?
In many aikido schools, great emphasis is placed on learning techniques. The techniques make up your repertoire of aikido moves, and, the thinking goes, the better you learn these techniques, the better you learn aikido. But what are you trying to learn when you practice techniques over and over for years?
Most aikidoists who have been practicing for a long time notice that, after a while, something changes in the way they do aikido. They no longer worry so much about the details of the technique. Instead, they simply deal with an attack using, well, aikido. Through endless repetition, they have finally made the techniques their own, and when they perform the techniques, they become personal expressions of their own aikido.
Real
aikido is the embodiment of the principles of aikido along
with the tactics of aikido
That's the real reason for practicing techniques: to make aikido your own. The techniques can be thought of as outer forms or shells of the real aikido. The real aikido is the embodiment of the principles of aikido along with the tactics of aikido.
By practicing continuously, you begin to get glimpses of the real aikido underneath. After enough of these glimpses, you begin to move from the shell to the real thing in your normal practice.
Techniques have a few things in common, regardless of the attack and response. These are the elements of a technique, which follow a specific order. They are: blending, leading, control, and neutralization. Surrounding all of these elements is the circle of connection.
Blending is the ai in aikido. It's the method of joining the attack without opposing the attack. Blending positions you so that you're directing your partner's energy without clashing with the force of the attack.
Leading takes your partner's energy and extends it just a bit past the level of comfort that your partner would ordinarily have. This extension generally results in your partner leaving his center. It destabilizes his balance. At this point, you can fairly easily direct the movements of your partner wherever you like.
Control in this context mean to connect with your partner's ki and center and move them where you need to. It also means control over your own ki and center.
Control gives you a deft hand at moving your partner. You want to refine your control so that your techniques have no openings. If your control wavers, your partner may escape, may reverse the technique on you, or may otherwise harm you. Control is like the enamel coating on your technique. It is nonporous, without holes, smooth and contiguous, so that nothing can sneak through.
Please remember that aiki control is benevolent. It's done with loving kindness, not with cruelty or vengeance.
This is the conclusion of a technique. It is usually either a throw or immobilization. In either case, the attack is neutralized, at least for the moment. Remember that an aikido throw--the kind we do hundreds of times in a class--can be devastating to someone who doesn't know how to take a fall. So a throw may "neutralize" an attacker by injuring him. That is why you want to have as much control over your throws as possible. It is also why you should immobilize your partner, if possible. If the attacker knows how to fall, the throw may not stop him for long. If he doesn't, the throw may do more damage than you intend.
If you're skilled, simply taking your partner's balance and holding him in a position of instability may be enough to convince him to stop the attack. This is also an effective type of neutralization.
Connection is the glue that combines these elements into one. It provides the timing for an effective blend, it's the conduit through which you extend your partner's ki, it establishes the feedback necessary for control, and it solidifies in the final neutralization of the technique.
Experienced aikidoka will recognize that there are no hard and fast boundaries among the elements of a technique. They blend one into another. The very first movement may contain all the elements of blending, leading, control, neutralization, and connection.
Since I'm not describing specific techniques in this book, use these distinctions to evaluate your own practice. Try to identify these elements in each of your techniques. If some are missing or less developed, their absence is probably causing you some problems.
