Falling

The best Aikidoists know that there is a right time and right way to let someone fall.

There is this interesting thing that some beginners do when they are trying to throw their partners down - they try and hold them up. As their partner is falling, they contort their bodies or lose their own posture and balance in order to soften the fall. This is a beautiful piece of human nature - when people fall, we try to catch them. As these beginners become more experienced, they don’t contort their bodies anymore, but they are still trying to “hold them up” so to speak. When I watch, there is this point where the person can easily be thrown down because their uke’s balance is broken, but the nage doesn’t take advantage of it and kind of holds them up while they are throwing them. By doing this, they never truly gain the feeling of what it feels like to throw someone down when their balance is broken. Part of training is to learn when a person’s balance is broken and can be thrown down. We can’t find this feeling or timing if we hold them up. I am not advocating for people to smash people. We should allow our partners to fall not because we don’t care but because this is a part of both of our training. From this place, we gain the feeling of when and how it is appropriate to throw someone down and they learn to feel what it feels like to fall and how to protect themselves when this happens.

Learning to let people fall and be thrown down is necessary because, in a circuitous way, we are trying to refine our sense of awareness. All martial arts teach their proponents to search for suki (隙) or “openings” or “weak spots” to exploit. Aikido takes this idea a step further and uses those openings not to destroy but to give grace. Ideally, if we can sense, feel, or know the moment when a person can be thrown down, then we would have developed a sense of awareness where we can read our opponents. Anyone can punch someone in the face. What’s harder is to be able to peer into a person’s psyche and realize that they are suffering and are only attacking us to vent out their suffering. This is my understanding of O’Sensei’s philosophy of non-violence. If that is true and we too are suffering and would want kindness, compassion, and forgiveness when we are suffering, then we have to give it to get it.

Later on in our training, we have to return back to holding others up. But, this time, we hold them up because it is what the moment necessitates. Sometimes people need to be held up while other times they need to be thrown down. The trick is in knowing one from the other and that stems from awareness.

It is easy for us to lose our way - it happens to the best of us. The true ardent of Aikido knows that in Aikido and in Life, there is a right way and a right time to do everything. When is it the right time and place to hold someone up? I don’t know, what feels right? Only by letting others fall, do we gain the understanding of when, where and how to hold them up.

Today’s goal: As yourself, “In this situation, is this a time to hold this up or let it fall?”