Travis Eneix

I was helping Daisy with de-installing an art show today and it reminded me of the time I became convinced of the importance, and usefulness of dedicated training in Aikido, and specifically the art of Ukemi (receiving.) In Aikido we learn Ukemi to take the techniques well and to practice our falling skills.  This allows us to train vigorously without having to worry about the partner we are throwing getting hurt.  It’s a key element to the practice, and without it Aikido would not have the amazingly dynamic component of training that it has.

I was about three years into my Aikido training.  Daisy was working for the San Francisco Jewish Museum at the time.  They were clearing a massive storage unit, and needed all the large shelving they had constructed taken down.  I was always on the lookout for extra cash at that time, and took the job.  Me, a 12 foot ladder, a power drill and about a dozen 5 foot by 8 foot shelving units stacked three high to the 20 foot ceilings.  Quite a job.

On the third day of taking down the shelves, plank by plank, I found a set that had been made out of single large piece of thick plywood.  They were affixed directly to the wall.  I probably should have thought better of working on one that had about 23 screws through the 2X4 at the back of the frame, driven into the wall.  I was under neath it, almost at the top of the ladder when I started in on a screw.  Once it was an inch clear I saw the white powder and realized that the wall was sheet rock.  Just as I thought, “That’s not a good way to mount this thing”, all the rest of the 22 screws started to give way.  The shelf, which weighed about a hundred pound, started to fall on top of me.  I dropped the drill as the wood hit my head.  Leaning forward I was able to get my shoulder past it and toss the thing over my back.  The shelf caught the ladder and swept it out from under me.  I was falling backwards, 10 feet up onto a solid metal floor.

I remember thinking, “No.”  Not a loud, “No!”  Not a defiant, “no.”  Just a simple, “this is not going to happen”, “no.”  My toe was the only thing still on the ladder, and I managed to use that to spin over in air to be face down.  I put out my hands, and caught the floor with a practice we call at Suginami, a “dolphin dive.”  You catch the fall with your hands then roll down onto your chest, belly and finally legs.  With so much momentum I actually popped up to standing at the end.  Not bad for a guy who at the time weighed in at 270 pounds.

I stood there for a moment, stunned, and tried to figure out what happened.  As I started to clear the debris I noticed a trail of thick blood coming from under my pants.  Somewhere in the fall something had hit the inside of my shin enough to rip open my leg, while not ripping my Ben Davis.  The hole in my leg was about the size of a dime.  I got some butterfly bandages and anti-septic from a first aid kit, patched it up and got back to work.

It wasn’t until later that evening when the adrenalin was gone from my system that I realized what had occurred.  I realized that my Ukemi training had at the least saved my back, and may have saved my life.  There’s an old Japanese word, Shugyo, that basically means “deep mind-body training.”  In martial arts it has a special place.  It is training to an ascetic level.  Training past the point of your own endurance.  Training until you bleed.  The first recorded example of a martial arts Shugyo in Japan was an agreed training betwwn two swords-masters.  They resolved to do sword cuts with each other until they simply could not anymore.  They were witnessed by their students.  The session lasted for 25 hours, and by the students count each master had performed 125,426 cuts before they both passed out.

The Yamabushi, ascetic warrior monks of Japan, have made a high-art of Shugyo training.

The fact that my hard training in Ukemi had saved my back-side, made a big impression on me.  To remind myself that it’s a good idea to put some hard training time into a skill that will be of great practical use I commemorated the experience by having the characters for Shugyo tattooed around the scar.  Everytime I put on my Gi at the dojo I see it, and I remember.

I don’t think training until your bleeding is something that should be done everyday.  But, every once in a while I really think it’s a good idea to see what your limits are, and what it feels like to go past them.  I have put myself through three Shugyo experiences in my time.  All of them provided deep, lasting, powerful lessons.

What would you do for Shugyo?

I was listening to an episode of the BuddhsitGeeks podcat the other day, This Is Your Brain On Meditation (part 1 of a 2 part series), and it got me to thinking about Aikido.  In the podcast, James Austin discusses the two primary types of attention that the brain engages in.  top-down, and

bottom-up.  In top-down mode we are focused at what is to hand, what we can touch and manipulate with our fingers.  We are literally looking down and the brain is focusing attention on detail and management.  This mode is designed to puzzle through a problem.  The other mode of awareness (bottom-up) involves actually looking up and out and is a diffuse generalizing awareness of our greater surroundings.  This mode is used to orient ourselves to our environment in a non-specific way and is what allows us to see and note arising trends or circumstances in our environment.  It’s a global awareness as opposed to a focused one (the top-down variety.)  The podcast goes on to deeply analyze the brain functions involved and how they apply to meditation and awakening.  A great listen when you have some time to digest it.  (James Austin has a brain the size of Wisconsin, and is not afraid to use it! )

After having listened to these podcasts I was teaching an Aikido class, and it struck me how applicable this thinking is for Aikido, and how it addresses a common trap in training.  Kato Sensei said during a seminar once that our common reaction when we don’t understand a technique (or feel confident about it) is to make our movements smaller.  The cure for this is not to wait until we get good at the technique to make the movement bigger, but is in fact to make our movements bigger from the get go.  If we leave our movements small while executing a technique we might eventually get good at it, but we would be locked into being good at a “pinched up” version.

This is in direct correlation to the modes of awareness/attention that James Austin was going  on about.  I watched it happen during my class.  When folks were puzzled by a technique, they looked down at their hands, and more or less planted their feet. Their motions became restricted to only include their shoulders, arms and fingers.  I stopped class for a moment and let them know what I was seeing, mentioned the two modes of awareness, and suggested consciously trying to use bottom-up attention when they felt confused as opposed to top-down.  Instead of looking down, look up and out.  Instead of restricting motion, expand on it.  Instead of employing only the arms and hands, use the whole body.  The effect was immediate and startling.  The technique was not suddenly mastered, but it was way more dynamic.  The ukes reported much more connection and loss of balance.  Everyone started smiling more and moving bigger and more vigorously.  All good things.

That also ties in with another thing I have noted as an Aikido instructor.  People tend to cut down their options when confused when what they should be doing is expanding on them.  As an example, when performing a kote-gaeshi (wrist-reversal) when dealing with a punch and the punching partner locks their arm the first thing the person doing the kote-gaeshi does is lock down on the wrist, focus their attention and power there and tries to apply more strength.  That’s a wrestling match, nothing but conflict and the evil opposite of the point of Aikido.  Instead, when we find ourselves in that situation we should not struggle to do more of the same, but should do something else.  I am not talking here about Hanka-waza, which is a switch to another technique.  Instead I mean continuing the same technique while exploring what other options are open other than the specific portion that is locked down.  In the example here, rather than fight to twist uke’s wrist the nage (thrower) could turn their hip, move their gaze, take a step, pivot an angle, anything within the context of the technique other than struggling where the struggle is.  I have tried this a lot myself, and when I can recall inthe moment to do it the results are astounding.  Moving a foot twenty degrees out can turn a failed technique into a dynamic throw.

Use everything you have, your whole body as well as both modes of awareness.  Give it a try, I think you’ll like it.

Let me know how it goes for you!