Aikido as a way of life.

Today in class I got triggered…I started to feel like I was going to throw up. I felt teary and shaky inside.  We were doing an irimi nage and Ron asked us get inside nearer to uke that I like to. I like to take their balance earlier to avoid the intimacy that comes from a closer in throw. In the past I have stayed on the mat when these feelings come up but today was different. I did not try to deny the feelings. I noticed them. I gently observed to myself, “Oh, you feel nauseous…are you going to cry?” Next, I felt my feet on the blue mat. I noticed the other people in the dojo…There was Jocelyn. There was Anne. I see Ron.  I breathed deliberately in through my nose and out through my mouth several times. I kept moving.  I attacked when it was my turn to be uke. I consciously asked questions through the panic that was hovering about a correction I received as nage.  I felt my hakama with my hands; I felt the inside of my mouth with my tongue....

When the judgments pop up on the mat what can we do about them? You know what I mean, sometimes in my head I hear “you (meaning me) suck”, or “uke (meaning you) should relax more or follow better” and so on…. None of the above is conducive to blending or correct feeling.  So what I do is notice the thought, feel the feeling and keep training. My experience is that the process of noticing, feeling and continued training works very effectively. I am not wasting any time or energy denying or minimizing my negative self-talk. I am not building a case against uke by focusing on what I think is wrong with them. Usually for me, those kind of thoughts are proceeded or followed by an uncomfortable feeling. So I breathe in deeply, I exhale fully and wait my turn, then I do the next thing I am supposed to be doing, whether it is bokken movement, attacking my nage of throwing my uke. I pay very close attention to what I am supposed to be doing and before I know it my mind is...

We are running a beginner’s class and I am buoyed by the response. We had 3 new people on the mat on Thursday night.  Other times in recent years we have had no response to the offer of a beginner’s class. When we first started offering basics classes about 25 years ago the response was great….often 12 to 14 people would attend. It seems to me that the trend now had been for more confrontational arts. I think MMA has had an influence on people who are interested in martial arts. Maybe now the pendulum is swinging back to people being interested in martial arts for other reasons than to beat people up or to be stronger than everyone else. I sure hope so. We are ready. Let the influx continue.