Free JOURNEY - on Mastering Ukemi by Daniel Linden Page A

and his timing is nearly perfect. What he lacks is the ferocity and willingness to kill or die. He just cannot attack as if he really wants to harm you. His attacks are practically feeble and no one can actually feel them in the quiet place in the center. And that is essential to mastering ukemi . It is essential to mastering aikido
    And it is something almost every 6 th dan has to some degree or other. Because they were all, at one point, ukes for their own senseis. They have it and understand it. They might deny it, but it is there. And God knows Christian needs some guidance in this. I’m hoping that the two best ukes in the dojo, Curtis and Chris, can help him understand what it is that he is missing.
    I had a student in Denver years ago; let’s call him Jake. Jake couldn’t take ukemi either, the physical act. He was simply the worst, but he had an unusual physique and that contributed to his inability to fall down and get up properly. He was six feet and seven inches tall, weighed two hundred fifty pounds and had wrists like a ten-year-old girl. He was huge yet so delicate it was simply hard to believe. Behind his back some of the students referred to him as Baby Huey because of his size and delicacy. I tended to discourage that kind of thing in order to embrace the notion of unit integrity. Still, seeing this giant with his huge belly and towering height try to grab your wrist with his smooth and narrow fingers was odd to say the least.
    Jake stayed with it; I’ll say that for him. I know it was hard for him though and actually would not have been surprised to see him quit. Somehow he had made a decision to change his life and had decided that he was going to do that by studying aikido. He believed a martial art could erase three decades of his mother’s constant attention and devotion to her little man and his “sensitive” ways. Face it, he was a mama’s boy and had finally rejected her attentions and had decided to become a man, by God. The problem was that he simply did not know how to break the chains that held him to earth. He didn’t understand that his pain was a warning signal, not the end in itself and that pain was something that could and sometimes needs to be endured if only to prove to ourselves that we can stand it. He couldn’t look another man in the eye and stand up straight and tall. He slouched, and sometimes, I can’t be sure, but sometimes during training I actually thought I heard him whimper while being pinned.
    But he stayed. After a couple years, and failing each test a time or two, he had made it to fourth kyu (level). He was changing and we would see the changes every once in a while, but he was fundamentally the same. There was no pride, no fire, no machismo, and for a martial artist – until he assumes the mantle of humility – those things are dearly important. You must believe, make that BELIEVE, that you are the toughest, strongest, quickest, wiliest, smartest, and most ferocious. Why walk into a battle believing that you can or will fail? It just doesn’t make sense. Even in aikido. Can you imagine O’Sensei (the founder of aikido) not believing in his invincibility?
    But Jake was certain that he was weak and small. His mother had told him often enough and that was his mountain. He had to climb it alone and to this day I believe that Jake was my most successful aikido student. I believe that his training in aikido allowed him to change his life in a more significant way than any other student I have encountered, and I have encountered many whose lives were radically changed and improved as a result of their training.
    The day Jake became a man started like winter days, Saturdays, often did in that Denver dojo. We had open mat time. People came and went, worked out, worked on weights, hoped someone would come by to do aikido for a while, and sometimes we would have a sensei on the mat for an impromptu lesson.
    Jake was there. So was Ron, a nidan . After a while Bruce and