Goddamn I love
aikido.
It's been three months since I practiced regularly. The whole
summer. Now I'm finally getting back into it. The style at my new
dojo is a little different, I'm still in the process of reconciling it with my old habits.
Sensei is demonstrating a technique. He has the two
biggest guys in class up there with him, one on each arm. Each of them is holding on with
two hands (as opposed to one or three.), and when I say they are big, I mean
big. The one guy has a bit of a
pot belly, but he looks like the kind of man you would see standing behind a
drill press, or in front of some other large piece of
machinery, working with his arms, his hands, his
muscles. I don't know what he actually does, but he's big, and he's
strong. The other guy is this
gigantic fucking Czech. He's not quite as massive as the first one, but his
chest and
arms look like they were
chiseled out of stone. This guy is really really strong.
So sensei is demonstrating
the wrong way to do it. He's
jerking his body into them, trying to
push them away with his arms. His whole body is
tense,
vibrating like a piano wire. He's
gritting his teeth, and the two guys have to
brace themselves, but sensei is still getting
nowhere.
And then it happens...
All the
tension is
gone from his arms, and his hips are
twisting,
smoothly, back and forth. His arms follow along, gently, like
water. And what's attached to his arms follows along too. A large sweating white man, and a big-ass
Czech. Their whole bodies are caught up in this simple motion, and then,
smoothly,
naturally,
easily...
WHAM!
WHAM!
They are both on the mats, and sensei is still
standing, perfectly
calm,
relaxed, and
centered. It is truly
beautiful. More so because I know that feeling.
It's not extemely frequent, but gradually it becomes more and more common. That feeling when you execute a technique
just right, when you finally
relax and
stop thinking about it, and
just move. Everything flows evenly, smoothly, and your body has become the
fulcrum and
lever with which
Archimedes (thanks,
chkno) claimed he could
move the earth. And there is
Uke,
floating through the air, across the
dojo, and all you want to do is
laugh and laugh and laugh at the sheer
bliss of it.
Perfect.