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.