on the art of gracefully falling on your face

Last week I signed up at the New York Aikikai, trying to get back into my Aikido training after a fairly long absence. The instructors here are great, and the Shihans (head teachers) are very prestigious in the Aikido world. In Vancouver over the last year I'd been training off-and-on in the "softer style" of Ki-Aikido, that was based largely on form: closer to meditation than martial art. What I forgot about Aikikai, apparently, is the art of Ukemi - falling.

Because of Aikido's open class structure every level of student trains together, as a rotating series of partners: Nage, who is the one that applies the technique, and Uke, who is the one receiving the technique. This means that every new student starts by learning (usually the hard way) how to fall correctly as Uke. In fact, you can usually tell how accomplished a person is at Aikido simply by watching them get thrown or pinned - a person with really good Ukemi usually has a lot of experience. Here's a funny comic.

Yesterday, though, I had a pretty spectacular fall. It's hard to explain the circumstances leading up to it, because Aikido techniques are based in a large part on joint locking. Sometimes when a technique is applied, a sort of magic happens: All the force of Nage's body is focused on a locked joint and, as Uke, your body instinctively reacts by trying to get away from the pain. Sometimes this results in a lightning fast crumbling to the ground, or sometimes a pretty amazing midair flip. This is one of the things I like about Aikido: Your "attacker" is largely responsible for the technique's effectiveness, you just direct him to the point where he has no option but to do what you want.

Anyways, I was practicing Yokomenuchi Kotegaeshi with a really advanced student. To me it's always both really interesting and really scary to be in this situation, because you know that the magic is about to happen to you. I wasn't quite prepared for this one, and in moments I found myself turning over in mid air, my wrist in severe pain. It happened so fast that I didn't have time to prepare for my landing and, falling on my back, my head rebounded off the mat.

It's always a little humiliating when you do a bad fall. My partner was sorry for applying the technique so hard on the "new guy", which was nice, but still made me feel like a bit of an idiot. It's all a learning experience I guess. This afternoon I get to go back and have some more fun, with hopefully less crashing and burning.