Discovery

Labor Day weekend, 2006. Traveling through Connecticut, I stopped to visit an old student and friend of mine, Sac, who I’d recently reestablished contact with. We took a nice class together. His sensei, a Godan, had studied a number of years in Japan, and his skill and mastery of what he taught was obvious.

Afterwards, in Sac’s kitchen, we were talking Aikido… About people, about techniques, about how different people do things different ways. He told me that his current sensei teaches a different way of applying Sankyu than Sac and I had originally been taught. He offered me his hand and asked me to put him in Sankyu. I held him in a firm Sankyu grip, my hands, and his, very close to my chest. His arm was in the classic upside-down “L” position – his forearm, from hand to elbow vertical, his upper arm, from elbow to shoulder, horizontal. Sac then twisted his hips, driving his elbow down, and his hand popped out of my Sankyu grip. He then asked for my hand, and explained/demonstrated that his sensei has them extend uke’s arm and hand as far from uke’s body as they can when they take the Sankyu grip. My arm was fully extended, straight from hand to shoulder. Although my hand was somewhat lower than my shoulder, the basic orientation of my arm was more horizontal than vertical. His Sankyu was very persuasive and he explained that with my arm fully stretched, there was no way for me to drop my elbow to counter. The demonstration was very effective, and I thought to myself that I will have to play with this some in practice and see how it feels in various situations.

A few weeks later, I was at a seminar in Massachusetts, with a high ranking sensei who was obviously quite skilled. He had also spent a good amount of time training at Hombu dojo in Tokyo. At one point, Sensei decided he wanted to make a point about Sankyu, and asked me to come up to help him demonstrate. He explained that at one point, while training in Hombu, he was working with one of the Uchi Deshi on a Sankyu technique. The Uchi Deshi, as nage, would apply Sankyu by extending uke’s arm far away from the body, so the arm was straight from wrist to shoulder. He demonstrated, applying Sankyu exactly the same way Sac had a few weeks earlier. Then he had me hold him in Sankyu that way. He explained that this technique being applied by the Uchi Deshi, was quite painful, and that after a while he just “got tired of it”. At that point he explained and demonstrated on me, moving his body in towards me, thus causing his arm to bend at the elbow, with elbow high. He then twisted his hip, dropping his elbow, and popped out of my Sankyu grip (just as Sac had). He explained that stretching the arm far from the body was not the best way to do Sankyu, because it allowed the opportunity to counter as he had just demonstrated. He said the better way to do Sankyu is to hold uke’s arm and hand in very close to nage’s chest. He had me take Sankyu grip, holding my hands and his right against my solar plexus area. His forearm was vertical, and fully in contact with my body, all the way up my chest to my shoulder. He quickly showed that from this position, dropping the elbow is not possible. He did not say so in words, but I believe he was trying to convey that with his arm “braced” against my body like that, there was nowhere for his elbow to go.

What a conundrum! A few weeks previous it had been demonstrated to me that extending the arm and applying the sankyu far from uke’s body was more effective, and now this sensei explicitly stated that having uke in very close to nage was better. And, they both utilized the exact same counter to “prove” their point!

I’ve always been fascinated by contradictions between “trusted” sources. At some points in my life, “obsessed” may have even been a more accurate term. I’ve just got to work them out! I’ve often found that contradictions exist within a particular frame of reference. And if you can shift to a more inclusive perspective in the way you look at the situation, the apparent contradictions are no longer. So I started to re-think, and re-examine both “demonstrations”.

At this point I am going to pause in my narrative to explain something about a concept that many beginning Aikido students do not fully understand. This is necessary so that beginning students reading this article will be able to follow what comes next. The concept is that of “sincere attack’, or “committed attack”. We are told that our job as uke is to deliver a sincere, committed attack to nage.

Let’s think about the process of attacking. All attacks involve movement. Prior to the attack, uke and nage are disconnected, not in physical contact. The purpose of the attack is for uke to physically contact nage, via strike or grab. Getting from disconnected to connected requires movement on the part of the uke.

Let’s look at a very basic movement, walking. At some point, both feet are on the ground, weight balanced between them. As the back foot starts to lift off the ground, weight shifts to the other foot. As the back foot is in the air, stepping forward, all balance is on the other foot. Stability is momentarily sacrificed for forward movement. As the foot touches ground again, now in front, stability and balance are regained.

Similarly, attacks originate from a stable, balanced position. This is needed to deliver a strong attack. And on completion of the attack, the attacker wants to re-establish a stable balanced position. Between the beginning and end points, there is movement, a sacrifice of stability, and momentum. Nage, for his part, trains to blend with the attack in a way that prevents uke from re-establishing stable balance at the end of the attack. Through continued movement, nage seeks to keep uke off balance, and eventually use a “technique” to lead uke to the ground.

Now, in the partner practice we use, uke knows, even before the attack is initiated, how nage plans to move in response. It is easy to resist or counter movement when you know beforehand what the movement is going to be. But in a “real” situation, the attacker has no such advantage. Thus, the “sincere” uke resists using this foreknowledge to hamper nage. He “commits” his body, his movement, his energy, and his momentum to the attack. He doesn’t hold back in the process of attacking, bracing himself against the movement by nage he knows is coming. This doesn’t mean he is genuinely trying to clobber nage, just that, he legitimately gives nage something to work with. A sincere, committed attack maximizes the potential for learning for both uke and nage.

Back to my narrative. Looking back on both demonstrations, I noticed a similar dynamic in both of them. There was no sincere, committed attack in either of them. In fact, there was no attack at all. The ukes simply gave me their hand. They did not commit their bodies; they offered no movement, no momentum, no intent. They did not sacrifice balance or posture at all. Additionally, in taking Sankyu on each of them, I did not attempt to bring either one of them to the floor. I held a static grip, and waited for each of them to demonstrate what they wanted to show. Under such circumstances, it is not hard for a trained person to successfully execute a counter.

I spoke before of frame of reference. The original puzzle was framed in terms of “Which style of Sankyu is more effective?” That framework is not useful for our learning. It is based on a faulty notion. I prefer to look at it from the framework of “preparation”. Any specific “technique” is merely the icing on the cake. It is the afterthought of how to safely end contact with the uke. Its effectiveness is almost entirely dependent upon the preceding parts of the interaction. Nage must prepare for technique by keeping his own balance and posture while blending and leading; disrupting and controlling uke’s balance throughout the contact, and keeping himself in a safe position relative to uke during the interaction. With such a foundation, most any way of doing a technique will be effective.

So, I offer the following postulate: Any style of executing a technique, is vulnerable to counter by an uke who’s got his wits and balance about him. And the collolary: if nage successfully controls both ukes balance and his own, stylistic differences in the execution of a technique are of little or no consequence whatsoever.

Having come to this frame of reference, and feeling good about it, I continued to re-examine the demonstrations. They were certainly effective, but they were not convincing. At the Massachusetts seminar, the instructor ending by showing that with his entire forearm braced against my upper body, he could not drop his elbow to counter. So what does this do to my postulate? It this truly a way to do Sankyu that cannot be countered? Let’s consider some aspects of the situation. Uke was in full possession of his faculties. He had his balance, his posture, his wits, and years of training. He was not caught off guard, or surprised by nage’s actions, as a real attacker might be. With our bodies so close to each other, and with such a large area of physical contact between our bodies, added to the fact that uke’s center (try to envision the positions) was beside and a little behind mine (my blind spot), I have no doubt that there were other ways he could have countered. I did not have a strong foundation for technique prepared in this situation.

As humans, we all share a similar structure and framework. But each body is unique. Height, weight and its distribution, proportions, bone structure, the length, strength, and flexibility of each of our muscles, tendons, and ligaments – these are some of the factors that make each body, and the way each nage uses his or her body, unique. Some students only learn from one instructor, and are only exposed to one way of executing a technique. But most of us have the good fortune to learn from different instructors, and get the opportunity to experience and experiment with different ways of executing techniques. Over time, we each settle on a style that is most comfortable for us. Hopefully, it is based on good foundation, and will thus be fairly effective most of the time. This becomes our unique, personal expression of Aikido. As we continue to learn, we refine our personal style, incorporating our new understandings and awarenesses into it. Thus, there are as many different ways to do a technique as there are people doing the technique.

Life itself, although all based on common underpinnings, is full of almost infinite diversity. For most of us, the experience of this diversity is a source of wonder and awe. So too, Aikido is full of diversity, different ways of expressing its foundational underpinnings. This diversity does not need to be seen as a challenge to our personal orthodoxy, a repudiation of what we’ve previously learned, nor as a basis for comparisons of superiority, effectiveness, or correctness. We can encounter this diversity with enthusiasm; celebrate it with comradeship, and strengthen our Aikido through embracing it. In doing so, we may become one step closer to building the kind of world that O’Sensei envisioned.

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