Over the last two classes, we covered the foundational suburi (sword forms) for bokken which are derived from Chiba sensei’s curriculum. We will continue to refine and expand the conceptual movements over the next several classes.
To provide video references between dojo sessions, here are the eight basic suburi as demonstrated by Hori sensei:
And this presentation from Brady sensei who was an early student of Chiba sensei’s when he was in England:
These forms are simple patterns.
Numbers 1 and 2 are essentially the same, with the only difference being the maai of the opponent, forcing nage to either retreat (#1) or enter (#8) to close the distance. Numbers 3 and 4 are linked, with #3 as a tenkan and #4 a draw cut, but again the same pattern with either a retreat (#3) or closing movement (#4). Numbers 5 and 6 address a flanking opponent and the close or more distant maai. Number 7 contemplates an opponent immediately to the rear (check your 6 o’clock!) and number 8 is similar to 5 and 6 in addressing the flank but this time the inside line rather than the outside.
When we get back to empty-hand contact training, the shihonage forms in #3 and #4 will be easily recognized and felt.
Because the suburi can be practiced solo, they are immensely beneficial to augment your Aikido training during the time of Covid. Focus on developmental precision – remembering only perfect practice makes for perfect form.
Hints. Use a fixed starting marker for your right big toe. As you move through each of the eight suburi, at the conclusion of each, your toe should hit the same starting mark. To ingrain precision, make sure all cuts remain on the same line, you are hitting only the four cardinal directions: For suburi 1, 2, 3, 4, and 7 you only cut north and south (zero and 180-degrees) and suburi 5, 6, 8 cut east and west (90 and 270-degrees). Once you develop familiarity with the footwork necessary to perform these eight suburi and can move smoothly through the patterns, the next level of development is conceptual. Meaning, these cuts and the associated footwork appear to cover only four angles, simply rotate these four 45-degrees and now all eight are addressed.
Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. While demonstrating, I will often break the continuous movement of the sword at check points. I do this to provide visual markers so you can verify that the sword position is correctly oriented. But once you can hit each mark with precision, then it is time to work on continuity of motion. Remember, the sword cuts with velocity, with continuous motion, not with muscular force, so keep the shoulder joints freely moving!
Transitions are critical. Moving your body around and under the sword so that you do not slow its motion is key. This is easier to demonstrate in class than it is to describe in writing, but the general reminder is that each time you turn your body, it should be under the sword to avoid ‘cavitating’ the blade. The sword should be moving in continuous arcs on the vertical axis only throughout these eight suburi.
As we get back to training in the dojo, movement and breathing are the keys to development. To facilitate upper and lower body integration, conditioning practice focused on Suri ashi and Okuri ashi footwork: contact with the ground with a variety of movement patterns. The patterns derive from Japanese swordsmanship and kendo preserves the granular distinctions for further study. Using Japanese labels reinforces the importance of the pattern differences and should help in remembering them. [1]
Because contact based training may still be months away, independent conditioning exercises are all we can do. Fortunately, there are solo kata that will inform our movements.
Happo Giri is a foundational exercise. It teaches universal lines in two planes. On the vertical axis, it is a targeting map. On the horizontal plane, it shows paths of travel.
Happo Giri – 8 Direction Cut
On the ground each of the eight cardinal points on the circle represent the location of an opponent. Eight weapon-wielding assailants is the maximum number which can approach without severely interfering with each other. Therefore, each line represents an avenue of engagement.
When visualizing the same eight lines in front of you, they represent the lines of your sword cuts. The eight cuts are found in all sword systems – and later derivations are just expansions on the basic pattern.
“Oak” and “fruit forward” are for wine amateurs. “Cedar” and “barnyard” are for real connoisseurs, and only a professional would have the confidence to deploy “gravel” or “tennis balls”. One tasting note says a wine has hints of “mélisse, lemon-balm”. If you are wondering what “mélisse” is, don’t bother: it is actually just French for “lemon-balm”.
The language of wine is easy to mock. It can be recondite, even downright obscure. Oenophiles make a convenient subject for ridicule: if their cellars require such a wide-ranging lexicon, they are probably rich enough to cope with it. But wine vocabulary has its uses. Among the vast array of tastes, perhaps even flowery labels help experts pinpoint odours and flavours that they are interested in and want to remember. If you have a name for something, it may be easier to keep it in your head.
Perhaps. You might have heard the stereotyping joke about women having hundreds of words for colour in their vocabularies because they love to shop, but men having just the eight that come in a child’s crayon box. This is a caricatured and simplified version of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s view that “the limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” The underlying argument is that having a name for something lets you understand it. But researchers have found that the links between perception, cognition and language turn out to be more complicated than that.
The debate over the relationship between thought and language is one of the most heated in psychology and linguistics. In one corner is the “Sapir-Whorf hypothesis”, named after two early-20th-century American linguists, who posited that the world is made up of continuous realities (colour is a classic example) that are chopped into discrete categories by language. People perceive what their vocabulary prompts them to. An extreme version of this theory holds that it would be difficult, even impossible to distinguish colours—or wine odours or flavours—without names for them.
On the other side of the debate are those who say that although language is indeed linked with cognition, it derives from thought, rather than preceding it. You can certainly think about things that you have no labels for, they point out, or you would be unable to learn new words. Supposedly “untranslatable” words from other tongues—which seem to suggest that without the right language, comprehension is impossible—are not really inscrutable; they can usually be explained in longer expressions. One-word labels are not the sole way to grasp things.
Into this dispute comes a new study of wine experts and their mental labels. Ilja Croijmans, Asifa Majid and their colleagues gave a host of wine experts and amateurs a number of wines and wine-related flavours (such as vanilla) to sniff. Some from each group were told to name the odours they encountered; others were not. Then they were given a distraction to clear their minds, followed by a chance to recollect what they had smelled. As expected, the experts performed better than the amateurs—but those who articulated their thoughts did no better than those who had not.
Some who did not label the odours out loud may have done so in their heads. So the researchers conducted a second experiment. Some subjects were distracted while sniffing by a requirement to memorise a series of numbers, making it harder for them to verbalise what they smelled, even mentally. They did no better or worse than a second group who were given a visual distraction (memorising a spatial pattern), or a control group with no distractions.
The team conclude that olfactory memory in wine experts, at least, is not directly mediated by language. This is not to say such language is useless. Vinologists describe wines more consistently than amateurs do, meaning that—contrary to sceptical gibes about their pretentiousness—they are not just making up what they taste.
Ms Majid says that rather than ask whether language affects cognition—since it clearly seems to, at least some of the time—the real question is what functions it affects. Perception, discrimination and memory are not the same thing, and some might be swayed by language more than others. Mr Croijmans compares words to a spotlight, which may not give you the ability to perceive things you could not otherwise, but rather help separate them from the background. That is a rather more positive version of Wittgenstein’s aphorism: language not as a limit, but as a light.
March 1, 2021, the first Monday class after almost a full year off the Aikido mat. Restrictions are still in place – masked, no-contact training – which makes for a challenging teaching and learning environment. Aikido is an energetic art: we need to touch each other to understand how to ‘blend’ with the intentional force of another.
And it is with full optimism that vaccinations and a declining infection rate will allow us to soon return to a traditional training environment, so I will be posting class notes that (I hope) will systematize a means to remind us all of the fundamental tools that will provide a solid base for further development and expedited learning.
Etiquette – rei (礼)
The importance of etiquette cannot be understated. As a traditional Japanese art, rei is a skill to master. A good overview from the perspective of karate is >here< and it is equally applicable to Aikidoka. For us, the seated bow has additional practical reasons. From the seated position (seiza), proper form derives from the need to maintain awareness (zanshin) and martial efficacity – you need to be able to deploy your sword instantaneously. Therefore, the proper sequence is: first left then right hand down with hands placed so the out stretched thumbs and index fingers almost touch which forms a triangle. As you bow keep your eyes up to stay in peripheral contact with the entire room – don’t ostrich your awareness!
Aikido is an armed art; all its rationale and form derives from the use of the sword (katana) and spear (yari) and short staff (jyo). These tools are the teachers. The tools dictate the forms and informs the basis for all our movements. And it starts with your sword in you belt (obi) as you show proper respect (rei) when bowing to the kamiza and to each other.
Conditioning Exercises
From the bow, we start in seiza (kneeling seated position). Practice moving gracefully from seiza where the toes are flat to the earth to kiza where the toes are up and ready to spring you up or forward. Accomplish this by pushing your weight up using only your legs, keep your upper body relaxed but still and spine held straight. Push your head up, do not rock forward. Repeat this action until it is effortless to go from one position to the next.
Return to seiza to find your hara (center), which anatomically is forward of and near the top of your sacrum. To develop internal awareness, in seiza, rock forward and back with the movement starting at the hips. Do not bend your spine and hold your head still so as not to bend your neck. The purpose is to find the limits of your range of motion and improve upon it. Keep rocking forward and back, keep your awareness low. Then shift side to side. Again the motion should stretch toward the ilium, the top of your hip bones, keeping your spine straight.
Sacrum
While shifting front to back and side to side, your hands should rest lightly on your thighs. Allow them to move with your motion. Having found the range of motion in two planes, you should have a sense of where your hara is. Now that point becomes the center of an internal circle. With spine still straight, begin a circular rotation around your hara. Circle first one direction, then reverse it. Imagine your head is a pestal and the base of your sacrum is the bottom of a mortar.
I admit to a lax aerobic training regime over the winter. So to get back some conditioning and familiarize ourselves to the proper use of the body in Aikido, we use an “Aikido burpee.” Starting from standing hanmi (half-stance), the movement pattern is: front foot back, fold it underneath your buttocks as if for a back roll, use your front leg to piston down to a controlled drop, without outstretched arms slap the mat to dissipate energy, tuck you chin to your chest as the momentum rolls you back along your spine, then when your feet are in the air, switch them, and as your return momentum carries you forward again, tuck your leg under you buttock to push yourself back to standing in the opposite hanmi. Focus on using your lower body for muscular energy – your legs push you up vertically. Resist the need to use your hands, or to project your head forward to increase momentum. This exercise develops the leg muscles and core abdominals while conditioning your spine and back to receive energy and dissipate it.
Next the “rowing exercise” (funakogi) – but without the kiai to avoid explosive exhalation and potential of Covid spread. The earlier linked posts cover the details, but for the first class, the emphasis was on relaxed shoulders and movement from the top of the hip bones while keeping rooted engagement with the feet to mat. The developmental rationale is again based on the use of weapons. We are grounded to provide a stable platform for their use, which is in contrast with unarmed arts that tend to be elevated for ranged attacks (high kicks and extended punches).
Next, shikko (knee walking). Shikko is a traditional means of locomotion in Japan. Low seated positions and the lack of high-back furniture produce better posture and shikko is more efficient than constantly getting up and down to traverse a given space. Aikido retains this artifact as a lower body conditioning exercise, but it also has combative applications – more on that in other posts. Starting from seiza (seated kneel), the first leg is raised, knee leading so that the patella shows the line of travel. Your nose and raised knee are in the same line. Your back leg remains perpendicular to your front, toes are up and heels directly under the buttocks. Your feet should always remain as if tied together so they move in unison. The sequence is, front leg up, then down, push your back leg up and forward your hips open at least to 90 degrees each time. Your legs carry your upper carriage which should remain stable and undisturbed as you glide along the mat, arms freely able to deploy and use your sword.
Add a turn: Every turn must start with the head – the eyes must re-acquire the target as quickly as possible! Like “spotting” in ballet, the head initiates the turn, as you rotate your head, your lower body must follow, exaggerate the hip opening to facilitate the turn – avoid ‘spinning’ on your knees – and focus on snappily returning to the line of travel to maintain balance and precision.
This manner of movement is applicable to a standing walk. Pay careful attention to maintaining contact with the mat using the whole flat of the foot. There should always be an audible glissade as the feet move. The rationale for this sliding step is to feel objects and to avoid tripping over them while carrying deployed weapons. While eventually, standing movements should start from shizentai (natural relaxed posture), for now, start from an ‘athletic stance’ with both knees softly bent, weight evenly distributed over both legs, feet shoulder width apart. Movement starts from the iliac crest (your hip bones) – remember how you found your hara – that is a foundational exercise and the origin of our movements.
Once forward motion is comfortable, then move in reverse. The feet still slide, glissade, so resist the habit of ‘stepping’ and lifting the feet. Turning should be done just like from shikko – a snappy turn initiated by ‘spotting.’ A combative application is a spinning back fist – the arcing energy of your body has to hit a precise target, which is exactly 180 degrees from your starting point – no more, no less! Maintain your balance and poise through the turn – remember the arcing movement is a byproduct of your need to get back on the line of travel.
From standing movement develop the facility to move easily to shikko then back to standing movement without breaking stride or pace.
In this class we covered this in a cursory manner, later we will add ukeme (rolls) into the pattern and change direction (forward/back) to develop spatial awareness and dexterity.
The final movement exercise was the ‘grape vine’ walk where the legs cross forward and back to carry you along a line with the blades of your feet pulling you left and right rather than forward and back. The exercise should enhance awareness of foot placement as well as encourage iliotibial band (IT band) flexibility.
Contextual Applications
The weapon as teacher. I demonstrated the basic iaido draw to emphasize the forward and outward arc while keeping in balance. Practitioners must move along two distinct planes of motion: the lower body moves forward and vertical while the arm is horizontal and outward arcing. One must maintain poise and balance despite the arcing momentum. Stop the kissaki (tip of the sword) at the target’s tracheae. Keep the arm and sword parallel to the ground and visualize your target. The elbow is soft and tip out to keep the kissaki aligned. Now add a paired exercise: Ki-musubi (to tie ki together). Both players draw and maintain their swords targeting the opponent’s tracheae at a fixed distance each participant finds Covid-comfortable while maintaining sincerity of intent. From that initial position, advance and retreat in time without changing the distance. This requires astute attention to one another to keep in time and at a fixed relationship while traversing the mat.
Challenge yourself to maintain soft elbow and shoulder while carrying a moving weight (sword) level and in a fixed location. Both players keep their spirit projecting toward the other regardless of the direction of travel – even while moving backward keep forward intention.
Although in class, only the right hand draw was used (all samurai were right handed!) future classes will add the left side for bilateral development.
Closing Kata(s)
Ai-hanmi katatedori ikkyo/nikkyo replicated as a solo kata (form) with a sword in sheath is a weapon retention technique. Uke approaches to grasp nage’s sword by the hilt with the intention to draw the weapon and use it against its owner. Nage starts in shizentai but takes an arcing step back with left foot to protect his sword as uke advances to grab it. While in movement, nage grabs the handle with right hand to prepare for the draw. Once nage hits 90-degrees from the starting position, draw the sword with an outbound arc, kissaki leading, and stop the cut just beyond parallel to the ground. Sequentially, nage then supports the blade by placing the flat of his left palm on the mune (back or false edge of the sword). The left hand on blade replicates the elbow control in an empty hand presentation of ikkyo. The left (back) foot advances in time with the left hand replicating a pin (this ends ikkyo). From that terminal position the right leg now steps in an arcing 90 degree advance into uke’s space while the right hand raises the handle to nage’s high-line, keeping the blade toward uke’s neck while the left hand stays low-line to brace the bottom of the blade and the left foot steps back. Nage is now 180-degrees from the initial encounter (i.e. you made a complete turn). This hand position inversion while arcing is the corkscrew energy of the (nikkyo) pin.
Nikkyo
The sword represents uke’s arm held vertically and the advancing turn is the torquing pin. This solo kata should be done with both sides for bilateral development.
The challenge of kata is the need to visualize the encounter and the proper sequencing of action (step a, to b, to c) while effecting precise foot and hand movements. Teaching kata requires assiduously monitoring the student’s precision in motion and sensing the clarity of intent given each student’s zanshin at each stopping point, because there is no other feedback mechanism to give the student information.
Protective Arts 