Coming
back the dojo after 2 months away with a debilitating shoulder injury, I found
that there are lessons coming from training with physical limitations. One of
the most important was that training in
an unusual way woke me up from memory-based, rote behavior, into being more in the actual moment. Lacking
a second hand to move uke’s secondary center, with my arm protected inside my
gi, I had to rely on distance and momentum for one-handed shihonages and one-handed
kokyus. If you take away reliance on muscle, what is left can be finding the
power in hip movement and leg movement. It was exhilarating to uncover new ways
to do old techniques. So training with a limitation ended up a good exercise in
increasing awareness and moving out of rote behavior.
The other
important lesson was a necessary adjustment in ego. We are all just temporarily
able-bodied. Everyone gets injured. Everyone
ages. But I had great trouble accepting that what I could do even four months
before was gone, not to mention skills and physical ability of 30 years
earlier. I thought that this time my
days at the dojo were over, and that that was the right decision.
But this
mindset is itself a wrong construct, coming out of comparisons with others and
with a younger self. First, I had to let go of judgments about what is required to belong: who should
be allowed on the mat to train. Instead, at the dojo I found a group of fellow aikidoka
wanting me to be there, willing to work in three’s so that there would be a
partner available who could take ukemi. I found support and was told that I had
something to offer. I think other dojo members are not nearly as concerned with
one’s own skill or the ability to train hard, as we would believe or fear. I suggest that every person needs always to walk
on the mat as if she owns it, without comparing herself to any other trainee.
It really is freeing. If those comparisons are stopped internally, then every
person’s training is indeed her own individual path.
Elaine Ryan,
Ni Dan
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