The feather fall--there is more than one way

"Soft ukemi", "Feather fall", "Soft high fall". There are lots of names for it, and I gave a side-by-side comparison in a previous post. A lot of people, myself included, have become discouraged in the quest to pursue it. Having seen it a lot in the past month, I wanted to share some observations.

As with so many things in Aikido and in life, there is more than one right way. Many of us at Aikido of Madison have really only seen this technique from Evie and from Charles Colton Sensei, who taught it to her. They are doing it at a very high level, and if the only thing we aspire to is to do it the way they do, discouragement is bound to follow.

So I am going to share the sage advice of my favorite roller derby skater, Mouse, of the Reservoir Dolls. She said, "Absorb the wisdom and the stoke of others, but try not to compare."

I've compiled a little gallery of folks doing it their way. There were some others that I wanted to record, but did not get the chance. But I hope there's enough here that others will take heart and see that it's more within reach than they might have thought.

And don't forget, the point of the whole exercise is not to be silent, it's to spare your body from getting pounded. So if your hand or foot bangs the mat instead of your body, I say you score full marks!

Here is Nicholas. He is frankly awesome, and sort of Evie's role model for the technique. You are not allowed to hate him, because he's just so nice.

Next up is Rupert. In this clip he does a variety of falls. Some are more traditional hard style, but clearly in the right circumstances he's working on the mechanics of the soft fall. Silent? No, but note that while his hand and feet both make some noise, the middle part of the fall, when his body meets the mat, is not a bang, but a roll. And clearly he's navigating the in-between territory. Lots of us worry about the nasty landings we have after we move away from what we know (the hard fall) but before we dial in the soft fall. Rupert is the proof that you can do it both ways.

Glenn is a hero to all of us. His feather fall looks different, and sounds different, from the one that Evie and Nicholas do. I hope I'm not crossing any boundaries here, but Glenn is 68 years old and has fused vertebrae. Let's just say he's in a different place in his life. But he found a way to make it work. Check him out, and note that he makes contact not with his hand or his outstretched forearm, but with his elbow, because that's what he has to work with:

And finally, here's Tres Hoffmeister Sensei. He's not part of the lineage (or cult, depending on your point of view) that created, or maybe popularized this technique, but he's found it anyway. Maybe he saw it someplace, or maybe he discovered it independently--who knows? But remember, this is a guy whose whole thing is about preserving the functionality of your body.

Back to first principles--what is the feather fall anyway? The assumption of the old style of hard fall is that you use it to protect your body in cases where you can't find a way to roll. Turning sideways and spreading the impact over a wide area is better than concentrating all the force of the fall onto your head, your elbow, or some other part of you that will break. And it works--you don't break anything, but over time the wear and tear accumulates.

Boiled down to its very essence, the feather fall is a way to find a roll in places where we used to think we couldn't find one. I've never seen grainy black and white footage of O Sensei and his students doing this. But guess what? Aikido is a living art, and there is lots of room to discover new things. To cooperate with your partners to develop techniques that allow you to train longer and that, when done by some are quite beautiful, well that's pretty much what it's all about.

Home tomorrow

It's Thursday evening, and we're in St. Louis, within striking distance of home. Evie is out visiting with a friend from Japanese camp, so we have a few minutes before we have to go pick her up again.

With the Aikido portion of the trip behind us and lots of time on our hands, we've started to reflect on what we have experienced. Our Aikido of Madison dojo mates will surely hear some of this, but one of the biggest things that we've been talking about is what it means to welcome visitors to your dojo. We had a range of experiences, and it's given us ideas about how we could be good hosts.

We also experienced a broad spectrum of ukemi, and it has helped us (probably more me than Evie, who doesn't have a lot of problems in the ukemi department) to clarify the kind of partner I want to be.

Technique-wise, we both have things that we thought were fun or interesting or worth sharing. While a library of techniques and variations is useful and nice to have (or it seems to be in Evie's case--I don't really have one yet), there are some bigger ideas that I think I will be focusing on, one of which is a greater emphasis on irimi, or entering. Nevelius Sensei had some demonstrations that really shows the value of it and I'll be doing some practice drills to beat it into my body.

I also feel that Nevelius's concept of the meeting place, and its corollary the axis of the meeting, really resonated with me. It's quite different from the Mary Heiny Sensei/Linda Holiday Sensei concept of "I am the center of the universe". It just makes more sense to me. The techniques end up looking quite different. Time will tell how well I can integrate the idea into my training.

I was also glad to see that Evie has no trouble finding a welcome for herself in a wide range of dojos. She was counseled once that if you have good etiquette and good ukemi you will be welcome anywhere, and she works hard on both. So as she moves into a phase of her life when she may be traveling around the country and the world, it's great to have confidence that she can make a place for herself.

I'm sure Jen and Evie will have more thoughts as we wrap up the journey, but for now, I'm looking forward to sleeping in our own bed!

Boulder--the last dojo of the trip

We stopped into Boulder Aikikai this evening and attended class with Tres Hoffmeister, 7th Dan Shihan. Evie had met him before at a seminar in Chicago and they had fun playing together. Here are the two of them, with Evie doing something that you should not generally do--throw a shihan. It's just not done. . .

Not really a big deal in this case, because Tres Sensei actually takes a lot of ukemi. He's kind of unbelievably young for someone of his rank--he's somewhere in his early 50s, and his "real job" is as a Feldenkrais teacher, so his whole thing is about keeping and increasing body movement. So he's super spry, and has a very collegial relationship with his students.

Somewhat incredibly, he is not the chief instructor at the dojo. That would be Hiroshi Ikeda Shihan, who was out of town (in Japan) teaching a seminar (which is no surprise, since he teaches all over the world practically every weekend). The dojo has a balcony level with couches and a great expansive view of the training area. It also appears to function as overflow space from Ikeda Sensei's garage, holding boxes of books and old calligraphy, as well as a set of snow tires and other assorted things. We also saw this:

I love it so much because almost any Aikido person could tell you at a glance that it is Ikeda Sensei, even without the type. He has such a distinctive way about him that he's unmistakable.

So as for the dojo, Tres Sensei is a man of few words, and his style of running class is very long intervals between instruction, meaning that you work a particular technique for quite a while before you have a break. This little detail matters because Evie and I both forgot one key detail--we've been training at sea level for 10 days and now we are at 5,000 feet. Jeepers, I thought I was going to pass out!

The folks here throw hard. It's just their thing. Ikeda Sensei throws hard, so we figure it's just part of the culture of the dojo. But it can make for a short career, which is part of Evie's interest in soft ukemi.

Here's a little comparison for you. The first clip is a traditional "hard fall". The second is a Jan Nevelius-style "feather fall". Both are from the same throw. Which would you want to do over and over for the next several years?

The woman in the hard fall video said that Evie's ukemi left her feeling like "a sack of potatoes" in comparison (even funnier since she has a French accent).

As usual, Evie got compliments on how soft her ukemi is, and I got compliments on how soft my uniform is. Both are deserved--my gi really is very soft!

Tomorrow: Kansas!

Santa Cruz through Wyoming, an alternative view

A different view of the weekend and our departure from California.

The weekend at Santa Cruz was great. The chief instructor is Linda Holiday Sensei, who visited Madison last year and made a strong impression on all of us. The most striking thing is how natural her Aikido movement looks. I sort of feel that if you made a movie of her training and through the magic of computers were to delete her partner from the picture, it would not look strange. She would just be sort of wandering around as if lost in thought.

Holiday Sensei and Nevelius Sensei co-taught throughout the weekend, and their ideas bounced back and forth. It was really interesting to see the interplay, because their approaches, at a basic level, have some significant differences. They both share an emphasis on softness, though, which is probably one of the reasons that they both appeal so strongly to Evie. She was fortunate to take ukemi for both of them during class, and as Evie has noted, each joined the class when the other was teaching. This meant that some lucky folks got special time with some folks who are not only very accomplished Aikido practitioners, but are also excellent teachers.

Here's a picture of Evie in a one-on-one with Nevelius Sensei. The Santa Cruz dojo has a separate small room off the main training space, which was a nice place for 2 pairs to practice away from the crowded main mat.

After class he grabbed her again, apparently just for some play time, because he didn't say anything. Here he is pulling off one of the most difficult feats in the martial arts--pinning Evie:

She's very hard to pin because she has a freaky combination of super strength and incredible flexibility. I have seen people (in good fun) pin her with a knee on her neck or by grabbing her ponytail. I asked if she was truly pinned and she said that she couldn't move, but it didn't hurt at all. That's the holy grail. For most of us, the pin becomes a submission hold and the person taps when they can't take the pain anymore. I guess we all need to keep practicing. . .

Another great day of training on Sunday, with the sensei exchanging meaningful gifts at the end, which I have to say I find extremely moving. I've seen Nevelius Sensei present gifts to some people on this trip, and they are always very personal and thoughtful.

Once we finished up, we hit the road promptly for Reno. We crashed with one of my college housemates, with whom we've not kept up very well since he was in our wedding many years ago. It was great to re-connect even if for a short time. Then we made an early start and drove across all of Nevada and Utah (both the short way!). When Buzz Aldrin looked out at the surface of the moon, he called it "magnificent desolation". He may as well have been talking about Nevada:

This was the Forty Mile Desert, a desolate and dreaded portion of the California Trail used by gold rushers and settlers. No water for 40 miles, there are over 900 graves along the way, and there were thousands of skeletons of mules, horses, oxen, and other work animals. I thought the landscape was fascinating, but it was a bit too lonely for Jen.

With Nevada in the rear-view, next came Utah. The Bonneville Salt Flats are in fact very salty, as demonstrated by this salt refinery with a giant mountain of salt sitting outside. We saw many operations of this scale:

They're also very flat! We did not see any rocket cars going for a land-speed record.

We stopped for a great Indian dinner in Salt Lake City and pushed on to our current location--Evanston, Wyoming. Tomorrow we're going to Boulder for more bakery goodness and more Aikido. We have decided not to stop for Aikido in Denver--we just don't have enough hours in the day to fit both in.

Aikido Of The Week

Thursday

All of the evening classes throughout California were great, but many of us agreed that Thursday at Two Rock Aikido was probably the best. Some of the stuff that Jan Sensei had been saying throughout the classes started to click for me, and it was a great group of training partners.

There was one woman there wearing a white belt and hakama whom everyone seemed to know. I didn’t get a chance to work with her during class, but we were folding our hakama next to each other at the end. We started chatting, and the fact that I was from Madison came up. I still didn’t know her name. She mentioned knowing John and Robin Sensei, and said she had somewhat recently been to Wisconsin visiting Eric Novak Sensei’s dojo in West Bend. It turned out she grew up in Milwaukee, we knew tons of the same people, blah blah blah. She had on a relatively new white belt, and I hadn’t seen her train much. Eventually she asked me if I want to “roll around a little bit”. Keep in mind this was after a full two hour class, but I wasn’t about to say no to that. She couldn’t fall because of an injury, but it was no problem, I took all the ukemi. We started training, and I was thinking “There’s no way she’s new”. It was super fun, she was really connected and smooth, and we practiced for probably almost five minutes. Afterwards she goes, “Tell Robin and John that Jamie Z. says hello”. And then it hit me. THIS IS JAMIE ZIMRON! She’s the golfing sensei! And she’s a 5th dan! OH MY GOD! But I restrained myself, and let her know how much some of the members of our dojo enjoyed her class in West Bend (the class that she previously neglected to mention that she taught).

After that experience, I asked Jan Sensei a question about one of the techniques we did that night, and got an even-better-than-expected answer.

The Two Rocks Aikido dojo is gorgeous. Out on Richard Strozzi-Heckler Sensei’s ranch, all the buildings are built like log cabins, there are tons of windows, and rosemary grows everywhere. The mat was pretty small, but we made it work. Lots of line throws. The weird thing was, there are no changing rooms, so everyone just changes in the dojo.

Friday
Class at Aikido of Tamalpais. After our extensive walking and eating of the day, I was really excited for class. Although the classes of the last few days were certainly not identical, they had a similar theme. In Tamalpais, however, Sensei started to change things a little bit (maybe in preparation for the weekend with Linda Sensei?). He did an exercise from shomenuchi where you enter, turn, and cut with uke. Then bring them around and “touch their center”. You don’t literally touch it, but use the connection through both of your hands as a bridge. I really liked this as an ukemi exercise, as well as a different entry from shomen than we usually do. Something that we often don’t realize as nage is that in many cases, when you can get uke’s balance, they can also get yours. Jan Sensei often talks about “researching” techniques. When you practice something new, it won’t be, and shouldn’t be, effective right away. In training, we often try to go off the line and be protected, but you learn the most in the vulnerable places. He talked about how the top of a mountain is both the most dangerous, and the most interesting place.

First in Seattle, and then again later, Jan Sensei was talking about “pure” technique, kata, or kihon waza. One of his goals is to not have to undo anything. You put your feet and hands exactly where they need to be, have balance in the right place, etc. Then, when you have solid kihon waza, you start experimenting with spacing, pushing and drawing, stepping or foot changes, and that’s when it gets interesting. This is back to the idea of researching.

The Weekend

Okay. So we got to Linda Holiday Sensei’s dojo Aikido of Santa Cruz at about 9:00 Saturday morning after an early drive from Berkeley, thinking class was at 10:00. It was at 10:30. Now, I love being early. Arriving at a seminar less than 45 minutes early makes me nervous. But an hour and a half is a little excessive. Luckily, the dojo is gorgeous, they have an extensive Aikido library, and nice squishy couches.

When I saw that Jan Sensei and Linda Sensei would be co-teaching half of the classes, I was really excited. They taught some of my favorite seminars of the past year. What I didn’t realize is that when one was teaching, THE OTHER ONE WAS TRAINING! So while one 6th dan was teaching an amazing class, the other one was just practicing with everyone else. I had taken a fair amount of ukemi from Jan Sensei in the previous couple days, so I was getting relatively familiar with his nage waza, but it was really interesting to see his ukemi as well. Jan Sensei and Linda Sensei are both definitely among the people whose ukemi makes your technique better, and when they throw, you can do ukemi beyond your normal skill. It was really interesting to see such a distinction in Linda Sensei’s Shingu style, to what we had been seeing all week from Jan Sensei.

Linda Sensei was continuing the theme of a bridge between uke’s and nage’s centers with some of the exercises she was doing. The contrasts between the two sensei was particularly clearly illustrated when they did the same exercise: when Linda Sensei throws you, it feels like you got scooped up and spit out by a tornado, and when Jan Sensei throws you, it feels like a trapdoor opened up beneath your feet. And yet even with all the variation, the two styles and teaching methods complement each other really well.

There’s still lots to absorb, so there will certainly be more to come!

The pastry--a recap

You got a brief report of our pastry experiences of the last few days, here's the extended version:

Thursday 
Arsicault Bakery, croissant and Kouign Amann. Both were fine, but not fantastic.

You already heard about b. patisserie.

(Aikido stories coming soon.)

Friday

The plan was John Pence Gallery to see our neighbor's paintings displayed, Cocoabella chocolates, Nuubia Chocolates, Chantal Guillon macarons, Choux bakery, Thorough Bread and Pastry, The Lab, and Craftsman and Wolves, then off to Aikido.

Here's what really happened:

We went to the gallery, saw the paintings, learned that yellow parking meters mean 30 minutes, all of that went as planned.

Then we were supposed to go to Cocoabella, but couldn't get there between traffic, lack of parking, and construction.

So we got to Nuubia (which happens to be in the lobby of the Twitter building), and parked. We got a calamansi and basil chocolate, an almond-coriander praline, and an "OMG bar" which is hazelnut praline, salted caramel, and caramelized rice crispy dipped in chocolate.








Walking towards Chantal Guillon we happened across Christopher Elbow Chocolates, which I've heard a lot about, but thought we couldn't go to. We started chatting with the person working there and ended up trying Earl Grey, Champagne, and Yuzu chocolates. They were all great. This is the Yuzu:

Off to Chantal Guillon, where we had chocolate orange, salted caramel, and raspberry-rose-lychee macarons. (You might think raspberry, rose, and lychee sounds weird, but it's a thing. Called "Ispahan" it's Pierre Herme's signature flavor.)

Walking to the next bakery, we passed a liquid-nitrogen ice cream place, and of course had to stop. The creme fraiche ice cream with pear caramel was tasty, although I thought the texture would be better.

Next up was Choux bakery, and all-cream puff establishment. Now, none of us really like cream puffs, so this was a little bit of a stretch. The lemon curd filled, and and chocolate pudding filled puffs were both okay, but nothing amazing. The shop was tiny! We could barely all stand inside.

Then to Thorough Bread and Pastry, which supposedly has fantastic almond croissants. Yeah, not so much. It was dry, and had basically no flavor.

And now the tale of The Lab. On a previous trip to San Francisco, we had tried to go there. The Lab is SF-based chocolatier Michael Recchiuti's cafe space and test kitchen. So we're walking down 22nd street, where the map said it was. The neighborhood was looking really different than we remembered, but none of us really thought about it. Trust in Siri! But we got to the address, looked all around, and finally saw the sign: The Massage Lab. Oops. There were some happy, relaxed-looking people leaving, but no chocolate to be found. (There's more to this story, you'll find out soon.)

Next we were off to Craftsman and Wolves, which I had heard about on Yelp, but didn't really know much about. Wow. Probably the non-Aikido highlight of the trip so far. We got a croissant which was quite good, but it seemed awful in comparison to the rest of it. The "stone" was amazing. I liked it, and I hate coffee! It was whipped coffee (??), yuzu, gianduja (which you should look up, but don't pay attention to the Wikipedia page, because it's wrong), and coconut. And so, so much prettiness.

Here's the croissant.

And the hot pepper and smoked cheddar gougere. IT WAS AMAZING!! The texture was perfect, soft and squishy on the inside, with little cheese pockets all over, and a crispy and almost leathery outside.

And here's the Craftsman and Wolves pastry case.

On the way to Craftsman and Wolves, we passed a cute looking frites place and had to stop on the way back, because we were pretty desperate for some salt. Our frites came with ponzu ketchup and orange-ginger mayo. Both were good, although I loved the orange-ginger.

And on the ketchup pump was this sign:

It was quite a place. They were definitely some characters.

So then we walked back to the car, and decided to drive to The Lab to try again. We get there, and what happens? Yep. They're closed for a private event. Nooooooooo! Maybe it's not meant to be. And we couldn't even get a massage this time!

From there we drove to Bodega Bay to see the ocean.

Then off to Aikido of Tamalpais for class. There are many Aikido blog posts to come, but not yet. Right now we're off to day to of class at Aikido of Santa Cruz. Where Linda Sensei and Jan Sensei are taking turns teaching, AND TRAINING WHEN THEY'RE NOT TEACHING! Turns out the two of them aren't 6th dan for nothin'.

Wisdom

"All of us in this world are members of the same family, and we should work together 

to make discord and war disappear from our midst.

Understand Aikido first as budo and then as the way to construct the World Family."

~Morihei Ueshiba O-Sensei, Founder of Aikido