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.