Imitation

Shoulders

My shoulders are chronically tense, but while performing aikido movements, one should have relaxed shoulders (most of the time).

While training with me, a yudansha stopped, grabbed my shoulders, gave me a quick massage, then had me do the technique again. For about five minutes my shoulders felt as though they were two inches lower than usual, and settled snugly into my upper body. The techniques went very well. Then my shoulders rode up again.

Later I tried to make them relax, but the harder I tried, the less they responded.

Then for the heck of it I just pretended I was someone who has relaxed shoulders. Strangely, I am more relaxed when pretending to be a relaxed person than when I try to relax myself.

Irimi

The static irimi entry from katate tori ( same side wrist grab, evading to outside ).

While playing with it today, I tried out a variation that is popular in our dojo, which starts with the palm up, roughly at uke’s throat level. The problem with this one for me has always been that it stops uke’s forward momentum. We collide internally right at the point of uke gripping my wrist. Uke has to really be committed, or the energy can really stall. So with beginners I find myself walking toward them to keep the pressure on long enough to re-channel things.

I thought to myself, “so and so can get away with this because he weighs so much, like this,” and I dropped my center, instinctively imitating what I perceived to be his additional mass. This in fact dropped my elbow and uke’s elbow. Suddenly I saw the missing piece. At the moment of collision, you drop your weight via uke’s grip and then re-channel. An exaggerated form of this would twist uke’s elbow inward.