The title of this blog is a reference the title of Terry Dobson’s wonderful book on aikido and his life and it came about because of research I was doing for a previous piece. Somewhere I had heard the teaching that “head leads body, hips lead feet.” Search as I might I haven’t been able to find any reference to it, so either I imagined it, or one of my teachers made it up.

Nevertheless, the first part is really important. The head does lead the body. At the most basic level you can see the improvement in people you practise with when they start turning their head first when doing tenkan or tai sabaki; obviously you can’t see the improvement in yourself, but your friends will tell you.

And this act of turning the head first has a definite impact on technique too; it is particularly noticeable when doing irimi nage or kotegaeshi or indeed any tenkan or ura technique.
There is a further argument that as aikido always assumes multiple attack, you should always be turning your head to look around you as you perform technique rather than focusing your attention solely on your uke.
So I was telling one of my students to turn her head whilst doing a technique and she said, “Like dancing?” She had done ballet. And I got the chance to say, “Yes, it’s a lot like dancing!”
The fact that she had been a ballet dancer lead me to do a little research on the turning of the head in ballet. Obviously I’ve seen dancers spinning around on their points and not falling over and I had always assumed the head-turning was a technique in order to prevent dizziness. But then I came across the “Rules of Classical Dance.”
They were first set down definitively in 1723 by John Weaver and they are the principles essential for a dancer to learn about the age of 9 or 10. Here they are all seven (I’ve edited out some of the more specifically ballet-related comments):
1. Stand Correctly
• Tail down, spine up.
• Shoulders and hips face same direction.
• Weight balanced on the Triangle of Foot [this means the weight falls evenly through the outside of the heel and the little toe and big toe side of the foot with the arches lifted].
• Head erect and centred.
• Body centred over pelvis.
2. Turning Out
• Legs rotate from hip socket, feet follow.
• Knee remains in natural alignment with leg and foot, whether bent or straight.

3. Moving Correctly
• Each body part needs to be in the natural relationship to all others, and to the dancer’s centre of balance.
• Eyes and head lead the movements; arms and shoulders, body, legs and feet follow.

4. Balance
• Epaulement [literally means “shouldering in French and refers to the position of shoulders, head and neck]:
o Natural — the leg in front is matched by a slight forward movement of the same shoulder.
o Opposition — the opposite shoulder moves slightly forward.
• Opposition: the leg in front is balanced by the opposite arm coming forward.
• The weight is evenly distributed throughout the body, using the least amount of energy for the technique as possible.

5. Classical Technique
• The Head:
o Head moves independently, and leads movements of the body.
• Feet and Legs:
o Movements pass through the centre of the leg and the longitudinal centre of the foot.
• Principles for the Arms:
o A continuous flow of arm movements brings life and artistry to port de bras [basically, movement of the arms].
o Arms do not go behind the shoulders.
o Arms are rounded for the basic positions.
o Arms do not cross the centre line of the body, unless expression dictates otherwise.
o Arm movements should be sensed throughout and coordinated with the movements of the entire body.
• Principles for the Body:
o Shoulders and hips face the same direction and are level, except where use of correct muscles and body structure determines otherwise.
o The direction the hips face determines the direction the body is facing.
o Nothing must inhibit the breathing.

6. Transferring Weight
• The entire body weight must go to the new supporting leg, moving through the centre of balance.
• Dancer must be completely balanced against gravity all through the movement.
•
7. Coordination
• Noverre [Jean-Georges, a French balletmaster] stated: “Accuracy in classical dance is what matters, and if there is to be accuracy then there must be unity and discipline. Only then will there be coordination.”
• Another author says that if all the other principles are present, coordination will not be a problem.

When I came across these rules I was at first astonished, because I could see so many parallels with the martial arts in general and aikido in particular. But then I started thinking about the samurai: they were expected to have interests in other arts such as dancing, the game of go and tea ceremony, literature and poetry. This balance of cultural and martial was considered the pinnacle of the samurai culture.

Takeda Shingen (1521-73), the greatest general of the Ashikaga shogunate wrote, “A man’s learning is like the leaves and branches to a tree; he cannot be without it. Learning, however, is not just in reading something but rather is something we integrate with our own various ways.”

This is not the same as “The Renaissance Man”, as defined in the Merriam-Webster dictionary as some who “is interested in and knows a lot about many things”, or even as embodied in Leonardo da Vinci, the archetypal Renaissance Man, who drew on his wide body of knowledge to solve specific problems.

The samurai seemed to view the arts as something that completes us, with one art informing another. This is not to say that everything should be viewed as a weapon, rather that swords have been beaten in ploughshares and ploughshares into swords.

To finish with a mundane example: a few years ago my wife and I took salsa classes. Now I would be the first to admit I have no sense of rhythm and two left feet, but once I started treating the dance steps as kata, I was surprised how easily it came to me. I probably wasn’t interpreting the music very well, but at least I didn’t look like a complete klutz (I hope!).

So now when I practise in the dojo, I will attempt to draw on John Weaver’s seven principles, and hopefully I can integrate some of the grace of a ballet dancer into my aikido.

Quite a while ago at a dojo near me I went for my fix of aikido. A new person came to the dojo that day. He was an MMA practitioner who wanted some training variety.

We were in group training; the technique we were doing involved defence against a punch. In the group was the new person, a brown belt and myself. I took my turn first and the brown belt was up next.

The new guy took a very strong stance you could tell he had been training a little while and he looked like a fighter, strong and relaxed at the same time. He followed proper etiquette and signalled to his partner asking if he was ready. He threw a right cross at the chest of his training partner.

The plan was to move out of the way with a slight tenkan and to engage your training partners mind with an atemi before executing the technique. That was the plan anyway, but things don’t always go to plan. He caught the brown belt square in the chest before he had a chance to even move. It pushed him back taking him off balance. The look on the brown belts face said it all. He wasn’t prepared for that attack. In response he said out loud “I should be able to do that, I’m a brown belt”. He composed himself and started again. This time he got caught also. Frustrated, he started making more errors. He was out of his comfort zone.

It got me thinking that day about how could it be that a person who had been training a long time and had put the hours in. Even bled, sweated and consistently travelled every week to practise couldn’t in that instance do the simplest thing we learn in Aikido, tenkan.
I questioned myself thinking that maybe he was having an off day, so over the next few times I trained at that dojo I watched him and the others training.

I followed how everyone trained not just in this dojo but in others too. It seemed to me that most people training in aikido (not all) lacked the ability to defend against an attacker that had intent to actually hit their training partner. They lacked the combat intensity while training. I understand that at the beginning of your martial arts career you are learning the very basics and the attacks may be slowed or are from a very static position but if someone, as in this case the brown belt had been practising aikido since a very young age. Fourteen years of practise summed up in one technique of the brown belt had me questioning my own technique.

“You can only fight the way you practice” Miyamoto Musashi, A Book of Five Rings

We who do the arts don’t actually like to fight and will avoid using what we have learned on others, as we understand most what devastation and harm it can cause. Saying that we are learning a martial art and in the dojo we must be honest to the martial and the arts aspect of whatever training discipline we follow.

As I practise today and in my teaching I hope I have learned a lesson from that day. We try to keep the combat intensity in training. It is at first scary for any student, going to edge of where there is a possibility of harm and taking control from that point.

There is a far cry from the dojo and real life, but in the dojo, I do believe we should keep the attack as real as possible where uke tries to actually attack nage so that he can achieve a better understanding of the art and himself.

We should also not delude our students and ourselves that we may be able to defend ourselves when (and I hope never) a person you can’t reason with may cross our paths. All we can do is prepare.

“One person practising the art is better than fifty people preaching it” – unknown source

The other night in class I was explaining how many aikido techniques there are. One or two students were quite disappointed when I came up with only about sixteen main ones – five immobilisations and eleven projections. “Is that all?”
And to be fair to myself, the number of aikido techniques has been distilled down to even less than that by some practitioners. Here are what they consider the five essential forms:
1. Ikkyo
2. Shiho-nage
3. Irimi-nage
4. Kokyu-nage
5. Koshi-nage.
After that, the class turned into a lesson in mental mathematics. First of all, all of those techniques can be done either as an irimi or a tenkan move. That takes us up to sixteen times two: thirty-three. Then we multiply that number by the number of attacks which is generally listed at about twenty three (this was where I would normally have reached for the calculator, and I have done now to check my reckoning for this blog): it comes out at three hundred and sixty-eight.
Then there are suwari waza (sitting techniques) and hanmi handachi waza (one sitting, one standing) versions of all three hundred and sixty-eight techniques. That takes me up to one thousand, one hundred and four! Then we have henka waza or changed techniques. Not all techniques are suitable to be changed to any other technique, but if you assume about fifty percent of them do then you are now up to one thousand, six hundred and fifty six techniques.
Then there are multiple attacks and there are kaeshi waza or counter techniques. And we haven’t even got to weapons techniques yet! After jo projections and immobilisations there’s knife-taking, sword-taking and jo-taking.
And kokyu techniques.
And then all the different circumstances in which the attack can take place – whether you are standing or seated, have a lot of room to move, or very little, uneven ground, in the dark. It never ends.
The point I was trying to make was that there is more than enough in aikido to last us a lifetime if all we’re interested in is collecting techniques. After that there’s another lifetime required to polish them, and several lifetimes after that to learn the different ways that different people have of doing them.
So really, within certain basic principles, the techniques and variations are infinite.
I suppose some people could regard it as depressing that there is so much to learn and so little time, but I find it exciting.
In a lecture given by the Founder himself, called “The Harmony of Love” O-Sensei said:
Aikido is none other the manifestation of the workings of love. Love gives form to the universe and purifies all things. The universe scatters the seeds from which all things grow; it contains the infinite [my emphasis] power which nourishes and allows them to prosper.
He goes on to say:
The actual forms of the universe are revealed within the human body. We must begin to see the universe within us and awaken to the principles of balance and love … the universe unfolds in a never-ending mosaic of many forms; each one a different aspect of its fullness, each one in balance with all others.
What he seems to be saying is that aikido is an opportunity to look beyond our small lives and connect with the infinite. And the best thing about this is that it is not a mystical process, it is very practical, and each improvement in our practice is reflected in our daily lives.
For example, one of my teachers used to say to me, when my techniques were too small and fussy, when I was staring at what I was doing with my hands, “you must try to touch the walls and the ceiling with your hands.” And when I thought my movements were becoming bigger, “touch the trees outside, touch the sky, touch the moon.”
There aren’t many things we do in our everyday lives that encourage to become so big we can touch the sun. In the Buddhist Metta Bhavana meditation practice, a similar thing happens. In the first stage, you think with unconditional loving-kindness of yourself; then a good friend; then a person towards whom your feelings are neutral; then someone you actually dislike; and finally, all four people together, and then allowing that feeling of unconditional loving-kindness to spread on throughout the world to all living beings everywhere. This meditation encourages us to touch the infinite with love.
Buddhists do it by sitting, aikidoka do it through their practice of techniques. I find myself now telling students of my own to reach out beyond the walls of the dojo, to try and touch the sky.
I also see improvements in my students’ performance when I tell them to do something as simple as turning their head during a technique. From a purely mechanical point of view, the head leads the body and generates greater momentum, just like a ballet dancer. But sensei like Morihiro Saito and Shigemi Inagaki emphasise that in aikido every attack should be consider a multiple attack, and therefore you should always be turning to face the potential enemy behind you.
This awareness is commonly called zanshin and translates roughly as “remaining mind”. It is a state of relaxed alertness. But the just-thrown uke is only a small part of one’s surroundings. There’s the dojo, its walls and ceiling, and outside there are the trees, the sky, the moon and the sun.
This means that when we are practising aikido it is constantly putting the infinite in all of us, if we’re prepared to explore it. It doesn’t mean we have to be trying to touch the sky all the time, just acknowledging the potential.
So we might be working on ikkyo, possibly that aspect of it which some practitioners call “connectedness”. There is the connection between you and your partner and then there is the connection you have with yourself. You have to be able to harmonise with yourself in order that you can move in harmony with someone else.
And this is enough to be working on – the infinite can wait. But because the infinite is implicit in aikido, we don’t have to seek it. We can keep on working on the details and aikido will lead us to the infinite anyway.

Many years ago I knew an Alexander Technique teacher who was also a Buddhist. He once said something which I have pondered on and returned to many times over the years. He said:
Stress is not a bad thing. Everything needs stress to stop it falling apart. It’s when stress becomes distress that things go wrong.
The image he used to explain this statement was a bridge. Two forces keep a bridge up: tension and compression.
Tension is what happens to a rope during a game of tug-of-war. It undergoes tension from the two sweaty opposing teams pulling on it. This force also acts on bridge structures, resulting in tensional stress.
Compression is what happens when you push down on a spring and compress it, and by squishing it, shortening its length. Compressional stress, therefore, is the opposite of tensional stress.
When compression overcomes an object’s ability to endure that force buckling occurs. When tension surpasses an object’s ability to handle the lengthening force then snapping happens.
Compression and tension exist in all bridges and they are both capable of damaging part of the bridge as various forces act on the structure. It’s the job of the bridge designer to handle these forces without buckling or snapping.
The best way to deal with these powerful forces is to either dissipate them or transfer them. With dissipation, the design allows the force to be spread out evenly over a greater area, so that no one spot bears the concentrated brunt of it. In transferring force, a stress is moved from an area of weakness to an area of strength.
So you can see that it is balanced stress that actually keeps the bridge up. The same tension and compression keep us standing on our feet. There is, for the most part, no actual “rest state” in the body. The extensor and flexor muscles are involved in the maintenance of a constant tone while “at rest.” In skeletal muscles, this helps maintain a normal posture.
This got me to thinking about the etymological origin of the word “distress”. It’s over 600 years old and derives from the Old French “destresse” meaning “circumstance that causes anxiety or hardship”, which in turn comes from the Latin “districtus” which means to “draw apart or hinder”. It was only in the late 13th century it started meaning “anguish, suffering or grief”.
As discover means to un-cover so distress must mean to unstress (a word which is not recognised by Spellcheck by the way!) when forces are not in balance and therefore things fall apart.
In the same way, when all those stresses and strains which we are dealing with in our daily life get out of balance, that’s when things fall, or draw, apart. And that’s when we can’t cope, so perhaps the first thing that is in order is a little reframing, to stop looking on all stress as bad or debilitating.
It is interesting to note that what is stress to one person is not stress to another as each person’s response is going to be different. Some people suffer post-traumatic stress disorder in the wake of a terrible incident or a battle in a war whilst others survive mentally unscathed. Some even thrive, experiencing what is now called post-traumatic growth, which helps develop the four resiliences:
1. Physical resilience;
2. Mental resilience;
3. Emotional resilience, and;
4. Social resilience.
Or to put it another way, those who are under stress do not necessarily collapse. For example, American World War II hero, Admiral Edward Rickenbacker said:
Courage is doing what you are afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you are scared.
We all have to find balance in our lives and, because we are not bridges, what is balanced for one person is not the same for someone else. So perhaps for all of us, a little bit too much stress is not a bad thing. It helps us find our edge and just maybe our edge is a little bit further away than we thought. We all need to test ourselves a little to see where the edges of our stress are so that we don’t get too comfortable.
And although she is talking about Buddhist meditation, Pema Chodron makes a similar point about being careful not to get to comfortable with where we think we’re balanced because:
[Her] strict practice is still pretty relaxed … so strict practice is good for me … Very relaxed practice doesn’t show me as much because it doesn’t show where I’m out of balance.
And the flip side of this is true; that someone who is militant and precise in their practice might need to practice in a relaxed, loose way. “Everybody is different,” she says.
This also accounts for the fact that sometimes in what you think is a perfectly innocent conversation with a friend, you suddenly find your head being bitten off. You don’t know what’s going on in that person’s life – the things that have happened to throw the delicate balance of tension and compression off-kilter.
Aikido helps us with this as it teaches us to appreciate good and bad stress. In our practice we know when we are “leading” our partner, if we get too far ahead, we start pulling and then we feel an unpleasant tension in our arm, as well as a pain in our shoulder.
We also learn that when there isn’t enough balanced tension between ourselves and our partner and our arm collapses and uke doesn’t move, or worse, takes control of our centre.
And of course, it also shows us that everyone is different! The tension we use that is effective with one person, is completely ineffective with someone else, so we learn to adjust.
This, I think, is a very positive attitude to stress. To start with, if we recognise that it is necessary, that it exists to hold up bridges and our bodies and that it makes our aikido techniques work, it may stop us getting sloppy at work and in our relationships. It makes us pay attention. And if we stop fearing it, it will challenge us to push ourselves further than we thought we could go.