Fear of Falling:

It has often been said (sometimes by me) that you only really start to improve at aikido technique when your breakfalls improve.

There are a lot of reasons for this.  The first, and most obvious one, is that you start losing your fear and relax.  It is hard enough to walk into a dojo for the first time without feeling nervous, where everyone knows everyone else and seem to know everything, or at least more than you do.  So to the basic fear of “will they like me?” is the added to the fear of looking stupid which in turn is compounded by the fear of doing something as unnatural as learning how to fall over.  All in all, a not a mix designed to induce relaxation, which is a key component of aikido technique.

As an aside here, I can add that,most people who have practised aikido for any length of time will say that looking stupid is something you have to get used to, because it will happen again and again: doing tai sabaki completely out of synch with everyone else, breakfalls that release unexpected wind, holding the bokken the wrong way up, tripping over your hakama.  The list is endless.  And any time you begin to feel you begin to feel a little over-confident, aikido is there to feed you a little humble pie.

Then there is the fear of pain.  Aikido is a contra-intuitive art.  When something hurts us our every instinct tells us to pull away.  It makes no sense to move towards pain or to move with that which is causing pain, and yet that is precisely what aikido teaches us to do.  Nikkyo hurts less when you move towards it, sankyo is less painful when you move with it.  One of the reasons why it is difficult to do these techniques on beginners without injuring them is because they tense up and try to pull or twist away, and at that point an experienced aikidoka will release the technique.  This leads to some beginners giving up before they have really started because they don’t think the techniques work, when in fact the opposite is true.  The techniques work just fine, but it’s hard to put them on people who can’t take a breakfall without injuring them.

And of course, there is fear of falling.  From the moment we learn to walk we are taught to fear falling.  Toddlers’ first steps are accompanied by many falls and few tears as they have not yet learnt to be afraid of falling.  In fact, a toddler’s falls look quite similar to the beginning of a backward breakfall.  It is only the first time the head gets banged on the floor that the link is made with pain and then the fear of falling begins to develop, reinforced by adults warning “be careful!” and rushing to snatch up and cuddle the crying infant.

And so on, into adulthood, unless it is trained out of us, leading to broken wrists when we are younger and broken hips in old age.

Most practitioners of aikido are asked at some point, “But have you ever had to use aikido in real life?”  And almost everyone has got a story, which ultimately disappoints the asker because invariably they are about how an angry situation was diffused by kind words, as the aikidoka remained relaxed in a tense situation and realised there was another way that didn’t involve fighting.  I recommend the book “A Way to Reconcile the World” edited by Quentin Cooke, 7^th dan, of Burwell Aikido Club in Cambridgeshire for many such stories by ordinary practitioners of aikido from all over the world.

A good ukemi story is from the book is Simon Collier’s:

“ … one day as I was walking along a street talking with a friend and not looking where I was going, I walked into a row of bicycles.  As the bicycles and I started to fall over, my ukemi training kicked in.  I sailed smoothly over the bicycles and then rather than crashing into the concrete I effortlessly rolled and came up walking.”

My two own stories are equally disappointing to anyone in search of blood and guts.  The first occurred when I was up a ladder, drilling into a wall about eight feet off the ground.  Since the ladder was on a laminate floor, and no one was footing it, when I put my weight on the drill, the ladder slipped from under me.  Because thirty years of aikido had taught me not to be afraid of the floor coming up to hit me it felt like I had all the time in the world.  I knew I couldn’t let go of the drill because it could have ended up anywhere, including in my body, so I held it at arm’s length and as I hit the floor, did a backward breakfall the way we practise when holding the jo.  The result?  When everyone came rushing to see what the crash was, I was already on my feet, assuring everyone I was fine.

The second story also involved a ladder and power tools; you would have thought I would have learned my lesson!  I was cutting the top of a hedge with a pair of hedge trimmers when the ladder fell through the hedge.  With more open space, this time I was able to throw the hedge trimmers forward and myself backwards, with the same result as my first story.  A little backward momentum, chin tucked in and legs up, like Simon Collier’s, it was the best ukemi I have ever done.

Aikido has allowed me to survive being stupid twice uninjured, so now ladders and power tools involve a second person at the foot of the ladder.

To quote again from Quentin Cooke’s book, to give heart to those who may be struggling with ukemi, here is Reesa Abrams:

“It took me six months to learn how to do a backward roll from standing and two years to do a front roll from standing, despite receiving the best mentoring from many of the sensei.”

Every instructor has a different way of teaching breakfalls and all of them work for some people, leading us to the moment when the fall itself is no longer feared.  It is a moment that we have to find for ourselves.

And that is the moment when we learn to love to fly.