JOURNEY - on Mastering Ukemi by Daniel Linden (classic books for 12 year olds .TXT) 📕

and if I can make an observation for all time, it is that aikido is meant to enhance the adventures in our life, not take the place of them.

Get off the mat and go to the train station. Take off your gi and hakama, go get your back pack and take off. You’re not getting any younger. The world is an immense place and everywhere you go, aikido will serve you as an ambassador, and a way of smoothing out the rough edges and maybe sometimes save your life. But the living of your life is your real job and aikido is only a small tool in your kit. Trust me, nothing you ever do on an aikido mat will match the surge you get from riding horseback over the Khyber Pass and then going hell-bent for leather into the Hindu Kush and exploring the Karakorum Mountains. Nothing on an aikido mat will fire up your spiritual light like a camel ride deep into the Anatolian Desert. There, you can slip into a thousand year old caravansary to watch Whirling Dervishes perform their ancient and secret meditation by candle light to the sounds of drum and flute.

Okay, you don’t have a passport. There are 53 mountains that exceed 14,000 feet in Colorado alone. Speaking of Colorado, the river has some awesome white water rafting. On the East Coast, the Appalachian Trail is a serious challenge or you can go the civilized route and go listen to one song in every jazz club in New Orleans. Just do something!

Aikido has two sides: nage and uke. Nage is like death, the dissolution of energy… a kind of entropy that diminishes our life forces as we train. A perfect nage contributes nothing and intercepts uke’s attack and leads it away until it is extinguished or until uke escapes. It is almost impossible.

A perfect uke attacks with all the energy, the life force, the juice, that makes nage look like he’s actually doing something when he should, in reality, be doing nothing at all. If you feel really energized after an aikido class, nage is adding too much juice to his throws and giving too much back. It isn’t aikido.

Everything in aikido begins and ends with ukemi.

It is the only martial art that embraces such a scheme and it is what, in my opinion, makes it unique. I don’t care about nage and what he does, anymore. After 45 years of training my experience tells me a good uke knows it all, anyway. Certainly he knows more than a nage that bunches his muscles and loads up to throw an uke so hard he bounces and makes a big noise.

The noise you hear is the ego of the nage, pounding his chest and saying ‘look at me!’ The truth is, aikido is really pretty boring if done right. And that’s good! So let me be the uke. That’s where the fun is, that’s where the joy is, that’s where the life is.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it

Afterword

Chris went back to work. The entire American Defense Community is relieved. Curtis, after years of engineering on-board changes to the Space Shuttle now heads a team of scientists searching for water in the polar regions of the moon. Celine and Esra went back to Turkey. I heard that Esra is dating a member of the Saudi royal family. That’s just perfect.

Christian went back to school, received his Doctor of Jurisprudence and is now my attorney. He’s the one who insists that I now tell you that no one in this book actually exists. This is a work of fiction. Nothing that took place in this book actually happened. Every place in this book is fictitious.

That said, if you ever get the yen to go off to far and mysterious places, contact Buz Donahoo at Condor Adventures. www.CondorAdventuresInc.Com

Also, if you feel you could spare a few pennies the children and other Nepali people would benefit greatly from any size donation to the Edmond Hillary Hospital.

www.himalayantrust.org/health.php

And on a very sad note I must report that Pemba Sherpa died tragically in a climbing accident. She will be missed.

If you ever get to the mountains of Maine, where I have retired, come by for a beer, but bring enough for everyone.

Dan Linden

Sent from my IPAD.

Namche Bazaar,

Kingdom of Nepal

Glossary

(Common definitions)

Aiki The blending of energy.

AikidoAikido is made up of three Japanese characters: ai - harmony, ki - spirit, mind, or universal energy, do - the way. Thus aikido is the way of harmony with universal energy, or the way of harmonious spirit.

AikidokaA practitioner of aikido.

Aiki juitsuThe ancient art of battling armed samurai empty handed. This art evolved into a practice where both partners fight empty handed. The first art learned by O’Sensei. From this comes the modified techniques we train today and call Aikido.

Aikikai“Aiki association.” A term used to designate the organization created by the founder for the dissemination of aikido.

AtemiStriking the body. Strike directed at the attacker for purposes of unbalancing or distraction.

Bokken a wooden practice sword.

BudoMartial way.

BushidoThe code of the samurai warriors.

Chinkan KishinA breathing technique.

Dan Black belt rank.

Do The way of… as in judo, the gentle way.

.

DojoThe place where we practice aikido.

Doshu Hereditary title for the head of an organization.

Gi (do gi) Training costume consisting of loose trousers and a jacket tied with a long cotton belt.

Hakama The long, flowing trousers worn in traditional Japanese society.

HanmiTriangular stance. Ai Hanmi is harmonious stance