It’s Only Four Feet

November 24, 2024

What’s Happenin’

●        ASNJ is closed on Thanksgiving Thursday, November 28. Enjoy your day with families and friends.

●        Kids’ Tests – New time: Saturday, December 7 at 12:00 noon.

●        We will have Kyu Tests on December 7, 3:00pm.  Your time practicing is not the only determination to test.  Only the Sensei can make the final determination who will test.  Please talk to Frank, Danny, Derrell, or Tom to pre-test. 

●        Lehrman Shihan, post-surgery, will be back teaching Wednesday, December 11, 7:00pm-8:30pm class.

●        Xmas Seminar at NYA Saturday, December 14 starting at 10:00 am. An amazing line up:Steve Pimsler, Sharon Dominguez, Hal Lehrman, Laura Jacobs Pavlick, Douglas Firestone, Harvey Konigsberg, followed by Kyu tests at 4:00 pm and Party after.  Please go to the NY Aikikai website to register.  Classes will be held as usual at ASNJ.

●        Sunday December 22, 8:45-10:00 am Dean Sluyter, noted Author and Meditation Teacher will lead the weekly meditation ASNJ is closed December 24 and 25 for Christmas.

●        ASNJ is closed December 31 and January 1 for New Year’s Eve and Day.

●        Saturday February 8th, we are heading to Aikido of Park Slope of Sensei Lehrmans 12:15 class. You can meet at ASNJ at 10:30 to carpool to Brooklyn. Students 11 and over are welcome

●        Sunday Feb 9th, Watch the Superbowl with us at ASNJ. It is a potluck so bring your A-Game. All are welcome. 

Tests

I am changing up kyu tests a little. Not the tests, the day. We are having Kids’ Tests and Adult Kyu Tests on the same day – December 7 – followed by our holiday potluck party.  We are encouraging all kids and their families to hang out after the Kids’ Tests, watch the Wheel of Ukemi class (Always a dojo highlight. Not my body’s favorite day but everyone else seems to enjoy the class.) and Adult Tests (a great thing for the kids to see what they are in store for) and stay for our party as one big Aiki-Family.

We do a lot to encourage our kids because, less face it, we are not getting any younger (as my body keeps reminding me) and they are the future of Aikido. So please join us on December 7 to watch the tests, share in everyone’s achievements, and celebrate the future.

Memorial

Saturday June 21, 2025, will mark the 10-year anniversary of the passing of the founder of Aikido Schools of New Jersey, Shihan Rick Stickles. We will be having a memorial seminar to mark this anniversary.  More details to come but, for now, please mark your calendars to save the date.

Don’t Miss This Seminar

The NY Aikikai will host the Christmas Seminar honoring hometown heroes on Saturday, December 14 and Sunday, December 15. I will be there all day on Saturday which will feature Senseis Steve Pimsler, Sharon Dominguez, Hal Lehrman, Laura Jacobs Pavlick, Douglas Firestone, Harvey Konigsberg, followed by kyu tests (yes, we have someone testing) and their famous holiday party. Sunday will feature Senseis Debra Crampton, Junya Nakatsugawa, Gina Zarrilli, and Ernie Lemon. Don’t miss it.  Be a part of one of my favorite Aikido events of the year.  You can register here.

No Body

We all have bodies (I hope, or I really must check who is getting my emails.) and when doing Aikido, move them to and fro. Aikido is about being aware of these movements, how the movements affect the person you are throwing (or being thrown by) but, as part of training, most importantly, that the totality of the event is experienced by you. Body awareness is a crucial part of what Aikido teaches.  There is a danger of getting ‘stuck’ on the look of the form and not how it feels.  If you are just repeating a series of steps, then you are not aware of your body.  Meditation is a great augmentation to this practice as is Tai Chi Chuan. Aikido is about discovering you.

An experienced athlete knows exactly what is happening in their body:  A pitcher, whose arm is moving over 90 mph, knows the exact moment the ball is released. A high board diver knows where they are in space as they plummet to the water spinning in multiple directions. A ballet dancer knows the exact shape of their pinky as they leap into the air. You get the idea.  Many Aikidoka that I practice with have no idea where their feet are.  They know what steps they need to take but are not sure of where the weight is on each foot. We must focus our practice on the knowledge of ourselves and our bodies: How do you sit at work or while you are driving, what is the shape of your back? Where is the weight in your foot when you stand on a train or on a line at the supermarket? Is your body tense? Is your head balanced on your neck?  All these things affect how you and your Aikido work. All these things affect you and your relationship with your uke.

During a technique, do not focus on the result but stay aware of the now and what happens at each moment during the technique. The throw will happen and is not important. What you learn during the technique is everything.  This is what makes the throw work - knowing where you are and where your uke is all the time.  Ultimately, what you need to learn cannot be taught to you. It is something you must learn from your practice. The technique is there to help you learn and the learning is on you.

You are a whole body, not nobody.  Pay attention, it will make you a better Aikidoka and a better person. Don’t practice like you are a No Body.

Four Feet Each Step

I have studied many variations of nikyo but until a few months ago, I mostly worked on two variations where either my back foot or front foot was used to draw uke out of their feet. From their attack, I moved into position to perform nikyo and would draw my attacker out of their feet to weaken their structure. With their structure weakened, they would not be able to ‘survive’ my nikyo. (As I type this line, I am imagining a poorly dubbed Saturday Kung Fu movie “Your kung fu is very good but you cannot survive my death kick!”)  I am not a big guy nor a very strong guy (just good looking?). But even if I were, an uke could still use a strong structure to resist my nikyo. To create a strong structure, they need feet or really, to put their weight in their feet.  So, for uke to get strong, they need to push up from their legs into their arms. This is their structure – and it can be quite strong. I have the opportunity to interrupt that structure by taking their power into one of my feet (front or back, depending on where their balance is). Make sense?

I was at a seminar and met with an uke who pulled me into them right away before I could take them into my foot. They attacked in reverse. I was stopped from doing my technique and found it frustrating and fascinating. I switched from my Aikido experience and into my Tai Chi Chuan lessons so instead of drawing uke out of their feet, I put all uke’s force back into their own foot. One of the beautiful things about my experience of learning Aikido from great teachers is they always felt you make Aikido your own. So, I included a Tai Chi Chuan concept where we put all the power into uke’s foot causing what we call an ‘Uproot’ overloading their foot to lose its connection with the ground and pop them from the ground.  This is studied in the standard Tai Chi Chaun practice of ‘Push Hands.’

I used this idea because uke’s attack was pulling and so I focused the nikyo into their back foot.  The nikyo was in the middle between my root and their back foot compressing their body like a spring in between. They popped up from the ground as their leg collapsed.  Wow! It was something I have never tried before. After a few rounds, next I tried uke’s front foot. It was more difficult, and it took a while.  I thought I had to do it from my back foot. Nope, I realized I had to drop my weight into  my front foot

This was the focus of a few weeks of my classes. Sorry. I started every class by apologizing to everyone as 60-90 minutes of nikyo is a lot of nikyo. Ten minutes is a lot of nikyo. The class was a little intense, but the information was new and exciting, giving people more options than what they may have been familiar with. I am playing with this idea in other techniques, not just putting the power into one of my feet but to drop into one of uke’s feet. So far, nikyo is the best to work on this. Remember, there are four feet in every technique to consider and use.  You are never short on options.

How Not to Teach Class

A byproduct of exploring all the options from this nikyo class -- my back foot, my front foot, uke’s front foot and uke’s back foot, is a lot of information. Which is right? What is best? There is no answer, so it shaped how I taught this class or how I did not teach the class. How did I teach this? I didn’t.  I took a lesson from my son, Zachary, who told me as a high school teacher, the best classes are the ones he doesn’t teach: The kids teach themselves.  He sets up the kids with a task and lets them teach themselves. He is just there to keep them on track. I tried the same idea.

You see, in most classes I can remember, I was shown a way to do a technique by the teacher and then we practiced their idea of that technique. The instructor shows us what they believe is either the best way the technique is done or, with some instructors, the ONLY way the technique should be done. They come around the mat and correct your technique to match their own. In this class, I think it was better to allow every student to adapt the technique to suit their body, their personality, and to what uke is doing.

In my multi-footed nikyo class, there was no best or right way to do the technique, only options. We practiced and explored; I only presented these variations. I asked everyone at the end of each class what they liked the best and what they liked the least and why they thought that to be. 

I know what I know, and I also know what I don’t know and that I don’t know ‘everything.’  I am my own best teacher.  As the head of a dojo, my best experience teaching is putting forth the information and letting each student self-discover. I think from now on, my best classes are ones where I do not teach; lets all just try to be great students.

Confessions of a AikiChuan Addict

We are in search of way into a room with many doors. In this series I explore my journey.

 Earlier, I used the term technologies in reference to both Aikido and Tai Chi Chuan. They are two different technologies yet at the very core, they are the same thing, relaxing and being aware. They only have different ways of doing that, different doors. Every country makes food but has different ways of doing that. Both Italian and Chinese cuisines make dishes from similar wheat noodles (spaghetti and lo mein), but the dishes in no way taste the same or are eaten the same way. And you eat one with a multi-pronged stabbing tool and the other with two opposing sticks grabbing things. Same with Tai Chi Chuan and Aikido.  Same noodles, different dishes, different tools.

In my Aikido practice, uke attacks and I use this force guiding them out of their feet into one of mine and around my center until they end up on the ground, sometimes horizontal and sometimes a roll. In Tai Chi Chaun, I listen to their attack, bring it into my body around my center and drop that force into one of their feet and send them flying horizontally. In both, we take an attack, revolve it and put it somewhere and uke either hits the ground or a brick wall (In Tai Chi Chuan, we use a brick wall to spot uke instead of a mat.).

To simplify this idea, in one, the force goes into your foot and, in the other, back into the attacker’s foot. In both you are taking the attack and moving it in a circle, either around your center in a big circle or a tiny one. In both you are relaxed, moving from your foot with a straight back and strong legs.

The biggest idea is your idea. Just use your noodle.

--Jay Tall

Chief Instructor

Aikido Schools of NJ

“Noodles are not only amusing but delicious.”

-- Julia Child