September 24, 2024
What’s Happenin’
● ASNJ Aikido/Iaido Demonstration Saturday Sept 28th, 6:00pm at the Central Jersey Community Center CJCC - 80 Cottontail Ln, Somerset, NJ 08873. Please join us and support the dojo
● Hakama class – Sunday, September 30, 11:00 am taught by Sensei Jay. A dojo meeting will follow. This is mandatory for all instructors and a fun class.
● Kids tests Oct 5th. 11:30. The forms are available on the website. Please pre register your children
● Lehrman Shihan will be teaching Saturday, October 26 at Aikido North Jersey.
● Lehrman Shihan Seminar at Portsmouth Aikido, Saturday, October 12-13.
● Aaron Case Sensei, a close friend of ASNJ, will be teaching a seminar at Aikido of Amherst November 2. Sensei Jay and Javier will be going yet only one will return(!).
● Dojo trip to NYA Saturday November 9th. We are meeting Linden Train Station 9:30 to catch the 10:04 to take the 12:00 class
● Kids’ Tests – New time, Saturday, December 7 at 12:00.
● We will have Kyu Tests on December, 7 3:00. Your time practicing is not the only determination to test. Only the Sensei can make the final decision as to who will test. Please talk to Frank, Danny, Derrell or Tom to pre-test.
Tests
I am changing up kyu tests a little. Not the tests, the day. We are having Kids’ Tests and Adult Kyu Tests 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: 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, save the date: Please mark your calendars.
Dinner and a Date
Rachel and I had a ‘date night’ recently. One of our student’s mom, Donna is the mixologist on Friday and Saturday nights at Da Marino Italian Restaurant on West 49th Street in NYC, right in the heart of the theater district. We had a wonderful night out. The food, amazing, the drinks (mixed by Donna) perfect and the conversation was always lively. We sat at the bar for three hours eating and talking with Donna, with the manager, and with the piano player, not while she was playing (during her breaks).
If you find yourself in Midtown NYC or catching a Broadway show, grab dinner there, tell them Sensei sent you. It won’t mean a thing, absolutely nothing. They have no idea who I am. I just always wanted to say that.
Dewey or Don’t We
When I was kid, I went to the library (A great place, try it sometime. Put your phone down and read a book, except if you are reading this newsletter, finish reading it first. I know it’s long, you can do it. Then put your phone down.) to get a book to read or get information to write a school paper. I grew up before the Internet and Google and when phones had cords and dials.
At the library, books are broken up into groups and each group is assigned a number. If you wanted to look for something specific, like Martial Arts, you would go to the card catalog and look up the number of that subject to find the book by that section in the library. It is called the Dewey Decimal System, named after the inventor, Melvil Dewey. Rachel and I went to John Dewey High School (totally unrelated to Melvil Dewey) (If you visit John Dewey HS, tell them you know the Sensei. It still won’t mean a thing.) where we met and fell in love. And Rachel and I have now have the same last name like Melvil and John except we are married and they aren’t. (I know it makes no sense, just go with me here. There is a point.)
Did you know Linda, an ASNJ’ian, is a real-life librarian (she can ‘Shush’ really good) informed me Aikido has its very own Dewey Catalogue number from the Library of Congress – it is 796-8154 (if you are interested). It is a subcategory of unarmed (not referring to an amputee) combat. Talking about making it big in the universe. I wish I could have that as the dojo phone number be 796-8154. And to make this even more weird (which in ASL is the ‘W’ hand moving like a disembodied hand crawling across a floor. Weird, huh?) my childhood phone number was Dewey2-7025 (phones had three letters for each number and you would refer a phone number by the word the first two numbers represented. Our first two numbers was 33 and thus became Dewey). What does this have to do with anything? Nothing, just cool that Aikido is recognized by the Library of Congress as important enough to have its own category. By the way, Tai Chi Chuan does not! ☹ Now go practice more 796-8154.
Off the Line
“Get Off the Line” is a common concept in Aikido that I would like to explore in more depth and look at its application on various levels, and offer my experience. At its most basic, it means to step to the side, off the line of the attack. In Aikido, as opposed to other martial arts I have practiced, we step off the line diagonally to the attack. An attack comes at you (hopefully) at your center line (I hate when an uke punches to miss me) and you move to the side to avoid getting hit. In Aikido, we enter – irimi, or withdraw – tenshin, or spin out of the way – tencon. All of these are doing just that: moving off the line.
At the beginning, your focus on timing is crucial. Too late, you get hit; too early, the attacker sees your movement, adjusts their attack, and you get hit. You need to match your attacker’s timing (harmonize) to move with their movement off the line. If done perfectly, your attacker should feel like you disappeared.
In a recent class, I explored this in a very martial environment with an uncooperative uke using morotetori (two hands grabbing one). I did what I could to put the nage (person throwing) at a disadvantage while keeping within Aikido protocols. When you are grabbed, while it is not as violent as a strike, their intention is for you to fall under the attacker’s control, they have you! (At least your wrist.) You get off the line the same way, enter (irimi) by extension, retreat (tenshin) with dropping your weight or spin out of the way (tencon) by creating a sphere with your arm and body, and you do so while your attacker is holding your wrist.
In each of these, you must move off the line with your arm relaxed creating a shape to direct uke’s strength away from you. The shape makes the attacker move off your line. Unlike a strike, speed is unimportant but, if you bring uke into you, they hit you. If you move into your attacker, then they (again) hit you again. Their grab has a direction -- they pull, they push, they get heavy and go down (that one is very frustrating until you figure it out) and you need to agree (harmonize) with their direction and move their force … off the line.
The next part was the tricky and frustrated most of my students. Once off the line, you need to stay off the line. Let’s take morotetori kokyuho. After you get off the line, your attacker is usually off balance. What many then do is to put their shoulder or arm against uke and SHOVE. I mean, you if have the advantage, why not use it? Because you bring back conflict. If you are bigger or stronger, this works and why do Aikido? If you are not, you feel like you are running into a wall (we have a few big, strong guys: you know, walls). You end up pushing your shoulder right into uke’s back foot giving them a strong brace to the ground. Not a good idea. There goes your advantage.
If you already have your attacker off balance, keep it that way. Leave your arm relaxed, let uke have that, and just move your body under them toward their back foot. Step and shift your weight. Leave your arm alone. Uke should feel nothing (your arm is relaxed) and remember they started this whole venture by trying to not let you move and they will continue to do that. Moving your lower body changes your shape and takes away uke’s balance even more until they fall down. Usually with bad ukemi as beautiful ukemi is a sign the uke has their balance. If uke falls from losing their balance, they are literally falling.
Why don’t we all do this? If feels like nothing, it sucks; it is boring. “I want to feel like I defeated uke, I want to feel the shove. It feeds my ego; it makes me feel powerful.” The problem is it doesn’t work unless you are bigger or stronger (or have a cooperative uke – G-d bless cooperative ukes, they make an Aikidoka’s world go round). But that is not real life, and it does not work.
You have two choices – to feel powerful and feed your ego, or to have effective Aikido that makes you effective but feels like… well, it feels like nothing. That is my understanding of getting off the line. Not to simply avoid the attack, but to never be a part of the attack. You disappear, not just physically, but internally, emotionally: you are off the line. (Not like Facebook off line, that is a whole other article)
A Lazy Man’s Guide to Aikido
Rachel and I were on a long drive and started talking Physics (We do a seven hour drive every month to Maine and back. Gotta fill the time somehow!). My wife has always been fascinated by science as an artsy, left-brained person (I am a science nerd) so she learns these theories in a visual three-dimensional way. We touched on Newton’s Three Laws and then went deeper into Chaos Theory (It is easier to blow up a bomb than to put it back together.) and then Theories of Energy (Remember, seven-hour drive). I started explaining the Conservation of Energy (also called the First Law of Thermodynamics, as well as its companion theory – The Conservation of Mass (Physical mass, not the liturgical. Sorry, Jeff!)). This is the idea that Energy is neither created nor destroyed, only changed.
This got me thinking about my Aikido. (I mentioned it was a long drive. My wife was napping by this point.).
My Aikido is strongly influenced by Tai Chi Chuan, Hal Lehrman Sensei (who studied with Koichi Tohei Sensei), Eric Schneider, Stanley Israel, and Sugano Sensei. The idea of relaxing in martial arts is not to be a puddle of mush (although Stan Israel often felt like a puddle of mush wrapped around a really heavy brick, but that might be another article.) but to be very structured while being lazy (Conservation of Energy?). When I say “lazy” I mean don’t use your strength but allow your uke to bring their energy to the party and let that do the work. Don’t try to create energy by adding your strength and don’t try to destroy energy by stopping their movement. Just change it by rotating it around you.
Let uke do the work for you. Don’t use your strength, use theirs. Be lazy. They offered it to you when they attacked. Now just take them up on their offer and let them throw themselves. It is just up to you to shape the technique. But I talked too much about that in Training Wheels (Maybe a little too much? Maybe you want to chop some wood instead? I know where you can.)
Expansion Vs Extension
I briefly mentioned this idea in my last letter and promised to elaborate. Here is my elaboration.
Extension is easier when you focus on something. Think about extension like shining the flashlight at a wall. This is when practicing with weapons can be helpful for some people. Think of becoming hyperaware of uke. Like looking through a telescope, your vision is extended to something farther away. When you swing a bokken, you try extending (not leaning) along the arch of the sword by projecting your awareness outward along the edge of the sword. Practicing sword but without working on extending your awareness is like ordering an A5 Wagyu steak (the best beef you can buy) and having it well-done and then smothering it in ketchup. You will be full but not well-fed. If this is case, just stick with Steak-umms.
Expanding is your focus filling the room; trying to have awareness of everyone in a room at the same time. It is like turning a light on in a dark room. The whole room is lit up. You are extending your awareness to four or five people at the same time. Expanding goes out in every direction (like your waist after eating too many Steak-um sandwiches.) You expand your awareness, you focus your extension.
My advice to understand this concept, meditate more (or start!). Just cut back on the Steak-umms though they are really tasty in a weird way.
Expanding on TCC and Aikido
What is something near and dear to my heart? My aorta. (Sorry, old joke from anatomy class at NYU.) No, seeing how an idea is experienced differently or the same in Aikido vs Tai Chi Chuan.
How do you experience expanding in Aikido and in Tai Chi Chuan. Aikido is like a bat. You send out your awareness (a bat’s sonar) into the whole room, contact everyone (like the nighttime mosquito) and experience their existence as it comes back to you. You shine a light and see it reflected back (and then eat that light/mosquito).
If you practice Tai Chi Chuan, you sink your awareness into your center and experience the world from that perspective. You are the center looking out. One is going out and bouncing back in. The other is going in and then bouncing out. It is how you relate to the world around you. Or it how the world around you relates to you.
Tai Chi Chuan is practiced slowly to let you focus more on this expansion as you are not busy rushing around. Many think this slow movement is not beneficial since it seems moving slowly may work only if you are attacked by a group of sloths. Funny but no. You practice slowly to be able to work on your expanding awareness. It is a great accompaniment to a healthy Aikido practice.
You better get started right away. I am sending a pack of sloths to attack you. They will be there next month on Tuesday. Start practicing.
--Jay Tall
Chief Instructor
Aikido Schools of NJ
“Failure is the key to success; each mistake teaches us something.
-- Morehei Ueshiba, the Founder of Aikido
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