Zero Point
In recent years for our practice of Aikido, my realizations of what exactly we are moving towards as a real outcome of our art have been very revealing for us. We can stay in the realm of kata only and practice the basics for many years and have some very rewarding outcomes in the grounding, centering and stablization process. This foundation is necessary for us to be able to move on to another plateau for ourselves and pass this on to our fellow practitioners.
One realm that has over the last five years is the realm where the horizontal and the vertical worlds that we live in intersect. We could look at this simply as a nexus where the we tend to let go of our basic practices of the known, all our kata skills, ukemi and the fundamentals into the
unknown or our practice of randori or freeplay where we tend to see if our years of practice are going to translate into handling a non obvious, random insertion of energy towards us into a skillful and useful outcome, self defense, integrative synthesis of Principles and using our higher communicative skills in the potential world of chaos that we can encounter from time to time.
Being able to let go of what we think is the only way to handle random energy projected towards us, such as violent behavior, be it physical or verbal abuse is where we are tested as we see what we need to work on in ourselves in response or reaction and how much self confidence we truly have realized.
In any good art in which we are tested we can see whether or not the practice is draining away any fear about the encounter. The more self confidence the less we go into the unconscious modes of reaction and stay centered in dealing with what is being presented to us in the moment.
At this point we are being present to “what is”, not necessarily attached to any given outcome from the event but staying in Awareness of what is happening as if we are observing ourselves and the outer situation that has presented itself from what I call zero point where the more whole aspect of interacting has now become our base of relating.
We can now function from not being a separate individual in our practice to one who now absorbs the energy and can let go of predetermined outcomes to allowing the process to unfold as the energy of the interaction is shown.
So this allows us to mold ourselves to whatever shape their body is in, its movement and use their total energy delivery against them, spontaneously. This requires great skill and trust in practice and letting go into Awareness so that we can move easier and respond as needed in the moment. This arena of practicing from a point where we let things happen and move accordingly to “what is” arising has brought many useful and valued insights.
Thank you,
Will Gable