The average Aikidoka doesn’t like to hear about control. Control seems contrary to spontaneity, it gives the image of a coercive action, of a manipulative and disproportionate use of force.
The average Aikidoka really likes to stand in front of a mirror. Not to see himself/herself as he/she is, but rather to flatter and convince himself/herself of what he/she is not (yet): balanced, always serene, capable of using only the energy of the practice partner, peaceful, tolerant and above all…free and democratic. And a thousand other legitimate desires, which can remain such.
Or, worse, can become only projections that melt like snow in the sun when life (or a practice partner in a seminar) deals you a few slaps, suddenly waking you up.
In reality, control is the daily bread not only of the first years of practice but of any formal training (kata geiko 形稽古). Those who learn the technical grammar are perpetually in a state of control, facilitated by the teacher.
You control your posture, you control the angle, you control the sequence of movements…
And even the fall (ukemi – 受身), which is the most free and liberating gesture of all, is the object of a real didactic vivisection. The chin goes towards the sternum, the arm forms an arch, the center of gravity leans out,…
The performer who improvises a session on the piano can allow himself to do so because he has full control of the keyboard and, thanks to and despite this, has full fluidity of execution.
The same is true in any art. Even Martial Arts, which however remain an area of human expression in which many limit themselves to just having control of the technique, renouncing the fluidity of execution.
Control is a word that comes from the French contrerole, the counter-register.
In accounting, the “double entry” is adopted: each accounting operation is recorded twice. Here it is not important to explain why, but it is interesting to note that everyone, even with no knowledge of accounting, has heard at least once about double entry bookkeeping and debit and credit.
Here, control in Aikido is something broader than the verification of an appropriate technical execution.
It is allowing yourself the luxury of opening the doors to emotional intelligence and acknowledging emotions before, during and after practice.
In the duality of the practicing couple, the technique is a transaction, an operation that is accounted for in the register of nage (投げ) and in that of uke (受け).
Recognizing and giving a value to both the aggression if not the anger of nage and the submissiveness and fear of uke, allows you to verify the register of what we have experienced.
It allows you to measure the aspects of each individual’s personality that remain in the shadows and that physical practice highlights, preventing you from continuing to hide. You discover that you have qualities that you did not know and flaws that have greater complexity than your attempts to minimize.
What to do if the martial accounting entries do not match?
It happens very often that in a couple one person gives with much more intensity than they can receive.
If giving and taking do not match, there is something in us that is emerging. Something that we did not know and that, remaining in the shadows, does not allow to balance the books.
It is something that is just apparently technical – even though technique is the main tool used to know each other and to relate.
Anger, frustration, fear, anxiety, self-control, trust, self-esteem, compassion, boredom, empathy…
The emotional mosaic that creates the person we are pulsates to the rhythm of our training; a well-oriented discipline supports the construction of a balanced person, because it is able to recognize, measure and… correctly account for the experience lived on and off the tatami.
A true double entry, obtained through a dual relationship, through the rigorous control of what happens and which is resolved in that single balance, in that equilibrium which is the goal that we all desire and that we do not always have the perseverance to seek.
Disclaimer: Picture by Pixabay