do’s and don’ts of freeform aikido (and yes, rules are for fools!)

do

• listen, listen, listen
• breathe - use your inhalation to savour your own and your partners energy, your exhalation to release
• look for outwardly expressed intention in you partner - even the intention expressed through simply standing is workable
• convert compression into release-in-connection
• release internal holding and compression through vocalising
• have faith in the connection and allow the work to emerge from your connection

don’t

• trap, hold or restrict your partners movement (or your own!) This creates antipathy and is a recipe for injury to your partner, particularly their joints. We are looking to expand rather than constrict freedom of movement.
• feel obliged to make anything happen!
• cling to your own stability or “form”. Freeform aikido places no value on the conservation of our own balance, or structure - it becomes a pillar of stuckness!
• try and come up with moves or impose your clever ideas on the process - you will sever the connection

uniqueness, diversity AND connection?

Ambient Jam - Florence Peake spoke astutely of the possibility of “uniqueness, diversity AND connection”. I immediately realised that is one of the wonders of freeform aikido for me. Within our practice, rather than struggling with the very different energies, postures and attitudes of our practice partners, they are liberated and find space to play in connection - in ki-musubi.

This feels very different from practices I have experienced in form or kata based practises, where human diversity always seems to be in conflict with the crystaline geometries of a conceptualised technique imposed upon it.

Freeform aikido practice seems very capable of celebrating the rich and deep diversity of our humanity as it resonates in communion.

chaos aikido

An observer (Alison), recently described our free-form practice as “chaos aikido”. I thought this was a fitting and apt title. The obviously unpredictable quality of the practice really typifies “emergent” phenomena - “the arising of novel and coherent structures, patterns and properties during the process of self-organization in complex systems.”( Jeffrey Goldstein).

One of the delights for me is how the practice is by it nature emergent and self generating. I don’t have to think “what shall I do next?”. The is a constant fountain of new “material” spewing from the “between” of of the practicing participants.

For me Freeform practice fulfills the promise of O’Senseis Take Musu Aiki - the spontaneous creative experience of Aiki .

Goldstein, Jeffrey (1999), “Emergence as a Construct: History and Issues”, Emergence: Complexity and Organization 1: 49-72

skin

Today we focused on the touch of skin to skin. We played with the surface. We attempted to be with each other sensitive to the fine hairs on our arms and necks and legs. The title of the hymn “abide with me” was floated!

In this we de-emphasised what is maybe our default orientation the task orientation of joint and skeletal proprioception.

What emerged was a lighter, fluidity, an ease of opening both in throwing and being thrown, a permission to be borne. The qualities were both diaphonous and snakeish!

throwing open!

While practicing yesterday i noticed another point of departure from “traditional aikido”. In traditional aikido work is sometimes directed to suppressing your partners freedom of movement - the lock or pin. These are familiar goals in the practice of “control and restraint” as used in psychiatric hospitals and jails.

This element is abscent in freeform aikido. In freeform work is directed towards the mutual liberation of movement into new realms, throwing things open.

The experience is one of expansion in to new possibilities and questions rather than containment, enclosure and control.

I enjoy this as I have a tendency towards clastrophobia, and a passion for seeing things in fresh ways!