Endo..rphines and hardened noodles

Check yourself!
Why do you do like you do?
How are you being perceived by your partner?

I have just spent 10 days in Stockholm. First a week-long seminar with Endo Sensei, and then a few days more with the local heroes Jorma Lyly and Jan Nevelius. A whole week of Endo seminar consists of a yudansha part, only for black belts, and then an open weekend seminar. An Endo yudansha seminar is a privilege to attend, since it so rarely happens that you know that you actually will enjoy practicing with each and every one aikidoka present. It is extremely crowded on the mat, but every person in the room is advanced enough to handle such a situation and we all practiced under the highest concentration and commitment.

This kind of intense practice makes you transcend into breathing, feeling, thinking, dreaming and talking about aiki. As we practice, we refine not only our bodies, but our minds, emotions and spirit. This week led me to a metaphor of the refinement of your physical qualities - how another person perceives you when you touch each other.

Most beginners can be compared to unboiled pasta. They are stiff and inflexible, but at the same time very easy to break (their balance). The separate body parts cannot move irrespectively of each other and they often feel reluctance in their bodies for certain movements. They avoid deep contact and fall in a clumsy way as they go down. Then they learn from the teacher that they should relax...

After a while they can do that, and then they become like boiled noodles. Over-boiled noodles to be more precise! Now they learn how to fall softly and follow their partner, but they also move excessively, like the wobbly noodles they are. They do not keep their physical integrity and they show a lot of openings. This is a time where the more advanced aikidokas need to take care to not hurt the "noodles", since they in this stage often are quite ambitious and very enthusiastic due to their newly-discovered flexibility, and they happily let people throw them around although they are not really yet collected enough to always stay safe on their own.

The next phase is the longest one, since it will go on for as long as you keep on practicing aikido. This is when you turn into a metal spring, that gets thicker, tougher and heavier, without ever loosing its elasticity and ability to store energy. If you think of it, it reminds a lot of the physique of a wild animal. This is the quality of a true warrior...