Release the Ego

This past weekend was the UKA’s annual summer school event, hosted in Nottingham. Having missed last year with the collarbone fracture, it was great to be back, training with so many different people and learning from the UK’s best Shihan as well at the phenomenal Katsurada sensei, visiting from our organisation’s headquarters of Hombu dojo in Tokyo.

One of my first posts on this blog was lessons from Katsurada sensei in 2024 and many of his key themes were echoed this year:

Your strength comes from your core. Your power derives from there. The straighter your back, and the more aligned with your hips and centre, the more effective your technique. Sensei demonstrated with the triangle you can visualise by by putting your hands together, wrists at you belly button, pushing the arms straight in front, cutting them up to your head, then directly down your body. This ties back to the triangle, circle, and square of Aikido I have talked about previously.

Electricity flows from your body. Sensei described how a smartphone screen responds to touch because of the electricity in our bodies. This is very much the essence of how we can control uke in technique. Feel our own energy connecting and allow that sensation, not our eyes, to guide us.

Inner and outer energy. As above, we can visualise our own body with the square and triangle. This is our energy, this is what we put in to a technique. Everything outside of that is out of our control. When uke comes into that space, they bring their own energy and we must blend it with our own, not use our energy to resist it. This way we amplify the pool of energy available, and use it to our advantage.

The final point I really took to heart, is one made by Neil Mould shidoin (someone I greatly respect) about ego. I’ve discussed this before but it is such a crucial aspect, especially when training under a different instructor to your normal classes: Allow yourself to fail.

At a seminar like summer school, you might be training with people you’ve never met before, so it is common to want to look good. As such, we can fall back to our tried and tested variations of techniques and body movements. This is ego. Not only does it disrespect the teacher, but it gets in the way of learning. Perhaps the way this sensei is teaching a technique is different and challenging to you, but it’s important to try it anyway, to fail at it, and to explore it. If you simply go back to the version you know, you rob yourself of the chance to learn, the very reason we are all attending in the first place!