Michael Godawski

How important is it to breath?

Stupid question you say. It is essential for live. It is so important that the control of our breathing was shifted by nature into our subconsciousness. We do not think anymore :”Now I have to inhale and now I must exhale.” The crucial clock of our life is ticking without us. Time is running fast for the ones who do not pay attention to it. If you can transfer the breathing from your subconscious level to the conscious level “things” will begin to happen. With the appropriate Qi Gong training you will be able to feel the pulse and vibration of the heart in every bone. From your fingertips to your feet the life giving force will spread and nourish your bones, muscles and tendons, every cell of your body will be regenerated. You will be able to redirect your breathing into specific parts of your body and to your organs. You will really feel your liver, your lungs, kidneys, heart and spleen. After a long while you won’t have to perform fancy movements like in tai chi or yoga. ‘There is simply not enough lifetime to learn all the very good and healing forms of tai chi. I guess tai chi and such are at the very advanced level completely internal and all the movements of chi happen inside and are not visible in the outside world.

Aikido is meditation in movement. Also during a dynamic class when you perform for instance katate-dori shionage many many times there comes a point when you get into a “flow”. You have finally found the harmonious rhytm with the uke and you move as one. You feel as if you can go on for ever. Eventually you get tired because you switch roles with the uke and the attacker’s part is not that effective concerning the energy management as the aikido techniques. You also notice that after the 100 shionage you use less muscle strength, more tendon power, you use your energy less and more energy of the uke. This can happen because your body learned in the past 99 attempts all the mistakes and blocades of the energy.

Now let’s connect the breath and the flow of the movements. Two aspects which are almost invisible and very hard to convey but which are capable of generating an extreme amount of fighting power. The best part is that breathing and flowing are not connected to such aspects like old or young, tall all short, male or female, strong or weak. Everybody can breath and move. But few can benefit from the fact they can do these “simple” and “obvious” things.

So how can we get there? I am at the beginning of the way too. But the only way to achive this is to go the way, to train on the mat, as often as possible, as zealously as possible and with as much fun and happiness as possible. Sometimes it is hard to overcome the laziness, I know. The weather is bad, it’s raining and the wind is chilly, it’s dark outside and cold naahh I don’t feel like Aikido today. When you break this resistance and go to the training you will often be rewarded with the best classes ever. And you can see the small way to the dojo as a part of the bigger Way of Budo. Resistance must be broken. “Do not resist, take ukemi”, once Osensei said.

Some new aikido students start to resist a aikido technique, they start to hold they breath, to break the flow, to stand still. They stiffen their muscles and you as the tori stands there sometimes helplessly, because you neither want to stop the flow nor you want to continue the flow and do some heavy damage to the ignorant beginner, who wonders why Aikido is so ineffective. If the technique would be finished the uke would feel the effectiveness but he would also be ready for hospital, and that is not the final goal of Aikido. Aikido is the mirror of your inner self. It shows you your strengths and your flaws very brutally and directly. After some lessons you will probably be sitting in a corner, breathing fast, and thinking why the hell this oh so “easy” technique did not work. The uke resisted and you could do absolutely nothing against it. Firstly let me tell you there is always a solution. I was often like:”Here I am and now I see that Aikido is useless, I just cannot think how to resolve this situation.” But then on the way back home I have found literally dozens of possible solutions for the resisting uke, and have laughed to myself in what a great danger the uke was whole the time, thinking he was the “winner” and I the “looser”. As I already stated in What is the Goal? there is actually no real fight between the uke and the tori. In the very moment when the uke raises his hand his faith is determined. Sometimes one can forget this easily. Sometimes it is good to forget and start at the very beginning at the essence of the movement. A cold restart of thoughts. Just breath in and out when you meat a resisting uke. Bow to him in your thoughts and look forward to a possibility to finally improve your Aikido. All the advanced students are aware of the dangerous aikido movements and they flow with them to not be hurt. A resisting uke is a great reward. You have to distinguish between resisting ukes who are beginners and advanced students. The beginners resist because they feel fear. Fear to loose, fear to hit the ground to hard, their Ego fears to loose, they fear that someone may laugh at them and so Fear leads to Resistance, and Resistance leads to Pain. The advanced ukes will only resist to a specific point. To a point where you can improve and they can improve as well. Then when this point is reached and the Pain should start they perform the ukemi or get connected to the flow again.

The Ukemi is a great gift. Knowing the technique of safe ukemi we can travel to the borders of our knowledge and there go just one step further. The ukemi guarantees that we can come back sound and safe. And go even one step further the next time. Good ukemi is like standing in front of a deep canyon. You look down into the dark and jump. The miracle is that you do not hit the ground but you stand and the same place before you have jumped. But you have really jumped into the dark. You have lose the earth under your feet and come closer to the sky. But because in life there is always an equilibrium of energy, after you have flown you must land again. And again: try to breath during an ukemi fall. Holding the breath just tenses up the muscles and after a while it becomes exhausting. Enjoy the flight. There will be moments you think you are for many seconds in the air. The time begins to slow down when ukemi is performed well. Bad ukemi is over before you can think of it. During good ukemi you can think:”Oh my I have so much time before I hit the mat, let’s enjoy this one more time.” This can be accomplished by loosing up your muscles, and joints. Every stiff joint costs time. Every joint that is flexible and soft gives you additional seconds in the air. I do not mean “collapsing-to-the-ground relaxed”. You have to feel the center of your partner whole the time. When you loose it, you loose your orientation point. You loose the polar star.

Breath can change your Thoughts. Thoughts can change your Actions. Actions can change everything. There is so much potential in our breath. I am sure the modern medicine will some time uncover what the ancient cultures have known by instinct.

“The Breath is the horse, and your consciousness is the rider.” Frank Ostoff 5.Dan Akikai