(A post about aikido, feel free to skip if not interested)

About ukemi

I've been thinking about ukemi a lot for at least 9 months now. For me, it is a hugely underestimated (and underexplained) part of aikido. In our dojo, everyone tells you how to do waza. That you have to move like this, put your feet like that, move your hips this way, irimi here, kaiten there, whatever. But quite often people don't tell you how to receive so that you are not actually passive (not giving any energy into that) and at the same time you are not resisting too much.

About my ukemi and being hurt

I still don't know a lot, and unfortunately my body is a combination of a bit stiff, a bit slow, and also sort-of-strong (for a girl, that it). I am somewhat slow in my reactions, and while I am working on it, it's not easy for me to be 100% reactive all the time and do everything right.

Quite a few people mistake this - a lack of knowledge and experience - for being an overly resistive and not-at-all-helpful uke. Basically and a*hole. I've been hurt a number of times because of this. Because sometimes I don’t know, so I do something ‘funny’, people misinterpret it, their frustration rises, and they force the technique by violence.

It happens to everybody, and as ashamed as I am of this, it happens to me, too.

What I find interesting is that people then continue being violent, right up to the final pin, which they do very nastily – and hurt me even more. My wrists in particular are taking a lot of this.

When I don't know, I try to 'honestly follow'. I move 'when I feel it', but sometimes I just ‘don't feel it', or I 'feel it later than would be ideal’. And people misunderstand and force it rather than doing something which would guide me a bit more clearly.

I’ve heart that aikido is like a dialogue. In this analogy, I feel like a person with a slightly impaired hearing: I understand about 70% of times, but sometimes people just have to be clear and loud enough for me to get it, without actually shouting at me or treating me like an idiot, and that is probably challenging for them. I suspect this comes from my way of exploring: again I don't move just because someone tells me to, I need to feel the incentive. I don't like to fall when supposed to (as opposed to falling when aikido happens) because that gives me personally nothing, no understanding what happened with my body and my balance, no understanding of aikido and physics and the universe. So I don't and then again I am told I am such a bad uke it's not even possible.