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Martial Arts Women
Sample Essay from
Women in the Martial Arts
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Irimi: Going for Life
by
Wendy Palmer
When I was a young girl I loved to ride horses. I dreamed of galloping as fast as the wind astride a strong stallion with a long, flowing mane. One day that dream came true.
My friend, Lynnie, and I sneaked into the "forbidden" corral that contained her father's thoroughbred stallion, appropriately named Bridlefree. He was "fresh off the track," and they had unloaded him with a chain over his nose while he fought and reared, his nostrils flaring red inside. The men had put him in a corral and warned us not to go near it. He was "very dangerous," they said. When they left, we went to him, bringing him sugar, carrots, and lots of love and adoration. We slipped on his back and noticed how beautiful, strong, and muscled he felt compared to the mares and geldings we were accustomed to riding.
One day, I don't know why, we went for the dream. Lynnie took a trusted gelding bareback with a simple bridle, and I put only a lead rope on Bridefree's halter. We opened the corral and we were free. Lynnie and the gelding began to gallop across a field toward a tree-covered lane. Bridlefree sensed the play and took off, his thoroughbred heart and untamed spirit leaping across the field.
We hurtled toward the lane. I twisted his long mane around my hands. I wanted to stay with him no matter what happened. I was living a dream and was determined to live it to the fullest. When we entered the lane, I had to lean way over and sometimes duck my head below my hands to avoid the branches whipping over my body.
Bridlefree interpreted my position as encouragement and I felt him surge a little more, his muscles driving even harder. I could hear his breath and his hooves rhythmically pounding the earth. When I looked down at the ground moving by so fast, my head swam. I closed my eyes, tightened my grip on his mane, and pressed my body into his as much as I could. I remember trying to feel way into him. I wanted to become one with him.
The end of the lane was coming up, with a substantial right turn that led into a short narrow field. Before that moment I would have considered it impossible to take the turn at the speed we were going. Now it seemed that anything was possible. I shifted my weight, moving my head to the right side of his neck. His body responded slightly, but for me it was as if I had whispered in his ear and he had heard me. He slipped a little in the turn, but we made it and were into the open. He slowed a little and circled, stopped and began to graze. My body was trembling as I unwound Bridefree's mane from around my hand. His flanks were heaving and his coat glistened in the sun. I had embodied a dream. I sensed anything was possible.
Sixteen years later I saw Aikido for the first time. It was as if a crack in the cosmos opened and a whiff of something forgotten yet familiar passed through me. That whiff was the memory of joining with a power, physically much stronger than I, and it becoming open and receptive to my intentions. It was the feeling of flight, of giving oneself with the innocence of total love and admiration. Beauty, grace, power, surrender - all of these stirred my desire to embody the dream again. Dreams and fantasies are great. The embodiment of them is even greater.
Growing up had seemed to be a journey into fear. When I was young, getting hurt meant little while I was actively pursuing the dream. As I got older, the dream began to fade, and protecting myself - not getting hurt - became the major task. I used my mind to understand things, instead of my body to experience them. At the age of 24 I had read many things about physics and existentialism. I knew and loved the Tao Te Ching, but my cells no longer moved toward and hungered after flight, grace, beauty, power, and surrender.
Then, as I saw the movements of Aikido, I felt a deep sense of coming home - a returning - like waking up and remembering the part of oneself that hungers after the experience of essential contact. The Buddhists call it tantra, the part that knows real satisfaction does not come from standing back and observing, but from entering the energetic vortex of universal life and breath.
My heart filled with romantic inspiration and I began training. The vast chasm between what I saw and sensed and what I could do was not entirely shocking but was extremely painful to experience. It was hard to bear the fact that all the discomfort, emotionally and physically, I experienced was brought on by me. I desperately want some part, however small, to belong to my partners. It really felt as if they were doing it to me. I couldn't be doing all this to myself, could I?
Not until a few years later could I appreciate, in a cognitive way, how powerful that step was - to realize, at the level of physical sensation, that we do orchestrate the situations of our discomfort. The other person is not doing it to us. Once we acknowledge this, we can begin the Aiki process of irimi: Moving into the situation, yearning for that center and essential essence, and developing deeper contact with center.
Center is the part of us that remembers we belong to the universe, the part that feels no need to protect oneself since it is not in opposition. For me, center is fed by desire, passion, and curiosity for the experience of essential contact. The trick is to allow my desire to be stronger than my fear. My aggression, which stems from my fear, pushes back my desire and makes me want to protect myself. Instead I look to yearn for the center, the way a lover yearns for the embrace of the beloved, the way a young girl might yearn to gallop bareback astride a great stallion.
Copyright 1992-2006 All Rights Reserved
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