Aikido and Going Backwards to Enlightenment

by Al Case

Morihei Uyeshiba won a challenge and went to a well. He poured a bucket of water over his head, and achieved enlightenment. To this day people pour buckets of water over their head to achieve enlightenment.

No, they don’t. That’s just stupid. But here is how it works, here is how Morihei achieved enlightenment.

Karate, and various other martial arts go forward. Punches and kicks go forward, blocks go forward and smash against what is going forward…or coming towards them. This is the concept of Force on Force, or Force/Force.

Aikido, Tai Chi, and various other arts go backwards. They go with the attacker. They absorb the attack, redirect it and control it.

Going forward and smashing into something is destruction. That is how the universe works. Cars crash, people punch faces, wars happen, destruction. And that is how people are raised. Under the influence of a universe that smashes things together, people assume the thought that only force works.

When one accepts the force he changes it into flow. He goes with it. This is called Flow on flow, or Flow/Flow.

Hard arts use force, soft arts use flow.

There are many arts that use partial or specific concepts in flow. Wing Chun flows the movement of arms. Tai Chi flows the body movement. Aikido flows the incoming force while in motion.

When a person has been trained to use force, to solve problems by force, he is doing what the universe ‘wants.’ He is agreeing with Force.

But people are capable of Force AND Flow. When they go with the incoming Force, when they agree with the punch, instead of resisting it and fighting it, they utilize a whole side of the mind that they have been trained, by the universe, to ignore.

Thus, they wake up to ‘the other half’ of their potential. They literally double their capabilities.

One of the things I did when figuring out how the martial arts work, a process I call ‘matrixing,’ was to do Karate backwards.

First I just did the forms on the other side, then I did them backwards, doing the motions of the forms in reverse from end to beginning.

Then I figured out that if I moved backwards in technique, and grabbed and guided instead of fighting and resisting, I could change punches into throws. I did this enough and I experienced enlightenment. The world literally ‘glowed,’ and I understood things from an entirely different perspective.

This led to restructuring arts such as Karate, Tai Chi, Aikido, and so on.

Conclusion? If you think the martial arts are just force, if you only practice hard, impact arts, you are using half your mind. You’ll never experience enlightenment. Enough concussion and you’ll experience stupidity.

If you move backwards, figure out how to go with the flow instead of using nothing but force,, you’ll wake up half your mind, become capable of using your whole mind, and there is a very good chance you will experience enlightenment, such as Morihei Uyeshiba did through his study and origination of Aikido.

About the author: Al Case’s work on matrixing such arts as Aikido, Karate, and others, can be found at Monster Martial Arts. He is the author of novels such as Monkeyland, The Bomber’s Story, Machina, and many others.