“You can’t blame gravity for falling in love!” – Albert Einstein
Hiro pointed out to me in todays practice, how i tend to “vocalise”, sing,
yell, “kiai” when falling out of balance. I was intrigued by this
observation.
I reflected that I experience relief / joy in those moments.
Micheal raised the parallel of “petit mort” the little death.
I remembered that much of my early attraction to aikido was falling. Much of
my dissapointment in judo was the tendency to resist falling. As a child i was extremely interested in the stuntmen and women who fall for a living.
In the zen training I did, there seemed to be a strong theme of falling. I
remember a story told by my teacher Myokioni (who died recently). She told
of the person hanging on a cliff-face holding onto a root. Above, hungry
tigers prowl – below, an abyss. The person sees a wild strawberry growing out of the rock face
and , reaching out to taste, lets go of the root…
How sweet!
Click here for further falling fun!
Peri
FREEFORMING 
‘Zen Flesh, Zen Bones’ compiled by Paul Reps, 1957, p.32
Buddha told a parable in a sutra:
A man travelling across a field encountered a tiger. He fled, the tiger after him. Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of the root of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him. Only the vine sustained him.
Two mice, one white and one black, little by little started to gnaw away the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted!
Yep… Reps!… looks like the same tale!
Peri
Hey it was a great practice tonight! I really enjoyed the yelling and falling into rolling, it carried through into the freedom within the connection when we worked on the ”slap me” stuff.
Oh dear that all sounds rather odd! ha haa! I am SO sleepy, just ignore my ramblings tonight! ha! I’m sure I’ll make more sense of what we practised tomorrow… But thanks so much everyone for such a good evening.