I'd like to share a brief anecdote in which Sensei wanted to demonstrate how even if your opponent is stronger than you, you can always move the rest of your body, even if you can't move the part they have a hold of.
Sensei stood by the edge of the dojo and called me over in front of the class. He told me to pin him to the wall by his throat. The first thing that crossed my mind was that this was in fact going to end in a lot of pain for me.
I was wrong. It was much worse.
I put my hands around his throat and held him against the wall. My hands were round his throat, but not in any way constricting his breathing.
Sensei looked at me and told me to squeeze. I hope you can appreciated that being told to severely constrict a persons airways and the blood vessels to and from their brain is actually quite unpleasant. But I did as I was told and squeezed a bit harder.
I was now making it difficult for Sensei to breathe and restricting the blood flow to and from his head. But for Sensei, difficult is too easy. With his face turning pink he looked at me and, with some shortness of breathe, demanded that I squeeze even harder.
Now there have been some traumatizing things during my time in aikido but this probably beats it all. I can handle pain and moments where I fear for my life, but actively suffocating another person is entirely unenjoyable in every way.
As I squeezed Sensei's throat with my full force and his face turned some unpleasant colours I couldn't suppress the need to shut my eyes and look away.
And then he moved his body to one side and I entirely lost my grip. And it was over.
I knew he was fully in control the whole time, I knew that even as it was happening, but it didn't stop it from being truly unpleasant.
I guess I can at least take solace in the fact that he didn't follow it up by hurting me with some painful counter technique. You see, there's always a silver lining.
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