On this particular evening, after still not succeeding in wearing down my attacker and taking him to the mat, I went to bed somewhat disheartened. While falling asleep the situation ran through my mind time and again. While defending myself, the correct balancing movement collided with my inner impulse to execute a hard defensive block, so that I repeatedly ended up unprotected and standing there like a question mark . . . a ridiculous and unworthy situation for the wearer of a black belt. During a dream that night, I fell down hard one time instead of rolling away. That day I had made up my mind to ask myself the critical question in this situation: "Am I awake or am I dream-ing?" I was immediately lucid. Without thinking very long about it, I immediately went to my Dojo, where I began an unsupervised training session on defense techniques with my dream partner. Time and time again I went through the exercise in a loose and effort-less way. It went better every time.
The next evening I went to bed full of expectations. I again achieved a lucid state and practiced aikido further. That’s the way it went the whole week until the formal training period started again. . . . I amazed my instructor with an almost perfect defense. Even though we speeded up the tempo [of our interchanges], I didn’t make any serious mis-takes. From then on I learned quickly and received my own training license in one year.
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