by Régis Soavi

All aikidoka have heard of Ma ai, because it is one of the foundations of our practice. Unfortunately, talking about it and living it are two very different things. As it is known in all martial arts, it is easy to find numerous references to it.You can conceive this idea intellectually, you can write about it and develop a whole discourse about it, but “nothing beats experience”, as my master Tsuda Itsuo used to tell us.¹

I will try, therefore, to explain the inexplicable through concrete examples or situations.

Distance and timing, a matter of perception

Ma is this invisible space between two people, which obviously does not depend on the number of metres or kilometres but on the relationship that exists or does not exist between these two beings.

If two people do not know each other, even if they live in the same street, if one of them has a headache, the other will not know about it, the distance is close but the communication does not pass, except in exceptional circumstances. On the other hand, if they are lovers, the connection may eventually be made. In the case of a mother and her child, even though the child has grown up and is four thousand kilometers away, there is an invisible link that transcends space and allows communication to take place. This communication is unconscious at first, of course, but if there is sensitivity it will emerge and reach the conscious mind. That is why the concept of space does not depend on distance, although distance does come into it, it is only one of the factors that make it up.

In Ma and therefore in Ma ai, time, the right moment, is crucial.

Technique of any kind depends on a number of factors, one of which is age. No matter how much energy, training or strength you have, when you are over sixty you do not move in the same way or at the same speed as when you were twenty; you have to rely on something else. And it is here, I believe, that Aikido as a practice can prove invaluable. Because whereas flexibility and speed may have lessened, as far as breathing is concerned – our ability to feel and conduct ki –, it might have deepened, allowing us to achieve what used to depend on our physical abilities. I am talking about phenomena such as intuition, the ability to observe, to SEE, to feel and to sense. Miyamoto Musashi spoke of this in the following terms:

‘There are precursory signs in all things; this is a principal of the universal order. Reacting to what has appeared is ordinary. In traversing human life and in governing society, it is important to perceive even before the precursory signs appear. That is what I call “knowing what you do not see.” By polishing your mind from morning till night in the way of my school, you can obtain the wisdom of strategy that makes it possible to apprehend the universal order in this manner.’ ²

In fact, it all boils down to being in a state of total perception, for which you need, and need only, to be EMPTY. As K. G. Dürckheim writes: ‘When your mind is thus in a state of absolutely-doing-nothingness, the world is identified with your self, which means that you make no choice between right and wrong, like and dislike, and are above all forms of abstraction. Such conditions as pleasure and pain, gain and loss, are creations of your own mind.’ ³

If our head is cluttered, if we are preparing to perform a technique or are overcome by fear, we lose our means. The distance between me and the other person decreases and it is the other person’s distance that imposes itself on me. This distance is intangible, but experts recognise it at a glance. It is a distance that can be expressed both in terms of metrics and even more of time – I would say: in terms of breathing, meaning by that the total coordination of the physical and the mental, in a way a return to instinct, to a healthy animality and not a return to bestiality or violence. I mean the voluntary and the involuntary coordinated and better still, the involuntary at the service of our capacities, our humanity.

Visualisating the sphere based on the idea of the atom

To try to grasp concretely how our body relates to its surroundings, I would like to return to the concept of the atom in Greek antiquity⁴. It was a philosophical concept of the composition of matter that included full and empty spaces. And, to put it simply, the atoms (atomos) in our bodies were thought to be held very tightly together, while outside they had more freedom, though maintaining a relationship with each other.

On this basis, and without wishing to explain the mystery of long-distance communication, which no one has yet been able to solve, one must imagine a sphere surrounding the living being, as if beyond the body, which is made up of very densely packed atoms, there were a kind of egg in which the atoms are freer, as if it were a liquid. Then, beyond that, a second sphere whose texture is less dense, as if it were a light liquid or rather a heavy gas. Then comes a third sphere, still egg-shaped, but this time horizontal, in which the atoms are only bound together as in a rarefied gas. And so on, each new sphere enveloping the previous one and expanding each time, ad infinitum, so to speak. The connections between distant atoms in the more distant spheres form a subtle network that is only activated when there is an urgent need. However, communication remains between each of these atoms, which can be thought of as a vibrational link, and at the same time these different spheres act as a sonar, the more powerful the closer the sphere is to our body.

The sphere, the body’s sensitivity

One of the conditions for discovering what I am talking about in practice is obviously relaxation. In today’s world, under the pretext of relaxation, we are offered all sorts of more or less oriental gymnastics and arts in order to become “Cool”. We are proposed to be “Zen” – even banks and insurance companies use the credulity generated by the fallacious use of these trends, which have become fashionable, and which only serve their masters, in order to make us more dependent: ‘Today more than yesterday and much less than tomorrow’ ⁵. Our society unceasingly takes us over, in every aspect: medical, technological, security… what we should eat, how long we should sleep, what is the norm and what is not. All this combines to weaken the individual, the being, the personal capacity to react throughout life. Depending on the person, this leads to a hardening or softening of the individual and therefore of the sphere.

When it hardens, our sphere curls up, shrivels, ends up sticking to the skin, there is no more free space, movements become hard, small, dry, without scope, like the rest of our life. The Ma is reduced to a minimum. It will be very difficult to move, to find the right timing. Oppressed breathing cannot find the right moment, the right distance, to intervene and create the Ma ai that is essential in difficult situations. If in training, in the dojo, many things go unnoticed because of the complacency of the practitioners and also, of course, because it is an artificial situation, it is not the same in everyday life where – this time – everything is revealed.

On the other hand, when our sphere softens, the body disintegrates, sensations become imprecise and, worst of all, imagination often takes over. We can then see people who, under the pretext of martial arts, assume postures like those seen in Hong Kong movies. But the body does not follow, on the contrary, and the space becomes completely unreal, either too big or too small. The timing becomes accordingly distorted. The image they give is that of an overcooked pear-shaped sphere, as if microwaved, with part of it spread out on the floor. When the sphere is soft, it lacks the density, the fullness, that allows information to be captured and transmitted – that allows the atoms of the other’s sphere to bounce, so to speak – but also that allows us to perceive the signs, sometimes invisible or hidden, but very real, that we absolutely need in order to act.

It is difficult to explain the feeling with images, and to understand what I am talking about as long as you cannot feel it yet or cannot feel it directly in your body, the way a very small child who has not lost its vitality can feel it.

Void

Mu mu mu! This is the cry that Zen monks utter to clear their heads. No thoughts, mental emptiness: easy to say! Not so easy to do. Yet it is the necessary state, indeed indispensable, to transcend time and space. Thanks to it, in a very real way, everything becomes much easier. At first, it is difficult to maintain this state for more than a few seconds, or even a few minutes. But if the need is great, if life or physical integrity is at stake, and if our practice has been sincere and profound, we may well find ourselves acting according to Ki (機) Do (度) Ma (間), i. e. exactly in the spirit of what my master, Tsuda Itsuo, explained in one of his books about the Seitai technique, from which the following excerpt is taken:

2) DO, intensity. The reaction of a living person does not necessarily increase in direct proportion to the intensity of stimuli.

Such-and-such a person who sleeps in a noisy train cannot fall asleep at home due to the almost imperceptible ticking of his alarm clock.

When attention is concentrated, a small stimulus can provoke a big reaction.

What makes learning very difficult is that we have to find the right intensity for each individual, according to circumstances.

That which a master executes very easily, making it look like nothing at all, hides an entire background of experience and fine-tuning.

3) MA, the spacing, distance, and suspension of stimuli that makes them more effective.

The notion of “ma” is one of the most difficult things to explain. I have not found an equivalent in the West.

It’s not that “ma” does not in fact exist. The layout of a margin on a printed page makes the reading more attractive. In a couple, if a spouse believes himself to be his wife’s shadow (or the other way around) and follows close on his or her heels all day long, life becomes suffocating. But in fact, a daily separation of spouses from each other is organised, making life more pleasant.

Yet, “ma” reaches its highest level of expression in the Japanese arts. “Ma” is not simply an empty space but an active force created by the very absence of all perceptible elements. Without “ma” there can be no Nô theatre, calligraphy, martial arts, flower arrangement, tea ceremony.’ ⁶/

Thanks to the teaching of Aikido as a work on the breath, on ki, and thanks to the work on the involuntary, which I did with my master for over ten years, I was able to discover and understand the importance of Ma ai. By continuing my own research, by deepening my breathing, by calming my mind, by achieving the fusion of sensitivity with my partners during the practice of the Regenerative Movement⁷, I came to feel and use this space, this Ma that exists between inhaling and exhaling, as well as between exhaling and inhaling, which Master Tsuda called “breathing intermission”. This space between the breaths, this time, this moment, as imperceptible as it may be, is one of the gateways to the breathing of the other and allows us to be exactly in the time, the space, the Ma ai.

The breathing intermission, if we feel it in our partner, we can increase it, intensify it, shorten it, this space also works at a distance. It can even be used on the phone! Just clear your mind and tune into the rhythm of the other person. You can help people out of a difficult situation, set a broken bone painlessly, or simply change the atmosphere of a meeting or group.

Ma ai has no morals; it can allow for the worst, as well as the best. Its use in the right direction depends on the quality of the person who is going to use it, the state of their ground and the state of their mind. Obviously, discovering aikido means understanding and feeling Ma ai physically.

Its transcendence can make it possible to go beyond the knowledge acquired through practice, education, or social life, to a better, more tolerant, more understanding world.

Régis Soavi

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Article by Régis Soavi published in April 2017 in Dragon Magazine Spécial Aikido n° 16.

Notes:

1. [see also Tsuda Itsuo, Facing Science, Chap. X & XI, Yume Editions, 2023 (Translator’s Note)]
2. Tokitsu Kenji, Miyamoto Musashi: His Life and Writings, Chap. 8, Eng. transl. by Sherab Chödzin Kohn, 2004, Shambhala Publications, pp. 251–2 (1^st ed. in French, 1998, Éditions DésIris, p. 265)
3. Karlfried Graf Dürckheim, in Suzuki Daisetsu, Zen and Japanese culture, Routeledge & Kegan Paul Ltd. (London), 1959, p. 434 (available online)
4. The idea was first put forward by Leucippus of Miletus (500 B.C.) and later by Democritus, Epicurus and Lucretius.
5. famous advertising phrase by a jeweller [(Translator’s note: that was Alphonse Augis)], originally taken from a poem by Rosemonde Gérard
6. Tsuda Itsuo, The Unstable Triangle, 2019, Yume Editions, Chap. VI, pp. 50–51 (1^st ed. in French, 1980, pub. Le Courrier du Livre (Paris), p. 49–50)
7. Katsugen undō in Japanese: method developed by Noguchi Haruchika Sensei and transmitted by Tsuda Itsuo in Europe in the 70s and 80s