On the first belt test, students must demonstrate forward ukemi - rolling over one shoulder, while looking back over the other shoulder.

I had been unable to do a froward ukemi over my left shoulder - I would freeze up, I could spend an entire period of rolling practice standing or kneeling looking back over my right shoulder, frozen, uanble to move. It was such a problem that when Nick Sensei said I would of course need to do forward ukemi over each shoulder, I almost panicked and nearly opted out of testing at all.

There's a reason for this.

Years ago, when I was a grad student at Cal, I was walking home one night from a rehearsal when I was attacked by an armed man in a ski mask. He came at me from across the street, so that he approached at a run - from just behind me and to the right. When he grabbed me, I - out of instinct - started to look over my right shoulder, when he shoved a gun right behind my ear and (amidst a colorful string of expletives I'll leave out here) told me not to look over my right shoulder or he'd shoot. I was to look straight ahead and go where he told me, do what he told me. He shoved me down into some bushes and kept me there for over an hour, sitting right behind my right shoulder, the gun trained on me for much of that time.

Ever since then, the blind spot of right behind my right shoulder has been a real bugaboo for me. I can't work in a room that has an open door behind my right shoulder, for example, without being in a state of physical anxiety; and, as the rolling practice demonstrated, the simple act of looking over my right shoulder literally made me freeze.

Not knowing any of this, Nick Sensei offered the following advice to me about how to get over my aversion to the forward roll that required me to look back over my right shoulder: "What is the worst thing that could happen while you're doing it? The worst thing that could happen is that you could die. Try to just acknowledge and accept that - if you can bow onto the mat and say to yourself, okay, so maybe if I do this I'll die, but I'll do it anyhow... that might help."

As crazy as that sounded, it worked. For the next several weeks, I would consciously say to myself, as I looked over my right shoulder, "Alright, I'm willing to die now," and as soon as I made that decision, I could go over into the roll without a problem. Months later, I still had to consciously think that before every forward roll over the left shoulder; only very recently have I finally been able to just do the roll without thinking much about it, and even now, on days that I am feeling vulnerable or upset or distracted, I sometimes have to invoke that little mantra.

I don't feel particularly articulate about how this relates to my aikido practice, but it had a profound, visceral effect on me. I suppose the point is that I realized that my body literally holds all my "issues" within it, and aikido, in requiring that I be absolutely present in my body, makes me absolutely present to those issues as well. I cannot improve in my practice without improving my relationship not only to my body but to my mind, my ego, as well. It's not just a matter of getting better at the moves, it is a matter of facing deep-seated demons and fears. It doesn't matter that I didn't know how to defend myself back then, and it doesn't matter if I never have to defend myself now that I know how to: in mastering my fear of the forward roll, I conquered the bad guy.

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