Aikido Weapons: Laido Sword Saisa Mai Form

Video Transcript

"This first technique is called saisa mai. Saisa is this traditional seated position that I'm in here with my legs underneath me. And my mai means forward. So, essentially I've got an opponent right in front of me, perhaps negotiations have gone awry, and I need to defend myself or maybe I have an order from my lord to do something such as move forward in negotiations, maybe a little bit more aggressively. First I'll demonstrate it and then I'll walk through and show each of the pieces. So essentially what we're doing, again I've got an opponent in front, it looks like he's going to draw his sword. As that happens I'm going to grab my sword, bring my knees together, come up on my haunches, come forward. Never want to lean back, I want to come forward, have my energy moving towards him. I'm going to draw the sword straight out this way, almost as if I'm going to hit him with the skagashia. At the last instant, I'm going to saia, and cut all the way across. I want to aim for the eyes, because when I'm very nervous it will tend to drop, and actually I want to get his peck. That way he can't use his sword. I'm going to cut all the way across. Not too far, I want to keep it in here, so in case he decides to move I can still lean forward and stab. From this position, I'll bring it over the top, grab the sword, and make a pretty major cut--going to cut all the way down. Want to finish about one fist away from my knee, we're going to turn the blade, pause a little bit, make sure that he's not moving, allow some of the blood to drip off, and then we're going to turn always putting my hand back on my saia when I'm doing one handed work. From here, I just follow the curve of the blade. It goes all the way up until my shoulder and my arm becomes in line with my shoulder, at which point I'm going to do a salute, I'm going to come up, cut straight down. My feet are together, okay, kind of making a V. Knees are still bent so I've got some cushion. This comes down and we finish. It's going to be out just a little bit. Again, because he's down there, just in case I need to lean in. From this position I'm going to draw my right foot back, leaving the blade at that same angle. Again, pausing, making sure that he's not coming back up. Once I'm pretty sure, then I'll bring it to here, draw the saia back, put the blade away. As I'm placing this down, or putting the sword back in, I'm going to drop my knee. That's called noto. Noto means to, again, encase the blade. Bring this all the way in, thumb comes over the top. Make sure it doesn't come forward. And I put my hand over the top again, covering everything, making sure that you can't see anything. The reason I would hold this is, again, I want to make sure he's done. He comes back up, I can just bring this up and stab. Probably not a likely thing after waiting that long, but just in case. So once we're here in this position, and we're pretty secure that he's not coming back up, we're going to again go back to the same standing position, feet at ninety degrees making a V. We're going to bring this back to our center, always having the tsuba right in front of our belly button. We're going to put our hand down, walk back the three steps, and then finish."