There is something that often happens in training. I remember one occasion in particular. As I arrived on the tatami at the Collège des Ceintures Noires, someone I did not know came to greet me. I greeted him in return, took hold of his judogi, and immediately found myself on the ground. He had made a perfect movement. I stood up again, took hold of his judogi, and immediately performed the movement he had just done. We both started laughing. We had had the same sensation, I had felt his projection, and he had felt my fall.

You transmitted your sensations to each other?

I learned something that day. Not me, but my body learned something.

Through the fall?

Yes, with a beautiful projection like that, one acquires a sensation. But one acquires it only on the condition of accepting it. If one refuses, there is no sensation, only a bad taste in the mouth. One has fallen, but because one resisted, it brought nothing.

It is the same sensation one has when one has made no effort at all to throw one’s partner.

That’s it. That is what I mean when I say that the fall, within a projection, brings something, the knowledge of the projection through the body. Not through thought, not through intelligence, but through bodily sensation.

To learn, is it necessary to fall?

No, it is not necessary to fall, one is obliged to. Otherwise one must flee or oppose, and under those conditions one is not doing judo.

To do judo, must one accept falling?

One must fall because the other has made a good movement, yes. You do not resist, but you do not fall on your own either. It is a matter of sincerity. You do not fall in order to gain an advantage. Because a judo exchange is about doing something with the other, and accepting that they progress with you by throwing you. If you accept falling, then it allows you to work much more freely. You can fall ten times, it does not matter. You get up and do the same thing again.

But then, how can one remain available to the fall and yet not fall after all?

That is a slightly more refined work. If you want to throw me, I do not oppose you. I agree, I go with it. I go with it until the moment when you are about to throw me, and then it is I who take your action in order to throw you. I modify your action by giving it another orientation.

Is that going beyond my action?

It is extending your action in another direction. Not the opposite, not at a right angle, because that would be opposition, but inside a circle. You will follow without realising it, because the movement is not linear.

What do you mean?

If one makes a movement in a straight line, one inevitably runs into something. Movement cannot be linear in judo. Otherwise one encounters an obstacle, an opposition at some point or another. To avoid opposing, one must go around, describe a circle. That is why in judo movements are always done on a circle, even if that circle is not always on the same plane. It can be a vertical plane, a more horizontal or oblique plane. When the movement is effective, it is an infinite circle.

Could it never stop?

Yes, what allows one to recover is the continuity of the movement. If you dive in a straight line, you cannot recover, whereas if you dive and come back up on the other side, you can recover within a circle. You could do it ten times, you would not fall.

Could it never stop?

The more oblique the plane, the longer the movement can last. But of course it has an end, the partner eventually meets the ground. It stops because there is gravity, because there are physical laws.