I’ll just erase you from my memory
Put it all behind me
Because you are erased
All erased…
– annie lennox

In Yoga’s Warrior Pose you balance your body between legs placed far apart. Your hips steady the framework as you do your best to distribute your weight evenly between your legs. When you roll a kayak and first come to the surface and for a moment there similar balance between the part of you in the boat, and the bits of you out of the boat. Then momentarily you bring all your energy to just one side (the bits in the boat) and roll up.

Some people are lucky. They can learn traditional rolling quite easily. They just “do”. Others (like me) have to break down and understand things over long periods of time, then have little epiphanies. It’s sort of a fits and starts way of learning but it works. So it’s natural that when I teach boat control and rolling I focus on the feel and not so much the rigid 1, 2, 3′s. I’ve come to believe that if the mind and body can connect sensually then the rest is cake. A good roller has to be well tuned with their body, even if they are unaware of it superficially.

I think we first truly begin to come to terms with this sensual understanding when we start learning our layback norsaq (or stick) rolls. At first we tend to learn reach out away from the boat and smack the Norsaq down onto the surface of the water. We use that tension to brace off of as we twist up. In time we may not “splash” but we still find ourselves pushing down on the stick. Then we learn to sweep the norsaq. Again though, we are focused heavily on what’s going on “out there” away from the boat. Well, we’re stick rolling right? Yes and no. Certainly there are rolls that depend on the stick, but to keep moving forward in our technique we have to understand that the stick just happens to be there. It’s irrelevant.

I came to understand this better a few weeks ago by watching Dan Segal roll in Michigan. For whatever reason Dan’s concepts of rolling spoke to my thought process and opened some blind spots. I just needed time to let it soak in. The little epiphany began with understanding the Norsaq in practical terms. A Norsaq is basically a spear chucker. Once the spear. . . (I should say “harpoon”) is tossed there are ropes to deal with. There isn’t time to fool around with the norsaq, so a hunter may just put it in his mouth while he gets on with the task. If he suddenly ends up upside-down he just grabs the Norsaq and rolls. Thing is, who knows where he’ll grab it from. Maybe an end, maybe the middle. Maybe he would end up holding it by the wrong end and it would be inverted so the length of the stick is toward the kayak instead of away from the boat. Chances are a sweep or “smack” might just be out of the question. There’s the epiphany. The goal is not to use the Norsaq to roll. The goal is to keep hold of it WHILE your roll so you don’t have to go home and make a new one. So I’m not rolling with the stick, I’m rolling with a stick in my hand. Make sense?

Well, that brings your focus right back to your body. Ok then, there is no stick. There is no “hand”.  Erase them from your mind. It’s just your body hanging out there and you need to recover. This is where the sensuality and vision come into play. The roll then feels like Yoga. Your mind tunes into your body and simply shifts energy from one point to another. As you come to the surface of the water you just relax. You’re upper body follows the roll but does not really participate. The energy is expended below your waist, not above. You lay your arm with the norsaq in hand out there and forget about it. Then beginning at your toes the energy of the recovery moves through your body. With a twisting motion your knee follows your toes and is followed by your hips which bring your lower torso, then upper, then neck, then head back onto the kayak. Your inward arm can be laid across the back deck which acts as a counter weight, however in time you won’t need it either.

The idea that we roll with our body and not the paddle is always true from the moment we learn to roll. However big fat paddles and buoyant Greenland sticks tend to hide that truth from our brains. We sense it, but only to a level. As we move to stick & hand rolls it becomes more important. To get rid of the “splash & sweeps” we have to sharpen our focus even more. Each step of the way tuning further and further into the inner sensuality of the kayak roll.