Flow Rolling
Flow Rolling
By Muriel Palanca
Me: You told me earlier this evening that you never rolled while being high. Do you want to fix that?
Him: Yes.
It’s sometime around midnight in BJJ Globetrotters Camp Maine. We walk up the hill, drunk on elation and high from multiple forms of cannabis. We’ve asked just enough questions to be comfortable but not enough to miss each other when it’s over because the only place this goes to is “away” and we both know that.
The gym is empty with a tremendously high ceiling and mats covering the entire floor. We have the place to ourselves. He turns the lights off, leaving a glowing perimeter from exit signs and hidden hallways. The doors remain open, and the air is cold enough so we can actively move without sweating.
I think about what I learned in the last two days about flow rolling.
Heather Raftery is a BJJ black belt who taught two incredible classes. One was about learning jiujitsu faster by understanding the concepts, principles, techniques. The other was about flow rolling.
Flow rolling is a style of grappling where the goal is not to tap/ submit your partner, but rather to explore different positions and techniques through cooperation. I’ve attempted to do it before, but it’s been misunderstood to mean “going slow and light” which leads to boredom and people go back to smashing each other.
I crawl away on hands and knees to the middle of the mat while the intro for “Dark All Day” by Gunship sets the scene of a gritty vampire noir wrapped in digital silk. He follows.
No words. I am a woman becoming a wolf and he is a willing participant in my transformation. I turn to him and fall to my side, elbows and knees tucked in like a praying mantis ready to strike. I can make out only outlines as he progresses. Come here.
Before he fully side-mounts me, I dart my knee into the ever-closing space between our bodies and frame his chest with my forearm. Shrimp away, cup his neck with my other hand, and pull him into my guard. He lowers his upper body to mine like a Valkyrie to a battlefield, but I’m not ready for Valhalla yet so I weave my leg into a Gogoplata. Dangerously close, he brings his face to mine and I release him before he goes further.
His hands on my hips, I open my guard, attempt an armbar and transition to triangle. His forward momentum is unrelenting, as are my limbs. Our pace quickens. I create space to the moan of the deliciously raw saxophone, and he pressures into me with the rhythm of the driving bass.
Briefly, he mounts me. I elbow escape. I give him my back and he takes it. His cheek presses into my neck and I can feel his breath in my ear. It’s no accident, but I’m not done yet.
Our bodies fall into cadence; every move we make is technical and wild, deliberate and free, action and reaction. The precision of my frames against the broad strokes of his body creates formidable friction, even more seductive than the submission. This is what being “in the zone” feels like: the nirvana of difficulty meeting skill level in every facet of being- mind, body and soul.
We are the gravity of two binary stars colliding. We become a singularity in this black hole where everything is here and nothing else matters except right now.
Jiujitsu is a journey, but the destination has been unclear for me. Earning a black belt? Staying physically fit? Learning how to defend myself? Gaining confidence? I’ve been running for so long, I don’t know what I’m chasing anymore. But I find it while flow rolling.
I am self- actualized. I am at the pinnacle of pure joy.
Nothing has ever made me feel this way before. But to be fair, the weed, music and having the right grappling partner are necessarily in creating the experience. The combination of all, including timing, results in my transcendence and my jiujitsu game is forever altered by it.
With flow rolling, the goal is not to keep score. It’s to play the game.
He pushes and I bend, but I do not break. Chaos is controlled and every eruption dissipates just as quickly in a prolific crescendo. We keep moving… for a while, until we…don’t. The darkness envelops us with all the calamity of dust settling.
“What do you want from me?”, I ask him.
In much fewer words he says: The taste of outside by exploring inward, a hostel for the night before I go home. A cabin in the woods so I can appreciate the quiet. I want the shell of you, no more or less and I’ll close my eyes until it’s over.
He never asks me what I want, so I take what is offered, but not here.
“Let’s go.”, I say.
And he follows.