WHAT'S AIKIDO?

There are about a thousand great websites that describe aikido from a historical or technical perspective. Instead of duplicate those, I am going to lay out what I'm teaching when I teach aikido. 

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POSTURE, CONNECTION, CUTTING 

The first things I am trying to teach any new student are:

1. How to keep your own posture intact when someone is grabbing or hitting you​

2. How to stay safe by looking at, connecting to, and keeping a solid hold of your partner 

3. The difference between pushing, pulling, or smacking and cutting the way you slice through a tomato with a sharp knife

 

Why? Because T.K. Chiba described aikido as "a supranatural response to conflict." These three skills directly address the most natural responses to getting grabbed or hit. We want to curl up and protect our own middle. We want to escape or turn away from conflict. And when threatened we want to express an idea we have in our heads about strength instead of doing something powerful. ​

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By learning these specific skills, we are training our nervous systems to do more than react. 

 

A WAY OF LIFE

Even when a student is a beginner, I want to impart that aikido is a do, a way. It is a lifelong path that stays interesting for decades, and has no end. Training can be endlessly refined. And this process of continual attention and refinement is intended to inform every aspect of your life. 

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The founder of aikido was deep into Shinto purification practices, studied many martial arts, was a prolific writer, he gardened and taught... he was doing aikido the whole time. 

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Perhaps the best place for a beginner to see aikido as a do is the relationship between members and the dojo. It is a formal environment with layers of etiquette that is built and maintained by the members. There's something really special that happens when we all work together to create this taut, earnest, sacred space. We all start to go deeper. 

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HONESTY

Whether you want it to be or not, studying just about any serious martial art is a fantastic mirror. When you are a beginner, this mostly just feels like getting way too much feedback that you're not good at aikido yet! But I encourage all beginners to turn that perception around and start to notice what you do with that pressure. Do you go dull and unresponsive? Dissociate? Does your inner critic light up and start taking everything you do apart? Maybe you say mean things to yourself, judge the teacher, or you can't feel what is happening in the moment... but you find it almost impossible to come to your third class.*

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Training is beautiful because you get a chance to see and deal with those parts of yourself that keep you from growing and changing. Looking at what training brings up in you and learning how to set it aside is just as important as any other part of training. 

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*This is a thing! If you make it to your third aikido class, you almost double your chances of training a whole year

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