*I wrote this a few years ago while I was doing a course with Jean Houston (a super human being!)
My early rolls
I started training in Aikido about a year ago. Prior to that, I hadn’t even heard the word!
Not long before I started, I’d been considering taking up some form of martial art. I’d assumed that it would be Kung Fu mainly because I’d seen quite a few Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan movies and because I loved the movements and many of the different styles – monkey, I think was my favourite although, the cat’s almost imperceptible, soft paw landings were soooooo appealing 🙂
I’d especially loved watching the old Jackie Chan movies as, to me, they demonstrated best the ‘art’ form rather than the ‘fight’ form of Kung Fu.
One day, I decided to search the internet for a Kung Fu school close to where I live. Having given up my car a few years ago, I wanted something close enough to walk to or that would require only a short bus ride.
The schools that I found on the internet did not appeal to me – you know how you can get a feeling about a place even if you only see it online…I’ve been learning to trust such feelings.
At this point, I decided to change tacks. Instead of searching for ‘kung fu paddington’, I decided to search for ‘martial arts paddington’. One of the results this generated was ‘Suncorp Stadium’ which is about 3 minutes walk from my apartment.
I followed the link and that’s when I encountered the word ‘Aikido’ for the first time. It was being offered Monday evenings and Saturday mornings. As it happened, it was a Monday and I could feel the excitement build up inside me as I thought about going for the class that evening.
I can’t remember which captured my attention first – the picture of someone in a ‘hakama’ (the very loose black pants) or the description of the martial art as the ‘way of harmony’. I do know both of these were enormously appealing.
A martial art grounded in a philosophy of harmony?
I was intrigued. How was this possible? How could you have an ‘opponent’ and still maintain harmony? This was something I had to find out for myself. I kept reading, then read some more at other websites and blogs. With each, I fell deeper and deeper in love with Aikido.
That was about a year ago. Today, I’m even more in love with Aikido. Now, isn’t that the kind of story you’d like to tell about your relationship with the person of your dreams? The man (or woman) you want to keep falling deeper and deeper in love with?
Or, for that matter, the kind of story you want to tell about your life? How you keep discovering more and more of it to explore and how that thrills you and fills you up just long enough to prepare you for the next excitement, the next bliss, the next joy???
I wanted to share my story with Aikido because the martial art of harmony sits so well with what I value in life – the art of harmonious, effortless living.
When your partner (as we call them) comes at you with an attack, your intention in your response is to return him/her to the path of harmony, to the natural flow of ki, to the Tao using the ki and letting it do the work.
Can anything be more loving and less effortful?
The motivation is always to return to the path of harmony. Always.
Not to overpower, subdue, defeat or harm but to return yourself and your partner to the FLOW, the TAO. This is why many of the movements in Aikido are about BLENDING.
The word ‘harmony’ is such a beautiful word with a beautiful sound and holds the meaning of joining or agreement (of sounds)
It is full of little words too, all saying what appears to be quite different things, yet all working together. Look at how ‘H’ takes the leadership and holds everything together with ‘Y’ which has her arms lifted in openness to give and receive :).
Anyway, since beginning this post (which was at the start of this course), I’ve been asked by another participant about my reasons for taking up Aikido.
One of the reasons I gave her and which I hadn’t thought to mention earlier was that I had been looking for a way of engaging with people physically, or kinaesthetically, as we might say in this course. You see, I’m frequently engaged with people intellectually but I’d dropped out of the group/team sport activities several years ago, taking up instead the more solitary practice of yoga.
Yoga has been wonderful for me, but I was beginning to feel the need for some kind of interactive practice.
Aikido is providing that balance in a way that honours the spiritual and mental while providing me with the immediacy of physical action and reaction/response. Now that is so cool!
I mean, intellectually, you can slow things down, take the time to figure things out, sidestep a threat or insult or retreat into a more ‘safe’ spot or counter from a well-rehearsed script to all the ‘feedback’ that you get in life.
But when you’re on the mat, and especially for a beginner like me, the feedback is more immediate and demands an immediate response. There’s no time to ‘think’ your way into a ‘safe’ space…and I’m not even talking about a safe physical space because physically, you know that you’re never in any danger, at least not from anyone else :).
Rather, I’m talking about the safety that the ego is constantly seeking when it is preoccupied with not making a mistake, or doing the ‘perfect’ roll or not looking clumsy or awkward! Oh my, these are the preoccupations that I become so aware of as I’m on the mat trying to do my rolls or practising the techniques or keeping up with the warm up exercises….:)
It is humbling for my ego, yes, but it is also so very freeing for my naturally great spirit which has been trapped too long in the limited self-image that my conditioned mind has painstakingly constructed…sheesh…:).
And it helps foster warm and caring bonds between me and those who instruct me or help with my learning.
So, that’s my current account of my love affair with Aikido 😉
Image from here
In Love,
Lucy
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