Life Lessons: Aikido Part Two

After the first session on Friday as an active participant in the class, I’m officially in love with aikido.

My friend prepped me before the class about some of the etiquette which was incredibly helpful, and it was really nice to have someone there to show me the ropes. There’s even a special way to bow with the way that your hands are placed on the mat and everything. I have a fair amount to learn terminology-wise but I think that will just come with repetition.

When I think about some of the circuit training that we did in boot camp, one minute can last a very long time. Try a minute of lateral raises. Hold the plank for a minute. Or a wall sit. The seconds tick by so slow you’d swear that the hands on the clock aren’t even moving. Bearing that in mind, two hours of martial arts is an especially long amount of time. Yet somehow, the time passed so quickly I barely noticed it go by.

My mind wandered once during the session, when the sensei was demonstrating a certain hold. I must have stopped paying rapt attention for only a few seconds but that was enough to make me completely lost when we paired up to practice the hold; any amount of time that your attention is not entirely focused on the task at hand costs dear in martial arts!

Taking aikido reminded me why it is that I love diversity in my workouts. Walking is my favorite activity, and a large part of the is because my mind can wander; I can explore ideas and thoughts and dreams with no need to focus on where my legs are taking me (except when its icy out. Well, no, that’s a lie- rather than pay attention to my footing I just fall down a lot). One session of aikido and I’m hooked. I know it is going to be right up there with walking for activities that I absolutely adore. And a large part of the reason that I admire aikido so much is because my mind cannot wander.

Losing your focus at all is the same as if you hadn’t been focused in the first place. With an activity like aikido, you just can’t afford to drift off into other worlds. It’s a whole new way of training your mind, being in the moment, and being aware of yourself and your attacker. Beautiful.

Something else I found interesting about aikido was that when I asked another student if I was performing the move correctly and getting the technique right, they would look at me with a bemused expression and shrug, saying that they are not the sensei so they don’t know. These students are far more advanced than I am, but even with that being the case, because they weren’t willing to correct me (because of the notion of the empty glass discussed in Aikido Part One), it increased my confidence. Knowing that we are all in the same boat as students made me bolder and I think that keeping that in mind is going to be beneficial to increasing my ability with mastering the moves.

At the end of the class we did a brief exercise of defending ourselves against two attackers. The idea was to keep moving our shoulders; sensei instructed me to keep my hands behind my back so I wouldn’t be tempted to bring them up in front of my body to defend myself that way. Applied to the everyday, the message I took home from this exercise was that when we face obstacles, sometimes the most obvious solution (using hands) is not the best choice. Sometimes we need to handicap ourselves by not using our hands and instead let our shoulders and hips do the work. We need to appreciate that although we might not think of moving our shoulders as the best way to get around an obstacle, it is better to move around it than aggressively attack with our hands which could create more problems.

Aikido requires full-body movements. Getting out of a hold isn’t something that your arms do on their own; your whole body needs to move into the movement for maximum power, strength, and balance. And when you think about it, it makes sense. It’s when we give it our all and fully believe in what we are doing that we are most successful. We need to put our whole bodies into what we are doing for the best results. No wishy-washing about it! It’s time to follow through and move with confidence.