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by Aubrie Appel

I have been practicing Aikido for many years and I am 56 years old. For the past couple of years, my sensei, Jim Barnes, had been encouraging me to think about preparing for my shodan (1^st-degree black belt) test. In August, Jim-sensei suggested I test at a seminar in October —  provided I was willing to commit to hard work and extra practice.

I had to make a decision. A black-belt test is a physically and mentally demanding exam that is normally conducted at a seminar by senior Aikido instructors. There is usually a large audience of students, too. I really needed to polish my techniques (to say the least!) and felt I had to lose a minimum of 15 lb. to have any chance of success. I discussed the matter with my wife Gail and two sons, who were very supportive.

I decided to make that commitment. I would describe the next eight weeks as very intense and grinding.  I attended additional classes  and started to eat healthier.

Jim-sensei and Yumi-sensei (his wife and co-instructor at the dojo) set aside a half hour to 45 minutes each day for special practice. I had to work on performing a very wide variety of techniques smoothly, consistently and without pause, as required for the test. As time moved on, with both senseis’ attention to detail and direction, I got over many bad habits and improved my practice.

Nevertheless, there were occasions when I seemed to stagnate and really had to question whether I would be ready for this exam. However, I could not let myself, Jim-sensei and Yumi sensei, or my family down.

It was important to improve my stamina. After a two-hour class, Jim-sensei and a couple of other dojo members, Vadim and Adam, would throw me around continuously — 25 times without stopping at the start, and building up to 50 times. After a very short break, I would then do my test practice while still winded. Sometimes during these practices, fellow students would leave the dojo at the end of class and wish me “Good luck,” with a grin on their faces as if to say, “Better you than me!”  In the beginning, I dreaded this demanding part of my training, but as my conditioning improved, I actually started to look forward to it.

What helped motivate me even further was that I was losing about two pounds per week as well.  I used to joke with Jim-sensei that this type of conditioning is better than the Jenny Craig Weight Loss Program. I lost a total of 16 lb. in eight weeks.

By the time exam day came, I felt confident about passing the test if all went well. I also felt that my stamina was sufficient to get me through the approximately 30-minute exam. Once the exam commenced and with my wife and son watching, I felt a rush of relief that it was finally here.

Then, it happened.  After I completed the first two or three techniques, I felt a strong, dull tightness in the back of my left leg as if it was about to collapse.  I realized that I had probably injured my hamstring. The thought that raced through my mind was, “Oh my God, I may have to leave the exam if my leg collapses.” Fortunately, I managed to get through the exam successfully. I learned later that I had pulled my hamstring and that it would take about two weeks to heal.

Right now, I can only watch classes. It is frustrating not to participate after training so hard for the past eight weeks. However, my hamstring is healing, so I look forward to beginning to practice again very soon.

I feel so grateful to Jim and Yumi senseis for all their attention and support since I commenced Aikido, and especially for the extra attention I received during the past two months.

I am also very thankful to my wife and fellow Akidoka at Aikido Hokuryukai for all their support.

Lastly, I am thankful to my late father, who always encouraged me to learn a martial art for confidence and self-defense.  I know he would have been very proud.

As most of our students know, we encourage attendance at seminars as soon as a student can take basic ukemi competently. Seminars give you real-world Aikido experience and take you out of your comfort zone.

Sometimes, I describe students who are content to train only in their own dojos as “hothouse flowers.” They have trouble adapting when you put them among the weeds outside the greenhouse.

It’s a big step for a student to jump into the deep end of the pool and attend a seminar, but the rewards are many. One of our students, Tibor Bodor, a gokyu, recently began to go to seminars. We asked him for his thoughts.

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“I had watched a couple of seminars since my first day of Aikido training, but I participated in my first Aikido seminar a few months after my 5^th-kyu exam. While my schedule was definitely the main reason for delaying my participation in a first seminar, I cannot pretend that hesitation did not play a role. Having been since to a second one after just a couple of months, I thought I’d share some impressions with those who, like me, are at the beginning of Aikido training.”

“Although there is no substitute for participation, watching seminars and classes is a form of training and is a first step to understand what happens during seminars. Feeling too inexperienced to take the next step and actually participate is normal.  But no matter what your rank or experience, it is undoubtedly a learning opportunity. After all, everyone at the seminar is there to learn Aikido.”

“Learning builds confidence, so during my second seminar I was not thinking so much about my inexperience, but rather focusing on absorbing as much as possible. Trying to pick up just one or two concepts is often more enriching than trying to cram all the techniques and nuances into your head. So, at the next one, I’ll try to just get better at just a couple of concepts.”

“Also, during the second seminar, I didn’t just revert back to my usual way of doing techniques. I actually started to make an effort to watch what the instructor was doing and try what they were demonstrating. More often than not, learning is enriched as much by the differences in approach as the similarities. Learning from differences applies also to training with new people whom you’ve never met, as an important benefit of attending seminars. It is about feeling their approach of interpreting what the teacher is demonstrating.”

“And since seminars are more crowded than regular classes and usually include multiple sessions, for the next seminar I will look into bringing another gi to feel more comfortable in the later sessions. Perhaps the training partners may even appreciate it! Part of learning… “

“Not least, my first seminar extended over two days and had out-of-town participants. It was organized by Yumi- and Jim-sensei to celebrate the joint 20th anniversary of their respective clubs. Quite a few of us managed to fit into our Saturday evening schedules a fun dinner (a big anniversary cake included) with our training partners – first of all, because what happens off the mat it is part of the fun of attending seminars!”

Stealing technique – Respect and traditional training

I started training in budo in the late 1960s as a young teenager. From the moment I walked through the dojo door for the first time, I was aware that different cultural expectations ruled the space. Even though none of the sensei or students were oriental, that budo culture was clear and pervasive. For me, sensing that atmosphere when I walk into a dojo today is the hallmark of a good training environment.

I often see students slowly growing into the same realizations I had to back then. One aspect of budo culture is that the culture itself is very seldom explained or discussed. Most students come to understand it only in a very haphazard way, often through criticism from their sensei or sempai (seniors).

The assumptions behind traditional budo training can be confusing for students raised in a Western educational system. In school, they are taught to discuss things openly, debate and question, and attempt to arrive at truth through a dialectic process.

They can be shocked when they discover that completely different rules apply in the dojo. A traditional sensei has little interest in discussing why training is done the way it is or in entertaining a student’s suggestions on how it can be improved.

It is a very, very old training culture.

Most traditional martial arts were battlefield systems used in feudal Japan, taught through forms – often two-person forms. In those days, the forms were closely held secrets. Since there was a very good chance that a student would end up facing a student from another style in combat, it was essential that the style’s most effective techniques remained a surprise its enemies.

That is the negative connotation of “stealing technique” – spying out technique from a martial school to better defeat it ­ and the teachers of those days were careful to protect themselves.

To keep the art secret, new students were not automatically granted admission to those dojos. They often had to be clan members or supply letters of reference from persons of influence known to the sensei. They sometimes had to serve for considerable periods of time performing menial tasks to demonstrate their commitment before being allowed to practice.

The training itself consisted of copying the sensei’s form exactly. No modifications were permitted. If the sensei saw a student deviating from the norm and “practicing his own way,” that was usually followed by instructions to leave the dojo permanently.

In traditional budo, once you had practiced long and hard and mastered the form, you might receive one of several levels of certificate to recognize your competence. In some cases, students were even encouraged to travel and test the art against strangers.

Morihei Uyeshiba (O-Sensei), the founder of Aikido, came from this traditional background. He seldom explained technique to his students. He would demonstrate freely and openly in front of them, often modifying techniques on the fly. He would lecture the students at length on spiritual matters, which he felt were the real core of the art, but seldom talked about the mechanics of technique. He took it for granted that talented students would be able to figure out the techniques on their own.

That attitude dates back to O-Sensei’s early training. His primary teacher, Sokaku Takeda-sensei, was master of Daito-ryu Aikijutsu. He made a living teaching Aikijutsu while travelling throughout Japan.

His classes often occurred in a seminar format. He would charge the students at the seminar by the technique. They would pay a fixed sum to watch him perform one waza. If they wanted to see another one, they would pay an additional fee for that, too.

Sometimes, his demonstration consisted of performing one technique four times… right and left side and omote (frontal) and ura (reverse) variations. The students would then practice. If they wanted to see the technique again, they would pay again. Takeda-sensei felt he was fulfilling his obligations in full, simply by showing the students his art. It was up to the students to learn or not, as they wished.

It may not sound like a productive teaching method, but Takeda-sensei had dozens of outstanding students over many decades, including O-Sensei, who had learned by watching diligently and practicing without respite.

However, as Japan modernized, modern methods of education began to hold sway. While O-Sensei had not been interested in creating a technical curriculum, the Aikido shihan (masters) who followed him were. Led by the second Doshu (leader), Kisshomaru Uyeshiba (O-Sensei’s son), major efforts were made to standardize Aikido technique and establish a series of tests and a ranking system that would recognize incremental levels of improvement in students at Hombu dojo.

But there is still an undercurrent of the old style of training in a traditional Aikido dojo. Don’t talk during class, but simply follow the sensei’s example as precisely as you can and train hard. Don’t deviate from what was taught.

I remember well the frustration that Yukio Kawahara-shihan would sometimes express during classes. He was the Technical Director of the Canadian Aikido Federation, and he occasionally complained that students did not watch him closely enough to catch his technique and were not making sufficiently conscientious efforts to copy it. That was very puzzling for him. He demonstrated each waza clearly, concealing nothing – but the ensuing practice of some students bore scant resemblance to what he had shown.

The Aikido shihan have often emphasized the need to learn with your eyes – not your ears or mouth – and then ingrain what you have seen in your bones with repetitive practice.

Many of them refer to this process as migeiko (watching practice). Others have referred to it as “stealing technique.” In this context, the phrase lacks the ancient, negative connotation associated with outsiders who would spy on an art’s techniques for their own purposes. In fact, the shihan encourage “stealing technique” in the modern sense of the phrase, for their students.

The ability to “steal technique” in this way is the sign of the superior student. Essentially, it means to watch the demonstration diligently and take ownership of the waza for yourself afterwards with hard practice.

That way, you will never forget it.

(This article also appeared in Traditional Dojo magazine.)

It is with great sadness that we inform you that Yukio Kawahara-shihan, 8th dan and Technical Director of the Canadian Aikido Federation, passed away on Thursday, June 2. He had been ill for quite some time.

He was a predominant force in raising Canadian Aikido to the standard it has today. Many of our members got to know him over the years and benefited from his seminars across the country. He will be sadly missed.

The CAF issued the following announcement:

Dear CAF Members,

It is with the deepest regret and profound sorrow that I inform you of the death of Kawahara Shihan.
He passed away in Victoria on Thursday evening.  During his last days he was kindly attended to by a number of his students who communicated to him the great respect and affection that so many of us felt.
More information will follow as it becomes available.

Sincerely,

George Hewson
(President, CAF)

See the CAF website for more information.

See the Vancouver West Aikikai website for a brief biography of Kawahara-shihan.

See our blog for personal memories of Kawahara-shihan.

Minor joint injuries sometimes occur in Aikido, unfortunately – just like in any physical activity. Your ukemi goes wrong, you zig when you should have zagged and you ding your wrist, elbow or shoulder. These injuries are usually more annoying than anything else, and most people recover from them fairly quickly.

(Note for beginners: safe practice is one of the key objectives at our dojo, and we train students to avoid injuries of any kind).

Some students who do have a nagging joint injury ask me what to do about it. The most important thing to do is to rest the joint until the immediate pain and swelling are gone. Icing is a big help. Don’t do anything to stress the joint until it has recovered. And afterwards, exercise it lightly with gentle stretching.

I also suggest that people try MSM.

Disclaimer: I am not a health practitioner or therapist of any kind. Nor do I particularly believe in herbal or patent remedies. But MSM is a different story.

I had a very bad knee injury at one point and a friend of mine who practised jujutsu asked me if I had tried MSM. He said that most of the people in his dojo used it. I had not tried it and was extremely sceptical. But I had nothing to lose, so I bought a bottle and started taking it.

Let me repeat that I wasn’t expecting anything whatsoever to happen.  I was immune to the placebo effect. Nevertheless, the improvement was noticeable and immediate. I have tried other remedies before and since, including shark’s cartilage and glucosamine, and I didn’t really notice any changes. But MSM is different.

I have recommended it to relatives, friends and students, and usually encountered the same scepticism I felt. However, the ones who tried it usually reported significant improvements in healing time.

This is all personal, anecdotal and unscientific. I have found the 1,000-mg gel caps to work the best (some of the tablets don’t seem to me to work at all). You’d have trouble overdosing on the stuff, so if you have a sprain, take it often.

Here are a few comments from a book called Knee Pain, the Self-Help Guide (Garrett and Reznik, New Harbinger Publications Inc., 2000) .

“Methyl-sulfonyl-methane is organic sulphur. It occurs naturally in the human body. MSM is also found in many foods.”

“MSM increases the flow of harmful substances out of the cells and prevents pressure buildup in the cells, which causes inflammation in the joints.”

“Some studies have indicated that MSM improves joint flexibility, reduces stiffness and swelling, improves circulation, reduces pain associated with arthritis, reduces scar tissue and breaks up the calcium deposits associated with arthritis.”

All I can say is that it reduced the pain and stiffness in my knee dramatically after a few days. The book cited above, by the way, is recommended for anyone with a knee injury. It’s a gold mine of information.

People are sometimes sceptical when they hear Aikido described as being nonviolent. In practice, we counter attacks by twisting joints and throwing our partners to the mat. How can that be considered a form of nonviolence?

First of all, for the uninitiated, let me point out that a considerable amount of training in receiving techniques and falling safely takes place before practice occurs at anything resembling full speed. And of course the purpose of practice is to improve ourselves and others physically and spiritually, not to cause injury.

What about outside the dojo? We need to bear in mind that nonviolence is an attitude, not a predefined set of actions or non-actions. In a physical confrontation, what are your motives? In restraining a violent person, are you using the minimum reasonable force? Are you protecting others and leaving your own ego out of it?

Let’s consider the case of a blind person about to step into traffic. Which is the nonviolent act? Is it to stand back, yelling about the danger and hoping that the blind person hears you above the street noise? Or is it to run forward and shove that person out of the way of an oncoming truck, despite the risk that he or she might fall? I think that most people would agree that physical action is the nonviolent alternative in this case.

Suppose somebody tries to push you into traffic? Most Aikido practitioners would instinctively move off the line of force. But suppose you knew that stepping aside meant that your attacker would plunge headlong into traffic, likely being seriously injured. Would not the side step, even without any physical contact, be an extremely violent act, in terms of intent?

I don’t want to split hairs, here, but let’s take a more ambiguous example. Say you are in a public gathering and someone gets drunk and angry, and starts to attack the people around him. Which is the nonviolent act – to stand back and do nothing while people are injured, or to talk to the attacker to calm or distract him, and, if necessary, restrain him to give him an opportunity to reconsider the situation?

I heard an interesting story touching on this topic from a friend of mine. He was about to walk on stage at a public demonstration, carrying a real katana (sword) in a sheath at his hip. A deranged person rushed out of the crowd and tried to take the katana away from him by drawing it from the sheath. My friend quickly applied nikkyo (a powerful wrist lock) with the sword’s handle, forcing the attacker to release the sword and drop to the ground. The Aikido practitioner then looked around, and saw a police officer staring at him with his hand on his sidearm. The officer said, “I’m glad you did that. If he had gotten that sword away from you, I would have shot him.”

Was this a nonviolent act? For me, essentially, yes. The attacker wound up with a sprained wrist instead of a bullet wound. If he had tried that attack on practitioners of some other martial arts, he might very well have been killed. No one in the dense crowd suffered any injury, and neither the police officer nor the Aikido practitioner nor the attacker had to live the rest of their lives with a death on their conscience. Given the circumstances, I think it was a real-world, win-win-win, nonviolent solution.

Aikido gives us a range of tools that enable us to exert appropriate levels of force when in these situations. It’s a mistake to equate nonviolence with passivity or disinterest. It should be defined as acting for the community’s welfare, protecting yourself and those around you from harm with the necessary degree of control – not brutality.

Many students practice Aikido for the purpose of “self-defence.” Self-defence is a worthwhile objective, but I think that people often misunderstand it. There is a significant difference between fighting and practical self-defence. There are far more common and serious threats in your life than a mugger with a gun.

I once attended a seminar with a friend who shared my interest in the combative aspect of Aikido. We stepped outside the dojo during a break, and he promptly lit a cigarette and began to suck it back with great fervour.

I was astonished that he could do that to his body while it was under so much physical stress. I pointed out the irony…. that if he really was interested in “self-defence” per se, he’d put a high priority on cutting back on smoking as well as on practicing joint locks. He had to agree.

Few of us will face a life-or-death combat situation in our lives. But for those of us who ignore their health, emphysema, stroke, heart attacks, cancer, diabetes, depression and a host of other ailments are fairly likely.

According to Statistics Canada, It is far more probable that you will die in a car accident (well over 3,000 in 2007) than in any kind of assault (just over 500). Do you drive defensively?  Do you drink and drive?  

Do you try to protect your health? Obesity is the source of countless fatalities. Nearly 70,000 people died of heart disease in Canada in 2007.

According to the statistics, you are at greater risk of suicide (3,600 plus in 2007) — dying at your own hands — than of dying at the hands of an attacker. That’s an adversary who is hard to defeat.

More than 2,600 people died of falls in 2007 in Canada. How many might have survived if they knew something about falling safely?

While combat, armed and unarmed, is fundamental to the concept of Aikido, it offers many other benefits.  Does your martial art relax you and revitalize you? Does it offer you healthful exercise? Does it calm you? Does it give you concepts for managing confrontations smoothly and safely as well as for surviving sudden street attacks?  Are you part of a supportive and friendly community? Does your practice give you a positive attitude that makes your life happier and more productive?

These are important aspects of true self-defence. Even a beginner, whose technique is not yet “combat-ready,” can get these benefits almost immediately. From this point of view Aikido is a wonderful art.

Of course combat is a central theme in Aikido practice and Aikido technique is an effective way to protect yourself from violence. But when you consider how much time you pour into learning a martial art, you have to ask yourself whether it is making you a stronger and better person – or just a more dangerous one.

People practise Aikido for a wide variety of reasons, ranging from exercise to self-defence to social contact to an interest in Japanese culture – and any combination of the above. One of the benefits of Aikido practice is strengthening of the student’s character. But what exactly does that mean, and how does it happen?

In this connection, I’d like to mention an essay written in 1906 by the psychologist William James . It was entitled The Moral Equivalent of War.

James, an avowed pacifist, wrote the essay during turbulent times – just after the Spanish-American War, with the First World War looming on the horizon, less than a decade away.

He was attempting to deal with a disturbing paradox. On one hand, he was convinced of the brutality and waste of war… its fundamental immorality. Few today would dispute that point of view. On the other hand, he tried to acknowledge the benefits of war – even in those days, a difficult argument to make.

His focus was on the human character. He began by pointing out that war is engrained very deeply in the human psyche and – ugly or not – is part of the human experience. It has been a constant throughout history, and some of our greatest literature (the Iliad, for example) celebrates it. “Modern man inherits all the innate pugnacity and all the love of glory of his ancestors,” he noted.

James’s essay helped me understand my father a little better. He was a combat veteran of the Second World War, and carried lifelong physical and psychological scars as a result. The horror of the war had shaken and disgusted him profoundly. But sometimes, he seemed to be weirdly nostalgic about it… the friendships, the challenges he proved equal to, the sense of order and purpose. It was a paradox I couldn’t understand, as a young man.

The negative effects of war on the human psyche are obvious. But James wrote about the positive effects, too: “Fidelity, cohesiveness, tenacity, heroism, conscience, education, inventiveness, economy, wealth, physical health and vigor — there isn’t a moral or intellectual point of superiority that doesn’t tell,” in war, he said. “Martial virtues must be the enduring cement [of society]; intrepidity, contempt of softness, surrender of private interest, obedience to command, must still remain the rock upon which states are built…”

James was seeking a “moral” equivalent to war, which was itself immoral. “The martial type of character can be bred without war. Strenuous honor and disinterestedness abound everywhere,” he suggested.

Aikido, when practiced with determination, can serve as such a “moral equivalent” to war in developing the human character, for people of all kinds. It can help to develop a tough resilience, determination, courage and sense of community that will serve the committed practitioner well in life, regardless of the ultimate level of technical proficiency attained.

O-Sensei saw Aikido as a path to peace built on a foundation of martial virtue. William James knew nothing about Aikido, but I’m sure he would have recognized its benefits.

There are many collections of quotes from James on the web. Some I agree with, some I don’t, but all are thought-provoking.

Aikido reading

Occasionally, students ask me to recommend some reading on the subject of Aikido. Dozens of great books about Aikido are available. Just a few that come to mind are:

The New Aikido Complete: The Arts of Power and Movement, Yoshimitsu Yamada. Yamada-sensei is Technical Director of the U.S. Aikido Federation and one of the world’s great Aikido shihan. The book provides clear explanations and photos of standard techniques.

The Art Of Aikido: Principles and Essential Techniques, Kisshomaru Ueshiba. This book by O-sensei’s son, the second Doshu (leader of Aikido) is an encyclopaedia of Aikido technique. It is authoritative, detailed and informative.

Best Aikido: The fundamentals(co-authored by the second Doshu); The Aikido Master Course: Best Aikido 2; and Progressive Aikido: The Essential Elements, Moriteru Ueshiba, are all invaluable references. The third Doshu, O-sensei’s grandson, has written clearly and extensively about Aikido practice at all levels. These books are currently in print.

The Aikido Student Handbook: A Guide to the Philosophy, Spirit, Etiquette and Training Methods of Aikido, Greg O’Connor. Covers a lot of basic knowledge needed by newcomers, in particular the basics of Aikido practice, Aikido culture and dojo etiquette.

Aikido Exercises for Teaching & Training, by C. M. Shifflett. Provides some general background on Aikido practice as well as useful, and sometimes amusing, answers to common questions. Includes much information on various Aikido exercises.

The five-volume Traditional Aikidoseries (especially volumes 1 and 2 if you are interested in jo and bokken) are valuable and unique resources. The author is the celebrated shihan Saito Morihiro-sensei, who has written widely about Aikido technique and practice.

Aikido Journal: No longer printed, this online magazine presents a great variety of articles on different elements of Aikido, especially its history. See http://www.aikidojournal.com/

Aikido News, published by the USAF, is a source of great articles on Aikido online, many written by Yamada-sensei himself. See http://usafaikidonews.com,

While there are many great books about Aikido on the market, there are a few questionable ones, too. If you are unsure whether you want to spend the 30 dollars or so a new acquisition might cost, just ask us.