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What Aikido is To Me

Aikido has been given many titles and explanations to me over the past few years which I have been training – from the generic “way of harmony”, to 1 hour lectures at seminars to illustrate that particular sensei’s understanding, to YouTube user flamers stating the rubbish it is and how it’s the most useless idea in the 21^st century. From my perspective it’s probably the most useful practice in the 21^st century – because we lead such modern and busy lives – we don’t take that time to stop and think about what we’re doing and the effect it has on ourselves and the people around us. The modern man is impatient like this and wants everything right now, without the realization of consequences which could follow.

When Aikido was developed, it was made with the idea of a metaphor in mind. O Sensei created a martial arts system which anthropomorphized the way he wanted human beings to live their daily lives. This is why Aikido is very unique in its training and practice, because it’s much more than what happens on the mat.

Way of Harmony

The most common expression used to explain what Aikido is that you’ll often find on sites like Wikipedia to gain a general understanding is the direct translation – “the way of harmony”. Several institutions adapt this one step further with translation such as “the way of harmonious energy”. Besides this being quite airy fairy, it’s actually quite cryptic to the outsider’s understanding – and was so to me until, quite recently, I got an explanation from my sensei. The way of harmony is directly related to the nature in which we train – which is cooperatively. By the first sounds of this, when you think about it, to train cooperatively is what most skeptics will point out about the art. It can’t be used in a real situation because your attacker won’t be cooperative. But think about it a little harder and note other martial arts – I can’t think of many where, when learning basics, your partner isn’t somewhat cooperative. This allows us to learn the technique so that if need be, we can successfully use it.

Aikido techniques have a lot of opportunity for atemi, which are strikes and other movements done to take the mind of your uke. O Sensei, himself, said that atemi is 70% of the effect; technique is the other 30%. Note that atemi is not solely a physical strike; it can be various movements that take the mind – ki-ai being one of these ideas. It’s important to remember that, although we are nice to each other on the mat (to allow us to learn), a kick to the groin and a gouge to the eyes is easily possible and will allow most Aikidoka to perform their technique with great ease.

Self Defense System

As mentioned earlier, O Sensei didn’t develop the Aikido system purely for self-defense, but rather to personify how human beings should live. With that in mind, I feel it’s important to reiterate that Aikido shouldn’t be taken up if you’re looking to beat people up, or show off what moves you can do. In order to become a true practitioner of Aikido, your energy must match the energy of the universe – and to do this, one must let go of his or her ego. In saying that, though, I feel that the principles of Aikido can easily be applied to a self-defense situation, in that there are various movements, ideas and techniques which can help neutralize an opponent. But more importantly than that, Aikido offers principles which help defuse a situation before it turns into situation — a life lesson much more valuable than disarming an attacker.

Principles over Technique

As just mentioned, I think it’s more beneficial for someone to be able to defuse a situation than disarm an attacker, because in life, situations don’t always come in the form of a person starting a fight. Situations can come in the form of a business deal, relationships, and 1 to 1 contact with other people. O Sensei didn’t want his pupils to go home thinking they had a way to defend themselves, he wanted them to go home knowing that they had the power resolve issues without conflict. Aikido is about stopping something before it starts, about blending with your life partner so that you and he/she live a happier life. This is where the harmonious practice comes into play. Aikido is about knowing that when life knocks you down, you don’t fall flat on your face and submit, it’s about learning to roll out of those situations and stand back up on your feet – the purpose of Ukemi.

Metaphor upon metaphor

As you can see by a lot of the explanations I’ve given, there’s a lot more to Aikido than simple techniques – and it’s a lot to take in. This is also why Aikido is not a 1 week course you can take and get the certificate for, it’s a lifelong practice which is about forever growing, learning and letting go of your ego. When you accept that you are not in control of the universe around you and can take a hit but still get back up — that will allow you to be happier.

O Sensei taught Aikido as a way of life, he wanted the world to treat each other with respect and learn to get back up when being hit to the floor.

The Reality of Fate

The world as we know it allows us to believe that we have much freedom, much understanding of ourselves and, hence, it gives us the belief that we are able to change things with our choices, we have the freedom of choice. Choice is something that we all perceivably have, will is something that we all perceiveably have. It’s interesting to analyze what we do, and don’t, have on levels beyond and deeper than simple yes and no questions.

If we assume that we came from a big bang, an explosion which cause random things to collide and cause things to grow and develop, then technically everything since then has been set into motion. Everything that happens is really a sequence of events which are meant to happen because there was a starting point. When we assume that something has a starting point and therefore begins a sequence of events, one has to assume that everything up until this very moment and beyond is unavoidable. What we are and the world around us is not merely a set of choices by us or the people directly around us.

You and I are the sum total of all the causal influence that is now, and has ever been in the past.

This would then mean that, if we are indeed the effect consequence of everything else, then it would be right to say that our influence and cause on ourselves and others is so minute that it is almost non-existent. And if we think about it on a slightly deeper level — because we are consiquencial machines and not causal, what we perceive as our cause is therefor, also, non-existent.

If these statements are true that we don’t influence the universe around us on a direct level, then our illusion of free will is laid to rest. If we do not influence the world, or even what we do then, really, we do not do much to change each other and ourselves. It is the factors around us which, not only allow us to be who we are, but also have dictated us to be who we are.

Many people who are reading may be thinking at the moment, what is the point of living if we are unable to do as we please, what we want? To that I would say, what has been keeping you alive all this time, so far? If you said your job, your kids, anything else, that doesn’t change. The point of our life, which is truly the greatest accident, ever, is to b happy. And when you realise that what happens to you is not a fault of your own, you can realise that there is no need to become emotionally distraught over it, but rather move forward quickly and swiftly onto the next event which is, hopefully, gratifying.

Many spiritualists will tell you that to become enlightened, one must spend a life time meditating, pondering and attempting to understand how to become accepting of the world around you. They will tell you that in order to change the world, you must first change yourself and really, after many years, you’ve changed your perception of the world around you and as such, you’ve changed the world.

But acceptance is a hard concept to grasp – hence taking a life time of dedication to achieve. I would be interested to know if spirituality is, not merely something you can practice throughout your life but also, something you are born with.

I was looking at a particular book the other day entitled The Encyclopaedia of the Brain and Brain Disorders – and one important fact to note is that disorders in the brain are not developmental (disorders don’t develop like diseases – in fact one could say they are the lack of development), they are something that a being is born with and cannot change throughout their life time unless something within them is changed (generally physically). A disorder is a structural error in the genetic code of a being (Turkington, 2002).

Therefore, there are certain properties that not every being will attain through pre-natal development. Think of a function of the human brain as a spark of electricity between two poles, every time a command takes place, the electric bolt fires from one pole to another – this is how your brain’s signal system works so that the brain works – many electrical impulses taking place. When there is a disorder in the brain the electrical impulses don’t take place and therefore the function isn’t carried out.

“Spirituality is a particular term which actually means a dealing of intuition.” – Chögyam Trungpa

Intuition is the apparent ability to acquire knowledge without inference or the use of reason. – Wikipedia

Note that, if we go by this understanding, that spirituality is not the ability to have an intuition, it is a dealing of intuition. So for the sake of argument we will say that everyone is born with a sense of intuition – our evolved understanding of right and wrong without being told – but how we deal physically, emotionally, cognitively and mentally can show how enlightened we are in the respect of acceptance and spirituality.

Intuition is knowing without knowing why we know, such as seeing someone being kicked and knowing it’s wrong, seeing a smile and smiling back because you know it’s the right response. Intuition is an evolutionary process which allows modern day human beings to act civilized to some manner because we deal with our intuition a certain way, such as smiling back.

But can spirituality be something you’re born with and developed or something that is acquired throughout life and you don’t need to be born with it? If we look at this question from a scientific and metaphysical point of view, there are a range of disorders which causes our brains to not connect the dots, i.e.: make those electrical impulses required for following a command, from Spinewave.

Simultanagnosia – Seeing only one object at a time, even when viewing a scene comprising many items.
Integrative agnosia – Inability to recognise whole objects, tending to focus instead on individual features of an object.
Visual form agnosia – Inability to describe the shape, size or orientation of objects, yet exhibiting no problem in manipulating them.
Optic ataxia – Ability to report the shape and size of an object, though attempts to manipulate it are clumsy.
Prosopagnosia – Failure to recognise the faces of familiar people.
Pure alexia (aka agnosia for words) – Inability to identify individual characters or read text, even though subjects are sometimes able to write.
Agnosia for scenes – Inability to recognise known landmarks or scenes.
Colour agnosia – Ability to perceive colours without being able to identify, name or group them according to similarity.

These are just a small number of disorders related to sight, most of them related to the brain (Bossenger, 2010).

Now what if there was a disorder that caused you to not respond to a feeling you had. This feeling is very simple, being right or wrong. If we consider that Spirituality is part of the creative hemisphere of the brain, that being the right hemisphere (Hermann, 1981), then we can also assume that a person who was missing this connection would also not know that he or she was missing this connection.

People who have an injury to the right side of the brain “don’t put things together” and fail to process important information. As a result, they often develop a “denial syndrome” and say “there’s nothing wrong with me.”

If we assume that the above is true, then a person who had sight damage due to the right side of the brain wouldn’t actually know that they were having vision problems in the left eye (Johnson, 1998 ). Therefore it is not only possible that a person could missing the connection in the brain which allows them to act on spiritual, but they would also not know that they are missing this.

So what? Spirituality isn’t all that.

Well if we analyse what spirituality is on a slightly deeper level, we can assess what said person is missing out on. As human beings we have evolved with a tendancy to know without knowing why we know, but if we saw something we which we knew was wrong – would we respond to that? If you saw a woman being kicked on the ground, would you feel angry or upset? Would it affect you more so  if this woman was also pregnant?

And that’s what accessing your spiritual part of the brain is about – responding appropriately to intuitive understanding. And it is unfortunately my conclusive understanding that, although we’re evolutionarily intuitive, we are not all spiritual due to under-development of the brain – at least, not yet.

References

Bossenger, N. (2010). Believing is not seeing.  Retrieved from http://spinewave.co.nz/believing-is-not-seeing/

Hermann, N. (1981). The Creative Brain. Training and Development Journal.

Johnson, G. (1998 ). How the brain works, from http://www.tbiguide.com/howbrainworks.html

Turkington, C. (2002). The Encyclopedia of the Brain and Brain Disorders (2nd ed.). NY: Fact on file, inc.