The Aiki Academy

By Ralph Pettman

Most of what goes by the name of aikido isn’t aikido any more. It’s aiki-jutsu, which is historically where aikido came from. Most contemporary aikidoka, that is, have gone back to practising aiki techniques, whether by physical or mental means. They no longer aspire, as Morihei Uyeshiba ultimately seemed to do, to a profoundly spiritual state of mind. They have gone back to doing sophisticated self-defense forms that may be physically and mentally based on aiki-principles, but do not cultivate the cosmic expansiveness and universal love that Uyeshiba, by all accounts, came to consider the heart of his marvelous art.

Which is fine. People can make of an art like aikido whatever they like - and they have. There are said to be more than thirty styles of aikido by now. Whatever the number, it is certainly large. Long before he died, Uyeshiba’s students had begun to teach aikido in ways they understood his understanding of the art to be. Their interpretations differed, because naturally enough, they differed. They were not the same person. Each brought his or her unique awareness to aikido. Each saw and did something different as a result. And after all, only the most dogmatic or authoritarian of individuals would have it any other way. Without the freedom to interpret and experiment we would never have anything new in this world, and that includes the aikido world. The dead hand of tradition would weigh so heavily on everything that any innovation would require a revolution. And revolutions are extremely difficult to mount or maintain. Aikido itself was initially one such an innovation. It only became a tradition once people, like Uyeshiba’s son, began making a museum-style collection out of Uyeshiba’s extensive repertoire of movements and techniques. This particular orthodoxy is known as the Aikikai style, and it is characteristic of those who see themselves training in the tradition of the Uyeshiba family itself.

I first studied aikido systematically under John Cornish, an Englishman who had studied under Uyeshiba himself. Cornish was first and foremost a judo player, but he had mastered the basic techniques Uyeshiba taught, and I learned these techniques from him on his return to London. I had most affinity, as a consequence, with the Aikikai style, and for many years, that is what I practised. I enjoyed it immensely. It was physically very stimulating and technically very demanding. There were real delights in the vigor and rigor of the aiki-movements involved and in meeting those technical demands. I wanted the same scimitar-like arms my teachers had. I wanted their physical prowess. And I trained hard to get the practical competence these things involved.

Years later, on a return trip to London, I trained with Kanetska-sensei, who was the Aikikai’s representative there. He was a typical exponent of that style. It so happened that at this particular time Kanetska’s father-in-law was also on a visit. His name was Sekiya and he was also an aikidoka. Because of the family connection, I think, Kanetska let him teach a local class. Out of curiosity I went along, and what a revelation it was! Here was aikido of the kind I had only read about in books. Here was a man who could throw me without my feeling him do so. Here I was, whenever I tried to attack, experiencing positive pleasure at the prospect of falling flat on my face. Here was a man who could pin me without effort and without pain; who somehow managed to make it a delight to do no more than lie still and not resist. I was truly astonished. I knew intuitively that I had encountered a completely different kind of aikido. I had no idea how it was done. I just knew that this was aikido without any competition at all, not only in principle, but in practice too.

I was not able to stay in London for long. I soon went back to where I was living and where I usually trained. Before I left I did find out that Sekiya was a student of Seigo Yamaguchi, though, and that is where the matter remained for many years to come.

The Aikikai style, as I said, is very sophisticated. I know from my own experience, however, that its practitioners - of whom I was one for quite a long time - tend to say one thing and do another. They tend to talk about cooperation, for example, while practising competition. They tend to talk about relaxation, while practising a deep form of muscular resistance. Some are notably better than others in this regard. Some are notably worse. But in my experience, this is broadly the case.

Seigo Yamaguchi taught at the Aikikai-dojo in Tokyo. Over the years he developed a very different approach. So had other Aikikai instructors - instructors like Koichi Tohei, who went on to found the Ki society and to teach a very intellectual form of the art that eschewed the physicality of the Aikikai style in favour of mental imagining of a powerful and productive kind. I had often been intrigued by Tohei’s approach, having read his books very early in my training career. When I finally decided I wanted to try and transcend the limits that the Aikikai style set, it was not to Tohei I turned, however. It was to Yamaguchi, or rather, to Yamaguchi’s leading student, Yoshinobu Takeda.

It was a very happy set of circumstances that led me to Takeda. They are not of relevance here. Takeda certainly is though, because of his extraordinary economy of movement, inner power and poise. In every photograph I have ever seen of Takeda, the image of the attacker is blurred with the speed of his or her attack. The image of Takeda, however, is always completely still. And I mean, still. He looks perfectly relaxed, as if he were just standing there, watching the movement happen. And that’s because he is perfectly relaxed.

Takeda once told me that Yamaguchi used to tell him: “you must be more like the wind, more like the wind”. And that, in a nutshell, is the style Yamaguchi developed, the style that students of his, like Sekiya and Takeda, went on to explore, each in their own particular way. Yamaguchi’s personal movements were so internalised that it was almost impossible to see what he did. It was a matter of feel. The feeling, moreover, was the diametric opposite of everything that the many Aikikai teachers I had encountered seemed to teach. One really did relax and let go. One really did research the principles of good movement in a free and spontaneous fashion. One really did meditate in movement.

If I were to categorise the main different styles of contemporary aikido I would say that they emphasise either the physical, the mental, or the spiritual dimension to the art. The Aikikai style (like many others) ultimately emphasises physical technique. Doshu (the founder’s son) was able to provide a text-book illustration of a vast array of his father’s techniques. His grandson can do likewise. The Ki society style, by contrast, ultimately emphasises mental technique. Tohei’s students teach ki exercises that promote stability, focus, and extended strength. The Yamaguchi style, however, emphasises spiritual awareness, and this awareness, as it turns out, incorporates the physical and the mental too. Yamaguchi’s students demonstrate the spiritual meaning of physical and mental techniques, and in the process, they seem to me to appreciate the key point of Uyeshiba’s wonderful art. It is a meditation in movement. It is a way to harmony with an expanding universe. But to find that way it is not enough to copy the founder’s physical or mental formulas. That is aiki-jutsu. To find Uyeshiba’s way it is necessary to catch the spiritual feeling of what he was trying to do. In my experience, few aikidoka truly understand that feeling, mainly I suppose because few aikidoka have felt it themselves. It is a very personal feeling, after all. It is given one-to-one. It has to be transmitted directly and personally by someone who has it already, and they are few. In my experience, they are mostly students of Seigo Yamaguchi, or students of his students, which may sound dreadfully arrogant (and may say more about my lack of experience than it does about the world’s aikido teachers). It is the conclusion I’ve been obliged come to, though.

As far as I can tell only one aikidoka has ever become enlightened and that was Uyeshiba himself. He didn’t become enlightened doing aikido, either. Aikido was a consequence of his enlightenment, not a cause of it.

As far as I’m aware, no aikido practitioner, even one of Yamaguchi’s ilk, has had the kind of enlightenment experience Uyeshiba had either, at least, not doing aikido. At least, not yet.

Many practice aikido with a spiritual purpose in mind. They are wasting their time doing so by physicalist or mentalist means, however. How you train is what you get, and if you want spiritual results you have to train in a spiritually relevant way. Physicalistic training results in physicalist awareness. Mentalistic training has mentalist consequences. Spiritualistic ends require spiritually attuned means, and though it may be spiritual hubris to say so, Yamaguchi’s way seems to me to be the one most consistent with Uyeshiba’s own in this regard. We may not get enlightened by following his way, but we do get the best chance if we do so.

This is not to demean any of my brothers and sisters in the aikido fraternity, whose soft, subtle and sophisticated techniques carry on the “aiki” tradition in wholly admirable ways. I should say in conclusion that practising a physicalist or mentalist style of aikido does not disqualify the practitioner from achieving insights of the Uyeshiba kind. It does not preclude finding a deeper meaning in aikido. It does make it more difficult, though. With integrity, sincerity, and determination the handicaps that the physically and mentally oriented approaches provide can be overcome. By the same token, someone practising a spiritually oriented style is not guaranteed spiritual insight. Such a style does not provide automatic access to deeper meaning in aikido. It may facilitate that access, in a way that the physicalist and mentalist styles don’t, but it does not guarantee it.

This difference is easy to explain. It is much, much harder to understand. There is such a difference, however, and it’s a radically important one. The survival of aiki-do itself depends upon our appreciating it.

Next Page : Aikido and Enlightenment