The Aiki Academy

Aikido is a non-fighting martial art. Doing aikido means letting go of the desire to use physical strength in response to an attack. This can be very difficult for males to do since they are usually more used to using muscle power than females. They’re usually more used to fighting with physical force.

This can put many female trainees at an advantage since they’re less likely to use brute force to apply a technique or to rely on physical power to prevail. They’re more likely to use movement itself, that is, to use aikido. On the other hand many females lack body- confidence as a result of years of learning inhibitions and of being taught to defer to men.

Aikido teaches harmony and harmony is about sensitivity. Sensitivity’s more complex than it sounds, however, including as it does feelings of a “centred” self, feelings of “extended” strength, and the ability to anticipate what a partner or opponent will do next.

Mechanical practice can’t develop the feeling of having a “centre”, or the feeling of “extended” strength, or the feeling of a connection so close that two become one. Training that repeats set moves will not generate these feelings. It will skill us in making the movements we repeat, but we can’t get the feelings of “centredness”, “extension” and “connectedness” by doing only this.

To get these deeper feelings we have to move with some sense of inner meaning. We have to have a mental sense of what we want to achieve that is without the intellectual “friction” of pre-conception and thought. We have to harmonise body and mind.

The difference in practice is the same as the difference between doing physical exercises and studying an art. Doing physical movements on their own is robotic. It’s mechanical. It makes people defensive, brittle and light. Harmony training, however, like studying any art, is mindful and expansive. It’s about mental awareness and it’s this awareness that makes people confident and relaxed, well-balanced and flexible, powerful and free.