Weapons were banned from Aikikai Hombu by O-sensei and since that time the role of weapons in understanding the art of aikido has been much diminished. In addition, Kisshomaru Ueshiba and Koichi Tohei oversaw an increasing and ongoing de-emphasis of atemi in aikido. There are historic reasons for these choices which are completely understandable, but they do leave some modern aikido with a few gaps.

So what does weapons training offer the art of aikido? Here are a few thoughts:

• The roots of aikido are in Daito Ryu. Open hand movements are based on the sword so you don’t need to learn a separate art (and a heap of new motor skills) for when you don’t have a sword. Training with weapons takes us back to the source and improves our aikido.
• Weapons are a natural tool to extend our mind outside the body. Yes, we know Ki is infinite, but putting a solid lump of wood in your hands gives you direct experience of extending beyond your own body.
• You can practise on your own. Most aikido arts are paired rather than solo. So unless you can get to a dojo seven times a week, you need to find a way to do more practice: so go scare your neighbours and swing a sword about.
• Weapon taking (bokken, jo, tanto dori) can take your art to the next level. If your kata practise is losing its edge, putting a weapon in uke’s hand can bring it back to life. Lipstick up a tanto and see how well you can apply principles without getting lipstick all over your gi.
• Weapon throwing (jo, bokken nage): kata don’t change because you’re armed. If you find yourself wanting to do something different because you have a weapon in your hand, here is a great opportunity to rediscover the kata. Jo nage is pretty mainstream but the lesser known bokken nage is a very powerful and practical tool.
• Stress inoculation and physiological changes: one of the most important tools for ongoing improvement is to introduce variability and stress inoculation through inducing a manageable, increasing amount of stress. Weapons are great for this. Why not let uke attack any way they want with a knife?
• Improved coordination, awareness and posture: it’s challenging to perform complex motor skills with a live weapon and not accidentally cut bits off yourself. It’s also interesting to observe how we (unnecessarily) change the way we move due to the distraction of having a weapon in our hands.

I am looking forward to the weapons part of atemi jutsu at our Autumn 2017 Workshop to bring some of these aspects to life and see how my kata stacks up!

words: Dan James, aikidorepublic.com; Andrew Sunter, aikidoinsydney.com
image: Simon Russell, tvhouse.com.au

by Dan James

An example of kintsugi, the Japanese art of ceramic joinery that treats breakage and repair as a natural process to be celebrated rather than disguised. image: wikipedia.org/wiki/Kintsugi

Not just a provocative title, but an excellent starting point from which to develop a better understanding of the art of aikido, and how we might improve its effectiveness in our regular practice.

Rather than respond with some variation of “your aikido might not work, my aikido works just fine”, if we want to challenge this assertion, we need only look around the internet forums, or pop into a local MMA gym… you’re likely to be in for a rude surprise if you think you can pull off a sankyo the way you practise it in the dojo.

So to be clear, aikido absolutely does work, but aikido techniques as typically practised in the dojo absolutely don’t work in real-life application.

The trouble is that techniques are presented (in most dojos at least) as if they are scenario-based, appropriate responses to specific stimuli (such as a particular attack). But this is a complete misunderstanding of the purpose of waza (technique; art; skill).

The techniques of aikido are kata (model; form): that is, a standard series of movements chained together for the purpose of principle-based learning and transmission of an art. We learn kata from day one, but the hiden (secret teachings) are in how we interpret or apply them (the bunkai).

If you pop along to a sword school or karate dojo it’s a lot more obvious: you’ll likely see their kata being practised as a long series of 30-odd movements. No one in these dojos imagines that in a combat situation they might perform a 30-step kata and have success, instead they might spontaneously apply one or two movements from a kata in a real-life confrontation.

So how do we get it so wrong in so many aikido dojos? Perhaps because the kata are so much shorter, it’s possible to mistake them for some kind of preparation for actual combat. And because most of us in aikido are into peace, love and mung beans, we might not look deep enough to discover that any action that relies on reacting to what someone else does is ineffective in real-life violence.

People learn through story telling and therefore kata (especially short kata) are often interpreted as a problem with a corresponding series of movements to solve it. This approach helps tap into imagination and thus is a very effective way to transmit and preserve the principles of an art through the generations. In this way the kata of aikido are a kind of container or jar for the art itself and it’s our job to fill that jar with meaning.

O-Sensei, the founder of aikido (or some might say Daito Ryu Aiki Jujitsu rebadged for a post-war, right-wing peace movement), said that the way of aiki is formless and spontaneous. From this viewpoint, kata are simply examples strung together to help us study principles. But if we want to manifest aiki we need to move beyond this.

So what’s in an aikido kata? Can we pick it apart to enhance our understanding? There are a number of phases including: initial contact, opportunities for striking, the meeting and joining of ki, and resolution through throws and pins.

In the contact phase we practise from a diverse catalogue of striking and holding attacks that come from different heights, directions and angles. At the point of contact we apply balance breaking (kuzushi) which needs to be maintained throughout the kata. As we move through the kata we are constantly aware of body positioning (tai sabaki) exploring where we can safely be in relation to uke (omote, ura, shikaku). We learn how to move around our partner safely using irimi and tenkan. There are opportunities for strikes (atemi jutsu), joint entanglements (and breaks — although Aikido™ finds this a little distasteful). The end of the kata explores a feast of projections and pins to keep us entertained for years.

The ability to apply what we learn from kata — using the principles in the real world — means picking apart the kata to find each of these elements. This is very different from thinking “Oh, attack x is coming, I need to react with technique y… Damn! Uke didn’t attack correctly… Bad uke!”.

Most of us are very familiar with the flowing nature and beauty of kata practise in the dojo. When we combine this with rigorous enquiry into the component elements and phases, we can transform the container of kata into something quite amazing.

Another great tool for exploring kata is atemi. O-Sensei is famously quoted as saying aikido is 90% atemi (although he is also quoted as saying 70%). And there’s very good reason for this. It’s not that we want to go around hitting people, we probably wouldn’t have chosen aikido if we did! It’s that atemi is a terrific tool for understanding our aikido kata. Atemi not only makes our flowing, dojo aikido better but also gives us a way to apply the principles we learn in kata in a devastatingly effective way when necessary.

A few years ago, through the experiences shared by fellow argonaut Andrew Sunter, I was introduced to Target Focus Training (TFT), a modern combative art that has evolved from investigating the best way to train special forces in the US. It’s not my cup of tea, but it very simply and effectively puts into perspective the role of atemi jutsu in aikido. Andrew continues to study TFT and integrate the principles of atemi jutsu into Great Ocean Aikido.

Practising atemi jutsu is an excellent way to ensure we:

• identify the segmental points in the kata
• align our bodies correctly
• break balance effectively
• identify opportunities for joint manipulation that arise spontaneously
• develop correct timing
• remove hesitation and therefore develop better flow.

I am looking forward to learning more as we catch up at our Autumn workshop in Alstonville using Jim’s engaging style of learning to accelerate understanding. I hope to see friends there from near and far.

Aikido in Sydney grading candidates and examination panel. Photo R. Banfield

Last weekends Great Ocean Aikido Spring camp in Sydney was my first time on the mat in quite a while and memorable… for all the right reasons.

• The lineages we have experienced,
• The vignettee of atemi-jutsu to keep the combat feel (yet without the distraction of fighting and wrestling)
• The very great influences of the sciences in particular physiology, biomechanics and psychology in our practice.

After a late night discussing all these things, all to soon it was Sunday and time for the yudansha gradings.

Gleason Sensei Gasshuku, Brisbane 12–14 June 2015

After attending the Sydney event in 2014, it was great to have Bill Gleason in Brisbane to continue the challenge of a whole new paradigm of aikido (or so it feels): Gleason Sensei insists it is the aikido that O-Sensei intended all along.

He certainly brings strong credibility through his initial 10 years training in Japan, fluency in the language and a deep understanding of the history and culture.

It’s hard to convey the seminar experience in words: feeling the movements and the demonstrations of the instructor and other participants first hand is obviously what it’s all about. So here are some random points which are provided with a strong dose of encouragement to seek out the source through Gleason himself, his many video demonstrations or through the Great Ocean Aikido dojos which are trying to work within this paradigm.

Over the weekend it was easy to feel quite flooded with input and frustrated with not “getting it”. However, passing on some ideas to the Alstonville crew it was really pleasing to see how receptive they were and how much they could feel that “aiki” was actually happening.

Where to start? Perhaps with the Sydney 2014 take-aways which were reinforced again:

• Expand in six directions.
• If we are pushing through the point of contact then aiki will not happen.
• Internal power comes from the earth and is expressed through moving the hara (which is the whole belly) and then led through the elbows.
• We are engaged and moving at the moment of contact.
• Aiki is about circles and spirals which are expressed through turning of the femur and humerus and engagement of the shoulders.
• Techniques emerge from applying these principles and cannot be planned.

And then Brisbane 2015 had some refinements of these points:

• Always have the daling point of the hand facing the uke and the hand open and flat on top. Somehow this creates a six directions feeling in itself.
• “Pulling silk” was mentioned last time and I got a better feel for it this time – the feeling of lightly pulling threads from the hara out in all directions. A great exercise was to have someone hold your wrist when “zipped up” and then to pull silk. Some aikido magic happens.
• When developing the six directions as an exercise “stack it” from the chin down to the earth rather than upwards and then you will be grounded in your power.
• Always rotate around the point of contact so the contact stays where it is and there is no feeling of additional pressure.
• Keep the legs bent for bowing and unbowing. Too many practitioners have straight (locked) legs. This was further explained through the standing femur turning exercise where one fist extends down through the kua and the other extends outwards. Gleason recommended ongoing solo practice of this exercise (preferably with a mirror) to make sure both the pelvis and head remain straight.
• This led to more explanation (I think than last time) about opening and closing the kua in the groin and armpit areas as a way of internally turning the upper thigh and upper arm bones.
• Another more elaborated aspect was the ming men point in the lower back. We were encouraged to think of this point as the beginning of the arms i.e. all arm extension comes from there. One really nice exercise was to lead someone very gently while resting on their two upper arms simply by flexing the ming men point.
• Also a lot more talk of yin and yang in how we were moving. Gleason Sensei says ki is really “intent” and intent creates yin and yang in our body. This can be expressed as some spirals are outward and these are pushing other spirals inward (and vice versa) — so if the lower left kua is opening out and turning the femur which then moves the foot, this spiral continues around behind the body and moves the arm as the shoulder rotates and the upper right kua closes. These words hardly express the body concept but they are worth trying to articulate to show the subtlety and complexity of the movements. While we practised a lot of this slowly there was no doubt that Sensei could demonstrate any of it very fast and effectively. Ukes were often on the ground as if hit by a brief light whirlwind!
• We were reminded that nowhere in the martial arts does any master suggest we should blend with our partner. We have our own internal blending and do what we want — the uke merely follows (and hopefully falls) from what happens around them.

I hope I have conveyed that this was a very comprehensive and enlightening weekend however none of it is about the words but simply about practice — and for some of us — more and more practice!

Big thanks to Steve Seymour, the Kim Walkers and Mike Nash for all their efforts facilitating the visit.

Bill Gleason will not be in Australia next year because of his busy schedule. The nearest opportunity will be Hawaii and already several players are saving to go.

Jim Nicholls

Photo credit: Kim Walker, Aikido and Internal Power Group