Aikido Philosophy
"Aikido is not simply the cultivation of skills for defeating opponents; rather, it is training in how to become one with those opposing you and, in that unity, find paths of mutual coexistence. Therefore, as your technique takes effect, you should already be in a state of oneness with your opponent."
~Shoji Nishio, Shihan
The word Aikido is made of three kanji (Japanese characters). "Ai" means harmony, "ki" means spirit or power and "do" means path. Put together they describe a path toward spiritual harmony between people as well as within the individual.
In Aikido we are actually practicing at two levels at the same time. At one level we are developing practical and effective martial art technique. But at another level we are cultivating personal traits that allow us to see life's struggles through different eyes and literally produce changes in the way our brain operates.
To understand why this special kind of physical training can produce these changes we'll first look at the common human response to conflict.
How we deal with stress and conflict is one of the biggest determining factors in achieving healthy relationships and personal happiness. The human mind naturally responds to confrontation with a "fight or flight" response. If we're honest, we can all admit to times when our brain has been hijacked by powerful emotions and we've been thrown into a state of tunnel vision. Expressions like "blind rage" give a clue to the powerful neurological effects that can cause areas of the brain, like peripheral vision, to totally shut down, limited our ability to both see and think outside of a very narrow range.
Because of the unpleasantness of this experience, many people develop subtle ways of avoiding conflict. For some, conflict situations are so distressing that they will leave their job or their home just to avoid the gut twisting feelings it sets off in them. Some people find other ways, like passive aggression, to try and stay in control while at the same time avoiding dealing directly with conflict. Conflict avoiders are opting for the "flight" part of fight-or-flight.
On the other side of the coin, the adrenalin rush of a fight can produce a sense of exhilaration - a chemical "high." Narcotics aren't the only things people get addicted to. We are more commonly addicted to the chemicals produced by our own emotions. The ongoing desire to fight (either physically or otherwise) is actually an internal chemical addition to the stress hormones produces by the "fight" side of fight-or-flight.
Fighting and running away are simply two sides of the same coin. Avoiding conflict may relieve us of emotional distress and fighting may give us some temporary satisfaction, but neither way allows us to channel the energy of the conflict toward a real and desirable, even mutually beneficial, outcome. To achieve this requires taking a position of mind that transcends our own tendencies of either fighting or avoiding.
Running from conflict or attempting to crush it both miss the moment of creative opportunity that exists, and in fact only exists, in the presence of conflict. Every creative act is the result of conflict. Creativity arises when there is a conflict between what is and what we want, between what we lack and what we need. Only through a collision of desires is creativity born. A phrase that the founder of Aikido quoted often is take musu aiki - the creative spirit of Aikido. This means that the spirit of aikido is nurturing and creative, not destructive.
Retraining the natural response of the mind - with it's powerful reptilian emotional centers - to approach conflict creatively is not a simple thing. It requires giving the mind a new experience of facing conflict. It is not the kind of desensitization used to harden a soldier and prepare them to kill. Instead, the experience must physically elucidate and instill the power, flexibility and control you have when you are calm, grounded and centered. You can obviously understand the words your are reading here, but transforming the mind cannot be gotten through words alone. The old zen adage, "You can't get wet from the word 'water'" means that growth and change can only happen through real experience.
