As I write this in early September 2024, it is six-and-a-half-years since I restarted aikido practice (at least at a serious / consistent level), but equally 30-years since I first discovered aikido. This multi-part article is in part about my personal journey from one style of aikido to another. It is in part about my personal battle with back problems – and age, and life, in general. It is in part about finding a way to keep training during the COVID pandemic and live beyond. Most of all, it is an acknowledgement, a show of my appreciation for all that have supported me in my study of the way of aiki.
Find the subsequent articles at https://www.westcumbriaaikido.com/blog/categories/club-news
Part 3 – shodan, the move north and having to stop training
I was awarded a BHA shodan at the end of January 1999, just under four and a half years after starting aikido practice. It was a gruelling exam, a marathon, which lasted hours.
The shodan exam started with ‘ki tests’, 29 ‘mind and body’ coordination tests. Unbendable arm, unraisable body, standing on one leg with one arm outstretched, sitting in seiza or rising from sitting cross-legged, plus many others. ‘Tests’ were push or pull motions designed to test the stability of a static posture or to challenge, or if possible, prevent, a certain movement sequence. They were not just about dealing with the physical contact, but also the perception, and the body’s response to the incoming test. Did you tense? Did you brace? Did you adopt a state of resistance ahead of physical contact? Strength was useless, you had to find ways to let your weight sink down and to accept the push-pull test, and without force, to ignore it. How your body moved (or didn’t move) was your choice. Is that someone trying to raise my arm? In my mind I would acknowledge that, note it as an interesting, but irrelevant fact. Had I instructed my arm to raise – no. Hence my arm staid where it was. There was no resistance – this was about practicing non-resistance.
The tai jutsu aspects of the test were extensive. There were sections on attack-defence combinations in suwari waza, in hanmi handachi, and standing (tachi waza). Any attack / entry / defence combination could be called by the examiner. There were then the taigis (I forget how many, but several), and multiple attacker ‘kokyo nage’. In terms of weapons work, there was bokken and jo suburi of the Iwama system, exercises such as happo giri, the jo kata and the Otani Omori Ryu iaido kata.
The bit that was feared the most in the shodan examination was the knife defence. This wasn’t wooden tanto work. This was Geoff (only ever Geoff) grasping the lapel of you dogi with his left hand, then with his right striking forward, at a very short distance, to your throat with his supper-sharp, very - VERY - real, knife. There were two other real knife defences you needed to show, but the thrust to the throat was the worst. Attacks were slow, and carefully delivered, but people did get cut, although never seriously. The biggest concern was often scrubbing blood off the white canvas that was stretched over thin foam mats!
The second most feared bit of the examination was the ‘alternative weapons’ attacks. You would stand at the edge of the mat facing the wall. The examiner would call out shomen, yokomen or mune tsuki, you had to turn quickly and deal with the attack, or more specifically what you were being attacked with. Geoff was imaginative in sourcing interesting things from his workshop – hammers, screwdrivers, chisels, saws, lengths of pipe, even a little handheld blow torch. You could hear the blow torch as the person behind would ‘rev’ the control to ‘torture’ you. These tests were as much about mental composure as they were about technique.
The objective of the BHA shodan test was simple, to take the student to their mental, physical, emotional limit, and beyond, and to then see what they did. Dis they become physical? Did they become aggressive? Did they give up, did they panic? It was a test of character as much as technical ability, it was a test tailored to each individual.
Each year I would help the freshers week recruitment drive and I severed as the university club chairperson for two years from 1997-1999, whilst also being an assistant instructor. Shortly after my shodan test in 1999, I was appointed by BHA as the Plymouth University club senior instructor. Thankfully, the Technical Director of BHA, Geoff, took most of the Plymouth University classes, so my teaching commitments were relatively limited, but I did have to take a lot of ukemi!
I moved north from Plymouth in September 1999, and with approval from BHA, opened a BHA club in St Bees, West Cumbria in early 2000 that quickly expanded with a second night in a nearby village just south down the Cumbrian coast. My objective was simple, I wanted to train, and for that I needed training partners. BHA had also introduced in January 2000, a significantly revised syllabus across all kyu and dan grades. This was still very much the principle-based system of Tohei Sensei, but with new techniques, new applications, new variations, new expectations. Nidan was no longer a simple extension of my shodan test, but now a different technical curriculum. I concluded that I needed to learn the kyu and shodan requirements of this new syllabus – and the most effective way to do that was to teach.
I recruited people from work and from the local circuit training club, including John (Aki). Martial arts were popular then, it was easy to get new starters, young and not so young! People were enthusiastic. Craig joined early on, he was 18, his desire to learn, and his aptitude to learn was incredible. We were never a big club but having 10 to 15 people on the mat twice a week was quite normal. Once or twice a year, Geoff would come up from Plymouth and we would organise a weekend seminar, concluding with kyu grade examinations. For key BHA things in Exeter, we would pile into my aging car and make the slow trip down to the south-west, praying that the car would survive the round trip.
In 2003, I started suffering lower back pain, I was in my mid-to-late 30s. In 2004, It got worse and worse; at times I could hardly walk. Getting out of a car was agony. Getting out of a bath unassisted was impossible, I could hardly move, let alone teach or train. I was diagnosed with degenerative lower spine issues – cause unknown. The NHS doctor told me that nothing could be done about it and that my life would mainly be about pain management. I sought private medical healthcare and was told the same. I had no choice but to stop training, to stop teaching, the club continued for a bit under the senior student, Craig, then a recently graded 2nd kyu, but ultimately closed. I felt ashamed that I had let Craig and others in the club down, that I had given up.
I couldn’t physically train, but regularly I would wake up in the morning, knowing that through the night I had dreamt that I was training. My library of aikido and associated budo books stayed in prime position on my bookshelf. My dogis sat, neatly folded, in the bottom of my wardrobe. My weapons carefully kept in their bag in the attick. Physically, my body was defeated, and mentally also, but a kernel of hope, of commitment, refused to die.
To be continued.
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