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 previous articles at https://www.westcumbriaaikido.com/blog/categories/club-news
Part 5 – Finding the feeling
The path to shodan
By late March 2020, the UK was in ‘lockdown’, effectively a ‘stay at home’ order. I decided that I would do an hour of solo weapons practice each morning. I lasted three days. Solo training felt bland, tasteless, boring – the enthusiasm of my youthful days of solo training in Plymouth were lost. I was frustrated and disappointed in myself. Shortly after, I found that Bjorn Saw was doing online teaching. I signed up straight away. Classes were only 45 minutes, but they were seven-days a week, a mix of stretching and movement exercise and Iwama weapons training. I had a training schedule! Each evening I would head outside with my laptop and weapons, it wasn’t ideal, but it was something.
Within a week or two, instructors in TAE started doing a Saturday morning online class which I also added into my schedule, there were instructors from across Europe, Sascha (Germany), Andrea (Switzerland), Brendon (UK) and many others. A week or two after, Michael Ormerod did an online multi-class, multi-day online event – an alternative to the cancelled Spring Intensive in Motril, Spain. I needed a better training environment. I tidied and rearranged the home office to give a training space suitable for most solo weapons forms.
Without anyone to my left of right or in front, I had to focus on the image of the instructor on my computer screen. Was that their left foot forward or their right? What was my image doing? Was it doing the same thing? My dyslexic brain felt like it was being tortured. But I persevered. Michael soon introduced a weekday morning class and two evening classes a week. With the TAE Saturday class and faces such as Brendon’s peering out of the screen at me and shouting “more weight Adrian” and Bjorn’s classes and his diligent corrections, I could easily notch up a dozen hours a week.
In mid-May, 2020, I approached Michael to see whether he would provide one-to-one online coaching on the TAE shodan requirements. He agreed and we met, digitally, for one-hour a week over the following two-months. We systematically went through the shodan syllabus, the first four weeks on the weapons and the second four weeks on tai jutsu. Michael was on his own, I didn’t have a training partner either. He would demonstrate in a solo form, and I would copy in a solo form. My confusion as to the syllabus and test requirements fell away – these were all things I had been training so hard on, but where I failed was that I hadn’t studied, I didn’t understand the system.
In early July 2020, COVID related travel restrictions were eased a little. I could get into Switzerland and back into the UK without quarantine at either end. I quickly made arrangements to go to the Swiss summer camp. Contact training was allowed in Switzerland, my first hand-on-hand training for nearly four months. It was exciting, but also nerve racking. My body survived and at the end of the week I pre-tested for shodan and was declared, by Lewis, as ready. The following morning Lewis asked me how I was feeling, my response was “it feels like I have already tested”. He response was “in essence, you already have”. That evening, in July 2020, I successfully passed my shodan test, my third shodan award, but my first with Lewis, my first with TAE and my first with the Aikikai. I was very happy.
Becoming aware
The following week I was back in the UK back under COVID restrictions, but people could meet up outside. I started an outside weapons class, and we would meet four times a week for an hour of solo and partnered weapons work per class.
When restrictions eased (and at times came back), people drifted away from the online training; why train alone when you can go to the dojo and train with others? The TAE online class closed, but a small die-hard group refused to give up, myself, included. Michael declared that if there were people wanting to train, he would continue to teach the online morning class.
Day-upon-day, class after class, we would go back through the basic components of the weapons system, there was a constant narrative, “arms like thick heavy ropes”, “feel the weight, feel the compression”, “feel as though you are moving into and under the mat”, “feel the back ‘light-up’”. Every class was different, but similar, there was no partner to be distracted by, no passer-by to catch the eye. The room became irrelevant. There was the screen, the voice, my body. I increasingly found that I was watching myself more than I was watching Michael. I started to experiment, adding 5 kg wrist weight to each arm during the 30-minute warm-up to see how they affected my structure. I switched between my regular bokken and two heavy suburi bokkens.
Things started to happen, I started to notice things, to ‘find the feeling’. The first thing that I noticed was the sound of my feet as I stepped and turned, sometimes a scraping sound as I screwed the foot into the ground, but also a ‘tap-tap’ sound as feet were picked-up, moved or turned and put down again. I focused of trying to get the tap-tap sound.
The weeks passed by; the hours of solo training notched up, but the narrative remained the same “feel…, feel…, feel…”. I was familiar with the concept of mental visualisation, such as imagining that there were elastic ropes drawing you down into the ground, but concepts of ‘body feeling’ were quiet alien. Then, bam, suddenly I felt as if I was corkscrewing into the ground, as if I was passing forward into and under the mat. Then the feeling was gone. It occurred to me that the feeling was the result of a particular biomechanical set up. I searched, I explored, I watched, I asked, I listened. Then I found it. The knee unlocks, the hips hinge forward, like a door swinging, the weight compresses into the foot and the foot spreads…
With the use of arm weights and a range of part-squatting-arms-outstretched static and dynamic postures that Michael was fond of including in his morning online class, the muscles in my back would cry-out in pain, but this was muscular pain, this was superficial pain. As the musculature in my back grew, so did my awareness of it. Concepts such as “feel the back light up” and “engage the back” made sense. Despite a significant amount of physical strain on my back, the lower spine issues became less and less.
A beginning of understanding – finding the principles
As COVID restrictions eased in 2021 and as life returned to normal (or at least the ‘new normal’), teaching/training in the local club, trips to Lancaster, seminars etc and daily (well at least 5 days a week) online training all merged together, amounting to, on average, 65 hours a month training, albeit a reasonable proportion of this being basic body movement exercises of Michael’s online classes. Daily training, in this hybrid environment became the norm. Sometimes at home online, sometimes face to face in the dojo.
As students returned to club training, I noticed a difference between those that had continued weapons training, as best as they could during the COVID pandemic, and those that hadn’t done any kind of training. There was a difference in quality of movement. I thought about what qualities of movement a 6th kyu should have or a 5th or 4th kyu etc. I looked – properly looked – at the TAE syllabus and for the first time saw the words, “At the body level the focus is on coordinating hands and feet and relaxing the body weight downwards into the ground as the principle of being balanced is emphasised throughout”, and, “Once the periphery of the body (hands and feet) are more coordinated and the weight is more ‘underneath’, further Principles such as being whole and coordinated and being centered are explored along with the Relational Principles of non-resistance, joining and following (awase), which receive more focused attention”. It was for me a ‘eureka’ moment. This was convergent evolution – these weren’t Tohei’s teachings, but they were virtually the same principle-based system, albeit developed from a different angle. Things came into focus, things started to make sense.
I looked again at the system I had first learnt, a system based on the teaching of Tohei Sensei, and the TAE system based on the teachings of Saito Sensei. I concluded that they were the same – yes, the teaching approach and the ‘tools’ used differed, but the objectives, the purpose, remained the same. And why would they differ? Tohei Sensei and Saito Sensei where without a doubt the primary pillars of post-war aikido, they were friends, they moved in similar ways. Saito Sensei sought to preserve, Tohei Sensei sought to evolve, but they both had the common reference point of O-Sensei.
Today, now, I am trying to integrate a decade of training in BHA with training with my new aikido family of TAE. Occasionally, I will slip back into the ‘old form’, and on a Sunday morning get a “no, no, what are you doing” from Aaron, but there is praise as well, acknowledgement I have really worked hard on adopting the ‘new’ (TAE) form.
I have been lucky to have the support of so many. In April 2022, I passed by nidan exam and in July 2024 my sandan exam. Under TAE, these are Aikikai regognised grades. As I publish this in autumn 2024, I am preparing for my first trip to Japan.
Every day I try to explore, to experiment. Solo weapons work, even in the simplest exercises presents a rich tapestry of feelings to explore, to work on.
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