AIKIDO

The Peaceful Martial Art

Stefan Stenudd
 Stefan Stenudd is a 6 dan Aikikai Swedish aikido instructor, member of the Swedish
Aikikai Grading Committee, the Swedish Budo Federation Board, and the International
Aikido Federation Directing Committee. He is also an author, artist, and historian of ideas.
He has published a number of books in Sweden, both fiction and non-fiction. Among the
latter is an interpretation of the Chinese classic Tao Te Ching, and of the Japanese samurai
classic Go Rin no Sho by Miyamoto Musashi. His novels explore existential subjects from
stoneage drama to science fiction, but lately stay more and more focused on the present.
He has also written some plays for the stage and the screen. In the history of ideas he
studies the thought patterns of creation myths, as well as Aristotle’s Poetics. He has his
own extensive website, which contains a lot of aikido material, among other things:
www.stenudd.com

Also by Stefan Stenudd:

Aikibatto: Sword Exercises for Aikido Students, 2007.
Cosmos of the Ancients: The Greek Philosophers on Myth and Cosmology, 2007.
All’s End, 2007.
Murder, 2006.

Cover: Sankyo, an aikido pinning technique. Photo by Stefan Stenudd. Design by

Stefan Stenudd and Jonas Dahlqvist.

This book was originally published in Sweden, 1992, with the title Aikido – den fredliga
kampkonsten. This revised edition is written in English by the author.

Aikido: The Peaceful Martial Art

Copyright © Stefan Stenudd, 2008
Book design by the author.
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4196-5879-2
Library of Congress Control Number: 2006911077
Publisher: BookSurge Publishing
North Charleston, South Carolina
www.booksurge.com
 The secret of aikido is to harmonize ourselves with the movement
of the universe and bring ourselves into accord with the universe
itself. He who has gained the secret of aikido has the universe in
himself and can say: "I am the universe."
Morihei Ueshiba (1883-1969), founder of aikido.
Contents

Aikido Is True
Aikido Principles
The Impossible Martial Art
No Opponent, No Battle
Morihei Ueshiba’s Path
Water, Air, and Vacuum
Sooner Like the Youth
Female Advantage
Throw Away
To Know or To Learn
Here and Now
A Shared Journey
That Self-defense Thing
Delight
Aikido Basics
Do – the Way
Ki – Life Energy
Ai – Harmony
Triangle, Circle, and Square
Tanden – the Center
Aiki – Rhythm and Direction
Kiai – Gathering Power
Kamae – the Perfect Guard
Kokyu – Belly Breathing
Maai – the Safe Distance
Irimi, Tenkan – Inward, Outward
Omote, Ura – Front, Back
Gotai – Static Training
Jutai – Soft Training
Kinagare – Flowing Training
Zanshin – Extended Spirit
Uke – the One Who Is Led
 Keiko – Practice, Practice, Practice
Takemusu – Limitless Improvisation
Nen – One with the Moment
Kototama – the Soul of Words
Appendix
Osensei’s Rules for Training Aikido
Budo Charter – the Japanese Rules
Glossary of Aikido Terms
Aikido Websites
 Above: The author (to the left) doing some kind of kokyunage in
Järfälla, Sweden, 1975. This was where he started with aikido in
1972, at age 18.

Aikido Is True

I was seventeen when I first heard about the remarkable

Japanese martial art aikido. It was Krister, a friend some years my
senior, who told me that he had practiced it.
Just how seriously he regarded aikido, I understood partly
from how long he had taken to reveal his knowledge of it – although
he must have been convinced that it would impress a teenage boy –
and partly from his elaborate and solemn way of talking about it.
What Krister described was something completely different from a
series of tricks to defeat an opponent of twice one’s own size, also
something different from the concept of athletics for a sound mind in
a sound body. What Krister described was a way of living – an art, a
philosophy, and yes, kind of a religion.
 After listening with widening eyes to Krister’s equally
fascinating and incomprehensible elaboration on the subject, I had to
make him show me just how it worked. Also with this he was
remarkably reluctant. When I had repeated my wish over and over,
he accepted and showed me one of the simpler techniques, nikyo,
wherein my wrist was turned in such a way that I fell to the floor in
sudden pain.
My wrist hurt as if broken, although it was unharmed, and
surely my knees had been bruised from the sudden fall to the floor,
but I was overcome by one thing only: the beauty of the technique.
Krister had only turned his hand around mine, as simply as a
butterfly sitting on a straw of grass gently flaps its wings. That was
all. And I fell to the floor as abruptly as if I had been hit with a
blacksmith’s hammer.
It was delightful, in the midst of the pain. It was magical,
and incomprehensible although it looked so simple. This I wanted to
learn. When the beginners course started in the fall, I showed up in
my blue gym suit, anxious and excited.
Like a darkening sky, where one star after the other
becomes visible to the eye, aikido has through the years revealed
increasing riches to me. Yet I think that the teenage boy, who fell
suddenly to the floor by Krister’s nikyo, really saw absolutely
everything that the years of training have since made me acquainted
with. Everything was present in that first, painful encounter. What
followed was neither more nor less than confirmation – delightful
confirmation.
However exotic some of the aikido movements may be,
they are permeated by a sense of recognition. When you pull it off all
right, and the technique works somewhat, it is not at all like a foreign
term you have finally learned by heart, after hours of repetition. No,
it’s an old friend making his entrance, or a small muscle that has
rested for a long time but is once again put to work. All the secrets of
aikido are dèja vu – they are recognizable from within.
How can this be? Maybe we must say like Plato that man
cannot learn anything he did not essentially know from the
beginning. All wisdom is contained in our heads from the very
moment of birth. We only have to be reminded of it. That is no more
odd than the thesis that something must come out of something,
never out of nothing.
Such a conception of reality is not strange to me, but more
precisely I perceive from within that the recognition springs from one
firm condition: What I can initially recognize and see clearly, no
matter how little I have practiced it, is true.
What is true, completely true, is immediately recognized by
every human being – if he or she just wants to. So, if my senses
were at all to be trusted, I knew from the first moment: aikido is true.
Stefan Stenudd

Above: The author at a seminar in Stockholm, Sweden, in 2007.

Uke, on the right, is Mathias Hultman, 3 dan Aikikai. Photo by
Magnus Burman.
 Aikido Principles

Above: Morihei Ueshiba (1883-1969), founder of aikido, makes a

throw without body contact. Among aikidoists, he is usually called
kaiso, founder, or Osensei, great teacher. Photo courtesy of Yasuo
Kobayashi.
The Impossible Martial Art

Budo is the collective name for all the Japanese martial arts,
such as judo (wrestling), karatedo (punches and kicks), kendo
(fencing), iaido (solo sword exercises), kyudo (archery), jodo (staff),
and many more. Aikido also has its origin in Japan, and shares a
number of traits with other types of budo.
Certainly, each of the Japanese martial arts has its own
technical and theoretical characteristics, but also with this in mind
aikido has got a place all its own. Most of the aikido characteristics
happen to be negations: In aikido there is no competition, no attack
techniques, no opponent, no force needed, no shortcut possible. It is
difficult to learn, even in its most basic movements, and few are
those who have learned to master aikido or parts thereof – even
after having studied it for decades.
So, it makes sense to regard aikido as close to impossible.
The way is long between the short moments when one’s movements
don’t feel clumsy, and even longer until there are moments where
one also feels in harmony with the movements of one’s training
partner. Therefore it is of some surprise that there are people who try
it.
Well, those who stick to aikido – and they are not
overwhelmingly many – seem to be attracted to the difficulties and all
the negations mentioned above. Our modern world offers all too
many trophies that are easily caught, with glimmering surfaces but
grayish content. You soon learn to set your hope on those surfaces
that do not glimmer, even to the point of almost being repulsive.
Perhaps they have a very different content.
Although aikido has a number of techniques and forms of
training, these visible things are just the tip of the iceberg. It is the
content that is really vast, and makes the training increasingly
difficult, the more one progresses. The beginner might sense it, but
has no chance of realizing the complexity of aikido. It shows itself
gradually, like a landscape opens and widens, the higher the altitude
is from which it is observed.

Aikido People

Of those who try one aikido class, a minority returns for a second
class, and only a few continue after one semester. On the other
hand, those few tend to keep aikido for the rest of their lives –
without ever feeling that they master the art, without ever getting fed
up with its content. This group is one of its very own kind.
Probably, any hobby or sport tends to gather people who
are of similar character. That might even be one of the most
important functions of a collective pastime, no matter what its nature
is. Nonetheless, aikido attracts its own kind of people. If this were not
the case, aikido would soon lose its nature.
We live in a world where we are crowded with many more
people than we are able or willing to get to know. In anthropology,
man is seen as a flock animal. During most of our history, we have
lived in small societies with about eighty individuals or less. That’s
what we are configured for. The modern world forces us instead to
live in great herds, as if we were sheep.
Many of the emotional disturbances in the psyche of
modern man stem from this situation. Unconsciously, we strive to
surround ourselves with a group of people that is similar to the little
flock, and we try to ward off the rest of the world and its population.
Therefore, we need methods to find those smaller groups,
preferably those that contain people we can relate to, people who
are similar to us – maybe even sibling souls, if that is possible. The
more odd a pastime is, the more homogenous a group will gather in
it. The exact nature of that homogeneity can be hard to perceive, but
it is there.
People who practice aikido usually describe themselves as
dreamers, and contemplative minds. They never choose words such
as athlete or fighter. Although they practice a martial art, they usually
regard themselves as pacifists, and violence has no place in their
hearts. Accordingly, the ideal in aikido is not to win in battle, but to
prevent it from even commencing – yes, to do away with violence
itself.
Aikido is definitely much more than a sport, and as a
martial art it is more about peace than about war. Its practitioners,
although far from perfect, are proof of this.

Three Years on a Stone

In Japan it is a well-known fact that at the outset the student has

no way of knowing what the teacher can give, nor if the teacher’s
methods are the most suitable. It takes three years, they say, for the
student to learn enough to decide if the teacher suits him or her.
Only at that point is the student mature enough to choose whether to
stay with that teacher, or leave to find another.
The one who makes that decision before three years have
passed is bound to get lost. If you hurry on from teacher to teacher,
from one art to the other, you will never learn anything more than
what you knew to begin with. You cannot see more. For such a
student, the most impressive teacher is the one whose ability is the
closest to that of the student, and the finest art is the one showing no
more than the student is already familiar with.
At first, we can only have an inkling of higher qualities, and
it is precisely this vague sense that is the only trustworthy guide for
the beginner. We go where we are tempted by our vague sense, our
intuition, and we remain there until we fully understand what
compelled us to go there. Then we can move on, if we like.
That should take something like three years.
An old Japanese proverb says: “Even on a stone – three
years.” It means that even something as seemingly simple as sitting
down on a stone takes three years to learn. If you can concentrate
on each task in life with this insight, with this willingness to study
diligently – then you are sure to gain impressive abilities.
The proverb actually admits that after those three years,
you really can sit on a stone. Many teachers, who want to bind their
students with lifetime contracts, are reluctant to reveal this
consequence of the proverb. Keeping the students in a state of
confusion might benefit the teacher who has no higher thoughts
about his or her own abilities. Students caught in this type of web
don’t learn much even in thirty years.
It would be going too far to say that anything could be
learned in three years. Certainly not aikido. But when that period is
completed, one should be able to ascertain how much is to be found
in that which has been studied. You have neither become an equal
to your teacher, nor a master of your art, but you can envision how
far your teacher and your art can take you on the path of life.

No Opponent, No Battle

The aikido training itself is quite clear in form. One trainee is the
attacker, and one the defender. The former uses grips, strikes, or
any of the many weapons in the martial arts. The latter applies the
evasive movements of aikido.
The attack techniques are not aikido. They may be
borrowed from other martial arts, or simply grips and strikes that
need not to have been cultivated into an art. Only the defense is
aikido. This defense is not to be done with any aggression, or with
the intent of forcing an opponent to submit. It is not done to gain
victory. Aikido states that if there is a winner, there are actually two
losers.
The aikido techniques should have the trait of endless
pliancy, mildly leading the attacking force past its target to a gentle
end, where nobody has been harmed. They should be done in a
peaceful spirit, as if a battle never occurred, protecting both the
attacker and the defender from harm.
Ideally, a bystander is convinced that the whole thing is
prearranged between the attacker and the defender, that it is all
make-believe. The attacker should all through the technique feel that
what happens is exactly what was the initial intent of the attack.

Completion
 A good way of describing aikido is that it does not redirect an
attack, but helps it to completion. The person who trains aikido not to
control his or her own movements, but to perfect those of the
attacker, has a far advanced grace in his or her movements.
Therefore it makes sense in aikido not to talk about opponent, but
partner. Aikido should be equally rewarding to both participants.
Such an ideal leaves no room for competition. The premise
of competition is that the advantage of one is the disadvantage of
another. Two persons cannot profit equally, or reach the same goal.
Actually, in competition the two participants strive to make their
opponent as weak and clumsy as possible. That attitude increases a
conflict instead of solving it, and hardens the technique instead of
softening it. One person’s progress is limited by the ability of the
opponent. For aikido, this limit is far too narrow. If both participants
cooperate instead, they can help each other to advance far beyond
the sum of their capacities.
You take turns. First, one is the attacker, and then the
other. A correct attack demands intense energy and force, but the
defense should be done in a relaxed and yielding manner. The
indomitable attack meets a submissive defense. The straight line of
the attack is led into a curve, which ends right where the attack
commenced. The force returns to its origin, and nothing at all has
happened. The movement is not at all a battle, but a dance – a
smooth waltz without collision, without any trial of strength.

Natural Movement

It is also important not to regard the techniques as counter

moves, defensive reactions to sudden charges. The aikido
techniques are curves and spirals that constantly move within the
trainee – and in the space around him or her.
It is similar to how the dance is hidden within the melody
and rhythm of the music. What the attacker is doing is simply inviting
to the dance. The movements appear naturally from the music
constantly being there, and from the initial step of the partner.
 The music of aikido is the flow of energy, an ever-present
movement in our living cosmos. If there were no movement, there
would be no life. Life is movement. Existence is movement. Aikido
opens up to this constant movement, and joins with it. The
techniques should be as natural as the fundamental movement of
nature.
This movement is harmonious. Huge celestial bodies spin
around each other in ellipses. Atoms vibrate in the incomprehensible
void. Hundreds of animal species inhabit one little grove. Of course it
happens that they collide, with or without intention, but each sector
of nature is mostly signified by balance, a friction-free order between
all things. The seemingly random pattern of all these small
movements continuously strives for peace and calm, no matter how
crowded a space is.
Everything moves, always. There is no one who starts it,
nor anyone who finishes it. The whirls of movement are never
interrupted. They flow everywhere and always. The only thing that
happens in aikido training is that two persons occasionally manifest
these whirls. Of course there can be no winner or loser, nor any
initiator, in this continuum.
The attacker tries to violate or interrupt the natural,
harmonious movement, and needs to be gently returned to it. To
seek conflict is to get lost in the movement of nature – and that is
only possible when one has lost the connection with one’s own
natural movement. The aikido techniques have no other purpose
than to lead the one astray back to the track of his or her own
movement.
The right way of doing an aikido technique is in a spirit of it
already having been done. Since it is nothing else than to return the
partner to the natural state, there are just two moments: before,
when everything was as it should be, and afterward, when
everything is again as it should. It is just like supporting one who
stumbles, or waking up one who has dozed off. Each time the
movement commences, it has already been completed. So there is
no way of interrupting it.
The natural movement is ever-present and omnipotent.
Therefore, to resist it, like in an attack, is immensely demanding. But
to guide the attack back to harmony is just restful. The one who
attacks a harmonious person tries to disrupt the natural order, and
cannot succeed. The one who avoids the attack and returns the
attacker to balance is not doing anything else than following the
natural laws, and cannot fail. One only has to realize that – and to
live it.
 Above: Osensei Morihei Ueshiba in his late years. Photo courtesy
of Yasuo Kobayashi.

Morihei Ueshiba’s Path

Everything that moves changes – also aikido. It is visible on

anyone who has started to learn it. Although it must be one and the
same ideal that attracts the beginners to the training, they are soon
caught up in initial limitations of their bodies and minds, and are for a
time stuck with an aikido that is but a fraction of what it can become.
They are not alone in this. Each one – also the founder of
aikido – has gone through the same. The development is bound to
follow the evolving tempers of age and maturity. Morihei Ueshiba,
who developed aikido from several traditional martial arts during the
first half of the 20th century, showed in his own progress what
everyone who trains aikido must go through.
He started as a weak boy of 14 years, frustrated by seeing
his father being harassed by bigger and stronger men. Young
Morihei was both shorter and more fragile than most. Through
diligent martial arts training, he wanted to become strong enough to
strike back. He got that strong, and then some. The intense and
dedicated training eventually made him so superior that he found no
satisfaction in defeating past antagonists. He gained rarely equaled
power, and had a hard time finding his superior, so how could he
justify assaulting those who were helpless against him?
Furthermore, the martial arts had revealed quite different
essences than those of sweet revenge and victory. Within the
thousand years old traditions of the martial arts were seeds to very
different values. They captured his interest. Morihei Ueshiba
discovered this with great surprise when one day in 1925 he was
challenged by an officer who wanted to test his ability. Instead of
meeting the officer’s charges with even more aggression and force,
he evaded the attacks again and again. Finally, the officer had spent
all his energy on forceful attacks that never hit their target. He had to
sink to the ground and give it up.
At that moment, aikido was born to Morihei Ueshiba, who
was 41 years of age. Still, the martial art he started to teach was not
completely in line with that discovery. Certainly, it started with the
evasive movement, but only to follow up with violently felling the
opponent to the ground. Ueshiba had great power, so any attacker
was thrown far. There was a softness that other martial arts were
lacking, which led again and again to young fighters doubting and
then challenging him, but they all met a more sudden end to their
attempts than the officer had done.
 In the 1930’s, when Morihei Ueshiba was in his fifties, his
physical power was at its zenith. Nobody could stop him or beat him.
He was like an Olympic athlete. But time passed for him as for them
– although slower. In the 1950’s, when he had passed 70 years of
age, another kind of aikido emerged. He was still quite invincible, but
more so in the way he had dealt with the angry officer thirty years
ago. Physical power and resistance were replaced with something
similar to the soft force of the wind. His techniques became vague,
showing no other force than that of the attacker. Ueshiba’s aikido
gave the impression of the ageing man, but had the interior of the
lively child. Because he was never in the way, he was impossible to
fell.
In the 1960’s, when his life approached the end, his
movements became even subtler. Primarily, his timing changed. His
aikido became syncopated, like in music. It started so early that it
often seemed to precede the attack completely. If aikido is a way of
leading the attacker back to natural harmony and peace, Ueshiba did
so at the very moment the attack became an idea in the partner’s
head. He did not make his techniques on the partner’s body, but with
his or her intention. The techniques became like abstractions. A
sweeping movement with his hand at the very moment when the
partner felt the impulse to attack, and the partner would fall. Often
they did not even touch. Ueshiba became a mirror, reflecting the
partner’s attack as quickly as it emerged. Speed was not a problem,
since in a mirror it is that of light itself.
One could say that Ueshiba’s aikido became guiding
gestures, so that the partner immediately made the technique on
himself. Ueshiba must have felt himself one with the harmonious
movement of nature. Just showing this wholeheartedly to the partner
was enough to halt the attack, and swiftly return the partner to the
natural calm. That is one way of describing it – but to do it is quite
another matter.
Water, Air, and Vacuum

Although few of us can claim to progress as spectacularly as

Morihei Ueshiba did, I get the impression that every aikido student
tends to head toward the same refinement. We go through stages in
our aikido, surely with differing speed and amplitude – but without
skipping any of those stages. Even mild mannered beginners want to
show power and capability through the aikido techniques. They want
to throw swiftly and far, fell the biggest opponent, and overwhelm the
force of the attack with their own. That is not aikido, but I doubt that
anyone can find a shortcut past this phase.
The power that the beginner cannot resist showing off, is
the same as that of the attacker. At this level, the aikido techniques
are tricks by which the power of the defender surpasses that of the
attacker. Here, aikido is like a weapon, a technical advantage. The
defender utilizes it with a similar rebellion against the order of nature
– vaguely camouflaged by the ethics of self-defense – as that of the
attacker. By necessity, it is on this level that every competition sport
must stagnate. The attacker and the defender are essentially doing
the same thing.
At the next level, they slide apart. This commences when
the aikido student has reveled so much in his capacity that he no
longer feels proud of it.
The time this takes to reach differs considerably between
people, and has nothing to do with what they claim verbally. Oddly, it
is my experience that those who speak the most words about
softness and pliability take the longest to express this ideal in their
movements. Instead, they see their words as an alibi, or as
cosmetics on how they actually do their aikido, as if words ruled
reality to the extent that they could change it.
What George Orwell called “newspeak” in his novel 1984,
is familiar to many a tongue. If we repeatedly call freedom unfree, we
might stop longing for it. If the hard is called soft, and the aggressive
is called peaceful – then it may become true.
 No. The only minds that might be fooled are those whose
mouths indulge in newspeak. Probably not even they. Real softness
and pliability are evident to every eye, and even more obvious to the
attacker. The one who still clings to showing his strength can have
movements that are as rounded and evasive as those that are truly
soft, but they are harder on the partner, who will feel defied and
subdued. Really pliable aikido is not a centrifuge that the attacker is
forced into, but a fresh wind that surrounds him, and discretely leads
his movements to a harmless ending. At such an ending, no one has
been subdued or rebuked.

Water

It can be compared to the elements of nature. The beginner is at

first like stone – immovable, tense, with sharp edges. Next comes
wood – supple, softening, though still almost immovable. When the
beginner finally loosens the feet’s panicky contact to the floor, and
moves about freely, able to do the techniques with the momentum
given by this free movement – then he or she has become like water.
There is great satisfaction at this stage, as well as an
impressive ability. The techniques flow. Attackers fall like bowling
pins, whether they come one after the other or several at once. You
can do your aikido for a long time, without losing control or energy.
Therefore it is tempting to remain at this stage, and to convince
yourself that the goal is reached. If so, you no longer train to throw
away the imperfect and renew your aikido from the ground, but only
to polish the abilities you have acquired.
But water is not the softest, not the most yielding. A tiny
creek drills through a mountain. Ocean waves throw around ships of
any size. Even the rain can strike so hard that people need to
escape it. The power of water is great, but its pliability is moderate.
That is not enough in aikido.

Air
 The most humble of elements is air, which gives room for all the
others. Air embraces without pushing, and adapts without resisting.
Where water immediately shows its reluctance, the power of air is
such that it increases only according to our own speed. Not until we
defy it does its capacity become clear to us, and only to the extent
we choose to challenge it. Certainly the wind can grab us,
sometimes even our houses. But it does not pursue. It passes, and
spares that which yields. Water is not as merciful when it flows over
us. If we were fish, things would be different, but since that is not our
nature, we do wisely to behave more like air.
In aikido this means softness without an underlying threat
or spite. We should be adaptive to the terms of the attacker,
according to the attack, so that the partner is made aware of no
other force behind the movement than his or her own. The one
attacked is not in the way, and does not take over the command. The
attacker is not subdued. Instead, the attack is helped along the way,
to the extent that it merrily rushes ahead and lands somewhere else
than initially intended.
When aikido becomes like air, the only obvious force is that
of the attacker. The techniques can sweep away so that they stretch
over the whole dojo, training hall, and be so overwhelmingly grand
that walls bulge. But no one is subdued. The partner’s force is
released instead of smothered.
The joyous dance that follows would no doubt do as an
honorable goal for aikido. The aikidoist who has reached this far is
fascinating. Also, we have by now gone through the basic three
states of matter: from solid, to liquid, to gas. There is a fourth state of
matter, plasma, and there is also another state to be reached in
aikido.

Vacuum

Even air makes a certain resistance, although ever so vaguely. It

also forces, it also has a kind of surface, and it has its terms that it is
reluctant to give up. In air, too, it is possible to feel and recognize an
enemy, a target for aggression. True, one cannot really win over air,
neither beat nor constrain it, but one can become aware of its
identity, and thereby challenge it. If aikido is to make battle
impossible, and do away with aggression itself, then air is not the
answer. What is next?
Vacuum. Empty space has no body, no substance
whatsoever. Still, there is no force great enough to conquer it, no fire
to burn it, no power to threaten it, and no room too big to be filled by
it, or too small to fit it. Emptiness is the only thing invulnerable, and it
is everywhere – between the heavenly bodies in the macrocosm,
and between the atoms in the microcosm.
Although it does not act out any will at all, it immediately
destroys what challenges it. If the astronauts were not encapsulated
in their spaceships and spacesuits, it would instantly rip their lives
out of them. Empty space is so completely open, so limitlessly
compliant, that every living thing succumbs to it. An attack is totally
futile, even lacking a target. There is no substance that makes it
possible to persist against such a foe.
Just thinking about attacking is difficult. The only thing
needed for such a thought to disappear is to be reminded of the
emptiness of space. That drains every fighter of his strength, and
cools any anger in an instant.
When aikido becomes like empty space, the attacker will
immediately lose all his power, as clearly and suddenly as if his legs
were swept away. An attack must have a target to aim at. Emptiness
can be no target. Therefore the attacker loses his power at the exact
moment when he tries to direct it toward this nothingness. The one
who is connected to his or her emptiness only needs to show that
vacuum, and the attacker will fall down, drained of energy. The
evasive techniques are gone. A never-ending nothingness replaces
them. The attack dies at the moment it is initiated.
If you show your vacuum at the moment the attacker takes
aim at you, he will lose his stability, and stumble helplessly around. If
you are constantly open, showing your vacuum, it becomes
impossible for others to even consider attacking you.
Emptiness is not a trick. Someone who just wants the
optimal self-defense technique cannot utilize it. Nobody can resist
emptiness, including the one who expresses it. It has to be done
wholeheartedly, so that you give yourself over to it completely.
Therefore, not even at the core of your being do you feel something
of substance, worth defending. Emptiness is to deplete oneself, to
give up oneself, like before death. Only if you feel bodiless, without
any substance that can be affected by other powers, the attacker will
feel the same. The one who gives in to emptiness and becomes
vacuum no longer perceives what in him or her can be the target of
an attack. Therefore, nobody else can perceive it.
Of course, the aikido of emptiness has nothing to do with
techniques and patterns of movement. Anyone watching is unable to
see what is going on. The attacker can experience it – but only as
something that happens exclusively within him. He loses control, like
somebody passing out, and loses power, like after hard work on an
empty stomach. He forgets his intention, like snapping out of a
daydream.
If the attacker becomes aware that it is the person in front
of him creating this, then it is not total emptiness. The attacker
should not perceive any other will than his own, and no other
explanation to his failure than his own insufficiency.
Spectators can believe nothing else than that such aikido is
prearranged. In their minds, the attacker must only be pretending to
charge, and then throwing himself. The attacker, too, is unable to
explain it in any other way.
In the aikido of emptiness, the aikidoist has become
invisible, as if nonexistent. Everything moves within and around the
partner. Self-defense has ceased to be an ingredient. Threat and
violence fade away. Only at this stage can a serenity that reaches
beyond one’s own mind be achieved. The surroundings are seduced
by it, like delight is awakened at the scent of a precious flower.
Maybe some other kind of aikido comes after that – who
knows? Although that is hard to imagine, you should not take it as an
argument for interrupting your quest, and settling down. At the
moment when you believe yourself to have reached the goal, you
are doomed to start closing your gates, to stiffen, and begin to
wither. Even emptiness you have to try to relinquish. Otherwise it is
impossible to discover if anything else lies beyond it.
 Above: Bewildered and amazed. Children’s class in
Brandbergen, Sweden. Photo by Gunilla Welin.

Sooner Like the Youth

It is a common view among aikido instructors that the esoteric

forms of aikido are best suited for older practitioners. They think that
young aikidoists do better to show off their energy and speed, since
that is what suits their age. Not until the years have made the joints
stiffen and the movements shrink, should one turn toward an aikido
soft as air, and only when the grave is around the corner should one
pass over to the aikido that shows emptiness – if one is able to.
Certainly, youthful vigor makes it difficult to turn away from
what seems powerful, to be mild as the wind. The young prefer to
test their limbs with such force that they almost crack, and to throw
their partners to the mat so hard that it whips up clouds of dust. I
don’t think that there is a teacher born who can make youngsters
abandon such games. But we lie about aikido if we say that they
should remain in this state until they have lost the power to pull it off.
If that is true, then the aikido of air is weaker than that of water, and
the aikido of emptiness is the weakest of them all. That is not true.
Also those who start with aikido in early childhood are able
to sense another force than that of muscles, and they desire it. This
is particularly true about the youngest ones, who don’t let curiosity
be overpowered by pride. Telling them to wait and remain in a more
primitive form of aikido just because they have not reached a senior
age, is nothing but a sin. When people want to pass from a lower to
a higher state, we should not try to stop them – but cheer them on.

Sin in Training

Behind the term in the Bible translated as ‘sin’, are three Hebrew
concepts. They all have to do with traveling toward a goal, like the
arrow heading for the target. One such sin is slowing down on the
way to the target, another to take unnecessary roundabouts, and a
third to steer away from it. So, what the Old Testament regards as
sin is not to hurry as swiftly and straight for the goal as one is able.
Applied to aikido, this means that the beginner of whatever
age should be allowed to explore every stage he or she reaches,
and to delight in it. It also means that the beginner should be
encouraged to move on upward, to the next height, and then the
next. Just as it is possible for the teacher to pull the student through
the stages in a higher tempo than the student would manage on his
own, it is inappropriate for the teacher to have any opinion about
what that speed should be. You can only wish it to be high, and that
along the way the student will not pause more than needed to gain
energy for the next challenge.
The opinion that there is a proper time for everything, is
mostly supported by those who wish to remain in a stage they should
be mature enough to leave behind. Just as each age in human life
has its costs as well as rewards, at every phase of one’s
development one must relinquish something in order to achieve
something else. Sometimes, it hurts to give this something up. You
might hesitate for the very simple reason that you know what you
have, but not what you can get. Unfortunately, he who gets stuck in
such a sin prefers to pull others to him, instead of allowing them to
pass.

Osensei on Film
 Morihei Ueshiba, the founder of aikido, is an excellent model to
follow, but he is used and interpreted in many different ways. Many
want to make him an unreachable ideal, a saint on top of a high
pedestal. In their eyes it is almost rebellious trying to learn an equally
advanced aikido as that of the founder.
I am not at all sure that he regarded himself as that
elevated. If he did, why would he at all have cared to teach his art?
Morihei Ueshiba pushed his students along. He was full of
explanations and instructions, though they were not always
understandable to his students. If we regard him as a discoverer and
a breaker of new ground in the martial arts, then the only thing that
makes sense is not to halt after his demise, but to endeavor to
continue where he left off. We should hurry all we can toward the
aikido that Ueshiba was capable of at the time of his death, and
move on from there.
I think it is possible. At least I know that it is impossible if
we do not try.
Morihei Ueshiba was filmed now and then, through the
years. On these films, the development of his aikido is as clear as
day. In the earliest known filming of his aikido, from 1935, his
strength is considerable, and his techniques are at least as sudden
and rough as the attacks. No matter how many opponents throw
themselves at him, they are thrown back with even more force. But
in the last films, recorded in the 1960’s, he does little more than walk
around making gentle gestures with his hands, sort of waving at his
attackers. This alone makes them fall – at the moment they get
ready to charge.
There are many aikidoists who hold the 1935 film as their
favorite. There, anybody can see what a mighty fighter Ueshiba was.
They tend to shun the last films, which give them feelings of
confusion and doubt. What he shows there can’t be possible, can it?
Isn’t it just an old man, surrounded by obliging assistants? So, his
aikido became such that even aikidoists started to think that all was
prearranged.
In my eyes, those last films are by far the most fascinating
and appealing. They show an art that could be explanatory, maybe
even give meaning to life. So why not hurry there, as quickly as we
can?

The Spirits of Ages

It is indeed possible to compare the stages of aikido with the

ages of man, but we should not demand of people to follow these
intervals slavishly, like prison terms. People are so different and
unpredictable that we can expect some children to show the form of
emptiness, and some aged people to stick to the aikido of rocks. In
that way, advanced aikido and people are the same: They don’t fit
into one single mold, but are unforeseeable by nature. Actually, I
would say that in his last days, the age group Ueshiba looked like
the most was that of the youth. Not physically, certainly, but in spirit.
One can glimpse, like a contour, the spirit of each age
group.
Children are by nature open-minded, swallowing the claims
of their teachers without even tasting them first. They don’t spare
themselves the least when they try the path of aikido.
For the adults, it’s not that simple. They have prestige and
preconceptions, which they cherish firmly. They are reserved when
listening to a teacher, wary of being lured into other thoughts than
they had to begin with, and reluctant to discover things, the values of
which they cannot at first calculate. Often they are so cornered by
their self-esteem that they are unable to learn anything at all. What
they manage at the most is by practice to reach some or other skill.
They are pleased with this, as if they already knew all about what life
could give.
It can take well into their old age before they open up, and
if so, with a feeling very close to that of youth.
No doubt, youngsters are often mesmerized by the simpler
aspects of aikido, and can gorge on pure bodily achievements such
as strength, stamina, and tempo. But only their bodies focus on that.
Their spirits are usually completely different. Youthful minds have an
unlimited thirst for life, and they are obsessed by what is probably
the most important human trait: curiosity.
Fascination

A child quickly loses interest, and lets the mind fly around like a
snow fling in the wind, but a youth can spend much time and energy
on a single thing, as long as his or her fascination is aroused. Adults
start by asking how they can get out of things, or how they can keep
their daily order undisturbed, whereas youths plunge into unknown
deep waters without a single sting of apprehension.
Fascination is probably the answer. Youths allow
themselves to be fascinated – by charismatic idols, by the biological
mechanisms of reproduction, or by a peaceful Japanese martial art.
Fascination is their battery, and the playground slide they
throw themselves into. That is an excellent attitude for making grand
discoveries in aikido. Instead of trying to halt the youth who rushes
forward, adults would do better to join – or to step out of the way.
Only those who allow themselves to be amazed by aikido can ever
reach an aikido that is amazing.
 Above: Mutsuko Minegishi, 6 dan Aikikai shihan, at a Stockholm
seminar. Photo by Magnus Hartman.

Female Advantage

In this book, when grammar has forced me to specify gender, I

have either used both ‘he’ and ‘she’, or just ‘he’ for the sake of
simplicity. In no way does it mean that men are more suited for
aikido. Not at all. Aikido makes no difference between the sexes.
Already by the early 20th century, Morihei Ueshiba had
several female students, who trained with the men on equal terms,
and reached just as impressive skills. That is still the case. Men and
women train together without any complications, and they develop
their skills according to personal conditions that have nothing to do
with gender.
Yet, if we must generalize, with some hesitation it can be
said that one sex has a slight advantage over the other: the women.
This depends on the nature of aikido. Boys and men have a habit of
flexing their muscles, and leap into battle with stubborn pride and a
hunger for victory. This is far from the ideal of aikido. Women tend to
prefer a gentle approach, the softer way, yielding instead of
confronting, and following rather than leading. That’s a superior
basis for advanced aikido.
So, although more men than women train aikido, this
female advantage is frequently visible on the aikido mat. Women
rarely have the same need for self-confirmation that many men are
victims of, so they have a shortcut to an aikido filled with tenderness,
generosity, and benevolence. That’s a splendid advantage.
Unfortunately, the same characteristics often make women
less willing than men to stand in front of the group and teach. Also,
women rarely hurry to try for the next grade. Whereas men are quick
– sometimes too quick – to see their own abilities, many women tend
to look more at their own shortcomings. For aikido to develop in
equality, women need to be confident about their abilities, and men
need to actively encourage the women to move boldly ahead.
For the sake of balance and harmony, it is important to be
keenly aware of the female qualities – both around and within
oneself, no matter what one’s gender is.
The latter is particularly important to men doing aikido.
When they talk with harsh voices about self-defense practicality and
making the technique work against any foe, they express the
traditional male role. They need to indulge in the softness of aikido,
its yielding and compassionate side, with at least the same
enthusiasm. Otherwise they risk making aikido a less peaceful
martial art. I have seen symptoms of it in many a dojo.
Another important female advantage is the natural ease by
which women find and develop their center, tanden. They are not
alien to focusing on the abdomen, since that is where they host the
very future of mankind. Men tend to work from their shoulders, and
often have a very hard time changing to centering their power and
techniques in the abdomen.
It is not necessary to speak of different aspects of aikido in
terms of gender. Not every man is hard, not every woman soft, and
so on. But if we avoid the gender perspective completely, we are
probably becoming victims of it.
I would like us to move further. There is a greater
percentage of women among beginners, than there are among
yudansha, those with dan grades. And among shihan, the certified
teachers with 6 dan or more, I guess the women can still be counted
with the fingers of one hand. That is insufficient. We need women to
have equal influence in the development of aikido, or there is a great
risk that it will not soften but harden.
 Maybe there will not be a significant change until we get a
female doshu, the Aikikai head of aikido. This title is inherited within
the Ueshiba family, and I guess that there are about as many girls as
boys born within it.
 Above: Yin and yang (in yo in Japanese), the cosmological
opposites of Chinese philosophy. Ink by the author.

In Yo

Another way of looking at it is the old Chinese polarity yin and

yang, in Japanese in and yo. The former stands for darkness, the
earth, and the female, while the latter symbolizes light, heaven, and
the male. Originally, the terms refer to the shady and the sunny side
– like on a tree, which has one side that the sunshine reaches, and
the opposite side not.
In Eastern tradition, the polarity of yin and yang is of
fundamental importance. It is used in cosmology, in traditional
medicine, and almost every other aspect of life. The ideal is to find
balance between the two, as in the classical symbol of yin and yang,
the circle divided into two fields, one white and one black – but with a
dot of black in the white, and a similar dot of white in the black. This
signifies that nothing is completely yin or completely yang. There is
always a mix of the two, though the proportions vary.
 Although the Chinese tradition demands balance between
the two, it is common to find yang regarded as the superior one.
Heaven is seen as the ruler of Earth, light conquers darkness, and
so on. There is little in the old Chinese cosmology to support such a
preference.
Actually, one of the greatest books of Chinese wisdom, Tao
Te Ching, expresses quite the opposite: Lao Tzu, its legendary
writer, claims yin, the female, to be superior. He praises the low, the
yielding, the humble, and other aspects that signify yin, while he
warns against many typical yang aspects. He also frequently refers
to Tao, the first cosmic principle, as the mother.
Aikido is very close to the Taoist ideals. If you are familiar
with Tao Te Ching, you probably don’t need to read any further in this
book.

Throw Away

Among the tales of old Japan, there is one about the ruler who
wanted to master kyudo, the art of archery. For that purpose, he
sought out the man reputed to be the supreme archer in the land.
The master was a low-voiced man of modest means. They took a
walk on the field behind his simple abode, while the ruler enquired
about his skills.
As they walked there peacefully, they heard a passing bird
call in the sky above. Immediately, the master had the bow in his
hand, and shot an arrow – without even looking in the direction of the
bird. It happened as quickly as a thought runs through one’s mind.
The arrow hit the bird in its chest, and it fell to the ground.
The ruler was aghast. He had never before seen such
grace, such swiftness and accuracy, with the bow and arrow.
“You have to be my teacher!” he exclaimed.
But the master shook his head.
“I am a mere beginner at archery. I can’t be anybody’s
teacher.”
No matter how the ruler insisted, the master did not change
his mind. Instead he said, finally:
 “Return in ten years. Maybe by then I will be worthy of
teaching you.”
The ruler had to settle with this offer, and returned to his
castle. But he did not forget the master archer and his splendid
display. So, when ten years had passed, the ruler returned to him.
This time too, they took a walk in the field, and the ruler
was full of questions about how the master might have increased his
skills. Soon, a bird passed above them. The master did not look, but
stretched the string of his bow – without an arrow – and released it.
The bird twitched, as if hit by an arrow, and fell to the ground.
The ruler had no words for his amazement, but he stated
firmly that now, the master had to accept him as a student.
“No, no,” the master replied. “I am still a mere beginner.”
There was no way of changing his mind. The ruler had to
accept another ten years of waiting.
“Maybe by then I will be worthy”, the master said.
It so happened that after a few years of unrest, the land got
a new ruler, and the old one had to step down from the throne. He
escaped alive, but lost all his power and riches. He walked on the
streets among his former subjects, and lived in poverty.
One day, as he wandered the streets of the city, he came
across a big gathering of people, crowded around an old man,
listening in awe to what he had to say. It was the old master of
archery. The ruler greeted him with great joy.
“Master,” he said humbly, “how far have you reached with
your art, after all these years? What wonders can you now
accomplish with your bow and arrow?”
The master looked up at him with an expression of
confusion, and asked:
“What is a bow, what is an arrow?”

The Teacup

In the Japanese martial arts, budo, it is well known that you have
to throw away your accomplishments, in order to gain new ones. The
one who achieves something great and then is unable to let go of it,
has no place within himself for additional knowledge.
Achievement easily becomes a prison, where vanity is the
attentive guardian. When you have reached a skill worthy of pride, it
is difficult to move on. Ability is a kind of fortune, just as tempting and
seductive as gold. If you hold on to every skill, you will soon carry
such a heavy load that your legs are unable to take another step.
In Zen, the meditative form of Buddhism, this is compared
to having one’s teacup filled to the brim. There is no room for
another drop of tea in it. He who wants to receive must first empty
himself. He who wants to learn must at first forget.
Usually we assume that if you empty your mind, you never
increase your learning. You remain ignorant, even silly. So, most
people strive to expand their vessels to contain more. But the vessel
has its given volume, and there is a limit to what it can contain. In
order to learn something new, you just have to throw away
knowledge of old.

Understanding

The fear of emptying one’s mind stems from ignorance of the

difference between knowledge and understanding. Names of things,
measures, and dates, all demand space in our heads to remain
there. Also, they demand practice and repetition, not to escape us.
But understanding takes no place. What you have once understood
cannot escape you, and still takes no space in your head.
Knowledge in itself is something dead. It is when
knowledge leads to understanding that it comes to life, and gains
meaning. It is also at this moment that knowledge has served its
purpose, and might as well wither away – as it is naturally inclined to
do. Knowledge wants to fade away. That is why it takes such efforts
to keep.
In math, which is a science with all the insights of its great
age intact, no problem is regarded as solved until the solution can be
proven correct. It is not enough that the student points to a formula in
the textbook, and claims that it must be correct to be included. The
student has to prove it. Therefore, mathematics is a vital and agile
science, although it might be the oldest one. Each new
mathematician can trace all its formulas and conclusions all the way
back to the logical fundamentals of math, which are none other than
the logical fundamentals of man. Since math can be traced all the
way back to its beginning, it can be recreated anytime, by any one of
its practitioners. Then, who is afraid of throwing away knowledge?
Knowledge may be an impressive ingredient in
conversation, but it is a burden by nature. As soon as you have
reached the goal of your quest, you should throw that burden off.
Knowledge is nothing but the fuel that takes us to understanding.
When this has been reached, there is no reason to hold on to
knowledge.

Simplifications

I was about ten or eleven, when we started to touch on the

subject of chemistry in school. We dissolved sugar lumps in cold
water, then in hot water, and stuff like that. Our teacher explained the
process in the crude way that we were able to grasp. When we
reached high school, we got a real chemistry teacher, who
immediately declared to us:
“Forget anything they taught you before!”
We had to start over, with the periodic table, atoms,
molecules, and so on. There was a whole lot to memorize, until we
got to senior high school, where the teacher greeted us with these
words:
“Forget everything you learned in junior high!”
So, we had to start all over again. After that, I was not
inclined to test chemistry at university level.
On each step of the way we had learned chemistry through
simplifications, to have any chance at grasping that complicated
science. We needed these simplifications to gradually mature in our
understanding of chemistry. Only by this process would we be able
to comprehend the intricate theories of chemistry today. It might
have been faster to jump directly to the latest discoveries of
chemistry at once, if we could only understand them. We could not.
The simplifications worked as steps along the way, but if
we had stuck to earlier knowledge, our understanding would not
have deepened an inch. We had to throw previous knowledge away.
Although it was relevant and sort of correct in its phase, by the next
step of the way it was false.
That is how aikido works, as well, though not as evidently.
Those who cannot throw away the knowledge of previous phases
are trying to build higher understanding on false ground. It does not
work.
So, in your learning process, always try to understand, and
let knowledge slip away as it naturally tends to do. Why flex one’s
brain as much as the shoulders in arm wrestling, instead of relaxing
and letting knowledge do its task and then be gone? We must trust
that our brains have the wisdom to keep the important stuff. We
should hold on to the formulas, but throw away the examples.

Unawares

In aikido, the beginner learns to be completely aware of the body,

and all the details of the techniques. These are repeated and
polished endlessly in practice, and every little flaw is corrected.
In all this labor with the small perspective, the beginner is
often unaware of what happens at a larger scale. As he is polishing
the basic techniques, his body and mind will naturally and
irreversibly absorb the true basis of aikido. Posture, breathing, the
flow of energy, and an extended awareness – all this will dawn on
him through the practice, unawares, and become natural
expressions of his being. This is the essence of aikido. The
beginner’s movements get a center and a flow, and his mind is
opened and cleared while his brain is occupied by all these basic
techniques.
Therefore, when your being has become one with the
essence of all the techniques, you should throw them away. You can
forget them, because now they are inside of you. When you need an
aikido technique, you can immediately recreate it.
In the terms of modern natural science, you could say that
your aikido has moved from the conscious thought, somewhere in
the convolutions of your brain, to the reflexes of the medulla
oblongata. Movements no longer demand consciousness, but work
on reflex. The relaxed mind acts instantly in the way that fits the
situation. You throw away your knowledge and trust that your own
being, your body, is prepared to do what is needed, and does it
correctly. That is real ability.
This is the aikido path to understanding, and it is the same
for any budo. Only the one who dares to forget will learn. The more
you dare to leave behind, the more you will find.

Above: Seishiro Endo, 8 dan Aikiai, teaching at a seminar in

Stockholm. He is a prominent teacher at Hombu dojo, Tokyo. Photo
by Magnus Hartman.

To Know or To Learn

We imagine that the discoveries of the natural sciences are

unquestionable truths, and that they progress in a steady march
toward greater clarity as to how the world works. That might not be
the case. A scientist by the name of Thomas S. Kuhn mapped the
development of natural science, and found out that it is not as
straight and even as the runway of an airport. Science is developed
through sudden revolutions. There is a rather unproductive
stagnation between them.
Kuhn talks about paradigm and anomalies. Each scientific
period confesses to a certain paradigm, sort of a basic law for how
things studied within that science are supposed to operate. The
paradigm describes what natural laws are to be taken for granted.
But reality soon shows deviations from this paradigm. These
deviations are called anomalies, and they are phenomena that
behave contrary to what they should, according to the accepted
natural laws.
When such anomalies pop up, they are not used to
question the paradigm. Instead, they are ignored. Scientists hide and
deny them in protection of the paradigm, or simply because they are
unable to see beyond it. Finally, though, the anomalies are so many
and so obvious that they can neither be denied nor hidden. Then a
scientific revolution erupts, where the paradigm is thrown in the
garbage. A new paradigm is formed, including and explaining the
anomalies.
The new order is quickly established, and soon it starts to
hide new anomalies that unavoidably appear in time. This periodic
process is like building a house, tearing it down, and building a new
one on the same lot – again and again. Kuhn found that this seems
to happen with surprising regularity. In chemistry, since I mentioned it
above, he found that it happens with an interval of about 70 years.
Why this inefficient resistance in the very temples of
reason and fact? Why don’t the scientists jump at every new
anomaly, as soon as it appears? Are they not curious?
The reason is more simple and human than the authorities
of science would ever care to admit. They spend a big portion of
their lives learning the paradigm, its examples and consequences.
They don’t want to throw all that away, and start fresh – especially
since it gives them no advantage against the young novices who are
supposed to be their students. So they hold on hard to their
paradigm, and don’t care about how far it takes them from reality.
They wallow in the past and try to ban the very future. Since they
rule at the universities and the research institutes, they are able to
stall the development – but never to avert it completely. Their
cardinal error is that they don’t want to learn, but to know.
It happens just as easily in aikido.

Positive

Now, aikido around the world is not as homogenous as the

natural sciences, and not as controlled. Still, it is quite possible that
we might detect paradigms, anomalies, and returning revolutions,
also in aikido. Anyway, many practitioners fall into this tempting trap
of knowledge.
I believe that those people were stuck in it to begin with.
Their teacups were not full at first, but they wanted it done as quickly
as possible, and then put a lid on them. They never allow
themselves to be surprised, and they are unable to learn anything
more than what they could imagine from the beginning. They hurry to
pour their knowledge on others, as if by that cementing their
paradigm and keeping the anomalies off.
Those who really want to learn behave differently. When
something is shown to them, they do not at first compare it to their
own insights, in order to dismiss it if there is a mismatch. They try to
understand in what way what has been shown can actually be
correct. It is a question of being positive versus negative. Faced with
something strange one should at first ask how it can be – not
immediately halt and shout that it is impossible.
Much in aikido can at first seem completely ridiculous – for
example moving the whole body away from a strike, instead of just
ducking, or relaxing all muscles to get out of a hard grip, instead of
forcefully wrenching free. What seems totally wrong in the beginning
is indeed wrong at that moment, but in time it becomes more and
more correct. You learn.
When you are always prepared to learn, you are open to
new solutions, and therefore not afraid of new difficulties. You do not
settle with only repeating again and again the techniques you
master. Instead you forget them and move on to the things in aikido
that you feel the least comfortable with. If a problem appears, if
something suddenly does not work, your lust to try and try increases.
Then the solution will appear.

Beginners

A clear example of this is when you do aikido techniques on an

absolute beginner. The otherwise soft movements tend to become
tense, the round forms become jagged, and suddenly there is a
technique that just does not work on the beginner, no matter how
easily you are able to do it on others. This often depends on the
beginner doing the attack incorrectly – for example passively, like
someone who does not mean it, or stiffly, like the one who is sure
that there is no risk involved.
Still, you should not hasten to blame the complication on
the beginner, and settle for the awkward way the technique comes
out, or rush on to other techniques in search for one that works. Use
the opportunity. Question what happened. Did the beginner really
attack incorrectly, and if so, what was his or her mistake? Is it
possible to do harmonious aikido on this attack, even though it is
faulty, and if so, how? Maybe there was no significant error in the
attack, but it revealed a shortcoming of yours.
Aikido is created to work against the best attacks, those
most skilled and definite. This still does not mean that aikido is
helpless against an inferior attacker. With aikido, you should be able
to handle also unskilled attacks. Only after having solved this, or
found a way to the solution, should you move on to correcting the
attack.
Otherwise every aikidoist will soon be as snared by limits
and conditions in the martial art, as the fly is in the spider’s web.
Those who want to know always start by correcting others, but those
who want to learn begin by correcting themselves. Only after that do
they correct their partner, if the partner wants them to.
The world is full of proverbs telling that the more you know,
the less you understand, and the more you learn, the more remains
to be learned, and so on. Although nothing is wrong with these
expressions, they do so easily become empty words. Of course
there are things we actually learn, and many things we do
understand. If our minds are in some order, these things will increase
with age. Real wisdom would be to trust that one knows what one
knows, and therefore always be willing and able to question it.
Human beings have an enormous number of brain cells,
and in addition, deep within, a sort of radar that infallibly recognizes
truth. There is no danger in wholeheartedly testing things that are
strange to you, and opening up to conflicting explanations. Only if
you always do so, can you be sure that your own truths really stand.

Quantity

Those who hold on hard to their knowledge do in time get bored,

finding little to do. Since they refuse novelties and changes, they
must fill their time with other things. To escape the threats to their
knowledge in quality, they turn to quantity. They increase the number
of examples of one and the same paradigm.
In every kind of budo there is kata, a series of
predetermined movements. Traditionally, kata training is a good
method of exercising the martial arts basics, with a maximum of
concentration and care. You train your kata to perfection, and in this
constant repetition you find the gate to another kind of inspiration,
another kind of awareness in your performance.
But kata can certainly become pure formality. There are
really no solid arguments for learning more than one kata, as long as
it is well composed for its purpose. The more kata you try to
memorize and master, the greater the risk is to get lost in quantity.
You find pride in knowing them all, and at the same time they are so
many that there is no time to train any one of them sufficiently. None
of the kata in this heap can open any gate. They just become a pile
of techniques.
Therefore, in every martial art the number of basic
techniques is strictly limited – but the number of variations, to be
born naturally in the moment, is immense. When there are too many
basic techniques, the practitioner’s attention will get stuck on the
technical level, and his or her budo will never come to life.
In aikido you move on by concentrating completely on what
you do at the moment, and then throw it away. You forget it to
concentrate completely on the next thing. That is being in the
present. Precisely because you don’t collect and keep things, there
is no limit to what you can perceive.

Here and Now

In kyudo, Japanese archery, the beginner should have only one

arrow in the quiver. Otherwise he or she might think of the next
arrow, already when aiming with the first one. You have to be
completely focused on what you are in the middle of, what you are
doing at the moment. If you allow yourself to be distracted by what
preceded it or what comes next, you will have a hard time hitting the
target.
Of course, this goes for all that you undertake. The one
who is in the process of learning something is sure to make several
mistakes along the way. If you allow yourself to let this worry you, it
will be twice as difficult for you to progress. Bad performance must
be forgotten, not to make the one guilty of it discouraged.
Also good performance can be a hindrance, even for the
most experienced, in making him or her worry if it can be repeated.
The optimistic beginner tends to hastily shoot the first
arrow, convinced that the next one will do better, and the one after
that even more so. He will be a brilliant archer – in his imagination. If
he wants this to become reality, he needs to empty the quiver and
learn to concentrate on one arrow at a time.
This is far from only a pedagogical trick. It is a basic
principle in the Far East.

Nakaima
 In Shinto, the old Japanese religion, Nakaima is sort of the
equivalent of the Judeo-Christian Paradise. Nakaima consists of two
words. The first means the middle, which refers to right where you
are, right here. The other word means now. If you can live
completely in the here and now, settle exactly where you are, and
not let anything else distract you, then you are surely in some kind of
paradise.
In budo, this is practically identical with emptiness, ku or
kara. When you succeed in forgetting the past, the future, and every
other place where you are not, you become empty. Everything that
happens – even that of your doing – is a surprise. Therefore, nothing
can get you off-balance, and nothing can forestall your action. You
are immediate in everything.

Already Done

The samurai in old Japan had a principle, partly derived from

Zen, for how to face danger: You need to enter the battle with the
attitude of already being dead. Then you cannot lose. The one who
holds on hard to life will be paralyzed by his fear of losing it, and
thereby be defeated.
If you can tell yourself that all is already over, that you are
already dead, then nothing can distract you. You are here and now,
completely unconditional. You are empty, and therefore impossible to
predict, dupe, or catch by surprise.
When you learn to strike with the sword in kendo and iaido,
or with your fist in karatedo, the best is to say to yourself: It is
already done. Then your body, and your inner being, will choose the
best moment for the strike, and you will be just as surprised as your
opponent. Such strikes can only be avoided by the same kind of
empty mind.
Whatever technique you are about to do, whatever
situation you are in – if you can feel that everything has already been
done, everything is over, then that can neither be stopped nor
altered. Such aikido gives the impression of not at all having been
done by the aikidoist, but by something else, something higher. If
you dare to trust this higher entity, and turn over your actions to it,
then you truly get an aikido that challenges no one, but creates
peace. It is one with what is natural.
Again, this is not as easy to do, as it is to describe. But it is
worth trying, no matter how long it might take to accomplish.
Considering how long we humans have walked the Earth
by now, it must be enough with victories that demand defeats of
others, advances that demand decline, and people who live at the
expense of others. It is worth a lifetime trying to find a way to interact
with other people that harms no one, and does not profit one at the
cost of another. If you carry this ideal with you, your aikido will
eventually not only look like a dance – it will be dancing. A delighted,
lively spin. Playful interaction with whoever approaches you.

A Shared Journey

In Buddhism, there are two ways to salvation: Hinayana and

Mahayana. They can be translated to ‘the smaller vessel’ and ‘the
bigger vessel’. They refer to man’s voyage from bewilderment to
enlightenment, the great assurance.
Hinayana is to be alone in this vessel. This was most
common in ancient India. Many a man, reaching middle age, left his
home and family to find the way to a grander truth, the meaning of
life – before it was time for life to leave him. To this man, eternity and
truth were magnitudes that could only be reached by the individual,
by his inner incurable solitude.
Mahayana, on the other hand, was sort of a group effort.
Several people, who wanted to find the meaning in all this, gathered
in the vessel and began their voyage together. Thereby, they could
give each other support and advice along the way. They were certain
that such great truths as the ones they searched could only be
reached through the joint efforts of several humans. The lonely ones
get lost, they claimed, but the group leads its members in the right
direction.
Surely, a universal truth is to be found somewhere in
between these two standpoints. Still, while voluntary solitude
definitely excludes the support and help of others, the joint voyage
hardly makes an individual private experience impossible. Therefore,
Mahayana really seems to be a combination of the two. But it must
be admitted, and history has proven it repeatedly, that a group can
get just as hopelessly lost as a lonely traveler. Also, it is sometimes
difficult for someone on such a quest to find like-minded people to
share the vessel. When it comes to the eternal questions, there are
no guarantees.

Mahayana Budo

Nonetheless, budo is Mahayana. We travel together. He who

thinks that the training partners are just tools borrowed for his own
development will not be able to take many steps on the way. We
have to help each other wholeheartedly, and learn from each other in
a continuous exchange.
In budo, the symbol of the mirror is frequently used. The
partner is a mirror of my aikido and my frame of mind. The students
are mirrors of their teacher’s insight and ability.
Since old times it is said that the master shall be judged by
the accomplishments of his or her students. That is how to discover
real grandeur, as well as embarrassing shortcomings. In addition, no
practitioner is better than he or she manages to be with the least
capable partner. Harmony, elegance, and naturalness, should signify
the movements of the aikidoist, whoever is the partner.
The techniques are not at all done in order to gain victory,
but as tools to exercise harmony and naturalness – for oneself and
for one’s partner. Both should feel enriched when the technique is
completed. As the training progresses, both should get closer to the
truth.
Those who enter a dojo only to work on their own
development will have a hard time learning anything at all. Someone
with this attitude is just too insensitive to discover his own
shortcomings or to sense a better way of doing aikido. Such an
aikidoist is standing still, and those who train with him will feel
discomfort.
 In olden times, this would have been described as the
budo of death, not of life. It is sufficient for learning how to injure your
partner and win one or other battle, but not for giving the partner life
and delight. You become a much too hardened blade, which must
one day crack. Those who are unable to let go of the thought of self-
defense, of becoming invincible, fall into this trap.

Pass It On

In the spirit of Mahayana lies also the revelation that aikido is not
something you can buy or steal. You get it as a gift. Aikido is a gift
from its founder, Morihei Ueshiba, from his predecessors and
successors, from one’s own teacher and all one’s training partners.
The only way to return the favor is to pass the gift on, whether this is
done by being a training partner or a teacher.
There is no room for egoism in this. In training, you have to
strive to give your partners all that they need, and as a teacher you
have to give your students all that you are able. If you are an aikido
student, it should be more important that the partner learns and
advances, than that you do. If you are an instructor, the goal should
be that the students surpass their teacher. The greatest merit for an
aikido teacher is to become a student of his or her students.
Mahayana means that until everybody has reached a
certain height, none of them has done so.
 Above: Taisabaki evasion from multiple attackers with bokken,
the wooden sword, at a seminar in Plzen. Photo by Antonín Knízek.

That Self-defense Thing

The East Asian martial arts have an air about them that is not
altogether sympathetic, nor something to strive for. I refer to the
ingredient of violence, of course.
This thing started already when Oddjob crushed interior
decorations with “karate chops” in the Bond movie Goldfinger, or
maybe as early as with the introduction of jiu-jitsu tricks to the west
in the beginning of the 20th century. As always with the unknown,
rumors took off about the mysterious techniques by which a small
man would be capable to fell a tall one. Ever since the budo arts
started to be practiced in the west, temperamental persons who want
to learn how to fight have visited them. It is not the ideal interest
group.
So far, aikido has been pleasantly spared those
spectacular rumors, and that type of crowd. When wild-mannered
men look at the tranquil and relaxed spirit of aikido training, they lose
interest and search for other sports. They often lack the patience to
sit through the warm-up of an aikido class, and leave before the
actual aikido training commences.
Only by the late 1980’s, aikido has entered the world of
battle on the silver screen, by Steven Seagal’s violent adventure
movies. There is reason to be ambivalent about this. Seagal’s aikido
techniques in the movie versions have little to do with the spirit and
ideals of aikido. He would probably be the first to admit that.

Aikidoists in Disbelief

Apart from what Seagal’s fame has brought, aikido is generally

known as a form of gentle gymnastics, rather than as self-defense
and martial art. Certainly, this is peaceful for the reputation of aikido,
but also misleading. For those who wonder: aikido is highly efficient
self-defense. Otherwise its principles would be faulty, its movements
misdirected, and the whole training would be massive self-deception.
One of the charming things about aikido is that its
practitioners don’t trust it much as self-defense. Instead they
conclude that it is difficult to learn, and their own ability is
inadequate. They can’t imagine that they would be able to succeed
with any of the aikido techniques, were they to face a real threat.
Therefore, those who have actually experienced such situations
show genuine surprise when telling how they did an aikido
technique, out of reflex, and it actually worked.
Generally speaking, the aikido techniques are easier to do
on an ignorant attacker, than on training partners in the dojo. The
latter are prepared for what will happen, and have a better chance of
resisting, if they choose to.

Budo Evolution

Aikido is constructed to neutralize the most skilled attacker, just

like the old martial arts out of which it was developed. If these
techniques and methods had not worked, they would have been
forgotten long ago. Traditional budo has evolved in a similar fashion
to that of Darwin’s natural selection. Those who practiced insufficient
disciplines just did not survive the days when the martial arts were
indeed martial.
When westerners are eager to rationalize and improve the
old budo arts, they forget this development over time. How can one
single human being have a better understanding than that of
thousands of people through centuries of practical experiences?
That is refinement by countless processes of trial and error. So, of
course aikido works.
Yet, aikido does its most good as self-defense in the
hidden. Long before the practitioners feel that they have gained any
technical skills worth trusting, their balance and stability have
increased. So has the speed of their reflexes and reactions. They
have also learned to utilize their bodily and mental resources much
more efficiently. Such abilities are not easy to observe, but they are
quite real and important, nonetheless.
When predator males fight over a female, or over
leadership of the flock, they rarely harm each other seriously. They
know their powers, and how to hold them back. Pigeons, on the
other hand, lack that control. They might pick each other to death in
the most trivial fight, because they do not know their power. Those
who practice a martial art usually become peaceful for the simple
reason that they respect the power and effects of violence, and want
to avoid them. Also rather hot-tempered persons tend to calm down
through training, and the knowledge they get from it.

Benevolence

The essence of aikido is peace and benevolence, so it is quite

difficult to keep a violent mind through the learning process. To the
same extent that your ability grows, so do your calm and your
aversion to violence. I also have the impression that those who
develop this peacefulness seldom tempt others to attack them.
Peacefulness is just as contagious as aggression – hopefully even
more so.
When the Japanese converted their jutsu into do, this was
one of their central ambitions. Out of the warrior skills of the
Samurai, they wanted to extract a peaceful content. The reformed
martial arts were to be ways toward a noble spirit and purity, far from
their original purposes. To the Japanese minds involved in this
reform, anything else would be abomination. Aggression is vulgar,
and minds set on challenge are crude. Those who focus on true
martial art can foster no such cravings. They seek peace, and shun
violence.
Therefore, aikido as self-defense is not a method to leave
a fight as the winner of it. That leads to wounds, which take time to
heal – on both the winner and the loser. Aikido shall prevent fights
from commencing at all, or put a gentle stop to fighting if an attack is
already on the way.
 Certainly, it seems like a utopian idea. It is. It can’t be
reached in a moment. But already long before it has developed to
that point, aikido is milder as self-defense than many of its sibling
arts, and that mildness actually increases its effectiveness. Not that
this quality is what keeps people training aikido for decades.

Delight

I have mentioned something about what attitude and methods

are the most fruitful for making progress in aikido. But one question
precedes it: Why learn aikido, at all? It is indeed a legitimate
question. Those who don’t have some kind of answer to it, no matter
how deep down in their subconscious, are not likely to remain for
very long in a dojo. We need a motif, if we are to pursue our training.
Aikido contains a number of arguments on several levels.
The most immediate one is the good the exercises do to the body.
You also improve the agility and skills of your limbs, straighten your
posture, and increase your balance. Self-defense is another
plausible gratification, although I have yet to meet an aikidoist who
regards it as essential.
At the next level are the life-giving energy, ki, the pursuit of
finding one’s center, tanden, and other sweet Eastern secrets. But all
of this might just as well be like pie in the sky when you die, a distant
mirage, maybe just fake, if the path to acquiring those benefits did
not have its charms, too.

The Way Is the Goal

I doubt that any of the great goals have solid value, without the
delight one can feel during aikido training. The way is the goal. So, if
the way is not enough of a reward, then the future is unlikely to have
any more to offer. Aikido training should be fulfilling from the first
moment on, in one way or other. Those who do not feel it should
probably search for something else on which to spend their time.
 Fulfillment is elusive. By its own nature, it is changing and
inexplicable. Still, everyone can feel it, without a doubt. Either it is
present or it is not. You need no master to tell you what is the case. If
you don’t feel it, then it just isn’t there. The only ones who do not
admit this are those who want to make themselves rulers over the
lives of others. They claim to know what they cannot prove, and to
understand what they cannot explain. They are bluffing.
Although it might take three years to realize your own and
your teacher’s potential, it does not mean that you have to wait as
long to decide if you benefit from spending that time. The content
can take time to grasp completely, but it only takes an instant to
sense it. You feel immediately, deep inside, if there is something of
value or not. So, you can at once decide if you should remain or
move on.
This inner sense is the only trustworthy motivation. It is
better to hold on to this sense, even if it leads to numerous
interruptions and farewells, than to restrain oneself into slavery,
supported only by some idea about self-discipline.
The same inner sense should be present in the training,
too. Even if the training is strenuous, maybe occasionally painful, or
dreadfully monotonous, this sense brings a feeling of delight. As long
as you feel delight, you are on the right track.
The delight I refer to is quite different from pleasure,
ambition, pride, or the prospect of benefit. Delight is humble and
generous. It hides from those who look only for personal gain, but
never deserts the benevolent. It is not only able to show an
accessible path, since there are many to choose between. It shows
the nicest path, the one that makes the very gods smile.
I believe that those who don’t feel delight in their training
are doing something wrong. But those who feel delight will discover
that their training partners feel the same, and so do all those who
surround them. No other motivation is necessary, and no other
reward is worth chasing.
 Aikido Basics

Above: Aikitaiso, warm-up, at Brandbergen, Sweden. Photo by

Gunilla Welin.
 Above: The kanji do, the way. Ink calligraphy by the author.

Do – the Way

The word aikido consists of three concepts that are all of them
quite complex, to say the least: ai, ki, and do. The first one stands for
harmony, or to unite. The second word is that of life energy. The third
is way or path. Together, they are best understood if read backward:
the way through life energy to harmony.
But that, too, is cryptic. One needs to pause at each word,
and contemplate it separately. Again, we do well to use the
backward order, starting with the word do, the way.
It helps to study the writing of the word closely. The word is
written with kanji, by which the Japanese mean the complicated
writing by pictures, originating in China.
The pictogram for do is a combination of two pictures. One
is the symbolic picture of a head. The other part symbolizes a step,
walking forward. So, the combination shows a head in forward
advance. With a western expression: mental development. This
suggests much more than the mere transport between point A and
B. It is not just any road, although the sign can be used that
profanely, as well. But do means more.
The pictogram symbolizing the head does so by combining
the eye with eyebrows. Pointing out the eye as the most important
part of the face is nothing unique to Eastern thinking. This is also
done in western tradition, and confirmed by the psychology of
perception, which has found that we trust our vision more than any
other of our senses. What we see dominates how we perceive the
world.
The sign for stepping forward or advancing consists of two
parts. One is the symbol of the foot, and the other is what the great
Sinologist Bernhard Karlgren referred to as an older form of the sign
for man. Those two parts combined describe how a man weighs over
on his foot, which is an elegant symbol of taking a step, since that is
done by moving one’s weight from one foot to the next, in order to
advance the former. It is also interesting because it points out the
foot that we would regard as the least important in taking a step –
the one remaining, instead of the one moving forward. But it stresses
that one needs to be steady on one’s foot when advancing.
Movement is dependent on being grounded.
Combined, the sign for do has a lot to say. In his thinking,
man can advance if he uses his eyes and is steady in his stride. So,
in two ways it focuses on reflection and careful consideration. The
eye inspects, and the foot weighs heavily on the surface. Thereby, it
is a way that is present on the spot.
I want to liken it to the deer that halts almost in mid-step,
and examines its surroundings carefully, its muscles ready for an
immediate leap. Any second, it takes off in a certain direction, but
until then it is frozen on the spot. Frozen, yet full of movement, like a
film stopped in one of its frames.
Human beings, too, are sometimes halted in the middle of
their rush through life, and wonder what is the best direction to
continue. We might not need a preset goal, but we do need a
direction in order to move at all, and to reach something through the
span of our life. The way, described by the pictogram, is primarily the
spiritual journey of man – toward completion, enlightenment, or
whatever sublime goal we can fathom.

Taoism

For more than two thousand years, the way has been a central
concept in the East. The pictogram is from China, where it is called
tao (or dao in modern transcription), and it plays a big part in the
oldest texts of Chinese philosophy. It has its most prominent role in
Tao Te Ching, the Book on the Way and Virtue, which was
composed several centuries BC. Its 81 verses about how to live
one’s life are said to have been written by Lao Tzu, and form the
basis of Taoism.
In Tao Te Ching, the way is much more than man’s course
through life. It is the very order and ruling power of the universe. All
parts of the universe, “the ten thousand things”, follow the way
naturally, like electrons circle the nucleus of an atom, and like water
streams through a riverbed. The way is the great order of nature,
and it existed already before the universe emerged. According to
Lao Tzu, man has a free choice of either yielding to this life order,
whereby fate will treat him well, or defy the order and unavoidably
suffer because of it. A person who lives according to the way has
virtue.
The way of Taoism is such a great thing that it becomes an
almost indescribable mystery. It is above and beyond everything else
– not like an ultimate god, but a principle that gods, too, have to
obey. The first verse of Tao Te Ching reads:
The way that can be walked is not the eternal way
The name that can be named is not the eternal name
The nameless is the beginning of Heaven and Earth
The named is the mother of the ten thousand things
Therefore:
Free from desire you see the mystery
Filled of desire you see the manifestations
Those two spring from the same source
but differ in names
There’s the secret
The secret of secrets
The gate to all mysteries
 It is not a way that is easy to follow, either for deer or man.
It is what it is, and we can only try to live up to it, through our virtue.
If we relinquish our desires, we can sense its secret, and when we
feel our desires, we see its manifestations. Maybe the perspectives
meet at the extremes: When we are free from desires, and when we
are filled with them, we see the same.

Zen

However, aikido is not as grand and cryptic as Taoism. Although

Morihei Ueshiba was no Zen Buddhist, it makes sense to approach
aikido through the Zen description of the way. The other martial arts
use the same suffix: judo, kendo, iaido, karatedo, and so on. The
same is true for budo, the general term for Japanese martial arts.
In Zen, the way is like a path along which one travels, but
not really to reach a goal. There is kind of a goal in Zen: satori, which
approximately means enlightenment. Still, there is not just one satori
to be attained. There are several, and no fixed method to reach
them. The person who experiences satori always does so in sudden
surprise, and the only thing to do after it is to recommence with
everything.
You reach your satori, that glimpse of absolute clarity, a
moment when no mystery is beyond comprehension, and no
circumstance in existence is complicated. This moment is ever so
liberating and healing. The force gained and the inner calm found
are used by taking on life even more wholeheartedly than before,
and even more from the ground.
You recommence, and make everything more demanding.
New satori will come in the future. It happens now and then,
sometimes minutely, and sometimes in splendor, in aikido as well as
in other spiritual pursuits. But as a goal to take aim at, satori is far
too erratic. It comes and goes with the same suddenness. Such
things cannot be aims. Actually, those who hunt satori moments of
clarity are unable to reach them, because the effort blocks the mind.
 Therefore, the way is the goal in Zen. You practice your art
for hours, days, and years. The more you can abandon the thought
of what you might reach, the more can come your way. The real
development happens in the hidden, behind what seems to take
place, and within the development that you can yourself perceive.
The big breakthrough is not a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. It
hides exactly at the spot where you stand – here and now.
The way of aikido can indeed seem monotonous. You just
have to train, keiko, and continue to train, without fostering any ideas
of what you will gain from it. That way, your own ambition and
imagination are no limits to what you can accomplish. Still, the way
has a definite direction. It infallibly leads toward the true and the
natural – if you walk it without prerequisites.
Both in Zen and in the history of the martial arts, there are
lots of anecdotes about the conditions of the way. They all teach that
you can only remain on the way, and head in the correct direction, if
you do it unconditionally. Reason is a bad guide. Speculation and
analysis lead the wanderer astray. Aikido should be grasped
intuitively. The movements should appear without plan, like reflexes.
In the beginning of the way, you copy your teacher to learn
the elaborate techniques. But as soon as you have made them work
and can repeat them effortlessly, you should forget about them. You
stop copying. Instead you create the movements from inside of you.
Thereby, every time you do the movements, they will come out
softer, more natural, and truer. They will automatically develop
toward perfection.
So, the way in aikido is walked with an empty head, and
without a fixed destination. Without a plan, like a sleepwalker.
Indifferent to the journey’s progress, like one marching on the spot.
 Above: The kanji ki, life energy. Ink calligraphy by the author.

Ki – Life Energy

All the way from India to the eastern end of Asia, breathing
exercises of many different kinds are important parts of human self-
curing. It is common knowledge among those peoples that breathing
is the major key to health and well-being. Practicing breathing
exercises daily, increases the chances of staying in shape.
It is odd that similar traditions have not emerged in the
western world, although we have known since ancient times that
breathing is the very prerequisite for life – from its starting point with
the newborn baby’s first scream to the dying man’s last sigh. In
between, western culture seems just to take breathing for granted,
something to be carried out solely by the autonomous nervous
system, as if such basic biological functions were unworthy of our
attention.
Maybe it is a characteristic of our culture, for good or bad:
We neglect the ordinary and natural, in order to devote ourselves to
all the oddities we can come up with.

The Square

Among the many Eastern breathing exercises there is one that

works according to the principle of the square: four equal sides. You
breathe in through the nose in an extended, deep inhalation all the
way to the bottom of you abdomen. Then you hold your breath for
just as long, followed by an equally long exhalation through your
nose or your mouth. Finally you hold your breath for the same
amount of time, before starting over again.
It is important to breathe deep and calmly. Shorter intervals
than, say, six seconds, are not that meaningful. You should also
make sure to have a good posture, with your back straight, your
shoulders open, and your belly slightly protruding.
You don’t need to repeat this breathing square very often
for its result to appear: well-being, relaxation, and the air will sort of
taste better.
Extending the intervals is good training and a natural
development of this exercise. Then you will quickly become aware of
its major difficulty: Three of the four sides of this square are easily
prolonged, but it is shockingly difficult to hold your breath for any
amount of time after an exhalation. The chest aches and the body
releases all kinds of alarm signals.
So, you should set the length of the intervals to how long
you can hold your breath after exhaling, without too much
discomfort. You should avoid having your torso cramp in an effort to
resist breathing in. The exercise should lead to relaxation, not a
battle between your conscious will and the instincts.

Extended Breath
 There is one way of extending the intervals quite a lot, and still
feel calm. Instead of holding your breath by tightening your muscles,
so to say putting the lid on it, you should imagine that the inhalation
or exhalation continues, although there is no air passing. When you
have filled your lungs with air, you keep the feeling of inhaling, and
when you have emptied them you remain in a feeling of exhaling.
It may seem odd, but it is nothing trickier for your fantasy
than to imagine a movement before making it. Although the air is not
flowing, you can feel a kind of buzz inside, a stream all through the
body, from the bottom of your abdomen to your nostrils. Your
breathing loses a beginning and an end. It just turns between in and
out – and in time that difference, too, is evened out. Breathing
becomes a steady flow, at the same time both in and out.
The sensation that is awakened and enforced by this
exercise, this immaterial flow – that is ki, the cosmic life energy.

Above: Nobuyoshi Tamura, 8 dan Aikikai shihan, at a seminar in

the author’s dojo. Photo by Paul Ericsson.

Oxygen

Ki works similar to breathing. It can be described as breathing

inside the breathing, the proper life-giving essence of it – sort of like
the hidden function of oxygen in the air. What happens when we
breathe is that we pick up oxygen and leave carbon dioxide, in a
constant, vital cycle. Oxygen hides in the air. Ki is also hidden, within
and beyond the air we breathe.
The similarities between oxygen and ki are so striking that
a modern analyst would probably like to explain ki as nothing but an
old assumption in lack of knowledge of oxygen. Although the
existence and function of oxygen were unknown, everyone could
observe the necessity of breathing in order to stay alive. It made
sense to suppose a hidden essence in the air, a life force that had to
constantly flow through us, for us to stay alive.
Still, this is far from all that ki is in the Eastern perspective.
Ki is not at all caught by the same boundaries as those of oxygen.
For example, ki needs not follow the track of the air, through nose or
mouth down to the lungs, in order for it to spread through the body
like oxygen does. Ki can flow through us in any direction – in through
the soles of the feet or the palms of the hands, out through fingertips
or forehead or chest. It moves completely independent of material
laws.
Ki should rather be seen as all the senses formed into a
beam of attention. If ki is a kind of ether, it consists of the very insight
I am, the awareness of existing and relating to the outside world. If
life equals movement, then ki is the will behind each movement, the
impulse to it, and something that prepares for it. The body moves by
muscles and biochemical combustion, but the will to move is fueled
by ki. And the will precedes and rules the body.

Intention

Maybe we can call ki the ether of intention. Let’s say you want to
throw a snowball at a road sign. First you create in your mind a
trajectory for your snowball to go from your hand to the road sign.
Actually, this arc does not begin at the snowball in your hand, but
inside your body, from where the force needed for the throw comes.
That is the bottom of your abdomen, in your center, tanden, the core
of your will-power.
 The imagined trajectory of the snowball, which starts in the
abdomen and ends on the road sign, is a flow of ki. The stronger this
flow is, the more fixed the course of the snowball will be, and the
more distinctly it will hit the target. All the movements in aikido are
done with this spirit.

Flow

In Chinese, it is called chi (or qi with a modern transcription). The

pictogram consists of two parts – one symbolizing a rice plant, the
other steam. That is the boiling rice, the foremost symbol of life-
supporting nutrition in the East. Rice is not edible until it has been
boiled. Only when it has been given energy, can it give energy.
So is ki, as well. Movement is the prerequisite, and
circulation is the condition. He who closes his faucets and locks his
ki inside will shrivel. In him, the life force becomes stale, and he
loses his spark. To increase your power, you must let ki flow out of
you. This is another similarity to breathing – the one who does not
exhale is equally unable to inhale. You must give to get, you must
empty yourself to fill yourself, and you must throw away in order to
win something new.
Life is change, movement without beginning or end,
without any fixed starting point or final destination. Ki is the same.

Spirals

The flow of ki does not move in straight lines, but rather like
heavenly bodies: in curves. Ki moves in spirals within spirals within
spirals. The natural movement for ki is serpentine – the seemingly
straight line is really a spiral shooting off. Within that spiral is another
and another.
If you want to stimulate your flow of ki, you should choose
rounded movements instead of straight ones, and returning courses
instead of disappearing ones. The most natural thing for ki is to flow
strongly in movements similar to those of heavenly bodies: ellipses.
 In both layman astronomy and aikido, there is a lot of talk
about circles. It is just as wrong in both. Natural aikido, flowing in the
same orbits that ki is inclined to, forms ellipses. The same is true for
planets and asteroids. Some planets, such as Neptune and Earth in
our solar system, move in orbits that seem circular, but studied in
detail they prove to be ellipses – with the sun at one of the focal
points. Close to the sun they have their maximum velocity, and they
move the slowest when they are the farthest away from it. No
heavenly body has a steady speed. They accelerate and decelerate.
That, too, is natural for aikido and for ki.
Constant speed and straight lines are unchangeable, like
death. Since ki is the very energy of life, its form and expression are
always the farthest from what likens death. Ki can expand or
contract, accelerate or slow down, but never stand still.
The person who is able to harmonize completely with ki is
able to direct it, but does so in ways that fit it, in orbits it strives for by
itself. Then ki is not only a resource for man, but an unlimited flow
through all of cosmos. You feel and follow this flow, like in a universal
dance, like music of the spheres.

Universal

Morihei Ueshiba talked about ki as something personal and

something universal. Each person’s individual ki flow must strive
toward joining with the universal flow. Just stimulating your ki to
perform a feat of some kind is a petty ambition, worth little else than
ridicule.
When ki flows without limit, it gives a spiritual experience
that makes anything individual meaningless. You start to breathe the
ether of the cosmos, and the I am that forms the core of your own ki
merges with the being of the universe. You cease to be separate
from existence, but become one with the world.
Ueshiba also talked about positive and negative ki. The
latter is destructive, a force that separates itself from its surroundings
and rarely does other than destroy. It suppresses, inhibits, and
damages, leading closer to death. With a positive unselfish spirit you
get ki that can create, cure, lead right, and go beyond the limitations
of your ego.
Those who make their ki negative want to force it into
straight lines, or stop it on the spot. They want to curb their own ki,
thereby also the ki of others. Such people can cause some trouble,
and occasionally even impress others, but what they do never feels
pleasant. Unfortunately, they can sometimes also transform the ki of
others to the negative.
So, when you train your ki it is of utmost importance not to
do it for your own sake, and not let yourself be trapped by the feats
you can accomplish with it. You should give all you get, and let it flow
for everyone’s delight.
In western occult tradition there are similar warnings. They
speak of white and black magic, where the former is benevolent and
soft in its expression, while the latter is hard and destructive.
Probably these things can be equally well approached with
the polarity of love and power. With ki as well as magic, it is quite
possible to be attracted by the prospect of power, but that darkens it.
You should throw away the ability you achieve, because it is worth
nothing compared to the good spirit you can spread.

Psi

Western research into parapsychology talks about psi as a

collective name for powers that are yet to be explained, such as
telepathy, clairvoyance, telekinesis, and so on. If these phenomena
are real, some kind of force or ability must lie behind it. For a deeper
understanding, it makes sense to approach the Eastern concept of
ki.
The parapsychology researchers have found another
similarity to ki. In their experiments, they have found that they get the
best results if the person examined is relaxed, trusting, and does not
struggle to succeed.
In Asia, ki is so established that it contains a world of
development and application. For example, traditional medicine and
massage work mainly with the ki flow and how it runs through the
patient’s body. In massage, it is the ki of the masseur that stimulates
the ki of the patient. The anatomical treatment is of lesser
importance. In acupuncture the meridians, which are ki flow routes in
the patient, are stimulated. Overall, ki is such a generally accepted
concept in the East that it is rarely given the metaphysical
connotation it always gets in western contemplation of it.
Another example of this is that in aikido, ki and the
stimulation of its flow is not the main object of the training. It is an
important part, certainly, but mostly in the same way that gasoline is
needed for a car to move, and food and drink make man capable of
action. Of course the quality of the fuel is important for the result –
but it is not at all the same as the result. The interesting thing is what
can be accomplished with ki. That is the great challenge.
 Above: The kanji ai, joining. Ink calligraphy by the author.

Ai – Harmony

The first syllable in the word aikido is the easiest of the three to
draw in kanji, the pictogram, but far from as easy to translate. We
usually say that ai (in Chinese he) means harmony, but that
particular word is not used for it in any dictionary. It is more correct to
translate it ‘joining’, ‘agreement’, or ‘unity’. The word is also used in
certain measurements.
The pictogram consists of a mouth, the number one, and
the roof of a house. It can be interpreted as: under this roof,
everybody speaks with one mouth. That is indeed an indication of
unity.
In the combination of the word aikido, the most common
translation of its first part is still harmony. It points out a unity that is
not just the absence of conflict, but so fundamental that it has
become like a state of its own, a peacefully working power.
To Morihei Ueshiba and his followers, aikido is not a way to
victory in battle, nor solely a path away from battle itself. In spite of
their obvious advantages, such things are basically just negations
and therefore cannot last. The absence of something is never as
vital as the abundance of something else.
 A world without war would be no lasting blessing, unless
everyone could feel that peace is something of itself, something
palpable, permeating civilization. Peace must be more than just the
detente between two wars. Unity must be more than just the silence
between two quarrels. Therefore the word harmony is preferred.
It indicates a sweet situation with such luminescence and
attraction that nobody who has felt it will ever be inclined to break the
calm. That is a unity more pleasant than any conflict can be exciting,
and a peace that is sweeter than any war can be frightening. The
good state of things must be so overwhelming that its counterpart
pales and becomes petty in comparison. Only when gaining such a
shine does ai become the most important of the three words in
aikido. Only then does harmony becomes the finest reward of our
training.

Like This

In Zen, riddles are often used to lead the student toward satori.
These are called koan, and seem at first to be impossible paradoxes.
The best known such koan is: What is the sound of one hand
clapping?
It has happened to me more than once, when I told
somebody this koan, that he actually started swinging one of his
hands so that it made a clapping noise all by itself. The fingertips hit
the palm of the hand. Some are quite good at it. Of course, their
answer is correct. Even those who lack that agility can give a correct
answer by simply swinging one hand in the air, like in an applause,
and saying: “Like this!”
The word ai in aikido is also kind of a koan, a paradoxical
riddle that is almost impossible to solve with words alone. You have
to do like with the hand clapping – show it in motion and action, and
say: “Like this!” The great sweet harmony is no thesis that can be
written down in books. It is ardent action, a solution in the moment
and the exact situation.
In aikido, you never remain on the spot when an attack
comes. You move to the side. If you walk on a railroad track and the
train comes, you step off the track. Anything else would be
devastating. That is as evident as the clapping of hands. Why
collide? Why stand in the way of a force that shows its direction so
clearly? Ai is to always step off the railroad track, and never to halt or
challenge – even if you have the power to do so. Even the little train
of a model railroad is allowed to pass. You don’t step off the track
because you are unable to stop the train, but because you do not
want to stop it. The harmony of aikido is to gladly allow the train to
pass, and watch it disappear in the distance. There you stand,
waving.
This might at first sound like a principle of passivity, a way
to avoid damage by surrendering to anything. That is not the case.
You halt no movement and do not go against any force – nor do you
give up or give in to them. You avoid the conflict in such a way that
conflicting is not successful. Using the analogy of the train again: If
the train’s purpose were to ram the person on the railroad track, that
intention became null and void. No collision, nobody subdued. When
the train disappears, you step back onto the track and continue just
like before.

Love

Most of the misery in the world seems to stem from conflicting

wills. One person wants what another does not want to give away, or
one wants to stand on a space occupied by another, and so on. But
the world is big and rich enough for all. We should be able to live full
and pleasant lives, without robbing others.
This is the conviction of aikido. Harmony is the highest
natural state, so anyone opposing it must fail. The one who is willing
to do battle for his own gain will neither succeed with his ambition
nor find a battle at all. When he wants to push another person aside
he will just be led back to his own place. When he tries to drag
others along they will escape, so that he just stumbles ahead on his
own. His force strikes right back at him, and each time he is returned
to where he started.
 If aikido did not work exactly like that, it would encourage
battle and hostility instead of leading to their disappearance. The
harmony that does not incorporate all, will sooner or later prove to
incorporate none.
Those who seek battle are in a state of confusion, of
misunderstanding, but they can be corrected neither by being
subdued nor by having their wishes come true. The harmony of
aikido shall be so pleasant that it seduces them to the right course,
and so evident that it opens their eyes. Then peace is not just time
spent in nervous anticipation of the next war, but a majesty that no
one is tempted to revolt against, and no aggressor has the power to
defeat.
To Morihei Ueshiba, this grand harmony was so central
and so sweet that the older he got, the more he compared this
concept to one pronounced the same in the Japanese language: Ai
written with another pictogram means love. Harmony in aikido should
be so universal and fervent that it transforms into love.
 Above: Ukemi, fall, at Brandbergen dojo.

Triangle, Circle, and Square

A recurring symbol for aikido is the combination of these three

geometric figures: the triangle, the circle, and the square. They can
be explained on several levels. On one level they are images of how
aikido should be practiced, and on another they are linked to Eastern
philosophy.
The triangle represents the basic position hanmigamae,
where the directions of the feet and the angle of the body suggest a
triangular shape. Even more so, the triangle shows how to meet the
attacker – with a step forward and to the side. If the attacker is the
base of the triangle, the entering step is one of its sides. One should
not move toward the attacking force, but to the side of it.
The circle shows how the aikido techniques should be
done – in curves around both the attacker’s and one’s own center.
As Osensei said: every circle has a center. The circle is a symbol of
the circular movements of aikido, and of the body’s center, which has
to be in the middle of every move. Maybe the ellipse would be an
even more suitable symbol. It has a more extended curve than the
circle, as do the aikido movements, and it has two focal points, two
centers – like that of oneself and one’s aikido partner.
 The square stands for determination and control, like in the
pinning that most aikido techniques finish with, or the throw that
sends the attacker in another direction than he or she expected to
go. The square is the heavy stability one gets from focusing on one’s
center.
Also, it is with the principle of the square that one
establishes contact with the partner. Both the triangle and the circle
are evasive by nature, but with the square a meeting takes place.
Without it, aikido would be like a passing gust of air, a mist that
certainly would make every attack futile, but it would not cause any
development.

Unity

Morihei Ueshiba talked about the three symbols united into one,
like drawing them one within the other: the triangle inside the circle,
inside the square. This unity is essential in making all three aspects
join in an aikido technique. They have to cooperate, so they have to
be in balance.
If you concentrate too much on the triangle, and neglect
the other two, your aikido will be sharp but fragile. If you focus on the
circle, your aikido will be swirling but indecisive. If you focus on the
square, your aikido will be strong but hard.
It is not only in aikido that those three geometrical figures
have become meaningful symbols. You find them in Zen as well, in
Taoism, and in many other doctrines. For example, the circle is often
a symbol of the all – or nothing. The square symbolizes the worldly
things, like the bricks of walls. The triangle often represents divine
principles, such as in the trinity of Christianity.
 Above: The kanji tanden, center. Ink calligraphy by the author.

Tanden – the Center

Not only at first glance, aikido techniques are like labyrinths.

Arms go here and legs go there, hands are held at odd angles, and
the body is turned this way or that. How to direct one’s body into the
right movements seems as impossible to solve as the trickiest koan.
And then you have to guide another person into the same patterns,
or several attackers at once. It is easy to shake one’s head and
surrender in front of such complications. This must be too much to
keep on one’s mind?
Yes it is. If man were a kind of machine that had to be
programmed and calibrated for each ability to stick, then aikido
would quickly become too much to handle. But man is no machine,
and aikido is not a random pattern of tricky movements. Aikido is to
be natural, and man is since birth deeply rooted in the natural.
You only need to be receptive to your inner voice, your
inner certainty, to immediately manage the aikido movements as
easily as if you had invented them. If you cannot feel this instinct for
what is right, if this inner compass does not give a reading during the
aikido training – then you are on the wrong track to begin with, and
no effort in the world can compensate for it.

The Red Rice Field

Man’s grounding in the natural, his inner compass and infallible

sensory organ, is his center. In Japanese it is called tanden (in
Chinese dantian). It is situated in the middle of the body, at the lower
abdomen, about three finger widths down from the navel. The same
point is also the body’s center of mass.
In Indian tradition the body has seven main chakra, points
of power, from the pelvis up to the top of the head. Chakra really
means wheel, implying its active role, and each of the chakra has its
own characteristics. Tanden is the same as the second chakra from
the bottom, with the Indian name svadhisthana.
The pictogram for tanden has two parts. The upper one
means cinnabar red, and the lower is the symbol for a rice field. So:
the red rice field. Since rice is the primary nutrition in this part of the
world, it does in itself represent life energy. A whole field is life
energy in abundance, and if it is glowing red – like the shimmering
red cinnabar crystal – then this expresses a formidable level of life
energy.
The center of this force is a point a few centimeters below
the navel, in the middle of the body. This point is also called ki kai
tanden, an ocean of ki in this cinnabar red rice field, or seika no itten,
which means the only point. In English, we can simply refer to it as
the center.
To the beginner, this center is as hard to imagine, as it is to
perceive. Therefore it is of utmost importance that the aikido
students try to stimulate their ki and the perception of their center
from the very beginning. The two lead to one another. Ki exercises
make you aware of your center, the source of ki inside you, and
when you become aware of your center, ki will flow from it.
Tanden is the ocean of ki, the endless source of life energy,
and also the point that ki will flow to and from. The more you focus
on your ki, the clearer your perception of your center will be, and the
more you focus on your center, the stronger the ki flow will become.

To the Center

In aikido, the center is the starting point for your balance and
stability, being your body’s center of mass. Also, it is the source
through which most of your ki will flow. When you concentrate on
your center you become steady. Your movements become powerful
and confident, and they spread a flow of ki from within. Of course,
these things increase in time. All the movements in aikido begin in
the center, and return there through elliptic and spiral paths.
This is the most obvious in the sword cut.
Katana, the Japanese sword, is grabbed by both hands. In
the basic position you hold the sword at the distance of one fist from
your body, in front of your center. The tip of the sword points toward
the opponent’s eyes (the left eye, to be precise). The angle of the
sword is not that steep, since the blade has its curve, and the
opponent is at a bigger distance than in unarmed training.
You raise the sword by pushing it forward from your center,
so that it moves upward in a semi-circle. You cut by pulling it back
the same way, to your center. You inhale to your center in the draw,
and you exhale from your center in the cut.
Although it is rarely as evident as with the sword cut, all
movements in aikido have the same course of events: out from the
center, and back to it. If you lose this link to your center in the
movements, the technique becomes weak and fragile, often failing.
Tanden is like a guiding rule, a constantly present key to the aikido
techniques.
Later on, tanden becomes much more than that.

I Am

I have heard that in psychiatry they talk about getting centered,

about recovering one’s center. What they refer to is the feeling of
being lost, which we can easily be overcome by. Existence is much
vaster and much more complicated than we are at all times able to
handle.
People stuck in confusion lose the sense of grounding and
stability that would give them the capacity to recover after emotional
turmoil. They need to learn how to sit down within themselves, how
to peel away the entire mental muddle until they uncover a pure and
lasting sense of who they fundamentally are. We need to shake off
all distractions, to find that we remain what we are – through
emotional turmoil and the whipping winds of change.
In Eastern thought, the human center is about the same. In
the very core of my being, there is no doubt: I am, and I remain
through all adventures and revolutions. Contrary to psychiatry,
though, this center is not only mental therapy or concentration
exercises. Tanden is very concrete, indeed. It is a core in the lower
abdomen, as tangible as the heart that beats in one’s chest. In
traditional Eastern thought this center is quite real.
Look at small children who have just learned how to walk.
Their bellies protrude like on sumo wrestlers, and they take their
steps just as heavily, with just as much concentration in the center.
Unfortunately, it is not rare that they lose contact with their center
when they grow up. The immediate effect is a loss of balance and
weakness in the movements, but what may follow is an increasing
confusion of the senses. Sadly, lots of people live their whole lives
like that.
 If you exercise sensing your center in the lower abdomen,
and use it for support whatever you do, then a certainty about your
own essence will grow. You regain contact with yourself. You find
comfort in knowing that you exist, and increasingly realize who you
are. The way to self-realization goes through tanden.
In aikido training you should always concentrate on your
center, so that it more and more becomes the initiator and motor of
the movements. This physical exercising of tanden also has a mental
counterpart. The more familiar you get with your center in training,
the more you also feel a center of your senses. You get rooted in
existence and there is a decreasing risk of losing your physical or
mental balance.
It is through your center that you become whole, and gain
confidence independent of success or conquest. Therefore you are
not shaken by adversity or defeat. This self-esteem is nothing but the
straight and simple statement: I am what I am.
If I have to choose one element in aikido as the most
important one, then without a doubt that would have to be tanden,
the inner center of man. There is nothing more important in all of
aikido. So, what essentially happens in aikido training is that two
tanden interact, and are led through aikido principles to harmonious
expressions.
Therefore, the most important task for all who train is to
stimulate each other’s center, help each other find and experience
one’s center, and then increasingly be able to express it.

Aiki – Rhythm and Direction

One story from old Japan tells about an ageing samurai who
could feel that his time was up. Therefore, he wanted one last time to
scrutinize his three sons as to their maturity and skills in bushido, the
way of the warrior.
Above the sliding door to his room, he placed a little pillow
so that it would fall when the door opened. Then he called his
youngest son. When the son entered the room, the pillow fell and hit
him on the shoulder. But before it landed on the floor, the youngster
had drawn his sword and with a fierce cry cut it in half.
“Shame on you!” the father exclaimed, and continued with
a sharp voice: “My son, you have understood nothing about bushido.
You must practice much more.”
After additional reprimands and advice on how to pursue
his training of the samurai arts, the father sent his son away and put
a new pillow above the door. He called the middle son.
This time too, the pillow fell, but before it hit the young man
he had taken a quick step to the side, drawn his sword and cut it in
half.
“My son,” the father said with a solemn voice, “you practice
our art diligently, but it is not enough. You still have a lot to learn, and
must practice more.”
As soon as the son had left him, the father did the same
thing with a third pillow, and called his oldest son.
The young man was just about to open the door to his
father’s room, but halted. Instead, his hand snuck up and carefully
grabbed the pillow, before it had moved at all from its unstable
position. Then he opened the door, stepped in, and returned the
pillow to its place.
“My son, my son, you have indeed learned the way of the
warrior! I can say with pride that you don’t need me anymore,” the
father said and smiled wholeheartedly. “I ask you to look out for your
brothers, and guide them on their continued pursuit.”

Two-beat

One of Morihei Ueshiba’s most important sources in creating

aikido was the old martial art Daito ryu Aikijutsu. The word jutsu
means technique, art, or skill, which stresses the practical and
functional side of the martial arts. Aikijutsu is a strategy for winning in
close combat, trained by samurai for centuries. In Japan there are
hundreds of different jutsu, which have been passed on through
many generations in samurai families. These arts were trained
severely, and mostly kept secret within the families of their origin.
 In this context, aiki is not really the mark of a spiritual path,
but a practical course of action in combat, in order to assure victory.
You unite your ki with that of the attacker, so that you can defeat him
or her. Although this goal is meager, compared to what aikido can
give, the strategy of this traditional application of aiki is still brilliant.
Basically, it is a question of rhythm:
Self-defense usually happens in sort of a two-beat. First,
the attacking technique is blocked or parried, and then there is a
counterattack. One, two. The problem with this is that the opponent
has a good chance of blocking the counterattack, and then attack
anew. If the combatants are of equal skill, this may go on for quite a
while – like a game of tennis. There is no way of making sure to win
the ball played. In the martial arts, where losing one “ball” is fatal,
these odds are not good enough.
One might try to increase one’s chances by quickening the
counterattack as much as ever possible. The regular two-beat is
replaced by the speedy double beat on a drum: ta-dum. If it is done
skillfully, the opponent is unlikely to be able to defend himself. He is
helplessly exposed, just by having attacked. So, already with this
thinking, attacking is the worst kind of defense.
This rhythm is the most common in all the Eastern martial
arts. They developed blocks and parries that would make the fastest
counterattacks possible. Ta-dum.

Be One

It is still not enough – and it is not aiki, the blending of the

energies of the combatants. For that to take place, everything must
happen at once, at the first beat. Aiki is both fighters acting in unison.
The samurai, with their razor sharp swords, could not trust anything
else.
There is one simple exercise with sword against sword,
which Morihei Ueshiba repeated all his life. The two swordsmen both
make a cut toward each other’s head at exactly the same time – but
where one of them advances straight forward, the other moves
forward to the side. The former will miss his target, but the latter not.
Instead of colliding with the other, he moves away and strikes him
slightly from the side.
Like most things in this book, this is easier to describe than
to do correctly. The difficulty is mainly in what we usually call timing.
You must draw for your cut at the same time as the opponent does,
and you must slide to the side at the moment when the opponent is
no longer able to redirect his strike.
This cannot be accomplished by tense readiness, where
you try to react as soon as you see the opponent begin to charge.
On the contrary, this needs relaxation and a special kind of
sensitivity. You must forget yourself in order to tune in to your
opponent, so that you react in almost the same way to the impulse of
his will as his own muscles do. You must be one with your partner,
and be at rest in his center. Then, when he gives himself the impulse
to charge, he will automatically give you the impulse to avoid it. Your
movement is synchronous with that of the attacker.
This is achieved through relaxation, through awaiting the
attack without preconditions.
The winning step is possible for one simple reason: The
one being attacked always knows what the attacker aims for. An
attack is limited by the fact that it has a specific direction – toward
the one being attacked. In aiki, this knowledge is quite sufficient to
ensure success.
You do not need to figure out exactly what kind of attack
will come, or how hard or strong it will be. You step out of the way,
and already before that step you know where the attacker must be at
the end of the attack. Since you know from where he comes and
what he charges at, you can tell where he will be after the attack,
and you can aim at that point instead of the position he started from.
So, when both the cuts are done simultaneously, one will miss and
one will not.

Joint Intention

Those are the fundamentals of aiki: It happens at the first beat,

and the evasive movement makes the attacker miss, while the
defender does not.
The sweet lesson in this strategy is that the attacker is
vulnerable precisely because of his choice to attack. If he were
instead to await the opponent’s move, he would also be able to use
the great advantage of aiki. Only the one attacking is vulnerable to
aiki. So, the best is never to attack. Therefore, aiki is not only the
cleverest of strategies, but the most ethical as well.
But if aiki stays on the level of these strategic features,
aikido becomes little more than a system of self-defense, although a
sophisticated one. There will still be a winner and a loser, which
inevitably leads to new controversy.
The initiation of an attack can be described as a direction
given to the ether of intention, called ki. That direction is also the one
of the following actual attack. The flow of intention is the true
substance of the attack, while the body movement and attack
technique following are secondary – in time as well as in importance.
If the intention is defied and interrupted, if the flow is hindered, then
the conflict must remain. That is true also if the attacker is
completely defeated.
Aiki is instead that the defender allows his ki, his intention,
to join that of the attacker, as if for a common goal. Their ki shall
have the same direction, and flow alongside one another like
playmates, to a natural end for the movement that gets its character
and form out of this joining. Mild and elegant techniques appear
naturally in the moment when the attacker’s and the defender’s
intentions go in the same direction. Therefore, you should always
make sure that the aikido technique moves with the attacking force,
instead of against it – all through the technique.
 Above: Morihiro Saito (1928-2002), 9 dan Aikikai shihan, showing
jo technique at Iwama, Japan, with Swedish instructor Ulf Evenås, 7
dan shihan. Photo by Jöran Fagerlund.

Kiai – Gathering Power

There was a market in the town square, and in addition to all the
stands and salesmen was another kind of attraction. A little guenon
monkey was chained to a pole, and anyone who wanted to test his
skills could throw a spear at it. The chain was long enough for the
monkey to run around the pole freely. Every time someone threw the
spear, the guenon quickly snuck around to the backside of the pole,
escaping the spear. It did not matter how fast the spear was thrown,
or how long the thrower waited before doing it – the monkey was
always on the backside of the pole before the spear hit it.
An increasing number of people gathered to admire the
monkey’s speed, and laugh at the failure of one confident man after
another. Hours passed, and the monkey remained unharmed. One of
the many men who tried was a young student of the famous yari
master Jubei Taneda, but he failed as miserably as all the others.
He told his teacher about the test, and next day Taneda
followed him to the market place. The imposing samurai lifted the
spear and fixed his eyes on the monkey. Suddenly, it became
paralyzed, made a short scream, and fell to the ground, although
Taneda had not even thrown the spear.
The samurai had used a silent kiai, and with such force
that it had stunned the monkey.

Not the Shout

Kiai exists in all budo. Mostly, it is expressed by sound – a

forceful shout at the moment the technique is done. Still, kiai is not
the actual shout, but a gathering of power of which the shout is a
sign. So, a soundless kiai is also a kiai, although more difficult to
master.
The two words that kiai consists of are the same as in aiki.
The reverse order is essential. It shows another purpose, another
direction. In aiki it is ki, the life energy, which shall lead to harmony,
but in kiai it is instead harmony that shall lead to ki. Kiai is to gather
one’s ki for one direction, one aim. You focus completely on what is
to be done, and let all your inner resources join to reach this goal.
Kiai is to raise all your power and ability in one moment, and one
movement.
All your ki flows into one stream, like when the ruby in a
laser shapes the light into one sharp beam. Just as with the laser
beam, such a concentration of ki can have an overwhelming effect,
according to the Eastern tradition. Your movement becomes
irresistible, your intent and technique become so sharp that success
is certain already before anything has happened.
It is not unknown in the western world. The weightlifter
shouts when he struggles with the biggest weights. The wrestler
shouts when he throws his opponent. The shout is a well-known
method to gain extra force, to stand pain, or to make other people
halt in anticipation. Mark Twain joked about this when he said that
his proud ancestors always walked into battle singing, in the last line,
and ran out of it screaming, from the first line.
Well, this shout is the outer sign of gathering power and
letting it flow. Without the shout, insufficient breathing might halt this
flow and diminish the power. When you really need all your force, it
is natural to open your mouth and let a sound out. In budo, this
sound is exercised so that it comes voluntarily, and helps the release
of additional inner powers.
We know from medical science that adrenaline is the
body’s method of mobilizing all that it is able. Kiai becomes a
technique to stimulate the adrenaline, and immediately raise the
personal resources beyond what they normally manage.
The shout should come all the way from the bottom of the
abdomen, from the ocean of ki, and be much more than a mere
sound. Volume is not the primary thing. If you strain yourself too
much to make an animalistic roar, the power will clog up in your
throat, and not find its way to the movement it was intended for. The
sound is nothing but an unintentional result of the gathering of
power, and not the other way around. A mere side effect. So, when
you train the kiai, it is not a training in making the sound, but in
gathering the power. You train your ability to instantly mobilize your
energy and let it out.
Kiai becomes a self-clearing, cleansing exercise. When
you have extended all your ki in one single moment and movement,
you become like empty. Internal knots are untied, distractions lose
their grip on the senses, and you stand alert, ready to take on
whatever you set your mind to.

Three Moments

It can be said that there are three different moments when kiai
can be applied, with three separate purposes: before the movement,
during the movement, and at the end of the movement.
Kiai before the movement, such as the silent one the
samurai used instead of throwing his spear at the monkey, is partly
to raise and cleanse one’s own mind, and partly to shake the
opponent out of balance. It is an imposing way of declaring: “Here I
am!” It gives you pride and ability, to the same extent that the
opponent is intimidated.
 Kiai during the movement maximizes its power and
precision, so that it completes its purpose without wavering or being
warded off by the opponent. The feeling in this kiai should be
irrevocable and inevitable. With such conviction in your voice, it
becomes difficult for the opponent to escape your technique.
At the end of a movement, kiai is a way of marking
completion, by being an explosion of power and concentration in that
final moment. Such a kiai washes away any doubt that the battle is
over. What was intended has been realized and cannot be undone. It
is like when decision and action become one.
In karatedo, the third kiai is often used, for example when
the bare hand hits an object. The kiai strengthens and protects the
hand. Kendo, Japanese fencing, has a kiai that runs through all three
moments, from the charge and far past the strike. That works as a
kind of underlining of the technique and the unavoidable character of
its whole course of events, as well as a lingering note stating – in a
victorious call – that the battle now is over.
In aikido, silence is the most common, but when there is
kiai, it is always at the time of the movement. Of course, silence
does not necessarily mean that there is no kiai. It is often soundless,
since aikido only tries to follow the force of the attacker. So the kiai in
aikido should be one with the kiai of the attacker.
For that reason it is unthinkable in aikido to pierce the poor
monkey.

Meaningful Sounds

Morihei Ueshiba made sounds almost all the time, when he

practiced aikido. All his techniques were accompanied by shouts and
different sounds. Those were certainly kiai, but they also had another
content. Ueshiba was deeply engaged in kototama, the Shinto
tradition of linking sounds to certain higher meanings. So, his kiai
was both a way of gathering power, and a method to express a
specific intention, uniting with a higher reality.
As you become familiar with the use of kiai, there is a
natural tendency that the sounds get their characteristics from what
was intended with them, and the attitude behind them. The
attacker’s kiai sounds differently from that of the defender, and kiai
will also differ according to what technique is done. This is the most
obvious in kendo, where the practitioners simply use the name of the
target as their kiai for the corresponding movement. Strikes to the
head are called men, referring to the head and helmet. Strikes to the
wrist are called kote, which is wrist in Japanese, and strikes to the
breast cuirass are called do.
In a similar direction the explanation might be found for a
common kiai in karatedo, where students shout:
“Kiai!”
Kiai also tends to become personal, whatever the purpose
of it. People who have trained budo for some time usually develop
sounds in their kiai that are individual preferences, rather than
indications of what is intended with them. On the other hand, such a
personal choice surely says something about what the practitioner
wants his or her budo to be. An individual kiai reveals what that
person wishes to express and achieve with his or her martial art. So,
one should listen to one’s own kiai and contemplate it.

Kamae – the Perfect Guard

Once, there was an old master of chado, tea ceremony, the

pleasant art of making and serving tea. He was highly skilled at his
art and a pride to his lord, one of the daimyo of Japan. When it was
time for the daimyo to visit and show his respect to shogun, the ruler
of Japan, he wanted to bring the tea master with him.
It was necessary to dress like a samurai for this journey.
The tea master knew nothing about the sword art and samurai
custom, but his daimyo insisted. So, he had to stick two swords
inside his belt, although this was reserved for the samurai, and they
went off to Edo (present Tokyo).
The shogun was amazed by the beauty of the master’s tea
ceremony, and his daimyo was very pleased. But one day, when the
master walked the streets of Edo, he met a ronin, a samurai without
a lord, who immediately challenged him to a duel. It was customary
among the samurai to try out their skills on each other. For the sake
of his daimyo’s honor, the tea master could not refuse, nor could he
confess that he was not a samurai. Instead, he asked his challenger
for a delay of a few hours, in order to inform his daimyo and settle
his affairs. This was granted.
The tea master hurried to visit the foremost fencing master
of the city, and explained his situation.
“I know that I cannot win the duel,” he said, “but for the
sake of my lord it is necessary that I die like a samurai. Therefore,
would you be so kind as to show me how to behave, so that my
challenger does not suspect the truth?”
The fencing master was deeply moved by the humble
request, so far from the fierce behavior of his fencing students.
“I will help you,” he replied, “if you do the tea ceremony
with me.”
This was done, and the fencing master was just as amazed
as the shogun had been.
“You need to know only one thing,” the fencing master
explained after the tea ceremony. “When you face your challenger,
draw your sword and then think exactly as you do in your tea
ceremony.”
This instruction puzzled the tea master, but he went to
meet the ronin and did what he had been told. He drew his sword
and concentrated in exactly the same way as when performing the
tea ceremony. The challenger also drew his sword, and approached
his opponent cautiously.
No matter how the ronin searched, he found no opening in
the tea master’s guard. There was not a hint of a weak spot, on
which to aim in a charge.
To attack a swordsman without any opening in his guard
would be certain death. Therefore, after trying his opponent for a
long time, the ronin had to surrender and lower his sword.
“I apologize,” he said humbly. “I see that I cannot defeat
you.”
And he left.
Only Kamae

In the budo arts, the basic guard position is called kamae. It is not
the same for kendo, judo, karatedo, aikido, and the other arts, but
the principles are the same. You should be ready, relaxed, and with
an empty mind.
The kanji pictogram for the word is a little odd. It consists of
the sign for wood or a tree, and the sign for a trellis and similar
devices. This gives the impression of the guard posture as a
complex construction, where each part has its specific place and
function, and the solidity of the whole depends on the parts having
found their correct positions.
Many people believe that the best defense is tense
readiness, and to fill one’s head with a great number of techniques
and tricks to choose from when the attack comes. But such an
attitude is easily deceived and lead astray. The brain is slower than
the hand, and should not slow it down. The best kamae is to empty
oneself of plans, worries, and the lust for victory, so that the reflexes
are free to handle the defense. With such an attitude you cannot be
taken by surprise.
When the tea master thought about his art he became
empty and clear inside, like in deep rest. Therefore, no opening was
visible in his guard. Although the tea master had no knowledge of
the sword arts, the challenger was not misled. In this state of mind,
the tea master would probably have responded correctly if attacked,
although he had never handled a sword before.
Kamae is a sublime test of mastery. Already there, before
any movement has commenced, the beginner is separated from the
one with experience. There are countless stories from old Japan
about how duels between samurai were decided already at kamae,
without any sword strike. The one with superior kamae does not lose
the battle.
One of the greatest Japanese swordsmen of present days
was Kiyoshi Nakakura, who died in his 90th year, 2000. He had the
grade 9th dan hanshi in both kendo and iaido (10th dan in those arts
can only be given posthumously). He also practiced some aikido in
his younger years. Once he told me how he examined kendo and
iaido practitioners for dan grades. He only studied their kamae. Then
he knew what grade to give them, and did not care about what they
were doing during the rest of the examination.
Now and then he hesitated – should this practitioner have
this or that dan grade? In those few cases he looked out for the very
first movement. Whether this was a charge or a parry, Nakakura
could immediately decide on the grade, and he closed his eyes. He
never needed to see more.

No Guard

As said above, kamae differs between the budo arts. This has to
do with their techniques and purposes.
In judo you stand with your feet right below your shoulders,
neither in front of the other. This is the best starting position for the
many judo throws and sweeps, if you want to be able to shift quickly
between attack and defense. In the basic guard of karatedo you take
a big step forward with one foot, so that your body is lowered, the
back leg is stretched, and the front leg is bent. The feet are outside
the line of the shoulders. This position is to give maximum stability
and force to the dynamic karate techniques. In kendo you take about
half a step forward, usually with your right leg, and lift both the heels
from the floor so that you stand mainly on your toes. The feet are
almost on the same line, well inside the span of the shoulders. This
is to become a small target for the opponent’s shinai, the fencing
sword, and to be able to leap forward very quickly.
The most common basic guard in aikido, hanmigamae, is a
bit more extended than the half step of kendo. The back foot points
to the side, the front foot points forward, and the body is turned
slightly to the side – sort of like you are heading in two directions at
once. This is also one of the reasons for it. You want support for
movements to the side, as well as forward. The first movement is
almost always the taisabaki step forward to the side. The back foot’s
side angle also gives the leg additional strength for a quick leap
forward.
 But the superior guard for aikido is that of no guard. Let us
call it anti-kamae. In aikido you never accept the battle, and do not
enter into it at all. For that reason there should be no guard that is
preparation for battle. Truly harmonious aikido begins from the steps
of ordinary walking, so that it is not even interrupted by carrying out
the technique. Then kamae is nothing but the position you happen to
be at when you halt your step: one foot a bit in front of the other, the
body directed straight forward, and the hands hanging relaxed by
your sides.
It is usually called shizentai, the natural or spontaneous
posture. Morihei Ueshiba said that there is no specific guard position
in aikido. The stances and movements are completely natural.
So, the optimal aikido kamae differs from those of all the
other budo arts. It becomes invisible, non-existent. Therefore it has
no weaknesses. It does not warn the attacker by showing readiness
and ability, nor does it limit the options of the aikidoist by fitting one
or other specific defense. It shall be nothing other than what it
happens to be at the moment.
When in your basic posture you show no vigilance, you
create no suspicion. When you do not signal the intention to defend
yourself, others will not be tempted to challenge you. You become
like air, eventually as vacuum.
Aggression needs a target. The more obvious the target is,
the more aggression it will trigger. That is the same with animals and
people. The instinct to attack is immediately awakened by seeing
somebody flee or prepare to resist. Only the one who seems to
perceive no threat at all can make the attacker forget his intention, or
never get the idea to attack at all.

Trigger

In the aikido techniques, kamae is also used in quite a

paradoxical way: to trigger the attack. By showing an opening in your
kamae, you make your partner attack that exact point at the moment
you show it. You open your guard, and thereby lure your partner to
attack.
 With persistent training you can in this way learn to
maneuver and manipulate the attacker as invisibly as it is far-
reaching – and decisive. Not even the most ferocious swordsman
will run right into his opponent’s guard, but if he perceives the
slightest crack in that guard, a slight lack of concentration, then he
will immediately charge. A defender who chooses to show such an
opening can make the attacker go for it.
This is used in aikido. In your training, you should always
tempt your partner to make the attack on which you want to practice
the defense – so that the attack will be credible and executable, and
also so that you can practice the art of secretly maneuvering the
attacker.
If you choose instead to keep an impregnable kamae, or
the anti-kamae that makes the opponent forget his will to attack –
then there will not be much training. You will both just stand there. It
might be ideal as self-defense, but quite boring at length in a dojo.
 Above: Seiichi Sugano, 8 dan Aikikai shihan, showing kokyuho at
a Stockholm seminar in the 1980’s. Photo by Magnus Hartman.

Kokyu – Belly Breathing

Kokyu is written with two signs: ko, which means exhaling, and
kyu, inhaling. Together they simply stand for breathing. In aikido,
though, the word refers to the special abdominal breathing that is
used to give power and stamina. You should breathe with tanden,
your center in the lower abdomen. This also stimulates your ki flow.
Maybe this is implied by the order of the two components
in the word: You breathe out before you breathe in, but then what is
there to breathe out? Ki, of course – the life energy that is not
dependent on the lungs. It fills us already before we have taken our
very first breath.
 In western meaning, kokyu is to breathe with the
diaphragm, the sheet of muscle between the chest and the
abdomen. This is what opera singers, among others, are taught to
do, so that they can sing loudly and keep a tone for long on a single
exhalation. But in budo one should not focus on the diaphragm,
although strictly physiologically speaking it is doing the job.
Instead, you should focus exactly on the body center,
tanden, and your breathing should feel like a pair of bellows of that
center. The breathing goes into your center and out from it, in an
escalating flow that soon loses the difference between in and out.
Breathing breaks free of the basic linear in and out, becoming a
spiral movement where it is no longer possible to clearly distinguish
between inhalation and exhalation.
That is shown by how the belly moves: not at all.
Good belly breathing demands a straight posture, where
the belly should be allowed to protrude rather than being held in, no
matter what modern beauty ideals may have to say about it. Such a
posture is seen in the Japanese sumo wrestlers – and in toddlers
who are just learning to walk. When you breathe with a correct
posture, your belly does not expand and contract significantly, but
holds its form. Nor are she shoulders going up and down. Although
kokyu is deep and powerful breathing, it becomes almost invisible.

Budo Breathing

The invisible breathing is a clear advantage in budo training. It

has been known for ages in the Japanese martial arts that man is
the easiest to defeat when he is inhaling. That is when the body is
the most fragile and weak, and the movements are the slowest. The
attacker is wise to charge exactly when the opponent is inhaling. So,
if the difference between breathing in and out is dissolved, and the
body does not signal the shift from the one to the other, the attacker
will have a hard time finding a moment for striking.
The aikido techniques show this process. In the beginning
of learning them, you should make a big difference between inhaling
and exhaling, where some phases of the technique are done during
the former, and some during the latter. In time these differences
diminish, so that the techniques become uninterrupted ellipses and
spirals, where the direction of your breathing ceases to matter.
The basic cut with katana, the Japanese sword, shows this
clearly. You grab the sword with both hands and hold it in front of
tanden, your center. The position is called chudankamae, the middle
guard, and it is the basic guard of the sword arts. Then you lift the
sword over your head at the same time as you inhale, and cut
forcefully forward and down, while you exhale. The sword stops at
the chudankamae it started from.
The more you learn to master the sword, the less of a
difference you will feel in this up and down of the sword, this in and
out of the breathing. Finally, the whole movement becomes like a
closed circle, with neither beginning nor end. Such a cut is difficult to
escape.
The basic sword cut is one of the very best ways to
exercise your belly breathing, as well as your center.
There are many aikido techniques that are just as obvious
examples of belly breathing. They are named accordingly: kokyuho,
which simply means breathing technique or breath control, and
kokyunage, the breath throw. They are variations of throwing
techniques, where your own breathing searches and follows that of
your partner, and this is what creates the throw.
Those techniques can look very powerful, but they are
based on uniting the attacker’s and the defender’s kokyu, as if
breathing jointly. Since breath is the most important driving force in
each movement, the joint breathing becomes irresistible.

Breath Practice

The way to good belly breathing is not complicated, but demands

a lot of effort from most people. You have to remind yourself again
and again to lower your breath from the lungs to the abdomen. In the
beginning this can even be physically difficult to accomplish. It is
tricky to direct one’s muscles and organs in something that is
normally done without thinking. It will gradually improve through
concentration and exercise. One day you will be surprised to
discover that you breathe with your lower abdomen, without having
to think about it.
It has to start with a good posture. Without the straight
back and the protruding belly that the meditating Buddha is always
depicted with, you lock your breathing and it never reaches below
your chest. The same locking can come from clothes that sit too
tightly over your belly. There are many budo practitioners who make
the mistake of tying their belt on the waist. Then they cannot learn
proper kokyu. You must allow your belly freedom. A strapped belly is
just as inhibiting on your breathing as a tightly applied tie around
your neck.
When you sit on your knees like in meditation, zazen, you
are in a good position for finding the correct posture as well as kokyu
breathing. The back becomes straight almost automatically, the belly
protrudes, and it is not difficult at all to inhale all the way down to
your center. The trick is to keep your deep breathing and straight
posture when you stand up and start your aikido practice.
For the beginners, it is particularly difficult to remain belly
breathing when they get out of breath in intense training. Then they
usually start to pant uncontrollably, with short and superficial breaths
that only involve the chest – although such breathing is not efficient
at all. They simply do not get enough fresh air, no matter how fast
their breathing is. The same problem often comes when they really
need to exert themselves, by lifting something heavy or pushing
something massive, and so on. They may even hold their breath,
unawares.
The aikido movements are designed in agreement with
kokyu, so regular training automatically stimulates the belly
breathing. In time you learn to breathe correctly, and you will not
understand why you initially found it so difficult.
Kokyu plays such an important part in aikido that you
should always strive to turn your belly toward what you focus on –
the direction in which you move, or the goal you have with your
movement. This is done by attacker and defender alike. Returning to
the basic sword cut: In the chudankamae initial position, you hold
your sword in front of your belly. Since you grab it with both hands it
is not comfortable to move it that far in any other direction than the
one your belly is pointing.
In all budo, you always want your belly to point in the
direction you act. Only by that can you have maximum control and
power in your movements. It seems obvious, since that is how the
human anatomy works. Still, many beginners have trouble doing it
correctly. Suddenly in the middle of a technique, the belly goes one
way and the arms another, and balance is lost. If you feel that the
belly is not just following the movements, but is the body part really
doing them, like the hub turns the wheel around – then you have
good kokyu.
When you exercise your kokyu, the ambition should be to
fill your whole body with the flow of breath, and extend it way outside
the borders of your body. If you are breathing forcefully with your
tanden, others around you should sense it without any sound of your
breathing needed. You become a pair of bellows, spreading energy,
and still soft like fresh air sweeping in through an opened window. If
you really get going, it should feel like a draft.

Maai – the Safe Distance

Among the many differences between nationalities, one of the

most obvious is the distance people of separate cultures prefer to
have to each other in conversations and other everyday
communication. In some countries that distance is so short that
people can almost sit on each other’s lap and still have a relaxed
conversation. In other countries, such as the Scandinavian ones, a
distance of at least arm’s length is needed for the two not to feel
crowded.
Comical scenes can take place when people of different
cultures interact. One advances, not to be impolitely distanced, and
the other retreats, not to feel crowded.
Each of us has a private sphere around our body. We want
to be alone and at peace within that sphere, except for moments of
voluntary intimacy. Japanese people are used to crowds, so they
have learned to live like sardines in a can, and still keep their
integrity intact. They have a technique of pretending that others just
do not exist. When they do have plenty of space at their disposal,
they tend to prefer the same distance Scandinavians need.

Reach

In the Japanese martial arts there is a similar personal sphere,

which also has a strategic significance. Two combatants in their
initial stances choose a certain distance to each other. It is called
maai, which can be translated harmony of distance, or distance
equilibrium.
The concept consists of two kanji pictograms. The first one
implies distance and shows the sun, the beams of which just barely
pass the chink between a pair of swinging doors. The second part is
the same ai as in aikido, meaning harmony or joining. Outside of
budo use, it is simply translated as interval.
The sign is also used as a measure of length, which is
about six feet, but the correct distance between two combatants
varies according to how tall they are, the martial art they practice,
and what weapons they might hold. The basic principle of maai is
simple: They should be so far from each other that none of them can
reach the other in an attack, without taking a step forward.
For two unarmed persons this means that if they extend
their arms forward, they reach no more than each other’s hands.
Maybe the western custom of shaking hands contains a ritual with
the same significance – the two persons measure out a safe
distance to each other.
In the sword arts, where the two duelers stand in the guard
chudankamae, with their swords held in front of their bellies, the
sides of their sword tips should meet.
If the two combatants stand closer to each other than maai,
none of them has the time to avoid a sudden attack. This also
increases the risk of a fight starting purely by accident – a defensive
reflex gets the whole thing going, without anybody really intending an
attack.
 This was the biggest drawback of the so-called terror
balance between USA and the Soviet Union, until the latter collapsed
in 1989. Advancing technology diminished the time between firing
missiles and their reaching the target to mere minutes, so both sides
had to constantly keep their hands right above that dreaded button.
That gives little time for contemplating one’s options.

Sphere

In aikido, this maai is like an invisible sphere around the

practitioner. Only when the partner penetrates this sphere does the
aikido technique commence. Morihei Ueshiba regarded his sphere
as a universe of his, where his laws of nature ruled – therefore, an
invasion of it was doomed to fail. An attack that reached inside his
universe was unavoidably chained to the orbits of it.
Of course, what rests in the middle of this sphere, this
universe, is tanden, the body center. Aikido is to practice the
sovereignty of the sphere and the center. So, defending against an
attack is not a struggle to regain command of one’s own universe,
but to express this command in a natural way.
The attack must fail, since it is done by intrusion into
another person’s world. The attacker pierces the periphery of the
defender’s sphere, and therefore loses control of his own sphere as
well as his own center. The circular movements of aikido throw him
out of the defender’s sphere by methods similar to the centrifugal
force. As long as the attacker does not succeed in replacing the
defender’s center with his own, he cannot be the strongest or the
steadiest.
It can be compared to trying to win a debate in a foreign
language. By the intrusion, the attacker is forced to adapt the
defender’s language. So, how could he manage to take over? In
aikido it is necessary to understand that the rules in operation are
those of the defender. Accordingly, the biggest mistake the defender
can make is to allow the attacker’s rules to take over. This happens if
your response is one imitating the action of the attacker, thereby
actually submitting to it. Then you have accidentally left your own
sphere to become the periphery of the attacker’s sphere.
Stay in your center and remain in the middle of your
sphere.

Irimi, Tenkan – Inward, Outward

There are really just two ways to move in aikido: inward and
outward, like in breathing. And just like in breathing they shall in time
emerge into one and the same. But at first you need to know the
difference between them.
The inward step is called irimi and is by its nature closer to
the mentality of the attacker. You step almost straight at your partner,
right into his or her sphere. If you are to attack, there is no other way.
But it is used also in defense, as a way to forestall, to counter the
attack before it is completed.
Being bold enough to take this advancing step against a
forceful attacker is at the core of budo. The difficulty of daring this
step equals what you can win on it. You forestall the attacker by
avoiding and countering the attack in one and the same instant. Irimi
is the key to the budo insight that attacking is the worst defense. The
attacker has a huge disadvantage, compared to the defender.
The kanji pictogram for irimi consists of the symbol for
entering or penetrating, and the sign for the body. So the word
means to enter the body, i.e. approach the partner.
The outward step is called tenkan and is more in tune with
the situation and mild strategy of the defender. The term means to
convert or divert. It consists of the kanji for turning around and that
for changing. Here you step away from the attack, around and
behind the attacker. This way you avoid the attack, simultaneously
initiating your counter move by this evasive maneuver. The attacker
is suddenly on the periphery of the defender’s sphere.
Let us pretend that the two combatants are tied to each
other with a rope – the attacker at one end of it, and the defender at
the other. A suitable length of the rope, the distance between them,
is the correct maai – five feet or so. The attacking step leads straight
toward the defender, who moves forward and to the side, almost to
the position the attacker started from. The rope is stretched anew,
and the combatants have changed places, but the dynamics of the
movement are such that instead of two spheres with separate
centers, the attacker is now in the periphery of the defender.
Therefore, he can be led around as naturally as the planets orbit the
sun.
This depends mainly on the defender not allowing the
movement to halt after the attack, but continuing it in an extended
curve. It is similar to how a restive horse is led around the ring – the
bridle keeps it in the periphery of the person training it.
It may seem odd to those who have not tried it. These
dynamics must be experienced in practice. The attacker loses
control because he is the attacker, and because the defender
responds with the evasive outward step.

Combined

It is easy to conclude that tenkan is the step that agrees the most
with the aikido principles, but also irimi is used – although never
exactly in the direction of the opponent. That would only result in a
collision.
The aikido irimi enters to the side, which escapes the
attack just like the tenkan step does. In both cases the attack will
miss its target. By irimi the defender will be to the side of the
attacker, facing him. By tenkan the defender will end up by the side
of the attacker, almost behind him, and face the same way as the
attacker does.
Actually, almost every aikido technique is a combination of
the irimi and the tenkan steps. It starts with an irimi advance, to be
followed by the tenkan turn. At the first step you avoid the attack,
and at the second you initiate the counter move, the actual aikido
technique. In time and by diligent practice the two steps will blend
into one inseparable whole, like a single step.
The irimi-tenkan steps are the very hocus pocus formula of
the aikido transformation of conflict. You meet the attacker openly by
irimi, and you turn and join with him or her by tenkan. You go from
conflict to agreement, from aggression to harmony, in two simple
steps. So, when you practice these steps, consider the significance
of the principles behind them.

Omote, Ura – Front, Back

Most aikido techniques exist in two versions, stressing either the

inward irimi or the outward tenkan step. The version based on irimi is
mainly done in front of the attacker, whereas the other version
includes moving around to his rear. Most beginners have a hard time
telling the two versions apart. It usually takes a year or so of practice
to recognize their differences.
When I was at that phase of my development, I tended to
unknowingly do the latter version even though our instructor had
shown the former. He was quite amused by this. Myself, I would like
to believe that it depended on my instinctive search for the softest
meeting with the attack. I had learned that this was the ideal of
aikido, so I went for the most evasive movement.
In those days, the aikido terminology used in our dojo was
not altogether Japanese. The two versions of the aikido techniques
were called positive and negative. Those words might still be used in
some dojo. The Japanese terms are omote and ura. In aikido they
are sometimes used as synonymous to irimi and tenkan, because of
the close connections between them: omote to irimi, and ura to
tenkan. But omote and ura are complex concepts with significant
meanings far beyond that of aikido terminology.
Omote means approximately front or outside. It originates
in the term for the hairy side of a fur, or the surface of a piece of
clothing. So, it relates to the outside, the visible and obvious.
Ura stands for opposite side, the rear, the inside, and the
hidden. Its origin is the term for the inside of a fur, or the lining of a
garment.
The word pair, then, can be compared to the opposites
obvious and hidden, or to approach the aikido application:
straightforward and evasive, or direct and indirect.
 I have never experienced that Japanese instructors have
considered some moral aspects to this, although to a western mind
that seems near at hand. Instead, my impression is that they regard
it as the two sides of a coin. In aikido, omote and ura are as
complimentary and mutually dependent as the inside and outside of
a garment.
During practice, it is rewarding to acquaint oneself with the
specific characteristics of these opposites. The omote form of an
aikido technique can be done in an almost pushy way, with a spirit of
eagerly meeting the attack – still with the evasive body movement,
taisabaki, so that you do not confront the oncoming force. Then the
ura version should be done so that you already at the initial meeting
more or less disappear from the attacker’s eyesight, into the
shadows.
These opposites can be compared to the Chinese yin and
yang, in Japanese in and yo. Their initial meaning of shady side and
sunny side show obvious parallels to ura and omote. When you do
the omote version, your attitude should be comparable to yang,
which is described as the extrovert, the light, the warm, and
traditionally linked to the masculine. Accordingly, the ura version
should resemble yin, which stands for the introvert, the dark, the
cold, and traditionally the female. Of course, the traditional gender
roles in this can be discussed.

Shoden, Okuden

Another pair of opposites, vaguely linked to omote and ura, are

the budo concepts shoden and okuden. Shoden is the front or first
teaching, and okuden is the inner or deep teaching. Some traditional
budo arts stressed this division greatly, so that the beginner was for
a long time only taught shoden techniques, before he or she was
regarded as mature enough to exercise okuden techniques. There is
still such a division in some iaido and kenjutsu schools, but usually
there is no restriction against beginners trying okuden early on.
In aikido there is no division of the techniques into shoden
and okuden. I have the impression that such thinking would be very
alien to Osensei’s mind. He was rather restrictive about teaching
counter moves to the aikido techniques, kaeshiwaza, to others than
instructors, but apart from that he seemed to make no specific
distinction between aikido for beginners and for the advanced.
Maybe to him all students were beginners.
Miyamoto Musashi, the legendary samurai of the 17th
century, had no respect for shoden and okuden thinking in the
martial arts. He stated in his still widely read Book of Five Rings: “In
real battle there is no such thing as fighting with an outer technique
and cutting with an inner technique.” He admitted that there are
simpler and deeper things in the martial arts, and it varies how the
students manage to grasp them, but he refused the idea that the
techniques could be sorted accordingly. The inner and the outer are
unavoidably mixed: “If you go deeper and deeper into the mountain,
eventually you will again find yourself at the entrance.”
It would definitely be a mistake to regard the omote version
of an aikido technique as shoden, and the ura form as okuden. Any
technique, in whatever version, has obvious aspects and hidden
ones. It contains easily attainable elements as well as obscure ones.
The more you practice aikido, the more complex it all gets.
I am also not that keen on regarding omote and ura as
versions applicable to different situations. For example, it is often
said that the ura form of a technique comes in handy when the
partner somehow succeeds to resist the omote form. True, but a
better way of dealing with the situation is to find a way of making the
omote form work, in spite of the resistance. We have a greater
chance of improving our ways of doing the techniques, if we work
with the assumption that they can be done in any situation.
Maybe the omote and ura pair should be regarded as a
way of getting to know the essence of a certain technique better, by
sort of seeing it from two angles.
 Above: French teacher Christian Tissier, 7 dan Aikikai shihan,
demonstrating morotedori at a Stockholm seminar. Photo by Magnus
Hartman.

Gotai – Static Training

Generally speaking, there are three ways of training aikido: gotai,

jutai, and kinagare – static, soft, and flowing. Although they can be
described as three stages in the development of the aikido student,
they are constantly present and intermingled in aikido practice. They
complement each other.
Gotai (also pronounced kotai) translates to hard body,
referring to a static kind of training. Each technique commences from
both practitioners standing still. Uke is allowed to grab hold of tori
before the latter starts with the aikido technique. Of course, this is
not the best kind of self-defense, but utterly important for tori to learn
to manage. And for the beginner, gotai is the only chance to try out
the complicated aikido techniques, and get acquainted with them.
For lots of years, Japanese budo practitioners have
enjoyed trying to get out of all kinds of grips and holds. Aikido is
highly respected because of the ease by which it gets you out of
even very hard grips.
 To the samurai it was particularly essential to break free of
holds that hindered them from drawing their swords, just as it was
desirable for their opponents to lock their hands. That is why aikido,
which has grown out of the samurai arts, contains many techniques
against wrist grips. Practicing against such attacks is also particularly
good for experiencing the aikido principles and methods. In these
cases, the inner workings of the techniques become quite evident.
If you do not know how, it can be very tricky to get out of
strong wrist grips – and in gotai the partner should hold quite firmly.
Of course, you can have the same problem with all kinds of holds –
embraces, chokes, and so on. Those who are the biggest and the
strongest seem to have all the winning cards. Aikido can change
that.

Use Your Center

In gotai there are two aikido principles mainly at work against the
strong holds: The first is to always keep your center behind what you
do, and the other is to discover the potential movement hidden also
inside the most rigid situation.
Turn your belly and center, tanden, toward the target, so
that it becomes a support and a launching pad for any movement.
That is of at least as much help as learning to lift heavy things with
your legs instead of your back. All movements in aikido should come
from tanden in the lower abdomen. To learn this, make sure that you
always turn your belly in the direction you want to move. This is done
by body turns, especially with flexibility in the hips.
It is not that difficult to hold somebody’s arms or legs or
head, but it is next to impossible to prevent somebody from moving
his or her hips. You can almost always move your hips – even if
several strong persons hold you – and thereby you get the flexibility
needed to get out of any grip. Through turning your hips you find the
way out, and by keeping your belly pointing in that direction, you get
enough power and stability to move that way.
Though the hips seem to be doing the job, it is important to
continue focusing on the belly – to find one’s center and to keep from
losing balance and stability. Without a good balance you are unlikely
to get out of any grip. Actually, the strongest of two combatants will
usually be the one with the best balance – independently of muscle
size. Like the boa constrictor needs to fasten the tip of its tail in order
to squeeze its prey, man must have balance to use his strength. And
the balance is always based in the body center, tanden, which is also
the center of mass.
Therefore it is only through your partner’s center that you
can influence his balance, and this is necessary to lead him into the
orbits of the aikido techniques, getting you free. There is always
movement inside your partner’s belly, potential movement in any
conceivable direction. This can be awakened and guided, no matter
how rigidly your partner seems to stand or how firm his grip is.
Movement is awakened by relaxation. Oddly, that is the
opposite of what people usually do when someone grabs them. They
tighten their muscles, tear and pull, trying to break free. That only
makes your partner stronger, and the grip tightens. But when you
relax and become soft, then the partner’s grip loses its stability, and
you can trace the many potential directions in which to move him or
her. You only need to choose.
This natural law is easy to try out. If you let your partner
grab your wrist really hard, while you tighten your fist and the
muscles on your arm – then both can feel how strong your partner’s
grip is. But if you suddenly open your hand and relax all your
muscles, then your partner’s grip sort of slips, and loses its strength.
He or she must renew the grip, put new force to it, to regain control.
It is easy for you to start your aikido technique before that happens.
Soft and supple are almost synonymous. When you are
soft you can move in just about any direction, whatever the obstacle.
Softness is real strength.

Jutai – Soft Training

The word go in gotai really means hard, but for the aikido
application of the term, the word static is more accurate. But the next
step, jutai, is a clear opposite of the hard. Ju means soft. It is the
same word as in judo and jujutsu.
Jutai is the soft style of training, and it comes as a logical
consequence of the static training. Gotai opens for the soft way.
Actually, it develops into softness all by itself, as you progress in
your aikido. The hard grip softens and dissolves. The rigid position is
transformed into supple waves of motion. Your heightened skills
make gotai look more and more like jutai.
Still, in jutai the soft training is the starting point. You initiate
your aikido technique before the attack has reached you, before the
attacker’s grip is completed. When your partner advances toward
you in the attack, you simultaneously take the first step of your aikido
technique. Only at the moment before the attack commences are
both of you still.

Taisabaki

Your first step is the advancing and at the same time evading
taisabaki movement of irimi or tenkan, omote or ura. In this step, as
in any other aikido movement, the direction of your belly and the
movements of your hips are most important. When your hips turn,
you disappear as a target, sort of like a door opening. You end up at
the side of the partner with your belly pointing at him or her.
Thereby you have a priceless advantage. Your partner is
aimed straight ahead, in the direction where you, the target, were in
the previous moment. But you are well inside the attacker’s sphere,
with all your power aimed at him. It takes a comparatively long time
for the attacker to redirect his power and body toward your present
position, and during that time you are quite free to do just about
anything that comes to mind.
What comes to mind is an aikido technique, which
continues to lead your partner’s power in a direction where it causes
no harm. Only if your partner manages to halt his flow of power and
arrest his movement, will he be able to redirect his attack. The aikido
technique gives him no such opportunity. What it does is to lead him
on in the original attack, farther than he had planned, but with a kind
of hopefulness remaining, so that in his body he feels that he is still
about to defeat his opponent – although he no longer has any clue
as to how.
In jutai there are only two static moments. One is before
the attack commences, when the two practitioners watch each other
at the correct distance, maai. The other moment is at the end of the
technique, when the attacker is held in a pinning or thrown to the
floor.
What is most of all trained in jutai is taisabaki, the body
turn that makes the attacker miss his target, and simultaneously
begins the aikido technique. Compared to gotai you have simply
started your hip movement, and thereby your step, at an earlier
moment. This move, which did in gotai lead to your release from the
hard grip, is in jutai what makes the attacker fail to apply the grip
completely.
Jutai is the normal way of doing the aikido techniques.
Also, its timing makes it possible to defend against strikes, hits, and
kicks. For obvious reasons, that is not suitable to do from a static
position. In addition, practicing jutai automatically leads away from
doing the techniques step by step. Your aikido changes into one
where all the steps of your technique blend, to become one joint
movement. Then it approaches kinagare.

Kinagare – Flowing Training

The attentive reader has already concluded that the difference

between static, soft, and flowing aikido training, has less to do with
how the techniques are done than with when they are initiated. Gotai
starts when the attacker’s grip is properly applied, and jutai when the
attack is commenced but not completed. Kinagare has no starting
point.
The aim of aikido is never to get stuck in a self-defense
situation, a battle between two wills. No matter how big an
advantage you may have, there is a risk in accepting the challenge,
and at the end of the fight there is a bitter loser, whether it is you or
the other person. No, in aikido we want to reach a state that cannot
be disturbed by aggression, not shaken by challenge, and in no need
to take cover from hostility. You just walk on, as if nothing happened.
That is kinagare (or ki no nagare, as it is sometimes
written), a constant flow of ki. The attacker is sucked into this flow,
and led away, without the defender having to halt or change course.
The aikido techniques are done during the walk, without any
distinguishable beginning or end. Only the attacker is able to point
out some kind of start – that of his own attack.

Taninzugake

When there are several attackers, which is called taninzugake, it

is both natural and necessary to shift to kinagare, which does not
stop at someone or contain a foreseeable strategy. It is quite
entertaining to watch, when well done: The aikidoist wanders about
randomly in a crowd of adversaries, who all miss their target,
tumbling this way and that, like bowling pins at a strike. But the
aikido principles are clear and not that difficult to apply in such a
situation. Actually, it is more difficult to be one of the attackers, who
runs a risk of being hit by one of his companions, and has a hard
time indeed to keep track of the defender.
In kinagare, this natural flow of ki and the body movements
are trained by continuous taisabaki. Because you never stay on one
and the same spot, the attackers are unable to join in an ordered
charge, and because you always make irimi and tenkan moves, no
individual attacker will succeed with his strike.
You can also observe the clever way the aikido techniques
are constructed. They are such that all through doing them, you
move in repeated taisabaki, so that surrounding attackers miss if
they try to strike you when you do your technique on one of them.
This was a necessary component for the martial arts of the samurai,
since they prepared not only for duels, but for the battlefield as well.
The most common techniques in kinagare are the throws,
because they are quick and do not demand that you stop in some
position. But the pinning techniques can also work against several
attackers, although slightly modified. For example, they can easily be
converted to throws or quick felling techniques, or they can be used
to put one attacker in the way of the others. And the pinning
techniques, too, can be done in a series of taisabaki evasions.
Still, all the aikido techniques get a more flowing character
in kinagare – spirals and ellipses that are like whirlwinds as they fell
the attackers, also often those who are not actually touched by the
aikido techniques.
Of course it is also possible to practice kinagare one on
one. Then the attacker has to hurry to get up after each felling, to
attack anew. The defender should always be on the move, and
preferably toward the partner instead of away from him or her, so
that the tempo increases. It can be quite a demanding kind of
training.
Another rewarding way of raising the tempo is by
kakarigeiko, where several attackers stand in line, and hurry forward
one after the other, as soon as the defender has thrown the previous
attacker – or better: right before the defender has done so. With this
kind of training, you also learn to adapt immediately to different
attackers’ temper, size, strength, and so on.

Improvisation

In high tempo kinagare it is impossible to do your techniques with

your conscious mind. The brain is far too slow a commander. The
initiative has to come from the reflexes and the intuition. You release
your flow and let the aikido techniques express this naturally,
following the flow where it happens to go. It can be compared to
improvisation in music, where the brain is far behind the rapid
advancement of the fingers on the instrument.
Certainly, kinagare is the training form that comes the
closest to the essence of aikido. The aikidoist should always be in
the middle of this flow, which automatically leads to techniques as
soon as somebody attacks – and it happens immediately, naturally,
as if the whole chain of events had been prepared and learned by
heart. Contrary to this impression, it is impossible to accomplish
such aikido by preparation and rehearsal. It must be born
unprepared, out of a center awake and living.
When this works, less and less of physical contact is
needed to do the aikido technique. You become like a current that
the attacker is sucked into. Neither pinning techniques nor throws
demand physical exertion, or a firm grip on the attacker. It just flows.
Although to those who do not yet comprehend it, this
seems like unreliable self-defense, it is the way to an aikido that is
really fascinating – both to the one doing it, and the one it is done to.
Eventually, you should be able to treat your partner with the same
ease as the conductor leads an orchestra – maybe one day also at
the same distance.
 Above: Former doshu Kisshomaru Ueshiba (1921-1999), the son
of Osensei, at an aikido demonstration in Aiki Jinja, the small temple
beside the dojo in Iwama. Kisshomaru Ueshiba was very
instrumental in the world-wide spread of aikido.

Zanshin – Extended Spirit

When in kinagare you go like a whirlwind among the attackers, it

easily happens that tenderness and care get lost. The attackers are
thrown around and into one another, leading to injuries and
bitterness. That is no good. The benevolent aikidoist wants to protect
the attackers from unnecessary harm. There should be no
retribution. It is enough to show the attackers a better course of
action than the malice they intended. Nobody should get hurt.
Instead, everybody should learn, and leave the fight as wiser and
more placid persons.
Therefore, an aikido technique does not end with the throw,
but is extended all through the trajectory of the falling attacker,
remaining with him until he chooses to interrupt his malice and walk
away. The aikidoist’s attention and ki flow continue to encircle and
lead the attacker all through the throw, making sure that it is lenient.
Also, the continued attention makes sure that the attacker becomes
aware of what the laws are in the defender’s sphere, the aikidoist’s
universe.
Judo has the same friendly spirit, which is shown in how
the thrower holds up the thrown partner’s arm, so that he will land
safely on the side, and not hit his head. In aikido we rarely hold on to
the person we throw, but with the direction of the movement and with
our ki, we show the best way for the fall. It is not enough to throw the
attacker. We also make sure to cushion the fall. Correctly done, the
aikido throws are not that unpleasant to the victims of them. They fall
just as softly as they are snared in the pinning techniques.

Remaining

This is accomplished by zanshin, extended spirit. This concept is

particularly stressed in karatedo, but is also significant in aikido. It
consists of two kanji pictograms: zan means to remain, and shin
(also pronounced kokoro) means heart, mind, or spirit. A remaining
spirit. Concentration that does not falter.
In Japan, the heart is used in connection to countless
things. Contrary to western use of the word, it rarely has anything to
do with emotions, but with willpower, mentality, and spirit. Zanshin
means not to lose contact with the partner in the throw. Your
attention remains when you lost physical contact with your partner,
sort of how in javelin you follow the flight of the spear until it pierces
the ground. It definitely has a martial aspect. The defender guards
and controls the attacker all the way until the latter is no longer a
threat. With forceful zanshin it is even possible to deter the other
from attacking anew.
It is also with zanshin that the partner is controlled in a
pinning. Zanshin is the force of attention and resolve, showing one’s
center and remaining in it. You continue to surround and penetrate
your partner with your ki, so that no other courses are accessible
than the ones you have marked out. That makes the partner
immovable in a pinning, and kind of stunned after a throw, having a
hard time standing up again – as if you were standing over him,
pressing him to the ground.

Protection

The friendlier side of zanshin is also practical. By extending your

attention beyond the reach of the aikido technique, it becomes
harder for the partner to resist, and the technique is free of
weaknesses. By guiding the partner’s fall with your mind, he is
unable to change its course. By applying the extended spirit of
zanshin to the pinning, it becomes solid without needing to inflict
pain on the partner.
Zanshin is the clear and decisive spirit that shall reach and
penetrate the partner already before the attack, so that it comes as
the defender wishes. Of course, it must remain during the attack,
and after it. Zanshin is the defender’s connection to the attacker, and
it should be like that of a ruler to his or her subject – a kind ruler, with
compassion for the subject. Noble zanshin is not exclusively for the
protection of the defender. Also the attacker is protected and
preserved by it. When your zanshin becomes like pure benevolence,
I doubt that it is possible to attack you at all.

Uke – the One Who Is Led

Although only the defense techniques are aikido, still the

attacker’s role is not to be neglected. The kind of attack and the skill
of it are also of importance. Because aikido itself contains no attack
techniques, it is common that the students train them insufficiently,
and do them with little concentration. But sloppy and weak attacks
lead to sloppy and weak aikido. Both roles are important, because
aikido is about guiding the attacking force.
The attacker in aikido is called uke, like in the term for
falling technique: ukemi. The kanji for uke is a sign that means to
receive and be susceptible. The symbols that compose the sign
show a hand giving something. So, the attacker is the one who is
led, who is receiving.
The defender, the one who leads, is called tori – or nage,
as in nagewaza, throwing techniques. Tori simply means to take.
Amusingly, it is written with the symbols of somebody grabbing the
ear of another – an action that seems to be comparable to the
western use of it, and therefore implies a correcting purpose, like
that of a teacher or parent.
Observe that the word pair tori and uke does not signify
give and take, but take and receive. So, the two have similar roles in
the aikido training. The difference is that tori has the initiative,
although uke is the one who starts it off with the attack. In aikido,
then, you should take over the initiative – not to win, but for both to
learn something. Since this means so much more than just throwing
somebody, I prefer the word tori, not nage. Still, both words are used
for the defender in aikido.
Tori’s role is that of the placid one, who calmly awaits the
attack and then neutralizes it as pleasantly as possible. Naturally, the
attacker’s role is quite different. He or she is supposed to charge
with complete concentration and maximum skill. Inferior attacks
result in bad training and disharmony in the aikido techniques.

Attacking Spirit

It is not easy to be a good uke. You need to master a number of

attack techniques, kogeki, usually brought in from the other budo
arts – such as punches and kicks from karatedo, sword strikes from
kendo, grips from judo, and so on. It is not enough to lazily hint these
techniques, just because you know that you are going to miss and
get thrown. Each time, you must attack wholeheartedly and
forcefully, without any thought on what the defense will be.
This usually works fine the first time you practice a certain
aikido technique, but already when uke stands up again for a second
attack, his attitude and approach have changed. Uke knows what
technique will be done on him, so he unconsciously redirects his
attack slightly – either to make it more difficult for the partner to do
the aikido technique, or to make it easier and more comfortable.
Unfortunately, from that moment on the training is a bit falsified.
Aikido is not as much about the physiology of extended
arms and charging bodies, as it is about energies and laws inside of
the bodily manifestations. Therefore it is important that the spirit of
the attack is correct. Uke must adapt the spirit of an attacker, and
express it consistently. The strikes are aimed right at the defender,
and the grips strive to hold the defender – just like in a fight. Of
course, the attacker still needs to show the same care as the
defender does, so that no one gets harmed.
Uke should exert himself to act like a great samurai:
advance with the center, let his ki flow, and show firm determination.
Aikido is constructed to work against the best and most skilled
attack, and the most competent challenger. Only when uke tries his
utmost to be all that, tori is given a chance to develop an aikido with
such superiority.
Uke must all through the technique remain in an attacking
spirit. Many practitioners make a forceful initial charge, but relax as
soon as tori starts with the responding aikido technique. They
become almost lifeless weights to throw or lead down to a pinning.
That is not natural. The will to attack shall remain all through, so that
if tori makes some mistake in the aikido technique, it is possible for
uke to get free and attack anew.
This may seem like an aggressive game, but it is exactly
what the aikido techniques are made to handle. That is the path to
the softest and most pleasant techniques. Aikido should transform
aggression into peacefulness. If the former is never present, there is
no way of learning how to make the transformation.
A competent attack follows the same principles as the
aikido defense techniques. The body center, tanden, is the base, and
ki is the energy that constitutes the true attack. Uke shall strive for
good balance and control, turn his belly in the direction he is moving,
and never lose concentration. He shall try to keep the initiative –
attack where he can, and protect himself where he feels threatened.
When learning how to attack correctly, you will benefit from
studying and appreciating how this is done in the budo arts that train
attacks as much as defense. So, for punches and kicks, look at
karatedo, for grips study judo, for sword techniques consider kendo
and iaido, for staff techniques see jodo, and so on. The more familiar
you are with other martial arts – and not only the Japanese ones –
the more reliable your aikido solutions will become.

Grabbing a Wrist

The seemingly most simple of attacks is katatedori, grabbing the

defender’s wrist. It is actually just as demanding and complex as any
other attack. Uke takes a quick step forward and catches tori’s wrist
in a steady grip, which stops the hand from retreating as well as from
attacking uke. So, the grip is both a defense and an attack. Also, it is
easily followed up by a strike with the free hand.
To grab somebody is to tie him or her to one’s center,
similar to holding a dog by a leash. You take a steady stance and
strive to control your partner’s body and movements through the
grip. As with the sword guard chudankamae, you apply your grip in
front of your center, and should be able to maneuver your partner’s
arm as freely as you would a sword in your hand.
Grabbing your partner’s wrist is in many ways similar to
holding your sword. In your grip, the little finger is the most important
one and should be tied the hardest around the partner’s wrist. Your
balance and the power of your grip are rooted in your center, and
you should be able to immediately change your own position as well
as that of the arm you hold.
If the defender tries to break free with a strike, his arm can
easily be used to parry the strike. If the defender tries to tear himself
away, the grip will tighten and he will lose his balance. By the grip,
the attacker aims to bring the defender into his sphere, his universe.
This cannot be accomplished with tense muscles, but by relaxation
and a focused spirit. Then it will be quite difficult for tori to get free.
The harmonious way of aikido must be applied.
All through the aikido technique, the attacker strives to
keep this control. As much as he can, he tries to turn his belly toward
the wrist grip, and continues to direct his ki, his attacking power,
toward the defender. When the aikido technique is done in a slow
tempo, this can seem strained and exaggerated, but when it is done
in normal speed it becomes obvious that this attitude is the only
possible one. Aikido works in such a way that the attacker is unable
to interrupt the attack before the technique is completed.

The Attacker’s Defense

With increasing refinement as you develop, your aikido defense

uses one circumstance that is evident to any attacker: The one who
attacks must count on being vulnerable, too. The one who strives to
hurt someone else also runs the risk of being hurt. So, the attacker
wants to protect himself as well as win the fight. Any attack includes
some kind of defense.
Many aikido techniques are built on the body’s and the
mind’s basic struggle to survive. The instinct to protect oneself
overshadows any conscious ambition and any trained series of
movements. Also the most lionhearted champion has reflexes that
twitch in him when sensitive parts of the body are exposed to
threats. Thereby the defender can manipulate the attacker.
But these reflexes can only be used when uke is as
concentrated on attacking, as he would be if it were done in actual
malice. So, uke must imitate this feeling when attacking. There is no
need to pounce like a rabid dog at the defender, because that only
leads to injuries and a very unpleasant atmosphere in the dojo. It has
to remain a controlled pretense. Uke can accomplish this by being
focused on the attack, and remaining ignorant of what the defender
aims to do – no matter how many times it is repeated. Uke shall
react to the aikido techniques as if unprepared for them.
 Practice in such a spirit is an effective way of emptying
one’s mind of thoughts. That is a budo way to emptiness and clarity.
Also, taking turns with attacking and defending is excellent training in
directing one’s ki and controlling one’s temper. At one moment you
are uke, a forceful and intense attacker, and the next moment you
are tori, the placid and gentle defender. That opens for a calm soul.
 Above: Present doshu Moriteru Ueshiba, Osensei’s grandson, at
a Stockholm demonstration. Photo by Magnus Hartman.

Keiko – Practice, Practice, Practice

I have surely at least implied, here and there in this book, that a
book about aikido never can do justice to the training of it. Nor can it
adequately present any of the aspects of aikido and its content. This
book might be of some use as an introduction for those who
speculate about what aikido can be, but even as such it is a bit
misleading, since it cannot convey the experience of aikido training.
The book may serve as extracurricular material for the
aikido practitioner with a hunger for knowledge – but then there is a
risk that the aikido student exaggerates the importance of thinking, of
theoretical pursuit, as if it were at least as essential as practical
training. Nothing could be more wrong.
Japanese teachers are usually restrictive when it comes to
talking about aikido philosophy and principles. On direct questions
about what this or that might signify, or why we do in one way and
not the other, their answer is often simply: “You just have to practice.”
They have a thought behind this, if not to say a complete philosophy.
 Man is a whole being. The intellect and the body are not
isolated from each other, nor is one disconnected while the other one
is at work. While we practice, we think constantly – analyze,
interpret, conclude, and gradually understand. But when we read or
sit down to discuss aikido, then the body has nothing to do. It is
locked out, unable to contribute with anything else than the itch for
training that every aikido student is familiar with, and experiences
already the day after an aikido class – at the very latest. Therefore it
is always more rewarding to practice, even when the most abstract
and theoretical questions about aikido occupy the mind.
Keiko is the Japanese word for training, used in all the
budo arts. It is written with two kanji that collectively translate simply
as training or study. But like so often with kanji, more is told when
they are examined closer. The first one means to consider, and the
second one means old, what has existed for long. We should
consider the old, i.e. contemplate the tradition. So, although the word
is used for physical training, which may very well be quite exerting to
the body, its etymology refers clearly to a thought process. What is
emphasized is that by physical practice you can gain clarity of the
mind.
Certainly, also theoretical studies have their place. They
satisfy our curiosity, and curiosity is the best guide we have in life.
We just need to remember that it is first and foremost by training in
the dojo that we gain the true insights. That is where our knowledge
can be properly expressed. Only by practice do the theories become
understandable.

Takemusu – Limitless Improvisation

Aikido of today is well organized, with a hierarchy, rules for kyu

and dan grading, and a system of basic techniques that are to be
done in a somewhat regulated way. But this neat order is not the
work of Morihei Ueshiba. He never wanted to deal with the politics
and administration of the martial art he invented. He graded people
spontaneously, almost on a whim – even the highest grades. And he
did not construct a system of basic techniques. Mostly he just said,
now and then during class: “This is a basic technique in aikido.” His
students hurried to make notes.
To Morihei Ueshiba, budo was something quite separate
from the worldly order. The secrets of budo – and for a long time he
was rather restrictive about them – were only to be transmitted from
the teacher to the students in everyday dojo practice. Anything else
lacked significance. There was no particular pedagogic system on
the agenda. To Osensei, aikido was nothing but the pleasant
expression of pure spirit and divine principles. The techniques had
no other value to him than as links to that higher and inner essence.
So why make a big deal out of them?
Aikido is not to settle with a number of fixed throws and
pinnings. On the contrary, it must become takemusu, a limitless
martial art born in the moment. Improvisation.

Creative

Takemusu consists of two words. Take is identical with bu in

budo, the martial way. It is just another pronunciation of it. Musu
(also pronounced umu) means approximately to give birth, to
procreate, as in pregnancy and childbirth. The expression takemusu
can simply be translated as creative martial art. The creativity of it
implies variation and the ability to adapt. Then there is no number of
basic techniques that suffices. Aikido should be born in the moment,
improvised out of the circumstances, so that there is never a
repeated predictable pattern.
The basic techniques are primarily exercises in finding
one’s center and getting one’s ki flowing. When you have practiced
aikido for some time, you notice increasingly how new ways of doing
the techniques emerge, and this stimulates experiments. You feel
constant movement inside yourself. It originates in tanden, your body
center. When this inner movement is expressed, it leads effortlessly
to aikido techniques. Sometimes these techniques are the familiar
basics, and sometimes they are so different that you will not know
what to call them.
 Unfortunately, the ordered form of training and grading in
aikido tends to obstruct this spontaneity and improvisation. Of
course, you need to practice the basic techniques so that you
become skilled at them, and continue to train them so that you can
do them with increased refinement. But you must also break their
patterns. Variation and open-minded discovery!

Variations

One way to stimulate this power of the imagination in aikido is to

try several of the existing variations to basic techniques.
Experienced aikido teachers can show tens of variations on any of
the basic techniques. It is rather strenuous to remember them all, so
you try them and then forget them. They will be reborn naturally
another time, like improvisations and sudden whims. Also other
variations, previously untried, will emerge just as easily during
practice.
You should not really memorize and plan your aikido
practice way ahead. That only becomes a burden and creates
limitations. Instead, dare to trust that your center contains all, and
lets it emerge at the right moment. If you empty your head of
thoughts, and trust your inner capacity, so much will emerge that you
soon become your own richest source and foremost teacher.
Some aikido instructors get so delighted by the variations
they invent, or learned from their own teachers, that they start to
systematize and memorize them. They teach the variations with the
same sternness and care as they do with the original basic
techniques. This has little to do with takemusu. What does a
musician gain from writing down and rehearsing his improvisations,
until he has learned them by heart?
Takemusu is by its nature similar to ki: Let the ideas fly off
as quickly as they came, and there will be more. The flow is what is
important.
When Morihei Ueshiba talked about takemusu aiki, he
must have meant that the harmonious way of aikido naturally gives
birth to an endlessly innovative martial art. The joint spirit of tori and
uke in aiki leads to limitless budo. Just by taking the initial step of
irimi or tenkan, past the attacking force of the partner but still in
rhythm with it, a solution will immediately appear to the defender.
The technique that comes to mind will be both effective and soft. The
principles of aiki and the evasive movement become a gate that
opens to a world of possibilities.
 Above: Shoji Nishio (1927-2005), 8 dan Aikikai shihan, shows his
irimi entrance and atemi strike at a mid-1990’s seminar in the
author’s dojo. Photo by Ulf Lundquist.

Nen – One with the Moment

The concept most difficult to explain, among those used in budo

philosophy, is nen. That may be the reason for it being rarely used in
texts as well as in dojo training. Still, let us try.
The kanji for nen is composed of two words: one is ima,
which means now, the present, and the other is kokoro (also
pronounced shin), representing the heart, but also the mind or spirit.
In western symbolism, the heart is usually described as the seat of
emotions. But in Japanese tradition, the will and the mentality are
what belong there.
The difference is not altogether insurmountable. Following
one’s heart, which is a European ideal, and trusting what the heart
dictates, comes very near to the Japanese concept. Willpower and
intention are expressions of the heart. Pure at heart, you go straight
ahead without hesitation, without ever being diverted.
Nen, the combined concept, can in an everyday context be
translated as thought, idea, sense, wish, concern, and such.
Generally speaking, it means suddenly getting an idea or sentiment.
The mind is in the present, the moment of the willpower. The heart is
filled with only one purpose.
More clues are given by how nen is combined with other
words in more complex concepts. Sennen means to be absorbed or
completely devoted to something. Nenjiru means prayer, neniri
concern, and nengan means an inner wish, one’s heart’s desire,
which is also called ichinen. So, in all cases nen is connected to the
will and the mental attitude.

The Moment

In aikido, the meaning of nen is extended and deepened. It

becomes a guiding rule for the mental attitude, how the mind should
operate during practice. First and foremost, you have to be
wholeheartedly concentrated on nothing but what you are involved in
at the moment. All your attention, and all your senses, should be
focused on what is at hand, what you are in the middle of.
Although the word nen is difficult to interpret,
understanding it is not as tricky as actually practicing it. Just like in
meditation, you can quickly notice how irrelevant things pop up in
your mind and disturb your practice. The five senses seem to
cooperate with the brain in interfering with the training. They have to
be cleaned and restrained, similar to how you in kiai gather all your
ki for one purpose.
But keeping the mind clean and fixed on the aikido training
are really just negations, and therefore not complete explanations of
what nen is. When the mind is focused like this, nen develops into an
insight and certainty, which will breed an aikido with the elegance of
the endlessly evident. You do not have to ponder and analyze, nor
do you need to prepare or process. It comes automatically.
Children often function like that with their knowledge and
thinking. Ask a mathematically gifted child how it solved a certain
calculation, and the response will often be “Because it is so,” or “I
just knew.” With a pure mind and a concentration solely on the task
of the moment, the answer often comes as quickly and readily as if
angels whispered in one’s ear.
 Perhaps the Greek philosopher Plato pointed out the same
mental ability, when he stated that man is born with all knowledge
already in his mind – he just has to be reminded of it. Then nen is
that reminded state of mind, when you need neither to search
through the brain for an answer, nor test your body in order to find
the next step. It comes naturally, at once.

Perception

You do not need to practice aikido that very long before you
experience moments of significantly sharpened perception, and a
considerably increased speed of your reflexes. An attack that turns
out differently than you expected, automatically leads to another
defense technique than you had prepared to do. Also attacks
completely without warning can be escaped in the same manner,
although you have no idea how you manage.
Nen gives a capacity that can very well be compared to
what we call the sixth sense. You are capable of much more than
you could imagine, and you perceive things that your eyes and ears
are hardly equipped to register. It is not at all reached by the power
and sharpness of thought. On the contrary, it demands that you
empty your mind of will and assumptions. You have to become as
blank as a newborn child.
Morihei Ueshiba told his students that eventually he got a
sixth sense that functioned almost like radar. When an attacker set
out to charge, Ueshiba perceived sort of a white flash of light,
preceding the attack. Thereby, he had plenty of time to avoid it. It did
not matter if the attacker was in sight or not. The white flash always
warned him.
You can also perceive it as an itch or a vague tickling
sensation, when a threat emerges – even if that threat is no more
than an idea in the head of the attacker. And if you happen to show a
gap in your defense, you can feel it as sort of a tickling in the part of
the body that is not protected. To reach this sensitivity, you must
lower the noise of your brain, so that you perceive the faint signals.
You empty your mind of thoughts. Instead you trust your inner
capacity and collect yourself in your center.
Morihei Ueshiba said that nen becomes a link between
man and the great whole, so that there is no longer anything out of
reach for the perception. That is to become one with the universe,
the natural. Therefore, you have to practice without purpose, without
selfishness or preconceptions.
Those who cannot throw away their ambitions will
constantly be disturbed and inhibited by them. Only the one who is
completely unbiased can accept whatever comes his or her way, and
adapt to it without difficulty. When you make your mind empty, it has
room for everything that comes, and perceives even the weakest
signals. So, nen is to make the mind empty, to throw away your
thoughts, and let your aikido be born exactly in the moment – as if it
did not exist beforehand, as if nothing existed beforehand.
 Above: The order of the kototama sounds.

Kototama – the Soul of Words

There is an American TV documentary from 1958 named

Rendezvous with Adventure, where two sturdy men in cowboy hats
visit Hombu dojo, the aikido headquarters in Tokyo. They travel
around the world in search for exciting challenges for real men, and
get curious about this strange martial art and its old founder.
At this time Morihei Ueshiba was around 75 years of age,
which did not stop him from waltzing around for a while with one of
the tall Americans. When they sit down for a conversation, the TV
reporters ask what is really behind aikido, what principles are at the
core of it, and how the old man who is about half their size can
perform such feats. Ueshiba points at a drawn circle on the table in
front of them, and says that every circle must have a center –
otherwise it cannot be drawn. The TV men mumble something
confused in response.
Then Ueshiba continues to speak solely about kototama
(often spelled kotodama). Koichi Tohei, who used to assist Ueshiba
in those days, has a hard time trying to translate it with his limited
knowledge of the English language. Finally, Ueshiba gives an
example of the mysticism of sounds that is the essence of kototama,
chanting a long vowel sound at the same time as he uses his fan to
draw a cross in the air.
Kototama was really the subtle core of Osensei’s aikido,
and occasionally he held long lectures on the subject to his students.
They understood little more than the American TV reporters did.
Fortunately, he never demanded of his students to study this
doctrine as he had done. On the contrary, he disapproved when
students tried to repeat his spiritual exercises. He interrupted them
with the words: “Don’t copy me!”
Nonetheless, in his soul and heart aikido was undoubtedly
an expression of the cosmology he had found in kototama. His aikido
was essentially a religious practice, based on the principles of
kototama. Ueshiba had an ardently religious view on the world,
based on Shinto and influenced by the many years he had spent
with the religious movement Omotokyo.

Vibrations

In traditional Shinto, there is a system of cosmology and

mysticism called kototama, describing the world through sounds and
vibrations. Kototama can be translated as the soul or spirit of the
words. It is a system of vowels, consonants, and combinations
thereof, where every sound has its meaning and underlying
significance. When the sounds are combined and pronounced, their
underlying powers get into play, through the working of their
vibrations. They carry their specific meaning and express it when
pronounced.
In kototama these sounds and what they signify are
exercised, as a form of meditation or purification ceremony. They are
chanted, like prayer or mantra, the Indian form of meditation on
sounds. But according to kototama, the powers of the sounds are
active also when pronounced in regular speech – whether the
speaker is aware of this or not.

Old Roots
 The system is certainly very old, and has grown to almost
impenetrable complexity. In addition, there are several different
schools of it, although the basic principles are the same. Kototama
gets its cosmology out of the Japanese religious sources Kojiki and
Nihongi, from the 8th century. The long names of the gods, and the
adventures they have in these books, are in kototama regarded as
keys to how the world was created, and what laws rule it – for men
as well as gods.
Similar mystic systems are found in other religions, such as
Buddhism and Hinduism, or in the Jewish teaching of kabbalah. Also
the anthroposophy movement, founded by Rudolf Steiner in the early
20th century, attaches certain values to the different sounds and
letters.
In Christianity, fragments of related thoughts can be
observed, for example in the first lines of the Gospel of John: “In the
beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word
was God.” The power of words is also evident in Genesis, where
God creates the world by simply ordering it to appear, bit by bit, with
the phrase: “Let there be...”
Perhaps the underlying thoughts of kototama come from
the Tantric teaching sphota-vada, which was introduced to Japan by
the Buddhist priest Kukai in the 9th century. He formed the Buddhist
movement Shingon, the Word of Truth, which still exists. The word
shingon means the same as the Indian Sanskrit word mantra,
referring to holy words that lead man to clarity and a higher
consciousness, when pronounced.
The most well known mantra is OM, the universal, written
with a symbol that contains the letters A, U, and M. When you
meditate on the mantra OM, the sound shall rise from the bottom of
the abdomen all the way to the top of the head, while the sound
glides from O to M. A classical Indian phrase is Om mani padme
hum: Om, the jewel, has appeared in the world. This perspective is
quite near that of kototama.
Kototama had a kind of renaissance in the beginning of the
th
20 century inside some religious movements, such as Omotokyo.
Some of these movements – though not Omotokyo, which had a
strikingly tolerant and open-minded world view – saw this cosmology
as confirmation of the superiority of the Japanese language. When
the Japanese emperor surrendered to the American forces, at the
end of World War II, then Japanese disappointment and shame
made Shinto lose its importance, thereby also kototama.
Today very few aikido instructors are familiar with
kototama, or show any interest in the system. Neither former doshu
Kisshomaru Ueshiba, nor present doshu Moriteru Ueshiba, seem to
have given kototama any particular significance in aikido. Others
have done so. The former shihan of Swedish aikido, Toshikazu
Ichimura, studied and taught kototama intensely, until he entered a
Japanese Christian movement. So did Masahilo Nakazono (1918-
1994), who taught aikido in France in the 1960’s, and moved to USA
in the early 1970’s. In the US he soon quit aikido completely, to focus
on kototama and natural medicine.
I believe that also the noble teacher Rinjiro Shirata (1912-
1993) was well acquainted with kototama, and surely some others of
Osensei’s direct students.
Although kototama plays no visible role in aikido or other
budo arts, it is there so to speak behind the scenes. Many kiai seem
to be linked to kototama principles, also substantial parts of the
cosmology that aikido and other budo arts imply and express.
Therefore, let us have a look at this intricate teaching.

Object and Subject

The Japanese Shinto source Kojiki, The Records of Ancient

Matters, from the 8th century, tells about how the sun goddess
Amaterasu once was so upset by the malice of the world that she
ran and hid in a cave. The world was darkened, and the other gods
did not know how to bring the light back. They gathered at the
entrance of the cave and begged Amaterasu to have pity on the
world and return to it, but she refused to comply.
Then they got the idea of luring her out with a mirror. They
held it up to Amaterasu, so that she could see herself in it. She got
so curious of her own reflection, and delighted by seeing something
that pure and brilliant in the world she had renounced, she finally got
out of the cave to have a closer look. The light returned to the world.
This tale is one of the most central of the religious legends
of Japan, which calls itself the realm of the sun. And there is great
symbolism in the goddess’ meeting with her own reflection, bringing
about the light.
Kototama regards the cosmos as two-sided: what is, and
its expression. Object and subject. What is has no limitation, but no
substance until it is noticeable, until it reflects itself and becomes
aware of itself. Accordingly, man exists through what he does, the
imprints he makes on the world. Each human being gets to know
himself by becoming aware of his own actions, his body, his
thoughts, and emotions. Our conscious mind is what makes our
being tangible, what makes us real.

Above: The 50 basic kototama words.

Creation

Kototama explains the emergence of the universe in the same

way. At first, there was only chaos, the great darkness, which existed
but could neither be perceived nor experienced. When there was
light, its reflection was born at the same time – the observation of the
light. What light would there be, without an eye to see it?
Kototama describes this process with sounds, where the
primordial dark chaos is U, which corresponds to the Shinto god
Ameno-Minaka-Nusi. The observer is the sound A, the god Takami-
Musubi, and the observed is the sound WA, the god Kami-Musubi.
When the observing force A has been born, two must follow it: the
memory of the observed, which is the sound O, and the conclusion,
the judgment of the observed, which is the sound E. From the
observed side WA, WO and WE are simultaneously born.
Out of these four of the third generation of creation, eight
new forces emerge – two from each of the four. They are the
consonants of kototama: N, Y, R, M, K, S, T, and H. Kototama
regards Y as a consonant, pronouncing it quite the same as the
English Y in such words as you or young.
Finally, there is a life force permeating all this, an ether
without borders, enclosing all the other forces and making them a
whole. Its active substance is the word I, represented by the god
Izanagi, and its passive object side is the sound WI, the god
Izanami. These two gods were twins, male and female, who were
quite instrumental in the creation of the world. They stirred the sea
and thereby raised the mud from its bottom that became Japan. It
was out of their incestuous marriage that the Imperial family was
born, according to the myths.
From this principle of creation, the words are sorted into a
system, where the vowels are called mothers, the consonants
fathers, and the combinations of them are the children. A diagram of
the sounds shows a total of fifty basic one-syllable words: the five
vowels, their five mirrors, and the forty combinations of vowels and
consonants. If all the fifty words are united into one, this is WN,
which stands for the all of the universe.
Sounds that are not included in this system, such as the
Scandinavian vowels Ä and Ö, as well as a number of consonants,
are by kototama regarded as impure sounds, invented by mankind.
Such sounds are not condemned, but they do not carry the spiritual
meaning described by kototama.
Among the left out consonants is L, but the Japanese
language does not separate L from R, which is included. D, G, and Z
are also missing, but their unvoiced counterparts T, K, and S are not.
On the other hand, both the voiced consonant B and the unvoiced P
are missing, although they do exist – rarely – in the Japanese
language. There may be another phonetic explanation somewhere.

Hidden
 Nakazono and his kototama teacher Koji Ogasawara (1903-
1982) claimed that the kototama principles were hidden to mankind
when they lived in Takamahara, a sort of Eden. This was done so
that man should struggle to explore the world, and through this
deepened contemplation of it make it whole, by proving the world to
itself.
This mapping and investigation of the world has been
going on for four thousand years. There is soon time for us to come
across the basic evidence of the existence of kototama, and then a
third era will commence. Nakazono studied Takeuti Kobunken, a
Shinto classic, and concluded that it will happen in the year 2011. By
then we have found confirmations of the religious principles, and we
settle in a world of peace, which is whole and observes itself in its
wholeness.
The thought that sounds or vibrations could be connected
to the laws and forces of the universe is not necessarily that
farfetched. Kototama practitioners of today refer to discoveries within
the science of physics that point in the same direction. Light consists
of waves, and so does sound – although of a much slower kind.
Atoms contain particle movement, and the whole cosmos is full of all
kinds of radiation. Practically everything in the universe consists of
periodic movement – i.e. vibrations.
The question is if something that does not move can exist
at all.
We talk about the absolute zero temperature (-459.67°
Fahrenheit, -273.16° Celsius) as a cold where atomic movement has
stopped completely. It has not been measured anywhere. Nothing in
the world wants to be completely still. Actually, since matter is a form
of energy, it would cease to exist if its movement halted altogether.
In kototama, this basic principle of eternal movement is
complemented with theories about the significance of certain
vibrations and sounds. Certainly, this is intimately linked to language,
and to the emotions and associations that different sounds generate
in us when we pronounce them. Although it is all based on Japanese
language and pronunciation, it is not that difficult to see the
reasoning and experience behind it.
 Above: The kototama cosmological gyroscope.

The Vowels

The five vowels describe stages in human evolution. The same

stages can be found in the development of civilization.
U is the first stage. It is pronounced like in ‘human’ or ‘you’.
This is the basic stage, which deals with survival and procreation.
Only strictly concrete matters have an appeal on this level, which is
focused on production and fortune.
O, pronounced as in ‘order’ or ‘source’, is the constructive
stage, signified by engineering, inventions, and progress. Ambition
rules, everyday life gets organized, buildings are erected, and
technology advances. Natural science rules the thoughts.
A, pronounced as the first vowel sound in ‘sigh’ or ‘my’, is
the reflecting stage, where existence is contemplated and portrayed.
The longings for meaning and beauty grow. Art and religion belong
to this stage, as do the emotions.
E, pronounced as in ‘ethics’, actually is the ethical stage.
On this level the previous stages can be seen clearly. Their traits and
purposes can be judged. Right and wrong, good and bad, are
possible to perceive. The moral principles and man’s mission in life
are considered.
I, pronounced as in ‘see’ or ‘bee’, is the very life force that
permeates everything. Only when this stage is reached, all the
pieces of the puzzle fall into place. One can realize one’s insights,
and integrate them with one’s life. Broodings of earlier stages lose
their meaning. Everything is clear, and man is both complete and
born anew. This highest stage is in itself nothing new. It brings life
into all the experiences of the previous stages, and puts them in the
right perspective.

Kiai

Several common kiai can be depicted as directions in this

evolutionary ladder. UI, which was the kiai used by my former
teacher Toshikazu Ichimura, describes the whole ladder from its
base to its top. It is a kiai to stimulate the movement upward, and to
show that the movement made during the kiai lacks nothing.
EI, a very common kiai in traditional budo, contains the two
top steps of the ladder, where the ethical stage is stressed and
awakened to real life. This kiai expresses a moral right to the action
in question, and a wish that it will lead to good, also to give life
instead of stealing it.
Kiai that express the opposite direction on the ladder are
not as common, especially not among Japanese practitioners.
According to kototama they must be regarded as unfortunate. The
one who likes to shout IA happens to reveal that by his technique he
wants to constrain life to an art, which means that he has a
narcissistic urge to show off his ability.
Notice that in the word for no, iie, which the Japanese do
not like to use, the vowels travel backward on the kototama ladder,
but in yes, hai, they move upward.
 Above: The basic kototama sounds explained.

The Consonants

The consonants, which are called the father sounds, are not as
easy to explain as the vowels. They are born in pairs out of O, WO,
E, and WE, where the pure vowels O and E stand for the subjective
active, and their opposites stand for the objective passive. This also
goes for the consonants linked to them.
The first four – N, Y, R and M – belong to the passive side,
with their softly extended sounds. The four on the active side – K, S,
T, and H – are short and hard in tone, with the possible exception of
S, but that sound has a sharpness that still makes it fit this group.
The consonants represent directions. Therefore they are
meaningless until they carry something – as when they are
combined with the vowels. N is attracting, Y is distancing, R is
whirling, M is revolving, K is scratching, S is piercing, T is spreading,
and H is developing. The first four are of the passive type, and the
others of the active type.

Child Sounds

When vowels and consonants form their children, each of them

gets its own meaning, depending on the sounds it combines. These
meanings are often abstract and hard to comprehend, as the
teachers of kototama present them. Although the child sounds are
supposed to be the most concrete expressions of the kototama
principles, the explanations are as vague as if failing to decipher
their meaning. We could compare it to the atoms, which seem to be
increasingly incomprehensible to science the closer they are
observed, and the smaller parts they are divided into.
Still, let us try to explain the workings of the kototama child
sounds, by the use of a joyous example.
When we laugh, that sound can usually be described as
the consonant H in combination with one or other vowel. That is how
laughter sounds, and that is how we write it. In kototama, how we
write sounds is regarded as of high symbolic value.
H always means to develop, like the flower when it blooms,
or for that matter fire when it consumes. Laughter gushes forth from
our interior. It is certainly of the subjective active kind. The choice of
vowel reveals the character of the laughter, the spirit of it.
HI is the happy laughter, feeding on the delight of existing
and being able to experience the fun, whatever it is. This laughter is
like being tickled, or pleasantly drunk.
HE is the victorious laughter of the one who knows that he
is right, who sees his plans realized, or who rejects others. This
laughter does not have that much to do with joy, but with analysis
and conclusion. It can often sound supercilious or even scornful.
HA is the big laughter where the sense of joy is completely
released. Here the emotion is central – having fun and showing it.
Such laughter must be loud and lasting. When the syllable is
pronounced just once, it expresses pride and triumph.
HO is the laughter of Santa Claus, of course. The fat old
man comes with presents, traveling all over the world to spread
some materialistic happiness. This is the laughter of someone who
comes from somewhere and is going somewhere else, and who can
allow himself to laugh on the way, but still does not interrupt the
journey. It is a laughter that accompanies a pleasing process, but not
one that erupts at the end of a joke.
HU is the deep laughter from man’s dark interior. It
preferably follows a horror story, or other ways of inducing fright. The
feeling is obscure. It could be the sound of crying or grunting, just as
well as that of laughing. The sound is difficult to interpret, and
therefore worrying, far from jolly.
Of course, the above is little more than onomatopoetic
simplification, like in comic strips, and should not be taken any more
seriously. Nonetheless, speaking about comic strips, it is interesting
that they have found simplifying expressions of human behavior and
emotions that come close to the kototama principles.

Suitable Kiai

Returning to the kiai of the budo arts, kototama principles point

out the benefit of choosing kiai according to what you want to
accomplish.
When in karatedo you want to practice tameshiware,
breaking objects, a combination of S for the penetration and O for
the technique, the constructive and the destructive, is the most
suitable.
Oddly, many karate practitioners have the habit of greeting
each other and responding to their instructor with a word that sounds
like OS, the kototama meaning of which is to use one’s technique in
order to penetrate. The one who prefers to invigorate the one he hits
should use SI as a kiai – to penetrate in order to give life, like the
injection of medicine to an ailing patient.
In aikido, the consonants R and M, whirl and revolve, ought
to be the most suitable. Also fitting is the artistic vowel A, which is
also the first sound of the name of this martial art. Then it will
become like a dance.
If you wish an aikido rooted in the principle of
peacefulness, and fostering others to it, the vowel E is the obvious
choice. But then the consonants must change from passive to active.
Maybe KE to approach the partner and correct him or her, then TE to
spread the forces and thereby put an end to the battle – that
corresponds to the steps irimi and tenkan.
Another kototama way to perform irimi-tenkan is to start the
spirit of penetrating the basic aggression of the attacker with SU,
followed by TE to spread and transform the energy.
Kototama in Aikido

Kototama is not only an abstract cosmology of vibrations. It can

be practiced – either in itself, by chanting the sounds as a way of
self-purification, or in aikido, in order to fill the techniques with
meaning.
Aikido is usually practiced in silence, in spite of the fact that
Osensei made sounds constantly in his aikido training. His students
may have felt intimidated by the power his intense sounds carried.
Nevertheless, sounds can be used by both the attacker and the
defender, and there is much to discover in the process.
The attacker should use a kiai that fits the attack’s type and
purpose. Starting in U brings up the animalistic fight for survival that
is probably the very root of any aggression. UO takes this energy
and uses it to power a technique, whether it is constructive or
destructive. The O sound makes the attack concrete and its effect
lasting.
Of course, other kiai work fine too, but UO is a basic
starting point for the defender to work on, and try to transform.
The defender should make his or her sound relate to that
of the attacker. An UO attack needs to be corrected. The response
should change the situation from one of hostility, into one of learning
and development. A sudden irimi entrance and atemi strike done
with IE takes the very power of life into scolding or even punishing
the attacker for the mistake of hostility. It is a reprimand, a lesson to
be learned.
If the kiai is EI, the sounds in reverse order, then the
defender expresses his or her right to do away with the situation as it
is, and create new life, a fresh start for both. Where IE arrests the
situation, EI solves it and moves on. Both methods are worth
studying.
Now, an aikido technique can be described by kototama to
contain three stages: The initial chaos of the attacking spirit, which is
like the world before its creation, then the transformation of that
situation into one of beauty and creativity, and finally the moment
when the attacker realizes the transformation and learns from it. This
is like the process of the world creation, expressed by U-A-WA.
You can do any aikido technique with these three sounds,
one after the other. U is the initial moment, when the attacker’s spirit
rules the situation. A is when the defender makes the taisabaki
evasive movement and leads the attacker into a technique, without
the latter realizing what is going on. WA is the throw in a nage or the
end pinning in a katame technique, which is the moment when the
attacker realizes what has happened.
You learn a lot by contemplating these three phases of any
aikido technique, whether you make kototama sounds during it or
not. The sounds will definitely help you discover these phases and
refine them.
There are many other ways to use kototama in aikido
practice, but the above ones are simple, and still quite rewarding.
From then on, trust your center, and experiment.

Aikido in Kototama

Of course, we have to analyze the word aikido with kototama.

The first two vowels describe a movement from art and emotion to
life itself – an art that should give life. That was no doubt Osensei’s
wish. Ki is the force, something that touches on life itself, and
thereby constantly stimulates it. DO does in kototama become TO,
which signifies spreading knowledge and ability. Then the whole
concept of aikido can be explained as: spreading knowledge about
how to stimulate life itself into making a lively art.
Such a study is worth a lifetime. Expressed in kototama it
also clearly shows a value reaching far beyond the dojo walls.
Anything less would not have attracted people to aikido practice year
after year, decade after decade. Most of those who have trained
aikido for that long can give you no answer as to why, what is
keeping them. Maybe kototama has the answer, and maybe not.
Nonetheless, I have noticed that its principles make for
inspiring exercises in aikido practice, and stimulate new approaches
– especially to those who have done aikido the longest.
 Appendix

Above: Shihonage entrance. Photo by the author.

Osensei’s Rules for Training Aikido

When the number of practitioners increased at Morihei Ueshiba’s

dojo, some of the senior students asked him if there should be some
rules for training. He was not that much into regulations, so he
smiled at them and said: “So, times have changed!”
Then he quickly wrote down the six guidelines below. This
was around 1935, and since then the rules have been called
approximately Reminders in Aikido Practice. They may seem a bit
dramatic in their choice of words, here and there, but are still used
as a guide for each aikidoist. Former doshu Kisshomaru Ueshiba,
the son of Osensei, suggested a modern version of the rules – the
addendum below.
The texts are from Kisshomaru Ueshiba’s book The Spirit
of Aikido, originally published in 1984.

Reminders in Aikido Practice

1 Aikido decides life and death in a single strike, so students

must carefully follow the instructor’s teaching and not compete to
see who is the strongest.
2 Aikido is the way that teaches how one can deal with
several enemies. Students must train themselves to be alert not just
to the front, but to all sides and the back.
3 Training should always be conducted in a pleasant and
joyful atmosphere.
4 The instructor teaches only one small aspect of the art. Its
versatile applications must be discovered by each student through
incessant practice and training.
5 In daily practice first begin by moving your body [Osensei
referred specifically to the tai no tenkan/tai no henko exercise] and
then progress to more intensive practice. Never force anything
unnaturally or unreasonably. If this rule is followed, then even elderly
people will not hurt themselves and they can train in a pleasant and
joyful atmosphere.
6 The purpose of aikido is to train mind and body and to
produce sincere, earnest people. Since all the techniques are to be
transmitted person-to-person, do not randomly reveal them to others,
for this might lead to their being used by hoodlums.

Addendum to the Rules, by Kisshomaru Ueshiba

1 Proper aikido can never be mastered unless one strictly

follows the instructor’s teaching.
2 Aikido as a martial art is perfected by being alert to
everything going on around us and leaving no vulnerable opening
(suki).
3 Practice becomes joyful and pleasant once one has trained
enough not to be bothered by pain.
4 Do not be satisfied by what is taught at the dojo. One must
constantly digest, experiment and develop what one has learned.
5 One should never force things unnaturally or unreasonably
in practice. One should undertake training suited to one’s body,
physical condition, and age.
6 The aim of aikido is to develop the truly human self. It
should not be used to display ego.
Budo Charter – the Japanese Rules

In 1987, the Japanese Budo Association (Nippon Budo Shingikai)

established a Charter of budo, the Japanese martial arts. It consists
of six articles to serve as guidelines for how budo practice should be
carried out. The work on this Charter had taken six years, with
lectures and meetings in big committees. The aikido representative
was former doshu Kisshomaru Ueshiba.
The Japanese Budo Association is a loosely formed
association of the independent Japanese organizations of judo,
kendo, kyudo, sumo, karatedo, aikido, kempo, naginata, jukendo,
and Nippon Budokan.

The Budo Charter

Budo, rooted in the martial spirit of ancient Japan, is an aspect of

traditional culture that has evolved from jutsu to do through centuries
of historical and social change.
Following the concept of unity of mind and technique, budo
has developed and refined a discipline of austere training, which
promotes etiquette, skillful technique, physical strength, and the unity
of mind and body. Modern Japanese have inherited these values
and they play a prominent role in forming Japanese personalities. In
modern Japan the budo spirit is a source of powerful energy and
promotes a pleasant disposition in the individual.
Today, budo has been diffused throughout the world and
has attracted strong interest internationally. However, infatuation with
mere technical training and undue concern with winning are severe
threats to the essence of budo. To prevent this perversion of the art,
we must continually examine ourselves and endeavor to perfect and
preserve this national heritage.
It is with this hope that we establish the Budo Charter in
order to uphold the fundamental principles of traditional budo.
1 Object

The object of budo is to cultivate character, enrich the ability to

make value judgments, and foster a well-disciplined and capable
individual through participation in physical and mental training
utilizing martial techniques.

2 Keiko

When practicing daily, one must constantly follow decorum,

adhere to the fundamentals, and resist the temptation to pursue
mere technical skill rather than the unity of mind and technique.

3 Shiai

In a match and the performance of kata, one must manifest budo

spirit, exert oneself to the utmost, win with modesty, accept defeat
gracefully, and constantly exhibit temperate attitudes.

4 Dojo

The dojo is a sacred place for training one’s mind and body.
Here, one must maintain discipline, proper etiquette, and formality.
The training area must be a quiet, clean, safe and solemn
environment.

5 Teaching

When teaching trainees, in order to be an effective teacher, the

budo master should always strive to cultivate his/her character, and
further his/her own skill and discipline of mind and body. He/she
should not be swayed by winning or losing, or display arrogance
about his/her superior skill, but rather he/she should retain the
attitudes suitable for a role model.

6 Promotion

When promoting budo, one should follow traditional values, seek

substantial training, contribute to research, and do one’s utmost to
perfect and preserve this traditional art with an understanding of
international points of view.
Glossary of Aikido Terms

The aikido terminology is in Japanese. It’s “all Greek” to the

beginner, but in time we all learn most of it. Here is a comprised
dictionary of aikido terms, with short translations and explanations.

ai harmony, unity, blending

aihanmi basic relation between partners: both have same foot
forward (left or right), compare gyakuhanmi
aihanmi katatedori wrist grip, right on right or left on left, also
called kosadori, compare gyakuhanmi katatedori
aiki blending/uniting one’s ki with that of the partner
aikibatto sword exercises, solo or pair
aikibudo budo based on the aiki principle, earlier name for aikido
aikido the way through the life energy to harmony/unity
aikidoka one who does aikido, specifically on an advanced or
professional level
aikido toho Nishio sensei’s iaido school
Aikijinja the aikido temple in Iwama
aikijo aikido jo-staff exercises
aikijutsu name on the Daito ryu martial art, also called aikijujutsu
Aikikai organization and “label” for Morihei Ueshiba’s aikido
aikiken aikido sword exercises
aikinage aiki-throw, throwing technique
aiki no michi aikido (michi=do)
aikiotoshi aiki-drop, throwing technique
aikitaiso aikido warm-up exercises
aite partner in training
arigato thanks
arigato gozaimasu thanks for something going on
 arigato gozaimashita thanks for something completed
ashi leg, foot
ate hit, strike
atemi strike to the body
awase harmonizing/blending movement
ayumiashi altering steps, left and right, like normal walking,
compare tsugiashi

barai/harai parry, ward off

batto draw the sword, also called nuki
bo staff, longer than the jo
bokken wooden training sword
bokuto same as bokken
bu war, battle, fight
budo the way of war/battle, the Japanese martial arts
budoka one who does any budo, specifically on an advanced or
professional level
bugei battle art, old term
bukiwaza weapons training
bushi warrior
bushido the way of the warrior

chado tea ceremony

chikara force/strength
choku direct
chokutsuki direct strike with the jo
chudan middle, compare jodan and gedan
chudankamae guard position with a weapon at belly height
chudantsuki strike at belly/solar plexus, with weapon or empty
hand
 chukyusha continuing student, with a mid-level kyu grade,
compare jokyusha

dai big, also o

daisho sword pair, the long and the short sword
Daito ryu aikijutsu school
dame wrong, bad
dan level, black belt grade in budo
dao/tao transcription of the Chinese word for way, do
deshi student
do way, also michi
dogi training dress, also keikogi
do-in self massage tradition
dojo training hall
dojo cho head of a training hall
doka poem about the way
domo much
domo arigato gozaimasu thank you so much, for something
going on
domo arigato gozaimashita thank you so much, for something
completed
dori take, catch, grab
dosa movement
doshu way leader, head of a budo art
dozo please/by all means

embukai public demonstration

empi strike with elbow
eri neck, collar
eridori collar grip by the neck
F

fukushidoin assisting instructor, title for aikido teacher, 2-3 dan,

compare shidoin and shihan
funakogi undo, rowing exercise, also called torifune
furitama exercise to still ki
futaridori/futarigake two attackers

gaeshi/kaeshi returning, reversed

gamae/kamae guard, basic position
gasshuku training camp, lodging together
gedan low, compare jodan and chudan
gedanbarai low block
geiko/keiko training
geri kick
gi dress, as in dogi or keikogi
giri/kiri cut
go five
gokyo fifth teaching, pinning technique
gomen nasai excuse me
Gorin no sho Book of Five Rings, book written by Miyamoto
Musashi in the 17th century
gotai/kotai hard body, static training, compare jutai, ryutai, and
kinagare
gyaku reverse, opposite
gyakuhanmi basic relation between partners: they have opposite
foot forward, compare aihanmi
gyakuhanmi katatedori wrist grip, right on left or left on right,
compare aihanmi katatedori
gyakutsuki strike with opposing arm and leg forward, compare
oitsuki
H

hachi eight
Hagakure Hiding the Leaves, classic samurai book from the 18th
century
hai yes
hajime begin
hakama traditional wide pants, used in aikido
handachi half standing
hanmi half body
hanmigamae angled guard position
hanmi handachiwaza sitting versus standing
hanshi title in kendo, from 8th dan, compare renshi and kyushi
hantai opposed
happo eight directions, compare shiho
hara stomach
harai/barai sweep away, parry
harakiri cut belly, ritual suicide, also called seppuku
hassogaeshi jo staff technique
hassogamae guard with weapon at shoulder level
henkawaza, changing techniques, variations on basic
techniques, also shifting from one technique to another
hidari left (right: migi)
hiji elbow
hijidori grip on elbow
hijikimeosae pinning technique, sometimes called rokkyo
hiki pull
hineri twist
hiragana Japanese phonetic writing, compare katakana
hito e mi making the body small, guard position with more of an
angle than hanmi
hiza knee
ho method
ho direction, side
hombu head quarters
 Hombu dojo head dojo, used for the Aikikai head dojo in Tokyo

iaido the art of drawing the Japanese sword

iaito training sword, usually not sharpened
ichi one
ichiban first, best
iie no
iki willpower
ikkajo older term for ikkyo
ikki one ki, bottoms up, toast
ikkyo first teaching, pinning technique
ikkyo undo exercise of the basic ikkyo movement
in Japanese for the Chinese concept yin, compare yo
ippon one point
ipponken strike with one knuckle
irimi in to the body, inward, compare tenkan
iriminage inward throw, throwing technique
Iwama Japanese town, where Osensei had a dojo and a home
Iwama ryu Saito sensei’s aikido style

jiyuwaza free training

jo wooden staff, 127.5 centimeters
jo awase jo staff exercises
jodan high, compare chudan and gedan
jodankamae guard with weapon over head
jodantsuki strike at head
jodanuke high block
jodo the way of the staff
jodori defense against jo staff
 jokyusha advanced student, with a higher kyu grade, compare
chukyusha
ju ten
ju soft
judo the soft way, or the way to softness
jujigarami/jujinage cross throw
jujutsu the soft art
jumbitaiso warm-up exercises, also called aikitaiso
juntsuki strike with the same arm and leg forward, also called
oitsuki, compare gyakutsuki
jutai soft body, smooth training, compare gotai, ryutai, and
kinagare
jutsu technique or art

kaeshi/gaeshi returning, reverse

kaeshitsuki reverse strike with jo staff
kaeshiwaza counter techniques
kagamibiraki Japanese New Year celebration, held January 11
kai club, association
kaiso founder
kaitennage rotation throw, throwing technique
kaitenosae rotation pinning technique
kakaedori embrace
kakarigeiko attackers in line, one after the other
kakudo angle
kamae/gamae guard position
kami divinity
kamiza honorary place in a dojo, compare shomen and shinzen
kampai cheers, toast
kan intuition
kangeiko mid-winter training
kanji ideograms, the Chinese writing
kanren linked, connected
 kanrenwaza linked techniques, one technique followed by
another, compare renzokuwaza
kansetsu joint on body
karatedo the way of the empty hand, or the way through the
hand to emptiness
Kashima shintoryu traditional sword school
kata form, pre-decided movements
kata shoulder
katadori shoulder grip
katadori menuchi shoulder grip followed by shomenuchi
katakana Japanese phonetic writing, compare hiragana
katamewaza pinning techniques
katana the Japanese sword, also ken, to, and tachi
katate one-handed technique
katatedori wrist grip
katate ryotedori grip with both hands, also called morotedori
Katori shintoryu traditional sword school
keiko/geiko training
keikogi training dress, also dogi
ken sword, also katana, to, and tachi
kendo Japanese fencing
ki spirit, life energy
kiai gathered ki, usually used for shout in budo
ki-aikido Tohei sensei’s aikido style
kihon basics
kihonwaza basic training
kikai tanden the ocean of ki in the body’s center
kime focusing
kimusubi tying one’s ki to that of the partner
kinagare/ki no nagare streaming ki, flowing training, compare
gotai, jutai, and ryutai
Ki no kenkyukai Tohei sensei’s aikido school, also Shinshin
toitsu
kiri/giri cut
kirikaeshi turning cut, sword exercise
koan riddle in Zen
kobudo older budo
 kogeki attack
kogekiho attack techniques
kohai one’s junior, compare sempai
Kojiki religious Japanese book from the 8th century
kokoro heart, will, mind, also pronounced shin
kokyu breathing
kokyuho breathing exercise, throwing technique
kokyunage breath throw
kokyu ryoku breath power
kosa cross over, pass
kosadori cross-over grip, same as aihanmi katatedori
koshi hip
koshinage hip throw
kotai see gotai
kote wrist
kotegaeshi reversed wrist, throwing technique
kotehineri twisted wrist, sankyo
kotemawashi turned wrist, nikyo
kotodama/kototama spirit of words, Japanese cosmology based
on sounds
ku nine
ku emptiness
kubi neck
kubishime neck choke
kuden oral tradition or teaching
kumi group, set
kumijo jo staff exercises, jo against jo
kumitachi sword exercises, sword against sword
kumite empty handed fight
kumiuchi ancient Japanese wrestling in full armor
kuzushi break balance
kyo principle, learning
kyoshi title in kendo, 6-7 dan, compare renshi and hanshi
kyu grade before blackbelt, compare dan
kyudo the way of the bow and arrow
L

(L not used in Japanese)

ma distance between training partners

maai harmonious, balanced distance between training partners
mae front, forward, compare ushiro
maegeri straight kick
mae ukemi forward fall, compare ushiro ukemi
makiwara target for hitting practice in karatedo
maru circle
mawashi revolving, turning
mawashigeri roundhouse kick
mawate turning
me eye
men head
michi way, also do
migi right (left: hidari)
misogi purification, cleansing
mochi hold or grip, also called dori
mochikata gripping attacks
mo ikkai do again
mokuso meditation, also called zazen
moro both
morotedori grip with both hands, also called katate ryotedori
mu nothing, empty
mushin empty mind
mudansha trainee without dan grade, compare yudansha
mune chest
munedori collar grip by the chest
musubi tie together
N

nagare flow, streaming

nage throw, also used for the one doing the aikido technique,
compare tori
nagewaza throwing techniques
naginata Japanese halberd
nakaima here and now
nana seven, also pronounced shichi
nen the purity and unity of the mind
ni two
Nihon/Nippon Japan
Nihongi religious Japanese book from the 8th century
nikajo older name for nikyo
nikyo second teaching, pinning technique
nin person
ninindori two attackers, also called futaridori
ninja courier and spy in old Japan
Nippon/Nihon Japan
Nito ichiryu/Niten ichiryu School of Two Swords/Two Heavens,
Miyamoto Musashi’s sword school
noto return the sword to the scabbard
nuki draw the sword, also called batto
nukite strike with fingertips

o big, also dai

obi belt
ocha tea
oitsuki strike with same arm and foot forward, also called
jontsuki
omote front, surface, compare ura
Omotokyo a Shinto society
onegai shimasu please, asking for something
 osae press down, pinning
osensei great teacher, in aikido Morihei Ueshiba
otagai ni rei bow to each others
otoshi drop
oyowaza applied techniques, modified for efficiency

(P rarely used in Japanese)

(Q not used in Japanese)

randori disorderly grabbing, free training

rei bow
reigi etiquette, also called reishiki
renshi title in kendo, 4-6 dan, compare hanshi and kyoshi
renshu training
renzoku continuous
renzoku uchikomi jo staff exercise
renzokuwaza consecutive techniques, a series of techniques
ritsurei standing bow
rokkyo sixth teaching, pinning technique, see hijikime osae
roku six
ryo both
ryotedori gripping both wrists
ryu school
ryutai flowing body, fluid training, compare gotai, jutai, and
kinagare
S

sabaki action or handling

sake rice wine
samurai to serve, Japanese warrior class
san three
sankajo older term for sankyo
sankaku triangle
sankakutai triangle shape, position of the feet in hanmi
sankyo third teaching, pinning technique
sannindori/sanningake three attackers
sanpo three directions
satori enlightenment in Zen
saya scabbard
seika no itten, the one point below the navel, the body center,
also called tanden
seiki life energy
seiza correct sitting, sit on knees
sempai one’s senior, compare kohai
sen no sen before the attack, countering before the strike
sensei teacher
sensen no sen before before the attack, a leading initiative
seppuku cut belly, ritual suicide with sword, also called harakiri
shi four, also pronounced yon
shiai competition
shiatsu massage
shichi seven, also pronounced nana
shidoin instructor, middle title for aikido teacher, 4-5 dan,
compare fukushidoin and shihan
shihan expert example, high title for aikido teacher, from 6 dan,
compare fukushidoin and shidoin
shiho four directions
shihonage four directions throw, throwing technique
shikaku square
shikaku dead angle
shiki courage
 shikko knee walking
shime choke
shin heart, will, mind, also pronounced kokoro
shinai kendo sword of bamboo
Shindo Musoryu jodo school
shinken sharp authentic Japanese sword
Shinshin toitsu Tohei sensei’s aikido school, Ki no kenkyukai
Shinto the way of the gods, Japanese religion
shinzen seat of the gods, in a dojo usually a position on the wall
farthest from the entrance, compare kamiza and shomen
shisei posture
shite the one leading, defender in aikido, also called tori or nage
shizentai natural body posture
sho first, beginning
shodan first dan grade
shodo calligraphy
Shodokan Tomiki sensei’s aikido school
shomen front of the head
shomen head place of the dojo, compare shinzen and kamiza
shomen ni rei bow to head place of the dojo
shomenuchi strike to head
shoshinsha beginner
shuto hand ridge strike
sode sleeve
sodedori sleeve grip
sodeguchidori grip on the cuff of the sleeve
soto outside, outer, compare uchi
sotodeshi student who lives outside the dojo, compare uchideshi
sotokaiten outer rotation, compare uchikaiten
sotouke block from outside, compare uchiuke
suburi basic exercises with sword or staff
suki opening
sumi corner
sumikiri sharpness of body and mind
sumimasen excuse me
sumo traditional Japanese wrestling
suri rub, scrape
 sutemiwaza techniques with losing one’s own balance
suwariwaza seated training, also called suwate
suwate seated training, also called suwariwaza

tachi sword, also to, ken, and katana

tachi standing
tachidori defense against sword
tachiwaza training standing up
tai body
taijutsu body techniques, unarmed techniques
tai no henko body turn, also called tai no tenkan
tai no tenkan body turn, also called tai no henko
taisabaki body move, evasive movement in aikido
taiso exercises
takemusu improvised martial art
takemusu aiki improvised martial art through the principle of aiki
tambo short staff
tameshi test
tameshigiri cutting test with sword
tameshiware hitting test in karatedo
tanden body center, compare seika no itten
taninzugake several attackers
tanren drill
tanto/tanken knife
tantodori defense against knife
tao/dao Chinese for do
tatami mat
tate stand up
te hand
tegatana hand sword, hand ridge in sword like movements
tekubi wrist
tekubiosae pinned wrist, yonkyo
tenchinage heaven-earth throw, throwing technique
tenkan turn
 tettsui hammer strike
to sword, also ken, tachi, and katana
tobigeri jump kick
tobikoshi fall over hip, break fall
tomauchi jo staff technique
tori the one who takes, defender in aikido, also called nage and
shite
torifune rowing exercise, also called funakogi undo
tsuba sword guard
tsugiashi following step, back foot following and not passing
front foot, compare ayumiashi
tsuka sword hilt
tsuki strike, with a weapon or empty hand

uchi hit
uchi inside, within, inner, compare soto
uchideshi student living in the dojo, compare sotodeshi
uchikaiten inner rotation, compare sotokaiten
uchikata striking and hitting attack forms
uchikomi hitting repeatedly
uchiuke block from inside, compare sotouke
ude arm
udekimenage arm lock throw
udenobashi extended arm, gokyo
udeosae pinned arm, ikkyo
uke the one receiving, attacker in aikido
uke block, parry
ukemi falling
undo exercise
ura backside, inside, reverse side, compare omote
uraken backhand strike
ushiro behind, backwards, compare mae
ushirogeri backward kick
ushiro kiriotoshi rear cutting drop, throwing technique
 ushiro ukemi backward fall, compare mae ukemi
ushirowaza attacks from behind

(V not used in Japanese)

waka sensei young teacher, used in aikido for the successor of

doshu
waki side
wakizashi short sword
ware break, split
waza technique, skill, training method

(X not used in Japanese)

yame stop
yang sunny side, male pole, in Japanese yo, compare yin
yari spear
yawara old jujutsu
yin shady side, female pole, in Japanese in, compare yang
yo Japanese for yang
yoko side, sideways, horizontal
yokogeri side kick
yokogiri side cut
yokomen side of the head
yokomenuchi strike to the side of the head
 yoko ukemi side fall
yon four, also pronounced shi
yonkajo older term for yonkyo
yonkyo fourth teaching, pinning technique
Yoseikan Mochizuki sensei’s aikido school
Yoshinkan Shioda sensei’s aikido school
yudansha dan graded, compare mudansha

za seated, sit
Zaidan Hojin Aikikai Aikikai Foundation
zanshin remaining spirit, continued concentration
zarei sitting bow
zazen sitting meditation, also called mokuso
Zen a form of buddhism
zengo around, forward and back, front and rear
zori sandals

Numbers

1 ichi
2 ni
3 san
4 shi / yon
5 go
6 roku
7 shichi / nana
8 hachi
9 ku
10 ju
20 ni-ju
21 ni-ju-ichi
100 hyaku
1000 sen
Aikido Websites

I have an aikido website that contains quite a lot of material not

included in this book. Among other things, I describe a number of
aikido techniques in some detail. I have also posted video clips of
them. Occasionally, I add things to the website – usually focusing
more on aikido practice than on theory. Here it is:
www.stenudd.com/aikido

There is a lot about aikido on the internet, of course. Here are

some website I can recommend. Most of them you probably already
know about.
www.aikikai.or.jp is the website of Aikikai Hombu dojo in
Tokyo, with information about that dojo and about the rules of the
Aikikai system.
www.aikiweb.com is Jun Akiyama’s very extensive
website about aikido, also containing a lively forum that is the
biggest about aikido on the internet.
www.aikidojournal.com is Stanley Pranin’s big website,
full of material from the many years of his work with Aiki News /
Aikido Journal. It also contains his trustworthy Aikido Encyclopedia,
and a very active forum.
www.aikidofaq.com is the old aikido FAQ by Kjartan
Clausen. He has not updated it in a while, but it is still filled with
interesting aikido material.
www.aikido-international.org is the website of the
International Aikido Federation. It includes links to many national
federations of aikido.
www.budo.net/Enighet is the website of my own dojo
Enighet in Malmö, Sweden. Some of it is in English, but most of the
updates are in Swedish only.