Inryoku Volume 6 Issue 4

“The way people interacted with the door was often reflective of how they interacted with their training partners. Your training partners, exams, kata, demonstrations…these things are all obstacles to be negotiated. They are all doors to pass through. And when you come to a door, do you expect to turn the knob and walk through without resistance? Do you expect the same when doing ikkyo? And when you meet resistance, how do you respond?”

Inryoku Volume 6 Issue 4 (bonus issue)

This bonus issue of Inryoku first appeared in a 2012 issue of the Aikido World Alliance’s newsletter. It’s about the AWA’s 2012 Spring Camp with Eiji Katsurada Sensei from Hombu Dojo in Toyko, Japan. Katsurada Sensei is ranked nanadan and holds the title of shihan (7-degree black belt and “teacher of teachers”). He is a student of Aikido Doshu Moriteru Ueshiba (doshu means leader of the way). Ueshiba Doshu is the grandson of aikido founder Morihei Ueshiba. You cannot get much closer to aikido’s origins than this!

I dug up this article because Katsurada Sensei will be teaching at the AWA’s 2024 Fall Camp! The seminar is October 17-20 at Keishinkan Dojo in Memphis, TN. I hope this article will help inspire and motivate you to attend. Click here for seminar details and registration.

Inryoku Volume 6 Issue 3

Flexibility and fitness are sometimes overlooked aspects of a standard one-hour aikido class. There’s only so much that can be covered in an hour, so we tend to give preference to technique practice. After all, you can easily stretch in your living room, but you can’t always practice at home with your partner or roommate (especially if they don't train.) Aikido has homework, and part of the homework is cultivating flexibility and fitness beyond what’s achievable in class. 

Inryoku Volume 6 Issue 2

Dojo etiquette is being helpful, treating others as you wish to be treated, and practicing safely. It is putting the needs of the dojo and the community ahead of your personal needs. It is an attitude and lifestyle worthy of worry, preservation, and transmission. Without etiquette there’s no “mystique” to the dojo—it’s just another fitness class. Etiquette is the most practical skill we cultivate in the dojo. It is the one that we can use daily, and in all our interactions. O’sensei said that aikido is medicine for a sick world, and our world is certainly diseased with vulgarity and incivility.

Inryoku Volume 6 Issue 1

This year marks my 25th year of aikido. During that time there have been no significant breaks or gaps in my practice. I’ve continued training through all sorts of life events like getting divorced and remarried, having a son, injuries, surgeries (including an emergency root canal), pandemics, natural catastrophes, new friendships, career changes, betrayals, and the invasion of social media. Taken altogether, it begs one simple question: Why?

In January 2023, I posted a newsletter about the importance of attending aikido seminars. In fact, I think seminars are so important that I decided to re-share that article this month. And not just because I haven’t written anything new. It’s also because of the timing. The 2024 seminar announcements are starting to roll out, meaning it is time for you to decide which seminars you’ll attend, choose among hotels, AirBnBs, planes, trains, and automobiles, and submit vacation requests. It’s time to plan your 2024 seminar calendar! But why? Why should you attend one or more seminars in 2024? Keep reading to find out.

Aikido is a perishable skill. Without practice, we lose the nuances of timing, spacing, and leverage that make our techniques work even as we retain the muscle memory. No matter how fast or powerful your technique, if you start it too soon or too late, or too close or too far away from your partner, it won’t really work.

In a routine aikido class, students pair off and assume the roles of nage and uke. The nage is commonly described as the defender—the one executing an aikido technique. Uke is commonly referred to as the attacker—the one striking or grabbing and falling in response to nage’s technique. But why does uke fall? When you are uke, are you thinking about why you’re falling?

Artificial intelligence wrote this newsletter. Well, not exactly. It inspired this newsletter. The article written by SquareSpace’s new AI app is at the end of the page. It’s not a bad article, but also not very readable. It doesn’t sound like me, although it says all the right things about aikido in the age of AI. And if you don’t know me or if you are unfamiliar with my writing, you might not realize that a robot wrote it.

The dojo is a place that brings likeminded individuals together. Perhaps traditionally and ideally, a dojo is single-purpose space used only for aikido classes, independent training, and meditation. And between training sessions, it sits pristinely and idly awaiting the next session.

I’ve been thinking about America’s loneliness epidemic, and the dojo’s capacity for creating and providing community. The dojo creates community in two ways: sometimes people seeking aikido find community among the other practitioners and sometimes people seeking community find aikido.