Aiki Institute Of Spokane

When I go running I hate hills.  Even the littlest hill makes me strain. This is certainly an affect of my mindset, thinking that it will be hard or more difficult makes it harder.  However a long flat distance seems much easier.  Even after a recent hiatus from running I was able to go out for my first run and cover a distance just under 2 miles.  (I know this doesn’t seem like a long run to most people but for me, 2 miles took some training)

This long flat distance is like a plateau.  Because it continues on in the same way, I can continue on doing the same thing.  This accomplishes something.  It allows me to cover the distance I want to cover without distraction.  I become familiar with my route and can excel at running it without injury.  I know what I’m doing, I know that I am able to do it, I know how far I have run.  My belief in my ability to run increases and I can increase my distance.  In the long run (pun intended) this plateau allows me to increase my health, my self-esteem.

Living in Spokane means I can’t plateau for long.  Downtown Spokane is a valley with a river running through it creating tumultuous though beautiful terrain.  This valley has a hill both north and south.  Eventually I have to run up a hill.  No more plateaus for me. It’s difficult, I have to change my timing.  It’s uncomfortable, my breathing changes and this is often the time my knee or ankle will hurt-as if the hill wasn’t punishment enough.

Of course this accomplishes something.  It causes me to bring my focus back to my stride, my breathing and my body.  It challenges me and increases my understanding of my own endurance.  It makes my breath control better and makes the flat area seem more inviting when it might otherwise seem boring.  It also means I run down a hill, eventually.

From my house there is a hill in every direction – literally.  No matter what direction I choose I have to run up a hill on my way out and run up a hill on my loop back without exception.  This has forced me to leave my plateau.

We plateau in our Aikido training all the time.  This is the time it is most important to come to class.  To face the repetition, face the challenge, some days even the most basic technique may seem a challenge.  But without the plateau to increase my self-esteem I’ll never be prepared for the hills or challenges related to training.  A lot of students get frustrated at this time “plateauing.”  It’s hard (just like running) but I need to remember this is a time to practice without distractions and avoid injuries.

No matter what Aikido class I go to there is a Sensei there – no exceptions.  Senseis are just like hills.  They force you to come back to the basics, regain your focus, concentrate on your breathing,  your stance, build your endurance.  They are challenging you-forcing you to change your timing, to struggle.  It’s uncomfortable, sometimes Sensei yells at me to bring my mind and focus back, I might even feel embarrassed.  But after all that’s what hills are about, increasing my understanding of my own endurance.

We all have something to overcome whether it be a struggle in our personal lives, an Aikido test we’re preparing for or a physical challenge of our own.  The time on the plateau is what gets us ready but the hills are what will get us through these challenges.  Now of course this means that to be prepared I have to run up the hills, not run away.  I have to meet my Sensei’s challenges not brush them off or avoid them.  So just keep training; plateau or hill they both accomplish something.

I love to train: cycling, running, swimming, skiing… After some time practicing at the Dojo, I started to have small epiphanies during my daily life in and outside of the Dojo. Some of the things Sensei says come to mind during seemingly non martial art activities: relax, weight under side, lower your center. Prior to doing Aikido, if a problem arose, I use to clench my teeth and force my way through everything.

Recently, I started to set goals for myself. Some of them seemed easy, others very difficult. For a long time I wanted to run a marathon. However, I disliked attending public events: fearing people, doubting myself. However, I enjoy training. A lesson I learned during Aikido was that going through the motion without a purpose does not lead anywhere. So I started to sign up for short distance running races.

After a few races, I became so engrossed with the goals I had set for myself that everything and everyone was in my way: the slow runners blocking my way (there is such a thing as running and cycling etiquette: indeed reigi is everywhere).

One day, I was at the pool and I saw a talented swimmer being incredibly mean to a less able swimmer: the less apt swimmer was in the way. To my horror, I realized that the mean and rude swimmer was a reflection of myself. For a while, I decided to pull away from competing in athletic events, I felt that this was exacerbating my worst traits.

Landry Sensei places great emphasis on volunteering and community service. An opportunity presented itself and I volunteered for an athletic event I would normally compete in. “Spectating” was interesting. Physical achievements are nothing without the people who organize and volunteer just like there is no nage without uke.

Some time went by and, even though I was still pursuing training, I was stagnating. I was plagued by fear, uncertainty and discontent. Once again, I was going through the motions but I lacked purpose. Finally, I decided to sign for up a running race. I trained hard. Something odd happened: 2 weeks before the race, I suffered a minor injury to one of my legs. One of my cycling friends suggested that I downgrade to a ½ distance or at least try to use a run/walk strategy. Doubt and fear came back: a few months prior, I had been injured after misjudging myself. I was ready to quit before the race even started. Three days before race day, I made up my mind: I was going to participate. I let go of my ego and decided that even if I did not finish I would at least “step foot on the mat”: throws won’t work if you don’t believe they will.

Just like testing, a race is a celebration not of “I” but of “we”. For every step taken, one is happy and thankful to be there. I smiled, talked to other runners, waved at spectators and thanked as many volunteers as I could. They were my Uke, and for the first time in my life, I was happy to have them. Mile after mile, I was enjoying the connection I had with people.

During the run more Aikido came to my thoughts, but they were not the usual ones. Thoughts of bokken and jo practices arose: concentrate on one point. For the first time I understood some of the concept of selecting one point as your target during suburi, yet I was still able to remain aware of my surroundings, I briefly thought of jusan. Finally, half way through the aptly named “Doomsday Hill” around mile 22, I felt my energy was nearly depleted. Bokken kata # 1 popped in my head. I had never ran this far in my life. I needed something familiar to ease into. I focused my attention to my center, and started to visualize bokken kata # 1 in my head. Shortly after mile 24, in spite of a volunteer telling me there were less than 2 miles to go (he might as well have said the race had just began but I just smiled and thanked him) bokken kata # 1 wasn’t enough anymore: doubt, fear and pain were about to overwhelm me. Out of all things I started to picture bokken kata #1 backward in my head. I kept on going, still thanking and smiling the people volunteering on the course. I crossed the finish line still thinking of bokken kata # 1. On that day, I broke my personal record for the ½ marathon and finished my 1^st full marathon.

This year I have done triathlons, biked and ran up mountains, ran a 25k and marathon: and yet, nothing is as challenging or as rewarding as Aikido. I don’t think that one is ever off the mat: Aikido is with us, wherever we go and can be found in whatever we do.

AIKITOTS

Aikido for 4 and 5 year olds.
Tuesday 4:30pm – 5:00pm
Saturday 9:30am – 10:00am

Plus we now have kids class 6 days a week!

Check out the new schedule

Aikido Open House

at Roshinkan Dojo

February 25th
10:00 –-12:00
at
2209 N. Monroe

Ever heard of Aikido?
Want to try a class?  Want to watch a class?  Want to enroll your child in a healthy physical activity that teaches compassion and discipline?

Free Introductory Class
10:30 –-11:30
ages 6 and up

Japanese snacks and hot tea will be served
Questions?  Contact the dojo at aiki@aikispokane.com or call 325-7348.

Please help us document the benefits of training.  We all know it is good.  Now let’s prove it to the rest of the world.

If you would be willing to volunteer a few minutes of your time to fill out a brief survey, please click on the link below. It will send you to the UNCW Aikido club’s website where an online survey is posted. It should not take more than 5 or 10 minutes to fill out.

Only through research like this, can we learn empirically what benefits our training may have.

Thank you for your time,

http://uncwaikido.sports.officelive.com/Mindfulness.aspx

John Lothes

UNCW Aikido Club

The Founder Gardening

On a cool and damp May day the young students of Roshinkan Dojo applied their ki to the planting of a  vegetable garden at a house for veterans undergoing treatment at the local VA hospital.

The week preceding the great planting affair we spoke with our students about the connection between Aikido and gardening. How earth, water, and sun blend to grow the seed into a life giving plant.  How the plant contributes to the ever flowing breath of life exchanging co2 for oxygen.  How a plant is centered, rooted deep in the ground while extending for the warmth of the sun, all the time remaining relaxed to bend with the wind and keeping its weight underside so as not to topple over. How we must care for our plants just as we must care for our training partner if they, we, are to grow.

Yes to truly understand Aikido we must in some way touch the very nature of our being.  Feel the universal ki that flows throughout the natural world.  Get our hands dirty with earth, taste the freshness of a cool mountain stream, feel the ocean’s breath on our cheek.

I lived for a while in the big city.  After a couple of years I felt out of touch.  Something was amiss.  I came to the realisation that for those two years I had not walked barefoot in grass.  I had not layed down on the earth and looked to the skies.  For those two years I had walked only on concrete and asphalt.  Never seen the sky that was not cluttered with the skyscrapers that surrounded me.  The air I was breathing was conditioned by hvac systems.  I needed to get out.

Regaining my health and sanity came with spending time in the mountains and ocean front, laying in a meadow of grass and flowers, walking on grassy slopes and sandy beaches, feeling the ocean breeze on my face along with the stinging of rain.  Refreshed and recharged I returned to a feeling of connection.  Even more so now that I realised what it meant to not have this.

Not long after I lived on a sailboat for a few years.  Never before had my senses been so alive.  My life and the survival of my boat were contingent upon my awareness of the winds, currents, tides, water, and earth that were always a part of my consciousness.  I began to feel the universal ki running through my life.

It is important that we do not separate ourselves from the earth we live on.  My brother is found of saying that we are “just critters on this planet”.  Insulating ourselves from the universe is a path to disaster.  Take your shoes off and bury your toes in grass and earth.  Get your fingers dirty in the soil, feel the rain and wind on your cheek.  Plant a garden and rejoice in caring for the plants that feed us.

James Landry

In the beginning of or lives our interactions are fairly limited, as babies we only interact by crying and some facial expressions, as kids we are able to start talking but are often in the role of the learner and depend on our care takers. We have very few interactions where our roles aren’t clear.  This is our education in social normalities.  We have these structured teacher/student relationships, parent/child relationships that help us learn and know how people should treat us, how we should treat them, what our role is in the world.

In an ideal situation we learn that we should be treated in a way that promotes our dignity, self-respect and self-efficacy, we should learn to treat others in a way that allows them to grow as an individual and honours them.  We should learn that we might make sacrifices for others, like sharing our peanut-butter and jelly sandwich with our younger sibling when they drop theirs, but that this should happen in a way that is still healthy for us.  However, the real world is hardly ever ideal and this delicate relationship balance is rarely learned completely or perfectly without some real trial and error for many years, even over a lifetime.  I as a human interact with other humans and want to do this in a way that is healthy for me, I need to set boundaries as I have learned from those early interactions that are clear and show respect for myself and the other person in the relationship, clear roles.

In the beginning of Aikido the role of uke is very clear. I know nage will throw a certain throw and I know I will fall a certain fall. I know I will put my foot here and my hands there.  This is the beginning of my education in how to set boundaries in my ukemi that will keep me healthy and help my partner.  Ukemi is the art of taking the fall safely.  As uke I am called upon to accept the energy of a throw and fall in a way that keeps me safe and is relevant to the throw.

Sometimes, in ukemi I may sacrifice my spacing or put myself in the best spot for a safe throw or to help nage learn.  I am never called upon to sacrifice myself in a way that may be dangerous.  As my understanding of this role gets better I may be called upon to take ukemi when I don’t know what throw is coming. This requires me to take energy without sacrificing my center no matter what happens, in other words to set a clear boundary and not give it up.  I must compromise but not forego my safety. This is the same as growing up with those set relationships and understanding how people should treat me and how I should treat people.  I need to learn to set a clear boundary that helps us both learn good Aikido which in every form is a role model for how to treat people well.

Further into my Aikido I may be called upon to take ukemi for kashiwaza and as roles change I must be willing to adapt. I must not assume that my partner will be uke, I must not assume that I will be nage. The roles become less clear and I must rely on the things I learned early on and continually learn while taking ukemi.  I must protect the core of who I am, my center, while allowing myself to give up that which isn’t necessary to my safety. In ukemi I can’t just give up and, knowing I am going to fall, plop down on the mat as soon as nage moves.  Instead I am called to understand what I can give and what I must keep to be safe and engaged in what is happening.  I’m not helping myself or nage learn by being “easy” to throw, throwing myself, or fighting.  Instead, I need to be able to set the boundaries of this relationship based on what I’ve learned from years of taking ukemi.

In relationships that are important to us we sometimes sacrifice things because of fear.  I might be scared to dissapoint my parent, I might be scared my partner will leave me, I might be scared my friend might not like me.  From Aikido I know the key to the uke nage relationship, my pivotal relationship in external Aikido, is to set clear boundaries and to treat myself in a way that shows I and my partner are equal.  This needs to carry over into my other relationships.  I can’t be scared to fall, I have to know what I can give up and what I need to keep and set that boundary and not give it up.  Relationship ukemi is just as essential as Aikido ukemi and boundaries are how we keep ourselves and our loved ones safe on and off the mat.

Challenge yourself to treat the people in your relationships off the mat with the same respect we show on the mat. Know that they are taking relationship ukemi for you and allow them to set healthy boundaries.  Understand that as when you are the leader people will have things they aren’t willing to give up, their centers, respect that and respect them for being strong enough to know what they need.  When you are being uke in your daily life try to take ukemi with the same level or grace and integrity you use on the mat.  Don’t just give in and set your own healthy boundaries.  Always practice good Aikido which in every form is a role model for how to treat people and yourself well.

During this time of down turned economy we all know someone who’s investments have lost.  We all know of someone with a tragic story, lost retirement, lost home, families breaking under the stress.  At these times we are reminded of the fragile nature of our material world.

There is an investment that we can each make that will create opportunities for true wealth building.  The potential to not only grow our personal wealth but the wealth of our family, our community, our nation, our world.

This investment is in our personal well being.  Our physical health, our mental strength, our spiritual growth.  This is the investment we make each time we walk into the Aikido dojo for committed training.  The two or three or more hours we spend each week in formal practice, along with (hopefully) the hours of commitment in our daily lives yields a payoff that stretches from our center, out into the world around us.

Our physical health increases through the physical practice.  This allows us the energy to do our work in the world so that we can obtain the shelter, food, and clothing that we all need, along with the other accouterments that go along with modern lifestyles.  It gives us the stamina to raise our children, take care of our grandparents, dig in the earth to sow the garden that feeds us, and swing the hammer that pounds the nail holding the supports of our house together.  It recharges our immune systems to ward off illness and gives us the flexibility to bend around the barriers in our lives.

Our mental strength grows as we test our powers of observation and creativity.  Our mind is challenged to observe and then direct the body.  The mind? must translate the visual and exterior view to a movement starting from the interior, growing to encompass the whole body in  somatic understanding. We are lead to creatively enter into a way of thinking that knows no enemies, only partners;  no bad, nor good, only opportunities; no past or future, but only now.

In the dojo we create a spirit of love, cooperation, and harmony.  We connect ourselves through our physical and mental practice to the larger universe.  We learn to feel the flow of energy as it surrounds us and moves through and with us.  We touch the larger picture and realize that we are as much a part of it as the pigments that blend together are a part of forming Michelangelo’s The Creation of Man.  Our spirit is rejuvenated and rejoices in the practice of our art.  We then take this spirit with us as we leave the dojo.  Touching all we meet with its infectious truth and natural beauty.

In this way we affect a growth in spirit and consciousness throughout the world, as our touch is passed on from person to person, group to group, community to community, nation to nation, the spirit of harmony, the art of peace, grows and spreads.  We find ourselves more creative, more cooperative, more in sync with the natural process of life.  So our wealth increases, both in the mind-body-spirit manifestation, and in the realm of material wealth as we spend our energy in cooperative creation and growth rather than in deceitful destruction.

This investment we put into our training in Aikido has a very high payoff.  It is slow.  It is gradual.  It is sustainable.  Your dues, your time at the dojo, is an investment that ripples throughout our society benefiting each individual and our existence as a civilization.   Invest in yourself … in your peaceful existence.

Watch your investment grow as you touch those in your life, and they touch others.   Imagine what could happen if more people made such an investment.  Go ahead, imagine it.  If you can passionately imagine the people of our world investing cooperatively, creatively, peacefully, harmoniously, then we can make it happen!

As you can see we have a new web site.  It is my intention to make this site a central piece of the community we have at the Aiki Institute of Spokane.  The audience is not limited to those who study Aikido or other martial arts, but extends to the larger community.  In this way I wish to share with a broader audience the joys and benefits of our training and to explore opportunities to continue our training “off the mat”.

Please enjoy your exploration of this new site.  Send us your comments, stories for publication, and questions regarding Aikido and what it can bring to your life.  Consider the work we do here with adults and youth.  While training in the dojo is the rock of our foundation, we also provide unique and powerful training experiences in formats for the office or school.  Have questions?? Please ask.  In the neighborhood?? Want to know more?? Drop by!

Subscribe to our email newsletter notification and / or rss feed.  Check back often as we grow and add new material to this site.

For the past 14+ years I have been on medication for both mental and physical conditions which, in all honesty did not do near enough to stabilize me. I then found Aikido (or Aikido found me?). A couple of weeks later (March 21st) I went to the doctor and shared my concerns about how the medication was making it more difficult to partake in the joy of strenuous training. The doctor thought that I might be able to try going off my medications and felt that there would be a good deal of “coping skills” to be learned through Zen meditation and training. Coping skills is an absurd understatement for what the Art of Peace can provide for someone.

I have now been medication free for two months. I am not bedridden due to back problems. My mind is clearer than ever before in my life. My emotions become more and more stable as training continues. Best of all, my spirit is alive! In summary, Aikido provides mental, physical, emotional and spiritual growth to the Aikidoka. It is Love in Action! A big thank you and I love you to O’Sensei for his insight in figuring out the puzzle and Sensei Landry for his loving kindness, patience, and commitment to the Art of Peace.

Sean Ambort

Roshinkan Dojo