An Aikido Story

Sat down to compose myself during the short break at the seminar where I took my Nidan test in 2009. There's actually around 70 people in the room with me, but the photographer managed to capture this.

I first developed an interest in Aikido through an article in a magazine, back in 1999. I had been training kickboxing six days a week, a 90-minute walk to the gym and back. You could say I was hooked into it. Upon learning that there was actually an Aikido dojo in my city and moreover, an acquaintance trained there, I set out to learn more. I got myself in there and was incredibly impressed at the first training session I ever saw (watching a session before enrolling had been required). I was a beginner in kickboxing but I understood how it worked. You tried to move out of hits and conditioned yourself to take them, and you tried to deliver hits and conditioned yourself to deliver them better. But this Aikido business was not at all obvious. I enrolled and trained in both disciplines for a time, until it became apparent to me what I preferred. Even though young and agile and perceptive and eager, I felt like mastering this was going to take a lot and I loved the challenge. I wasn't even particularly talented, in retrospect, but I could and did put serious hours and effort into it. Training took priority and I missed more school than Aikido practice in the first couple years. As I've said I was not a natural, but I was tall, wiry and didn't gas out and as such I fairly quickly became one of my sensei's favorite uke. Working with sensei and the top ukes more from the very beginnings propelled my progress, which in turn got me more mat time with them and so on in a feedback loop. We went to seminars and organized them in our dojo, always with really good teachers. Sensei was exceptionally good himself, although how good I would learn only after much exposure to others from a multitude of styles. I should probably say something about the style, lineage etc. here. It goes something like: Founder -> Koichi Tohei -> Tenzan Fumio Toyoda -> Robert Malic -> yours truly. Of course it's never this linear in reality, with cross-influences and politics and so on, but for the general timeline that's the best approximation. Those who are interested in history beyond the superficial will find the whole story with Tohei, Toyoda and the Aikikai quite complex and thorny.

Falling for my teacher in Olsztyn, Poland

For this story, I'll leave the politics behind and continue with the style itself. For lack of a better word, it is a blend of pre- and post-war Aikido as Tohei got it from the Founder, and Ki Aikido as Tohei developed and taught it in the early times of his travelling period. Then there is the personal touch of Toyoda sensei, who was fierce and a big (for a Japanese) guy and his softness had a special bear-like quality. So I was told, I never met him. The tragic circumstances of his untimely death took place literaly weeks prior to the seminar he was to hold in our dojo in Split, Croatia in 2001. My own teacher, Robert Malic, was profoundly influenced by Toyoda sensei more than anyone else. He is a preserver more than a creator(think Saito), but having a different body type from that of his teacher made the flavor of the art that finally reached me - different. More cat or snake than bear-like. Longer limbs and more acceleration, but less mass and power makes for different movement, even within the same principles and style-confinements. Such was my body too, at least for a long period at that time. I learned everything I could from him and the teachers he chose to connect with. These were mostly other close students of Toyoda sensei, back in the day. Moore, Germanov and Krzyzanowski sensei all painted the same picture but with different brushes and strokes. I was exposed to mainstream Aikikai, Yoshinkan and Iwama schools as well. I genuinely disliked how they did things, which is probably the standard response from someone indoctrinated into a system. But, I'd like to think it was more due to the fact that truly great proponents of a school are rare and I happened to have one as my teacher; whereas these other styles I was exposed to did not reach me in their best form. Whatever the flaws of my Aikido style at that time were, stiff we were not; and rigidity in one form of another(even its opposite) was the main dealbreaker everywhere I looked. I opened my own Aikido club in a rented BJJ gym space in 2012, with my teacher's and peers' support.

A happy moment in time

I was beginning to see things differently than my teacher, which is probably how stuff usually goes down in these situations through time. For a while I attended practice in my old dojo parallel to running my own, with students passing freely between. It worked. Until it, little by little, didn't. No big break happened, just slow distancing over time reflected in the number of students attending both dojos. Myself included. Can't have two plants in one pot, I was told by someone at that time. I relentlessly dove into the waza and taiso that I taught, seeking the kernel of each on every level. I changed some things, details at first but important things with time. Always running them through tests and checks. I expect I'll write about these here in time. My search for the hidden in plain sight took me to Akuzawa Minoru sensei of Aunkai Bujutsu, and Mike Sigman of... well, Taiji seems fair. There are several other sources I have sighted but have not met in person yet. Like pieces in a puzzle without a reference picture, I'm putting together an internal Aikido of my own. It's a daunting task, but one I can't set aside and say I do Aikido anymore. Once the glimpses of what's possible and in fact should be inherent are seen, they cannot ever be unseen. Not by me, anyway. I must remain true to myself. And my Self tells me I have much to learn and embody. Aikido is in every practitioner, it does not exist outside of those doing it and in me it exists as something not done by many. The seniority structure and systems of contemporary Aikido have lost their meaning for me. The waza have fallen apart like the scene in The Matrix where Neo sees the source code for the first time. I can never honestly go back to repeating them mindlessly, in expectation of becoming another Takeda, Sagawa, Ueshiba with just doing more shihonage or funakogi undo. I am looking at the code now, and everything is upside down and inside out, has been for some time. Throughout this internal strife, I moved the dojo, switched venues twice to attract more students. Organized seminars on my own. Some of my decisions worked and some not so much. Aikido in general is declining in popularity and unfortunately I live in one of the areas where this is happening more pronouncedly. Other clubs started shutting down. So I shut down my dojo too, recently. It coincided with getting married and moving to another city. I'll be building a family house, so that will be my focus for a while. And then? Well, there really is no pausing what I'm doing. I've reached a simple truth a while ago: Aikido doesn't work without an Aiki-body. It's a prerequisite. Kind of like a racing car with 50% less horsepower than its competitors on the track. Or no tires. Through transmission over time, the means to achieve an Aiki-body through Aikido alone have been lost. In plain sight. However, something being lost in one place is sometimes so common in another that noone gives it much thought there. Other things are not lost at all, but kept out of the spotlight on purpose, appearing lost to the mainstream but in fact quite well known to select groups. Still other things are not hidden in any way except by the laziness of seekers. I am rewiring and re-tempering myself every day, constantly. My solo training is evolving and I'm learning and rediscovering material and connections all the time. If only Ueshiba had the Internet. Will I teach Aikido again? Probably, at some point. But I'll make damn certain that it's a real internal martial art and I'm at least partially satisfied with my take on it, before coming out with it again. Until that day, back to the forge.