Aikido FAQ

Aikido is a martial art that focuses mainly on redirecting the force of an attack in order to take the attacker's balance and throw or pin them. It's also designed to be a practice of self-development with benefits that extend far beyond its self-defense applications (see below, under "What are the benefits of Aikido training?").

At the beginning of class, the sensei (teacher) leads the students through stretching and movement exercises. Then the sensei demonstrates whatever move the students will be working on (usually a particular way of throwing or pinning an attacker). The students work together in pairs to practice that move, by taking turns playing the role of the attacker and the person dealing with the attack. Beginning students will be paired up with more experienced students.

While the students practice, the sensei observes and comes over to offer guidance to anyone who needs it. After a while, the sensei calls an end to that round of practice, the students sit down, and the sensei demonstrates the next move for the students to work on. During the course of a class there may be anywhere from half a dozen to more than a dozen brief rounds of partnered practice, covering a series of related skills and moves.

Many people take up a martial art to learn physical self-defense, and the style of Aikido we practice at Aiki Arts Center is good for that. But Aikido also has other major benefits, which over time can improve your quality of life in significant ways:

Mobility
Most people gradually lose their range of physical mobility as they age, especially if they spend a lot of time sitting in chairs. Between the fluid wave-like motions we use when we deal with attackers, and the falls and rolls we learn to take when we play the role of the attacker and get thrown, Aikido engages the body's full capacity for motion in a way that restores, maintains, and expands our range of mobility. A body with good mobility is not only more agile and at less risk of injury, it also just feels better to live in.

Strength
Aikido strengthens the whole body, especially the core. Long-term practice builds the sort of power we see in cats––the fluid power that comes when the whole body moves as an integrated, well-coordinated unit.

Cardio
The structure of an Aikido class––periods of highly active practice, interspersed with brief breaks to watch the sensei demonstrate the next move to be practiced––serves as a form of interval training. Interval training has been shown to be a particularly effective way of building cardiovascular health and stamina.

Relaxation
The big secret of Aikido (which we're not very secretive about) is that in order to do it well, in order to find that fluidity of motion and be able to feel the openings in an attacker's balance, you have to be physically relaxed. Over time, in your Aikido training, you learn to free yourself from excess tension and stay relaxed even while moving quickly to take down attackers. This aspect of Aikido can powerfully transform other areas of your life. If you can stay relaxed and centered while being physically attacked, you can learn to stay relaxed and centered in just about any sort of situation.

Mental Clarity
People think more clearly when they're relaxed and centered. When you regularly train to stay relaxed and centered in challenging situations, as we do in Aikido, you're developing the habit of finding mental clarity in the situations where it's most needed.

Harmony
In Aikido training we create intentionally challenging situations (someone trying to grab or strike you), and practice turning them into situations of harmony (redirecting the force of the attack and taking the attacker's  balance). The capacity for calm spontaneous responsiveness and adaptability that you develop through this form of practice can also be used to bring greater harmony to other areas of your life and other sorts of interaction, from making your way through a crowd to gracefully navigating the challenges of interpersonal relations.

Confidence
If you stick with your Aikido training for a while, you'll eventually start to notice that you're moving through life with greater confidence. Not loud and blustering false confidence, but the easy, relaxed confidence that comes with feeling at home in your body and knowing on a deep bodily level that you can respond gracefully and effectively to challenging situations.

Fun
Aikido is fun. It's a form of physical play, complex enough to always be interesting, with lots of tumbling around on mats, done with a group of good people in a supportive environment. Though our play is challenging and intense, at the end of class everyone walks out of the studio smiling and feeling good.

There are many different styles of Aikido, and they vary greatly in terms of how practical they are for self-defense.

The founder of Aikido, Morihei Ueshiba Sensei, was a formidable fighter famous for his ability to take down much larger and younger attackers. He passed this effectiveness on to the students whom he mentored personally during his lifetime. In some of the larger Aikido organizations, however, the movements have now become so formally stylized that current generations of teachers have lost touch with the art's more "street-effective" side. Most of these teachers don't have enough personal experience with the realities of physical violence to be able to assess the effectiveness of what they're teaching.

Nick Walker Sensei, co-founder and senior instructor of Aiki Arts Center, began his Aikido practice at the age of 12 and had extensive opportunity to use Aikido in situations of real physical combat over the next 15 years––first as a teen growing up in a violent low-income housing project, then defending urban queer communities from street violence and working as a bouncer. These experiences gave him a practical hands-on understanding of how to do Aikido in a way that's effective for dealing with real violence.

At Aiki Arts Center, we're not exclusively focused on "street-effective" self-defense. We believe that what makes Aikido a truly marvelous and worthwhile practice are its other benefits––the way it can improve your overall quality of life by increasing your capacities for relaxation, ease, grace, mental clarity, flow, and harmonious interaction. Our approach to training always aims at cultivating these benefits. But we'll also make sure you understand the practical self-defense aspects. Nick Sensei in particular makes a point of letting students know which moves are street-effective, which ones are just exercises designed to develop qualities like grounding or fluidity, or how a given move can be modified to increase its effectiveness in a more dire situation.

Three more important points about Aikido as practical self-defense:

First, if you're ever wondering how a particular move would work in a situation of real violence, just ask!

Second, one way Aikido training protects people from violence is by reducing the chance of violence happening in the first place. If you go through life carrying yourself with calm confidence and fluid ease, with a clear head and an eye toward how to keep situations harmonious––in other words, if you conduct yourself the way we learn to conduct ourselves in Aikido––you can often defuse potential violence well before it turns into actual violence.

And third, when people think about practicing a martial art to protect themselves from physical danger, they almost always think about the danger posed by an attacker. But the leading cause of physical injury in the world isn't violence, it's falling. People of all ages are statistically more likely to be injured in a fall than in an attack. One of the most important self-defense skills Aikido will teach you is how to fall safely.

While the majority of Aikido schools are affiliated with larger Aikido organizations, Aiki Arts Center is independent. This independence means we're not beholden to  any one specific Aikido style or lineage, which gives us freedom to innovate and freedom to integrate moves and ideas from any Aikido lineage (or from other martial arts, or any other practice that has ideas and techniques which might be useful to us).

Because we're not required to duplicate some Aikido organization's official way of doing each move, we tend to approach teaching and training in a spirit of creative inquiry and experimentation.

Also, compared to many other styles of Aikido, we tend toward more natural and ergonomic ways of moving that allow for greater mobility and fluidity.

The more classes you attend, and the more consistent you can be about your training schedule, the more you'll get out of your Aikido practice. We recommend attending at least two classes a week. If life events interrupt your training schedule, get back to it as soon as you can.

Another key to getting more out of Aikido is to talk to the sensei and the senior students about your practice and bring them any questions you have. Be bold about asking questions! If you're question isn't immediately relevant to the move the class is currently practicing, it's best to ask before or after class. The teachers are also reachable by email. If you want guidance in your practice but you can't think of a specific question, you can always approach a sensei and ask something like, "Sensei, is there anything you think I should be working on in my practice these days?"

And finally, an active, ongoing process of self-driven experimentation is invaluable. As you go through your daily life, keep looking for opportunities to apply the lessons of your Aikido practice. For instance, if the sensei reminds you to relax your shoulders during class, make it a goal to remember as much as possible to relax your shoulders outside of class as well. If you learn something in class about how to stay centered and grounded when someone is grabbing you or pushing you, try to practice that same technique of centering and grounding in any challenging situation you encounter in life.

The colored belts people wear during Aikido practice indicate their general levels of Aikido experience and knowledge. We wear the colored belts so that even if you haven't met a particular fellow student yet, you'll have a general idea of how experienced they are just by looking at the belt.

Beginning students start out wearing white belts. After a year or two of regular practice, a student is likely to be invited to advance to orange belt.

Students who continue to pratice consistently will gradually move up through two levels of orange belt, then two levels of blue belt and two levels of brown belt, and eventually to black belt. Students who consistently train about twice a week can expect to advance approximately one level per year. (There are multiple levels of black belt, too, but people advance through those at a much slower pace.)

If you need guidance––for instance, if you find a particular move confusing and you want an advanced training partner to help you with it––just look for someone wearing a brown belt or black belt. The sensei and black-belt-level students also wear traditional black samurai-style pants (called hakama), which makes them easy to spot.

Here are three books we recommend:

Journey to the Heart of Aikido, by Linda Holiday
A lovely book on the spirit and philosophy of Aikido.

Mastery, by George Leonard
A short and invaluable guide to long-term thriving and mastery in Aikido or any other transformative practice, by one of Nick Sensei's old Aikido teachers.

Body: Recovering Our Sensual Wisdom, by Don Hanlon Johnson
This one's not about Aikido specifically, it's about the broader topic of transforming one's relationship with embodiment. Out of print, but it's well worth tracking down a used copy!