Aiki Themes

Weekly themes about Aikido. What is Aiki-Move & Stretch? Aiki-Move & Stretch is an authentic mind and body practice. Broadening your perception of the moment.

Aiki-Move & Stretch is a transformative practice. The goal of Aiki-Move & Stretch is to practice ...
Deepening your awareness of inner and outer space. Elevating your physical, mental and spiritual health. Multiplying your possibilities of movement. Aiki-Move & Stretch Philosophy
The intention of Aiki-Move & Stretch is to move freely between the systems of dance, martial arts, health and well-bein

g without protest, taking all that is positive along its way. It is dance, it is self-defence, it is traditional and non-traditional all at the same time! There is an on-going flow between form and creativity within the practice. There will be moments of abstraction and moments of being more specific. Aiki-Move & Stretch Goals
- Aiki-Move & Stretch exercises involve a number of individual and partner exercises which:
- Confirm your connections to your inner self and to others.
- Authenticise your interactions and communication.
- Establish trust with yourself and with others.
- Allow you to objectively (without judgement) observe your behaviour/actions and the behaviour/actions of others. Aiki Move & Stretch Basic Class Structure
The class takes place in an ambience of a calm setting and, different ambient background music.
1. Stretch & Breathe for Vitality
Energetic stretching and breathing (using exercises related to chi gong, yoga and do-in exercises) in order to relax and centre the individual.
2. Falling with Grace and Confidence
Rolls and Falling improve confidence as the individual learns safely under expert guidance to trust themselves and others in falling.
3. Notice your Steps
Various footwork and body movements, of varying levels of intensity and speed, combining different step and turn combinations. The key is to learn to use one's centre (in Japanese, called "Hara"). The movement will allow you to enhance coordination and spatial awareness.
4. Blend & Balance for Connectivity
To make a blending movement with a partner, one learns to connect using the "Hara" principle mentioned above.
5. Empower & Relax
The class finishes with exercises that centre and relax, giving vitality and life-force energy to the individual.

17/12/2020

This week's Aiki-theme "the tipping point". This week we playfully look at the the edge of kuzushi (disbalancing). If we slow it down and zoom in to that point where the balance is taken we'll see it is just a brief micro-moment that the subject disbalanced transitions from in balance to out of balance. In order to make that switch in fact very little power is required. The beginning aikido student will always put more energy than required into making their practice partner lose balance. With time the position is refined so that only the minimum force is required to make the effect. In life we would benefit from the same philosophy. Ideally we'd like to make effective changes with minimum efforts when going through life and achieving our goals. Aikido is a great tool to help us realize this. Study this tipping point and make a conscious note of what it requires physically and mentally and in connection with your practice partner.

28/11/2020

This week's Aiki-Theme is 'Organize your Body'. Regarding this theme, the famous Albert Einstein quote comes to mind "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them".
The development process in Aikido may be considered an individual development. However, to put another angle on this perspective, consider that you, the individual, are actually in charge of a huge community of trillions of cells that make up your body and you have the great responsibility to try to keep all those cells together in harmony.
Aikido movement is problem solving with the body as the tool to solve the problems. The problems are created by the 'attack' of Uke. The solutions are carried out with tori's response to the attack. On the basic level, we apply standard techniques. As we get more advance we apply the core principles more than the techniques. One of the most fundamental of principles is based on how you organize all those trillions of cells in your body both in independent exercise but also with the added challenge if being under pressure. If we are stuck when receiving the pressure/attack, we will create more problems than solutions. Therefore, changing the body position and leading it to bring you into a more advantageous situation is practiced. We have various basic moves to practice that. The general term for changing the body is called "tai no henka". Apply tai no henka to put yourself more in your centre and out of the struggle. We can see this principle being useful in life too. When we enter conflicts in our daily lives, our personal health is challenged and we need to be able to adjust our positions in order not to be all the time pressured and to address the conflicts from our centre instead of our head.

15/11/2020

This week's Aiki-Theme is self control. Life often triggers us in ways which bring us out of balance emotionally. Either the stress of work or the little nagging irritations from others that can build up into explosions. The practice of Aikido is a martial practice in the sense of martial discipline rather than fighting. The practice of discipline is carried out first at the simplest level. Simply sitting still and not moving and trying not to make an emotional opinion in stillness is already a very good practice. Yoga practices a similar state lying on the ground in stillness (Shavasana or dead body pose). At the next level up we transmit such a meditation to practice the same mental stillness in movement. Therefore we attempt to make the movement in connection with another person without expressing judgement or making an emotional opinion. That can be more difficult with some people depending on the person we are facing and the relation we have to them. We then try to apply the same discipline to our daily lives in order to practice self control at the highest level, that of real life. Eating in moderation, being careful with desires, rationalizing and grounding before responding to challenges. Self control is a path to mastery and nobody said it would be easy. Aikido is the perfect tool to train self control. And we should of course always remember that, even if we fail to exercise self control, we are only human and we should be able to find forgiveness and honour for at least trying. 🙂

05/11/2020

This week's Aiki-Theme is "mada!". Mada literally means "not yet". This image of Mr. Miyagi in the 1984 film, of the Karate Kid, perfectly illustrates the concept. Over enthusiasm, ambition, rushing to reach our goals will make us continuously frustrated not being able to see the golden moment of "catching the fly". And so it is in aikido we train ourselves to be patient but also seizing the right moment to rest is as important as finding the right moment to act on our goals. Therefore timing is not just a matter of acquisition, it is also a matter of surrendering and offering yourself to rest instead of constantly trying to strive for something. Being still in a moment of calm. Taking the initiative to acquire what you need from that state of calm. These two steps appear as opposites but in fact they go hand in hand and both require the same application of timing.
To use music as an analogy, it is not just the sounds played which require the timing, it's also the silence not played by the musical instrument that is timed and the combination of both makes music.

29/10/2020

This week's Aiki-theme is "Hachi no ji" or the symbol of 8. This is a recurring theme because it is a core fundamental characteristic of the meaning of Aikido. The infinity sign is coincidentally the shape of the number 8 and this corresponds in movement to a continuous flow, the direction of the movement revolving around two axes of rotation. It is no wonder that this symbol reflects the research of founder O-Sensei who connected such a way of moving to laws of nature. We can see the 8 shape coming back to the movements of waves in the sea, the wind and natural structures tend to have this sense too. You can also find the 8 shape back in the human body. Look at the shape of the double helix in DNA. When looking at it in two dimensions, you actually see a sequence of 8s. Also the hips have an 8-like shape and it is no wonder that our movement is most natural if we follow the lines defined by the shapes of our bones. Therefore the hachi-no-ji movement should happen effortlessly if you are tuned in to your body. You find hachi-no-ji back in the movement of the sword and the staff and, of course, you can also find it at the core of every Aikido technique.

11/10/2020

This week's Aiki-Theme is about winning the right way. Aikido is possibly misunderstood as an art which, due to its non-competitive nature, does not prepare a person for competition in life which may be considered by the public, therefore, as not having a practical application to life's challenges. In fact the 'win' in Aikido is very important although the target of the 'win' may not always be evident because the person we are winning over is ourselves, or, moreover, our egos and not the person we are practicing with. The practice of Aikido allows us to differentiate between listening to one's inner instinct and listening to one's ego. It might sound obvious to tell the difference but, in fact, without really training ourselves, the distinction is not so clear and we could think we are listening to our instinct or gut feeling when in fact it is the ego that is talking. A person who makes a regular practice of any art or discipline will notice how their practice allows this inner clarity. One story I remember reading recently was about the Spanish runnner, Ivan Fernandez Anaya, who competed in a cross country race in 2012 against Kenyan runner, Abel Mutai. The Kenyan runner was clearly winning the race and, at just 10 meters before the finish line, Mutai stopped running because he was thinking he had already crossed the line, unaware there were still 10 meters to go. Running in second place was Fernandez Anaya and, rather than running past Mutai to exploit Mutai's lack of understanding that he had not yet finished, the Spanish runner instead shouted to Mutai to continue. Mutai was confused as he did not understand Spanish and so, as Fernandez caught up with Mutai, he ended up pushing his competitor to the finish line, allowing Mutai still to win the race.
In fact, there were two winners in that race as Fernandez had achieved what can be considered by Aikidoists as Agatsu Masagatsu, the expression used in Aikido to express overwinning your ego. Of course, the decision was also a wise one from the Spanish runner as he was able to pre-conceive the bad publicity he would get had he overtaken the Kenyan runner.
In the same way, we practice humility in Aikido not to kill our egos or remove our zest for living competitively but in order to get clarity about what is the wise thing to do in any given situation in life and, that way, we can always win at life in the right way.

23/09/2020

This week's Aiki-Theme is early morning practice, so called "Asa Keiko" in Japanese.
I know some of my friends dread the thought of waking up earlier than 7am let alone waking up to exercise. I know even fewer friends who actually get up and make their morning run or yoga.
The early morning may sound counter-intuitive for activating our body and mind when we are in sleep mode but a regular routine of doing so would bring you into a new world. You would have more, not less, energy for the day, you would feel fresh in the mind and be more alert at work and you would improve your physical vitality as your body is fortified over time to respond to the fresh early wake-ups. Getting up early in the morning regularly to make exercise is more common in the Asian cultures and it is somewhat underestimated in the West. Aikido is a great practice to do in the morning as you wake up all your senses at the same time as practice your aiki-connection with others. The practice itself is not so difficult as long as you respect your own and other peoples' limitations, but the benefits will be felt immediately after each practice and you'll probably want the practice to continue on! Probably the only difficult aspect of the morning practice is that moment of transition from deep sleep to waking up to the alarm. But if you can overcome that hurdle, the morning practice is a wonderful bonus to your day!

11/09/2020

This week's Aiki-Theme is: Please enjoy Aikido! The practice of Aikido may be considered as a mindset not only in the goal but also in the method. Whilst the martial aspect should not be ignored, Aikido is fundamentally an exercise of joy for life and connection to others. When there is joy in the practice we avoid the burden of pushing to a point of pain or suffering. The no pain no gain philosophy has no place in Aikido. We need to take care that our limits are respected both physical and mentally and, in this way, we permit ourselves to approach the practice with a serious but light attitude. This is also why Aikido cannot be a competition practice otherwise it would limit the way one practices to athletic training of physical strength and comparing oneself to others. By taking away the competition element, all levels of ability are respected and we rejoice in being a collective, each person developing their own path at the same time as collectively uniting in a common practice. This freedom from competition allows Aikido to be all inclusive and accepting of all levels. There is nothing in the way, therefore, and we are left to fully enjoy the Aikido learning process.

31/08/2020

This week's Aiki-theme is keiko. To most people who do aikido the word "keiko" has the limited meaning to practice. However, the literal meaning of keiko is much deeper. It means to preserve those teachings which came before and to remember those who taught before us. This is part of the reason of keeping the founder of Aikido, O-Sensei, in the picture as we practice. Of course Aikido evolves with time but it doesn't mean we should forget what and who came before us. In particular the principles of Aikido that O-Sensei developed should be upheld as these are the principles which characterize Aikido and give it its identity. We therefore should spend part of our practice to go to the foundation of the movement that was transmitted by previous teachers and give it a sacred place in our Aikido evolution.

25/08/2020

This week's theme is disconnect! We often talk about connection in Aikido that one might think that we have to connect to everything that we are stimulated by! Our phones, the internet, our work, our agendas, our popularity, etc. But in fact this external over-connection interferes with the important human connection that we try to achieve when making the practice. By connecting inwardly and to others on a human level in Aikido, we actually invite disconnection from our external environment so that we can focus entirely on the practice.
Of course we can actively be aware of our external environment without consuming it. In reaching a higher state of consciousness, we want to be able to acknowledge what is out there in the physical world without being led by our temptations and overwhelmd with trying to fulfill our desires. This is unfortunately how we are driven in modern society as the advertising industry uses the art of seduction to make us believe we have no other choice than what is displayed on the screen. When we reconnect organically to ourselves and those we love, we see the pointlessness of the screen and the marketing masks that go with them and the illusions that go with it are dissolved.
Ways to disconnect from the extern environment in modern times:
- Take a trip to the countryside and leave your mobile phone at home.
- Make a regular/daily meditation practice.
- Participate in a group activity like Aikido to concentrate on your human skills.
- Engage in conversation with others again leaving your phone at home.
- Make a period of telecoms and internet fasting :).

20/08/2020

This week's Aiki-theme is "the journey". From a philosophical perspective, we can think of life as a journey that we didn't choose to be on and yet we are heading to a destination that we did not know about when we were born. And a personal development process is the exploratory part of that journey. We can think of our practice as the tools and vehicles we use to embark on our explorations to help us awaken to our purpose and, therefore, know more about our journey's destination. The founder of Aikido, O-Sensei, forged a path based on his realisations through his life journey and set out guidelines to help others follow that path. Although one could say that O-Sensei was awakened to his purpose does not mean to say that we are destined to reach the same purpose as him. Stemming from Aikido practice, which is very much a martial way, is the application of the personal development vehicle created by O-Sensei to manifest our own individual awakenings towards one's own purpose.
What is therefore learned in Aikido is the set of principles applying to the vehicle. In order to get somewhere, we don't learn from another person about their journey but we learn how to drive a car or fly in an aeroplane, as examples in the context of the travel analogy. We need to learn, therefore, the focus required for applying techniques as well as the awareness of any obstacles coming our way when getting from A to B. With Aikido we problem solve the obstacles that allow us to overcome them and move on. Those obstacles may be psychological or physical but the solutions correspond mutually just as the mind and body manifest in synergy. So when we are being water as a physical technique to blend with a hard attack, we are also being water when we enter a stress scenario to blend with the complex burden on the mind.
And in learning to use the vehicle more efficiently this way, we will learn to enjoy the life journey we are on and, whilst life may appear challenging, sailing through it in such a way will heed a calling for us to discover and explore deeper within our personal development process.

Adres

George Gershwinplein
The Hague
1082MT

Website

http://www.shinyuembody.org/

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