Author: Biran Online Editor

Darrell Bluhm, Founder and Chief Instructor, Siskiyou Aikikai

Please also visit Aikido Journal for Josh Gold’s Spring 2022 interview with Yamada Sensei.

The recent passing of Yamada Sensei marks the end of an incredible era of Aikido in America. Yamada Sensei was the first of a wave of Japanese Aikido pioneer instructors to establish themselves in America. He was one of the last remaining of those pioneers and arguably the most impactful, proving to be an extraordinary ambassador for our art for nearly 60 years.

I first met Yamada Sensei in 1973, while I was training with Saito Sensei in Iwama, Japan. Yamada Sensei was visiting Japan with a group of students. A stop in Iwama, O-Sensei’s long-time home and home of the Aiki Shrine, was essential. While that first encounter was brief, it’s one I still remember, largely because I found Yamada Sensei to be disarmingly charming.

Over the course of the next few years, I encountered Yamada Sensei at various seminars, and was always charmed by his friendliness and openness. However, during the late 1970s, most of what I heard on the west coast regarding Yamada Sensei was resentment on the part of the local American Aikido teachers, including my own, because the organization he co-founded and headed, the United States Aikido Federation (USAF) was the only organization in the United States to be recognized by Hombu Dojo. Dan ranks could be processed only through the USAF, and all US based instructors who wanted to have their students’ ranks registered with Hombu had to be members of the USAF. (It was known as the “one country, one organization” rule. Interestingly, it was Chiba Sensei, after his arrival in the US, who was instrumental in persuading Hombu Dojo to abandon that policy, and agree to recognize multiple organizations within a country.)

In October 1980, Yamada Sensei brought Chiba Sensei to visit San Diego, as a possible place for Chiba Sensei to settle and establish a dojo. As it happened, I was designated to pick the two of them up at LAX and be the tour guide for the day. Yamada Sensei was thus the person who first introduced me to Chiba Sensei, for which I shall be eternally grateful. Yamada Sensei did almost all the talking during the day. Chiba Sensei didn’t speak with me until the evening, when I sat to drink with him at the bar in Hanalei Hotel, where they were both staying. The difference in personality between Yamada Sensei and Chiba Sensei was quite striking. Yamada Sensei’s warmth and friendliness put me at ease — Chiba Sensei’s quiet intensity, not so much. One thing became clear to me during that day (and was confirmed with further conversations with Chiba Sensei), without Yamada Sensei’s efforts to bring Chiba Sensei to the US, convincing both Chiba Sensei and the leadership of Hombu Dojo that it was a good idea, it would not have happened. We in Birankai owe Yamada Sensei a special debt of appreciation for his striving on behalf of our teacher and our community.

Although my exposure to Yamada Sensei’s teaching was limited, there were numerous occasions where he most graciously offered me his personal support. As an early example, during the first year Chiba Sensei was in San Diego, while I was teaching a class, Yamada Sensei showed up at the dojo, by himself. He sat to observe my class. I was nidan at the time, and was extremely intimidated by Yamada Sensei’s presence, yet following the class he chose to give me only positive feedback and encouragement. The last time I saw him was at the BNA summer camp in 2016 in St John’s University in New York, his home ground. We taught classes back-to-back. I trained in his class, and he watched my class. It was 35 years later than the first time he watched me teach and I was just as intimidated and again, he offered only positive feedback.

I started with the comment, Yamada Sensei’s passing marked the end of an era for Aikido in America. He, Kanai Sensei and Chiba Sensei and other Japanese Shihan have laid a foundation for the development and growth of Aikido in this country and beyond. It is now our and our students’ responsibility to apply the same passion, commitment and expertise demonstrated by our teachers, now gone, to sustain and advance our art into the future. 

Darrell Bluhm
January 2023
Ashland OR

Kristina Varjan, Chief Instructor, Aikido of Kohala

There are special people in our lives who never leave us even after they are gone.
Yamada Sensei was one of those people.
How can someone that has given so much to others ever be forgotten?
He can’t and he won’t!
Yamada Sensei introduced me to our amazing world of Aikido in 1975.
He was generous, a great cook, a strong leader, with a great sense of humor, and a true diplomat as well.
He made everyone around him feel special.
Being on the mat teaching to so many, meeting new people, that was what was truly
important to him.
Spreading Aikido to as many people in as many places as possible was his mission in life.
It seemed like he never tired, but he did. He was human.
He came to teach a seminar in Hawaii at our dojo (Kohala Aikikai) in 2003.
I saw him outside the dojo preparing for the seminar and asked him if he was ok.
He said: “I’m nervous. I still get nervous after all these years. Like it’s the first time that I am getting on the mat to teach!”
It seemed to me like he was once again embracing the concept of “SHOSHIN”, beginners mind, every time he taught a class or seminar.
I think many of us have felt the powerfulness and the freshness of his dynamic teaching in each class stressing the basics, even if it’s Ikkyo again and again.
Get everything you can from your Senseis, talk to them, and stay in touch with them.
Their commitment and vast experience are invaluable.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart Ms Yamada, Mika, Risa and Tatsuya for sharing Sensei with us all.
And when your Sensei says “ROLLS”, throw out a few on the mat!
Some of you will know what I mean…

Gassho,
Kristina Varjan

Archie Champion, Birankai Senior Council Member and Chief Instructor, Central Coast Aikikai

People too often undervalue the benefit of martial arts practice and its ability to transform one’s life. To have good health, power and energy at any age is a blessing. Being healthy is a virtue that every individual should strive for to the best of their ability. The muscles of the body are naturally designed a to be challenged by bearing weight, and being lengthened and contracted. The bones are designed to bear weight, to continue to grow, to replenish themselves and to remain strong. It is the body owner’s responsibility to know these things and to engage in practice designed to fulfill these functions that has been handed down from the ancestors. People suffer from many health issues that decrease quality of life and lead to premature death, which can be changed through Aikido practice. Having practiced Aikido almost every day for 44 years, I don’t consider myself old or close to the end of the road.

We live in a postindustrial, digital, AI culture, programmed to believe and operate as if our human consciousness is no longer capable of focusing for extended times to achieve true development. Especially in this day and age of technology, it is essential you create something with your hands. We no longer really develop and hone our physical skills; instead we simply express ourselves with filters and quickie videos. Nowadays, if you want to learn something you watch YouTube, not a book or manual in your hands. Yet it is through the body we experience the world, coming to sense the mystery of life, and a feeling there must be something beyond it. It is through the body that we express our true Self.

Our physical body is the alchemical laboratory in which we can test what kinds of foods, how much physical training or rest, and what kind of mental attitude we need to cultivate an ” Aiki body”. A human being who develops an Aiki body can circulate life force. Developing an Aiki body requires humility to learn from nature – the natural world, and your own nature/body, working with the hands, the body, the physical. To work with the body is to engage creative spirit, becoming co-creator with nature. Similarly, our emotions are stored in the body as energies we sometimes must work through physically, rather than talking about them. Aikido movement helps you go into that space, where those emotions live and move this energy through the body. Bodywork helps you learn to release fear or anything else that is not you, and learn to trust your intuition.

The lockdown over the last two years caused me to stop doing body arts and to only teach Jo. (Usually I switch every year, but the uncertainty of the times compelled me to stay with Jo.) First let’s remember every weapon has its own “spirit” and a manner in which it likes to do things,  almost as if it has a personality. Furthermore, weapons tend to create their own “rules” for body methods and training. The Jo’s versatility is the liveliness of the grip, making practice very enjoyable and flowing, as there fewer limitations on what can be done and achieved. The Jo can be held with junte, gyakute, or a combination of grips. In fact, the hands can grip at any position, even at the butt of the Jo, and at any distance across the length of the weapon. With such diverse grips, the hands can also easily adopt some of the qualities and methods used with swords and can move similarly to many empty-handed techniques. When pressed against uke’s joint or bone, the Jo often enhances joint-locking techniques. Stand in left or right hanmi, you still enjoy practice: left hanmi, symbolizes our attraction toward divine light and spirit, and progress; right hanmi symbolizes our individual body, and regression. 

(Earlier I said every weapon carries its own spirit – with Jo that spirit is wood. Human beings have used trees and their wood as friends, medicine, and vessels for their creativity. We evolved to coexist with trees and other plants in the deepest sense possible. I personally have had an affinity to wood for as long as I can remember and believe deeply this is an innate human trait. Even traditional Chinese medicine recognizes trees and wood are related to our livers and Hun (ancestral spirit). They also see wood virtue being adaptable, you can pull, push, press, thrust, smack, chop, redirect, divert, absorb, block, spiral from the middle and sides.)

In sum, the ideal of our Aikido has always been to create a body of work that set the standard for others. Today, if the body is uncomfortable doing something outside its normal range of natural ability, or if the breath is not developed enough to move and circulate life force, many simply give up and move on to that which can be done with little/no effort, depriving our mental and physical development. Others go through the motions, recording the “hours”. Few actually change their diet, adopt a holistic or spiritual way of living and become actual practitioners committed to a lifetime of consistently  engaging your body with this wonderful tool called a Jo. Those of you who are willing to follow their hearts and connect with your core being will in this tool find solace and meaning. Seek to make it more than a weapon, and it shall serve to guide you on the path.

Coryl Crane, Birankai Senior Council Member and Chief Instructor, North County Aikikai

To throw oneself into the extraordinary having isolated oneself from the lifestyle so long ago adopted. – Chiba Sensei in an article on Sesshin.

Dear Sensei, every year since you passed, I think about what it meant to train with you and how that relationship changed my life.

As a teacher, you gave yourself fully to every encounter with your students. You would walk onto a mat full of students, and the power of your intention spoke to each one of us. From the beginning, my personal encounters with you were often fearful because inevitably I found myself in a place I had never been before; but the more I opened up the more I let you in, and the more I gave you the more you gave back to me. When you worked with me, we were the only two entities in the world at that moment.

There were truly painful times along the way that took time to heal or to understand – after all you were as human as I and as prone to errors of judgement. Yet through it all, in your own way, you always respected us as part of the one human race.

You were a profound thinker and your grasp of the English language enriched your vision for us. You saw Aikido through many lenses and articulated them in depth and often poetically. You could describe the movement of Aikido as a brushstroke on rice paper, or as the physics of body movement extending from the spine. And when we were ready, you made real the martial edge between life and death. Aikido was always an art form within a martial context for me.

You expressed an Aikido for each one of us, if we could see it. For me, as a woman and an artist, you made it beautiful as well as powerful. Because of you, I threw myself into the extraordinary and stepped away from the lifestyle I was born into. I am eternally grateful for your teaching.

Coryl Crane

Learn more about Chiba Sensei’s life in Aikido with Power and Grace – Portrait of a Master: T.K. Chiba

Darrell Bluhm, Founder and Chief Instructor, Siskiyou Aikikai

LIVELINESS

As we continue to explore the process of developing and maintaining an Aikido Body, I want to review and expand on earlier topics. An Aikido Body is of course, a human body. Even more fundamentally, it is a living body. Our language – the English language, specifically – biases our self-perception, so we see ourselves as objects or things, when, in fact, we are, as all of life is, ongoing processes. We are not objects, we are subjects, actively engaged in the process of living. At some point we will all die, and as corpses we can be considered objects – although the process of decomposing is also quite dynamic. But, as living, embodied beings, embedded in a living world right now, we are gifted with life, bodies, consciousness, and the ability to make distinctions and choices. We can recognize what is toxic or nourishing in our world and choose appropriately. Movement is one form of nourishment. Unfortunately, many of us develop habits of movement that are to movement what junk food is to food.

Training can strengthen our capacity to sense ourselves with greater refinement, so we may learn to distinguish functional, effective action from junk. For our training to fully serve us, however, we also need to extend our conscious awareness to our everyday actions: how we lie, sit, walk, breath, bathe, cook, play, and receive the nourishment that being alive in this world offers us. When we, through conscious practice, learn to move as whole beings, connected to our partners and the world at large by means of our center and all our senses, a liveliness emerges in our movement and responses.

Aikidoists tend to discover this quality of liveliness, on the mat by practicing ukemi. Chiba Sensei, having discovered this liveliness, said of it, “The practitioner frequently experiences a sense of pleasure and joy in the discovery of the body’s previously hidden potential – an experience often accompanied by a sense of safety and security while training.” He continues that, in his experience, “Sustaining injuries during training is largely the result of [the person] handling his or her body in a fragmented manner…” ¹

Sensei described the art of ukemi as “preparation for the unexpected” and counseled us to avoid mechanical or rote habits of practicing ukemi. He defined ukemi as “the means for receiving and neutralizing force, without resisting, trying to escape, collapsing or flying away.”

The process of neutralizing a force coming towards or into us requires an acceptance of and joining with that force and is best accomplished with a passive will, as opposed to a will seeking control. In our practice, whether as uke or nage, using weapons or in solo practice, we build a repertoire of actions that take residence in the deepest resources of ourselves. Usually when we practice, we consciously observe ourselves as we do it. Yet there are times on the mat when we respond to a given situation with our “adaptive” unconscious or non-conscious mind. When this happens, we move from the domain of kata, or form, to that of true martial technique or waza, which is formless. Many of us have experienced this in the role of uke, where we find ourselves getting up from the mat with no conscious sense of how we arrived there. 

Eventually, through training, this quality of liveliness can manifest in all aspects of one’s practice and by extension, off the mat, in one’s everyday life. There is a natural and pure quality to our acts when, to use Chiba Sensei’s words, “perception, judgment and action arise spontaneously and simultaneously.”

In our daily life, our conditioned responses, developed on the mat, can at critical times serve to save our self or others. I have experienced this in mundane ways, such as braking to avoid hitting a deer with my car before my conscious mind realized that the deer was there, or catching a falling object without conscious intent. This kind of non-conscious action is known in the Japanese martial tradition as mu so ken – dream-thought-sword.

Chiba Sensei wrote about several intense, life-or-death situations where he experienced this spontaneous, unconscious action. A couple of those situations involved saving himself when attacked. Other situations led to him saving someone else. On one occasion, while waiting to catch a train in Japan, a non-stop train approached the station at a high speed, as two brothers on bicycles approached the crossing. The older brother decided to play “chicken,” by riding his bike across the tracks in front of the approaching train. His younger brother, following, fell on the track. Without thought, Sensei rushed forward, threw the bike off the track, grabbed the fallen boy, and launched them both forward across the tracks with a forward roll, just in front of the oncoming train. Another time, while fishing at the pier in Ocean Beach, San Diego, Sensei spied a young girl drowning in the ocean below. He instantly jumped in and rescued the girl. When I asked him about it, years later, he said he simply acted, without hesitation or forethought.

These, and other more combative experiences, confirmed Sensei’s belief that the body responds more quickly and effectively in the present moment than does our discursive mind. While his teaching is often misunderstood and misrepresented as harsh, one aspect of it was a deliberate attempt to create conditions on the mat by which we could discover and nourish this developed spontaneity (mu so ken) to protect ourselves and others.

Frequently when teaching, Chiba Sensei tested his uke’s liveliness by executing a technique, such as ikkyo or irimi nage, where he would cut them down, allow them to recover and cut them down again and again, before finally completing the technique. This situation required uke to remain connected, centered, extended, lively, and fully present, perceiving everything. Often, Sensei would change to a different technique, and his uke was expected to follow. This practice, which requires we perceive deeply with all our senses, leads us toward the cultivation of openness.

OPENNESS

In his recent Biran article, “Still Here”, Champion Sensei describes the Aikido Body as having “an expansive frame around a compressed core”.² In the first part of this series I addressed the development of a compressed core in the discussion of centeredness and connectedness. To clarify further how a “compressed core” supports and interacts with a “expanded frame” I would like to expand on these earlier remarks.

The discovery and nourishment of our tanden, which is essentially our movement or “action center”, is the starting point for exploring the cultivation of an Aikido Body. The tanden works with two other centers: a “feeling” or “heart center” in the chest and a “navigational center” in the head. As upright creatures, these centers are balanced along our central axis and relate to the spine and our alimentary canal (gut). When I think of a “compressed core”, I think of these three centers functioning as an integrated and dynamic whole:

Our action center, which resides in our lower abdomen and pelvic bowl, connects us through our legs and feet to the ground, enabling us to move through the world. This lower center relates to our survival, individual conservation and reproduction.

Our heart center connects us through our arms and hands to one another, our tools, and allows us to bring the world to us. It sits on the central tendon of our diaphragm, is suspended between our lungs and its function is closely associated with our breath. This middle center relates to feeling, sensation emotion, and our relationship to others.

Finally, our head center orients us and allows us to navigate the world. Our head houses all of our teleceptors, organs of perception that connect us to the outside world, eyes, ears, vestibular system, taste and smell. This upper center, resides in the center of the head– where the skull sits on the first cervical vertebra — at the level of the eyes and ears.

These three centers all have perceptual aspects. Our lower center is associated with exteroception, which is the sense of contact with our base of support, our ability to recognize the firmness, amount of friction, or stability of the surface we are moving over. Our heart center is associated with interoception, our sense of what’s happening within us, which includes emotions, as well as the many sensations generated by movement, muscular and visceral. The center in our head, enables us to access the world outside ourselves. Action and perception mutually inform each other. The balanced, combined functioning of these three centers empowers us to act with confidence and competence in an expansive and expressive way.

The language by which the body, heart and mind communicate is that of feeling and sensation. Essential to refining our action in the world is learning to listen to that language. In learning to listen in that way, we open our senses to see, hear, smell, and taste, supporting a deeper engagement with the world we are a part of.

In Aikido, our capacity to generate and neutralize power correlates with the development of our tanden. Concurrently, our ability to make and sustain sensitive, lively contact with our partners is influenced by our hearts. I believe that emotion colors our perception, perception guides action, and the clearest perception comes with love. To be able to move to the right place, at the right time, with the right choice of technique (where, when and what) arises only when all centers are open and our frame is well conditioned and expanded.

The foundation of openness is the ability to listen with all of our senses with the attitude of a beginner (shoshin), or the wonder of a child. To accomplish this, we must consciously close at least one important opening: our mouth.

When we sit in seiza or zazen, our posture is upright and relaxed and our focus is centered on the present moment. Included in right posture is our “oral posture.” The lips should be lightly closed. The tip of the tongue should lightly touch the roof of the mouth just behind the front teeth. The jaw should be forward, but relaxed. This position of lips, tongue, and jaw ensures we breathe through our nose, which conditions our unconscious breathing away from the unhealthy practice of mouth breathing.³ Correct sitting posture assists us in quieting our internal chatter or mental noise, which deepens mental and physical stillness.

When we practice on the mat, it is Birankai’s tradition to keep our mouths shut. Of course, there are times when the vigor of training requires us to open our mouths to take in more oxygen to meet cardiovascular demand, but there are almost no times in our training when it is necessary to open our mouths to speak. Talking during training distracts from our engagement with our own senses and our presence in the given moment, creating noise on the mat that can endanger those practicing around us. This is a critically important element in Chiba Sensei’s teaching. On his mat, conversation was not tolerated.

When training vigorously, especially on a crowded mat, we must rely on hearing, as well as vision and kinesthetic awareness, to avoid collisions with our neighbor. Verbal noise creates a safety risk. With our mouths shut, our senses open, our breathing is healthier, and our mind more focused. When we sit to observe a teacher’s instruction, we endeavor to keep our internal dialogue quiet – and our internal mouths shut, just as when practicing Zazen. By so doing we enhance our learning, enabling us to cultivate “eyes to see” – to see what is, as opposed to what we think we know – and eventually to engender our “eyes to see through” – to see beyond outer form to the inner, normally invisible elements of what is shown.

Champion Sensei, in the article referenced above, discussed the martial principle of ichi soku ta, meaning “one equals many”. This principle speaks directly to the importance of openness, notably, the recognition that when practicing with a single partner, the potential for multiple attackers is always present. How we enact any form (shihonage, ikkyo, irimi nage, etc.) should reflect this understanding. Regardless of the form we do, our gaze should be soft, our peripheral vision wide, hearing active, our ability to turn and change direction readily available.

While it is true that in certain circumstances action can arise simultaneously and spontaneously without conscious thought, when training or in other learning situations we yoke our attention to our actions. This allows us to make choices and create opportunities to step out of our habitual patterns and refine and expand our understanding of and ability to execute any form. In this way we can discover how each element of our practice reflects the whole.

In presenting the five principles of Centeredness, Connectedness, Wholeness, Liveliness and Openness in his essay, “The Study and Refinement of Martial Awareness”, Chiba Sensei wrote, “Openness is both generated and characterized by a strong interrelationship between body and mind…In this stage, the physical and mental aspects respond to one another in mutual and nearly simultaneous development.”

While the thrust of this three-part essay focused on cultivating an Aikido Body, the development of an Aikido Mind cannot be ignored. Of the five pillars, openness probably contains more psychophysical aspects than the other four. For myself, the qualities of mind and attitude that accompany the cultivation of physical aptitude in Aikido are humility, curiosity, flexibility and creativity. When our Aikido Body/Mind matures through the forging and awakening influence of our training, we can bring the foundational principle of O Sensei’s post-World War II Aikido, that of take musu aiki – the martial generative power of aiki (union with nature) – into being. Essential to discovering the creative potential within our art is the necessity of dissolving our attachment to our egos. Our art, as George Lyons Sensei so beautifully expresses, offers the opportunity to step out of any fixed world view, to detach ourselves from our social and cultural biases, so we can see the world with fresh eyes. 

In conclusion, I want to add a few comments regarding physical conditioning, and to offer a few references I have found useful.

Chiba Sensei did not limit his physical/mental/spiritual training to Aikido. Sensei came to Aikido with extensive experience in Judo, and other martial arts. He incorporated into the Birankai “curriculum”, Iaido and Zazen. He also practiced Yoga, beginning with the Yoga of Tempu Nakamura and later, that of B.K.S. Iyengar. He spent intense periods of misogi, or purification, training at Ichi Ku Kai.⁴ In addition, he ran, bicycled, loved to fish and practiced and appreciated various artistic traditions; painting, calligraphy (Shodo), poetry (in both Japanese and English), and on occasion, singing. 

I have found several other disciplines very helpful to my development as an Aikidoist. Particularly valuable, when I was young, was extended periods of time backpacking, often at high altitudes, which not only provided elements of physical fitness, but placed me intimately in the more-than-human world. I have practiced Tai Chi Chuan for as long I have practiced Aikido, and fenced for over 30 years. My Tai Chi teacher, Choy Kam Man, and fencing coaches, Charles Selberg and Michael D’Asaro Sr., influenced me tremendously as a teacher and as a person. I have been practicing Iyengar Yoga the last few years, and find it deeply enriching. I have practiced the Feldenkrais Method professionally for the past 25 years, and have extensive experience with the Alexander Technique, Structural Integration (Rolfing), Tui Na (Chinese massage), and other approaches to movement and the life of the body. All of these various activities inform my Aikido training.

For resources related to movement and physical well-being, I suggest the following books and websites. For teachers, I hope these resources prove useful in expanding what you incorporate into your warm ups and conditioning elements in your classes. For all of us as students of Aikido, I hope these resources provide more movement choices to support our ongoing development of our unique Aikido Bodies.

Books (please choose “Birankai International” on Amazon Smile) :

• The Thinking Body, Mabel Ellsworth Todd, 1937
• Awareness Through Movement, Moshe Feldenkrais, 1972
• Yoga: The Iyengar Way, Silva,Mira & Shyam Mehta
• Your Spine Your Yoga, Bernie Clark, 2018
• Move Your DNA: Restore Your Health Through Natural Movement, Katy Bowman, 2017
• The Practice of Natural Movement, Erwan Le Corre, 2019

Websites:

• Feldenkrais Method
• GMB Fitness
• Natural Movement
• Nutritious Movement

There are of course many more great resources. The most important resource is your own movement, driven by your own curiosity!

Notes:

1. Thanks to Shiun (Biran Continental Europe newsletter) for the Chiba Sensei quote, excerpted from “The Study and Refinement of Martial Awareness” Shiun, Vol 5, No.2, 2007.
2. “Still Here”, Archie Champion, Shihan, quoted in Biran, Fall 2020 print edition.
3. I strongly recommend Breath by James Nestor, which describes the plethora of negative health consequences of mouth breathing.
4. See Adam Sorkin’s recent article in Biran, Fall 2020 print edition

Darrell Bluhm, Founder and Chief Instructor, Siskiyou Aikikai

The discovery and development of a dynamic center naturally leads to greater core ability, which includes core stability, mobility and reversibility. It also leads to a stronger connection of the various parts of ourselves to each other: upper body to lower body, front to back, left to right. 

In his classes, Chiba Sensei often followed the exercise for discovering the center, (found in Cultivating an Aikido Body, Part 1) by what he called a “seesaw” exercise.

The exercise involves sitting on the mat, maintaining a strong extension through both legs with ankles and toes pulled toward one’s center, spine extended, with the head balanced on top. In this position the legs are lifted, center engaged, so that the upper body and lower body are held in a V-shape, and one rocks backward and forward without allowing the feet to return to the mat. This exercise is easily integrated into the basic practice of backward ukemi. 

Ukemi as a whole plays a central role in the forging of an Aikido body. The practice of ukemi, receiving and neutralizing the energy generated by nage (and by gravity) while falling and recovering is done repeatedly in our practice. Chiba Sensei often likened this aspect of training to the act of beating and folding iron in the traditional construction of a Japanese sword. No matter how well the blade is shaped, sharpened and polished, the smith will not produce a quality blade without first going through this initial stage of the process. The “beating and folding” that is promoted through the repeated enactment of basic forms, ikkyo, nikkyo, irimi nage, shihonage, etc., is the primary means by which we unify our bodies. This unification process, in my understanding, should be well underway by the level of third kyu, and completed by first kyu. 

We do not abandon this process as we advance in our art and as we age. As martial artists, we necessarily make a sustained commitment to physical training. In my experience, if the forging process is not well established in the early stage of training, the physical expression of one’s art becomes arrested and tends to break down with age. The development of one’s intellectual, ethical and spiritual understanding can, of course, continue to grow, but to maintain and refine the physical aspect of our art requires a commitment to the life of the body. This requires adjusting and adapting how we train to the changes living brings. It is much easier to do if we lay down a solid foundation early.

Finding and working with our center both connects ourself to ourself, but also deepens our connection to the lived-world in which we exist. In Part 1 of this article, under the section titled “Centeredness”, I introduced the concept of the “field of promoted action,” which refers to the learned ways that we habitually eat, walk, sit, stand, dance, defecate, and otherwise use our bodies in the culture into which we were born. The experienced world, which we each inhabit, is even more complex and varied than “the field of promoted action,” as it extends beyond physical movement to all aspects of our subjective experience. 

However, within that great expanse of variability there is a common foundation, the earth itself, what Chiba Sensei called our Big Mother. There are primordial ways that being creatures of the earth support and nourish us, whether we are conscious of them or not. Deepening our awareness of our connection to Big Mother can enrich our Aikido practice in countless ways. We are connected to the earth and to the atmosphere surrounding her through our feet, our breath, our hands and our organs of perception, eyes, ears, tongue, nose, skin and proprioception. 

Our feet provide the understanding for our action in the world. Adapted to the demands of this task, our feet are complex and wondrous instruments that dynamically connect us to the earth.

Each foot is comprised of twenty-six bones, thirty-three joints, numerous ligaments binding the bones, accessory bands and sheets of connective tissue and all the tendons attaching the twenty intrinsic muscles (originating from the bones of the foot itself) and dozen extrinsic muscles (originating from the bones of the leg above). The organization of these bones, joints, connective tissue and muscles in association with blood vessels, nerves and sensory organs (for pressure, pain, movement and position) allows the foot to mediate between the terrain of the ground below and the distribution of body weight and mass above. In accomplishing this role as mediator of above and below the foot acts as a sensory organ as well as an organ of support and mobility.

Living in a culture that imprisons feet in shoes from an early age, and within an environment that provides mostly even, two dimensional surfaces to move over, denies our feet the opportunity to develop the sensitivity, flexibility and strength that running, walking, climbing over varied natural surfaces provides. Martial practice offers antidotes to the dullness our feet acquire through our modern lifestyle. If you watch Chiba Sensei’s warmups you will see a variety of actions that work the toes, feet and ankles. Moving on our knees in shikko also works to enliven our feet. When enlivened feet act in accord with a conscious dynamic center, our ability to meet the fundamental demands of our practice — to manage distance, to transmit force from the ground through the whole of ourselves, etc. — is greatly improved. 

Chiba Sensei often began his classes, especially morning classes, with a series of breathing exercises derived from Tempu Nakamura, known as the Father of Japanese Yoga. One exercise that Sensei frequently taught, independent from the series, connects breath to the feet, center, spine and vision via our imagination. The exercise is done standing, feet close together, spine extended, eyes focused on the ground six to ten feet in front of oneself. Beginning with the inhale, one begins to float upward onto the balls and toes of the feet, ideally maintaining the weight over the balls of the first and second toes, while one breathes in through the nose and imagines drawing the breath into one’s center through the soles of the feet. At the top, maintaining balance, one engages the tanden and begins to exhale and lower the heels to the ground with the image of strongly breathing out through the heels. At the end of the movement down, one tries to empty the lungs of air through the mouth, audibly, with a strong contraction of the expiatory muscles. The exercise was usually done three times. Sensei encouraged us to use our imagination to develop a more conscious connection to our feet, breath and center and to explore our ability to experience our weight creatively, learning to intentionally become light or heavy.

Another breath exercise (kokyu soren), one that often followed that described above, also involves the use of the imagination, this time linking the breath, center, spine, feet and hands. After jumping both feet out into a wide stance, one inhales extending the fingers and arms upward overhead, rising up on the toes and balls of the feet at the end of the inhalation and extending the fingertips and arms up and forward, then exhaling, lowering the arms and whole body to the starting point. The instruction, given by Sensei, was to imagine breathing in through fingertips, arms, down the spine to the tanden, then breathing out through spine, arms and hands, extending our consciousness as far as we could imagine (“to the furthest ends of the universe.”) Both inhale and exhale are to be done quietly, through the nose, with an emphasis on relaxation.  

This exercise is reflected in the basic kokyu exercise done in hanmi. Hands are raised overhead, thumb leading the motion up with the inhale, weight shifting forward, and then cut out and down with the exhale, little finger leading, fingers strongly extended and consciousness extending out from the center, while shifting weight onto the back leg. The same image is applied to all basic cuts with the sword, or strikes with the jo. I can still hear Sensei say, “Don’t contract your muscles, extend your consciousness!”

Our feet connect us to the ground, and within the martial context, they function optimally when in the service of our center. Our hands connect us to others. The human hand is the most sensitive and sophisticated manipulative instrument in the known universe. While our lower body moves us through the world, our upper body brings the world to us. When we contact each other in Aikido, as uke and as nage, our hands, be it through grabbing, striking or controlling, should connect us, center to center. An oral instruction I received from Sensei was, “When your students’ handwork is weak, help them strengthen their center. If they need to strengthen their center, work with clarifying their hand work.” 

Having established vital connections to the ground through our feet, to the air through our breath, to our partners and our tools via our hands, we also must connect to the world at large by means of our organs of perception, most of which reside in our head. To function as a whole being engaged in the world, every action we make involves orientation, using our vision, hearing, smell and possibly taste to direct our attention and or action appropriately. In developing ourselves as martial artists, we seek to cultivate “Ten direction eyes” — that is, an awareness in all directions and the ability to move in any direction without hesitation or preparation. This requires a well-organized posture, in which the head sits balanced on the spine, free to move easily, supported below by our feet and center, using our senses to guide the complex actions of daily living and the wonderfully varied forms of Aikido. The unification of the body that arises through an awakened center, connecting all parts into a cohesive whole, exists in collaboration with a fully embodied and awakened mind. 

Wholeness of being allows for wholeness of action. As Chiba Sensei wrote, “… (It) activates (an) essential life force manifesting as strong physical liveliness and culminates in the reification of the psychospiritual virtues such as humility, receptivity, modesty, etc. that are necessary to the process of raising (ones) art to its highest level.”

Darrell Bluhm, Founder and Chief Instructor, Siskiyou Aikikai 

“Study your own body through basic forms. Study the centralization of the body.” – T.K. Chiba

Chiba Sensei often spoke of wanting those of us he trained as teachers to understand the ways he helped his students condition their bodies through and for training in Aikido. He expected us to be able to assist each of our students to develop what he called, “their Aikido Body”. When he spoke of the Aikido Body, he spoke not in the abstract but from his extraordinary experience in working with his own body, and from the practical means for shaping and conditioning his students’ bodies that he developed over decades of teaching Aikido to many different students in many different cultures. He would sometimes refer to the ‘Aikido Body” as the “Natural Body” or the “Instinctual Body.” However, he was very aware of how unnatural the social and physical environment of the modern world is. We humans have created a world for ourselves that resembles a zoo more than it does the wild world our hunter-gatherer ancestors lived in, and in which our bodies evolved. In a very real way, we resemble captive or domesticated creatures more than adaptive embodied beings. The question Chiba Sensei sought to answer for himself and for us is: How do we, as modern humans, reclaim the natural abilities that exist within each of us?

In trying to answer that question for myself, in this three-part series I look to the five principles of embodied Aikido which Chiba Sensei identified: centeredness, connectedness, wholeness, liveliness and openness. Underlying these principles is a foundational assumption that the body is inseparable from the mind, and (as stated in his essay “On Food and Diet”) the body and the Earth are one. While I will explore this topic from the perspective of the primacy of the body, I too believe the body exists in union with mind and no body/mind union exists independent of a social and physical environment.

Centeredness

We are literally shaped by our everyday movement. Much of our movement is determined by what is known as the “field of promoted action”: the ways we eat, speak, defecate, dance, and so on, in the culture we are born into. This is different from culture to culture and even family to family. In the Japanese culture of the early to mid-20th century when, through the genius of Ueshiba O Sensei, Aikido emerged, there was little need to teach people how to move from their center. This teaching was embedded in patterns of action woven into daily routines: sitting on the floor in various postures, moving from sitting or squatting to standing and back to the ground. Now, in the 21st century, sitting cross-legged or on one’s heels on the floor (seiza) is uncommon. The chair intervenes between bodies and ground for many contemporary people as soon as they learn to walk. We sit, often while looking at a screen, more than we engage in any other posture. This creates challenges, even when confronted with simple actions such as kneeling, bowing, or getting up and down with ease.

To understand what it means to be centered, and to know how to move from our center, we need to have a clear image of where our center is and how it is related to the whole of ourselves. Chiba Sensei taught a very simple action for us to use to sense where our tanden resides and how to engage it actively:

He had us lie on our backs, place our hands by our sides (or sometimes place our fingertips on our lower belly) and with a sharp inhalation lift our head, arms and legs from the mat, hold for a moment and then with our exhale release our head and legs back to the mat. Try this for yourself. You will feel the engagement of your tanden and hopefully experience a sense of physical unity. This should be done carefully and without excessive muscular effort. Locating the center is the first step in cultivating our ability to use our centers dynamically.

To move in any way, we have to coordinate the mobilization of some parts of ourselves while stabilizing others. Given that our physical center resides in the basin of our pelvis, to mobilize that center requires fluency in the movement of the hip joints. If you watch video of Chiba Sensei conducting warm ups, you will see many actions both in standing and seiza that require movement in all planes of action, where the pelvis rotates over the hip joints, or the hip joints move relative to a stable pelvis, as well as very dynamic use of the tanden and breath:

For kinetic energy to be transmitted from the ground through the body to the hands, the hip joints must be fluid and the spine must be well organized, extended, flexible and stable. As teachers working at this time, we need to recognize that a life of accommodation to the chair has compromised the ability of most individuals entering our dojos to move freely at the hip joints or to have the requisite flexibility in their feet, ankles, and knees or the stability in their spines to execute the most basic actions of our art, sitting, bowing, suwariwaza, etc. Chiba Sensei modeled many ways to address this reality both through his warm ups and conditioning exercises, and in the precision with which he executed basic Aikido forms. I believe that going forward we need to study what he developed, and to expand it to meet the needs of our present students.

“Everything is hidden within your spine. The state of the spine is an indicator of the unification of the body and spirit. To study the body is to study your spine.” – T.K. Chiba

The primary function of our skeleton is to provide support to the body within the field of gravity. As upright, bi-pedal creatures with large brains — and consequently heavy heads — that task is complex. Literally central to that task is our spine. As mentioned earlier, in order for us to move freely, the spine provides the stability to transmit the forces generated by gravity downward and the forces generated by ground reaction forces and muscular action upward. Skeletal alignment, the organization of parts to each other and the whole relative to the ground, develops for us during infancy and early childhood. The movements of rolling side to side, front to back, lead to sitting and crawling, and create the strength and organization of muscles, connective tissues and proper neurological stimulation necessary to then stand, walk, run, jump, roll, etc. Returning to a closer relationship to the ground through seiza, shikko, rolling, etc. gives us an opportunity to refine and expand the quality of our movement by strengthening the stability of the pelvis and spine and their ability to support the actions of the body as a whole.

The quality of support we sense, relative to the ground, influences the amount of effort and the distribution of effort utilized in any action. Just as learning to walk as children required moving from the ground up, learning to move from our center in Aikido is promoted by the practice of sitting in seiza and executing suwariwaza (kneeling) technique. Paradoxically, our instability as upright creatures enhances our overall mobility. All martial arts involve an exploration of stillness and motion. Finding stillness in standing is required in balance poses in yoga, the most basic being Mountain Pose or “Tadassana.” Tadassana is very challenging, yet, moving from standing requires almost no effort. I have become very aware, in my personal Iai-batto ho practice, of the difference between moving from the large triangular base provided by sitting in seiza compared to moving from standing, At this point in my life, due to 70 years of wear and tear on my knees, seiza and shikko are no longer accessible to me. The foundational form in our system of Iai is Shohatto, executed from seiza. The standing version of Shohatto is called Koranto. This form has become the root of my present practice. Without the years of practicing Shohatto and its sibling forms, from sitting, where stillness is more readily available and moving from an engaged and vital center is essential, I would not be able find the rhythms of stillness and motion, mobility and stability, necessary to execute Koranto in a satisfying way.

If we as teachers of Aikido within Birankai wish, as our newly drafted vision statement states, to “meet our students where they are”, we need to develop ways to help them find comfort in their relationship to the ground and learn to mine the treasures accessible to them in the fundamental actions of sitting, bowing, knee walking etc. For those who can’t get all the way to the ground, we may need to explore ways we can help them discover their centers and how to move dynamically from their centers in and out from a chair (or zafu). What we must never do is remove seiza, bowing, shikko, etc.  to accommodate the many who will be challenged by them. To do that would be to  abandon the foundations of our practice.

Biran Online Editor

Reading Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s book, Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder, is to feel stuck next to him on a long flight. During the journey, you’re confused, intrigued, frustrated, inspired, and uncomfortable. Most significantly, you’re motivated to get back out into the world and apply your hard-earned knowledge…much like our current predicament with COVID-19.

If you have the time and fortitude, Taleb’s book is exceptionally insightful and worth the effort.  For the rest, being antifragile means to gain from disorder, volatility, and other stressors.  By contrast, the fragile wants stability and predictability, and the robust doesn’t care.  The wind extinguishes a fragile candle and enlarges an antifragile wildfire.  A forest which endures periodic fires is more robust than one which hasn’t withstood a fire in centuries. Fragile is bad, robust or resilient is better, antifragile is best.

The philosophy of antifragility complements Aikido, if one appreciates the peace, love, and harmony we aikidoka strive for comes from working through and even seeking conflict, pain, and disorder.  Making the commitment to train. Shaping the body through ukemi, off-mat training, and diet. Practicing techniques until they are instinctive.  Working through injuries.  Maintaining commitment to train when life events and other competing priorities emerge. Assuming leadership roles in the dojo and Aikido community. Perhaps, becoming a teacher, responsible for transmission to new generations and maintaining a dojo. Wherever you might be on your path, consider the following principles Taleb promotes in Antifragile:

If one has nothing to lose, then everything is a gain, making one antifragile.

One’s ability to switch from one course of action to another is an option.  Options allow you to benefit from the positive side of uncertainty without a corresponding serious harm from the negative side. Continuously set conditions which maximize your options, preferably with open-ended, not closed-ended payoffs.  Avoid being “squeezed” – having no choice but to do something, regardless of costs.

When you’re fragile, you depend on minimal deviation and demand predictability – a rarity in our increasingly volatile world. The antifragile need only the wisdom to not do things which might harm themselves and to recognize and seize emerging favorable outcomes. 

Base decisions principally on fragility, not probability. Failure to predict a tsunami or economic meltdown is excusable; building something fragile to them is not.  Natural systems are antifragile thanks to layers of redundancy – high birthrates, extra organs (kidneys, lungs), the ability to store fat or lose tails to a predator…

By tinkering, one incurs lots of small losses at minimal cost to occasionally find something rather significant.  A “loser” or “victim” is one who, after making a mistake or suffering harm, doesn’t reflect and exploit the lesson for gain.

So, which are you? Your dojo? The Birankai community?  More importantly, how are you working to increase antifragility among the people and things you care about?  Biran Online posts in the coming months will meditate on these questions and make suggestions for greater antifragility.  Please email your submissions to editorbiran@gmail.com.