In this article, starting from an I Chin hexagram (䷯ jǐng: the well), Régis Soavi discusses with us how the practices of Aikido and Regenerating Movement can be instruments of searching and deepening into oneself.
The dojo is, intrinsically, the well where all practitioners of martial arts in search for the Way, Tao, come to feed themselves. Contrary to rings or gyms, it offers a place for peace that is necessary, perhaps essential, to deepen human values.
dojo Scuola della respirazione, Milan
Today we live at the speed of light. Communication has never been so fast. Waves loaded with bits and micro-bits circulate continuously around our planet, carrying more information that our brain can store. Social networks have replaced knowledge with a superficial veneer that may, seemingly, be fit to meet up with our social appearance. In the sixties, members of the Situationist International castigated the pseudo-intellectuals who would feed on magazines such as Le Nouvel Observateur or L’Express1Le Nouvel Observateur (today L’Obs) and L’Express are weekly French general information magazines. They are among the most prominent ones in terms of audience and circulation, and stand at the political centre in the French media landscape. [Translators’ note] to fuel their society conversations or their writings: what would they say about the democratisation that is now offered to each and everyone of us as a chance to become the new Monsieur Jourdain from Molière’s Bourgeois Gentilhomme? Better than deepening anything, ‘Jack of all trades, master of none’ seems to be the motto of our times.
Martial arts tend apparently to be going the same direction. Many are those who are interested in the spectacular pictures broadcasted by media that present the fictive abilities of martial actors who, though highly skilled in their profession, mainly look for a rendering that is both superficial and commercial.
The image of the well in ancient China should make us wonder about the trends that govern our daily life. Whereas water used to be drawn from the well using a bucket and a pole, it was indeed the repetition of such an act that enabled the village life, and the provided food was considered as unlimited. What if we took a leaf out of this ancient book?
When we practice an art such as Aikido, it is not about accumulating ever more numerous techniques, nor blissfully repeating what is being taught, but rather about beginning a search, about reorienting oneself towards something more profound in order to abandon the superficial, the superfluous, that disappointed us so much and that we can no longer bear.
Régis Soavi
Many of those who were, at first, extremely enthusiastic to start a true work with their body get weary of repeating, in an all-too-often schoolish manner, or get misled by the latest trend. This is how some people collect methods and go from one art to another, from Yoga to Tai chi, from Karate to Capoeiera, sometimes thinking that one of them is superior to the other, as so nicely explained by any trendy youtuber making up the news the way they like.
In view of all these characters who live only to influence their followers and earn a living on their backs thanks to the number of “likes” and to the ads they generate, is it not time to search deep into oneself? To take time to think rather than passively consume someone else’s thought? To move one’s own body to rediscover a lost harmony rather than search a virtual complement to the routine that stems from the poverty of one’s daily life?
The dojo as a place for searching has all the characteristics of the well: it is both a place for training, because one draws from it everyday, and at the same time (and maybe even more) it is a place for conviviality where the social gets rid of what prevents it from being true, that is to say, from being as close as possible to the profound nature of individuals. A place where sociability escapes conventions, a place where we can talk to each other, physically get in contact with each other in a simple manner, with all the difficulties potentially involved for who is not ready.
All the arduousness resides in not remaining at the surface of the practice, in not being content with surfing onto an ocean of images that have become virtual or wading on the strand – without getting too wet, please – but in absorbing what one finds out therein, in letting go of what encumbers us so as to be free to explore its depths.In his book The Non-Doing, my master Itsuo Tsuda delivers us with simplicity an insight into his own research and the work he had developed in Europe:
Itsuo Tsuda
‘What am I in comparison with the greatness of the Universal Love of Master Ueshiba, or with the technique of the Non-doing of Master Noguchi, or the unfathomable refinement of Master Kanze Kasetsu, actor of the Noh theatre? I have known them all; two of them are dead and now only Master Noguchi is still alive. Their influence keeps on working in me. They are natural masters. I am simply a being who is beginning to wake up, who is seeking and going through an evolution.
An extraordinary continuity of sustained efforts is what marks out the works of these masters. I feel as though I am finding wells of exceptional depth in barren land. Where the work of categorization halts, is merely their starting point. They have drilled much deeper. They have reached the streams of water, the source of life.
However, these wells are not interconnected, although the water found in them is the same. My task is to draw up a map of the territory, and there, to find a common langage.’ 2Itsuo Tsuda, The Non-Doing, 2013, Yume Editions (Paris), p. 12
This language, Itsuo Tsuda will find it in the art of writing (he defined himself as a writer-philosopher, as attested by his funeral stele in Père Lachaise cemetery), in the teaching of a certain form of Aikido that is grounded in breathing and the deepening of the sensation of Ki, and finally in making known Katsugen undō (Regenerating Movement). Through his work, his writings, his teaching, he will manage to create a bridge between East and West.
What threatens who practices martial arts – and more specifically Aikido – is the boredom due to repetition, search for efficacy, polishing one’s technique, and all this at the expense of the depth of the art and the culture that underlies it. As a matter of fact, our time is no longer under the same imperatives as were previous centuries; while it is still useful to be able to react in case of agression or difficulties, what will be determinant is our inner force and the awakening of our instinct, more than our fighting capacity. Aikido remains a bodily practice, where rigour, dynamics, know-how, are of the utmost importance, but its philosophical aspect cannot be overlooked. This aspect is in no way contradictory, quite the contrary, one of my former masters Masamichi Noro had himself understood it very well when he created this new art that is Ki no Michi (the way of Ki) at the end of the seventies. The search in Aikido is something difficult and can sometimes even be pernicious, because it is not about confronting with other combatants, it is not meditation or dance either – and I can say so because I have an immense respect for these arts, there again the wells are different, but the search goes the same direction.
To go and search towards the development of human capacities, of the culture beyond what is known, to question oneself and question the ideas of the world, to move forward to make our society move forward. Maybe one day to get finally out of barbarism and obscurantism. We just need to read again Umberto Eco‘s conference3Umberto Eco, Costruire il nemico e altri scritti occasionali [Creating the Enemy & Other Occasional Wiritings], 2011, ed. Bompiani (Milano). The conference Creating the Enemy was given in Bologna on 15 May 2008 and its full text is availble online (in Italian) on how the human being creates themselves enemies to understand that, more than ever, we need to know the other to better understand him or her.
Aikido as an art of the Non-Doing is a gateway to what many people are looking for: realising oneself, with no oversized ego, but in simplicity, and with the pleasure of an authentically lived experience.
Le Nouvel Observateur (today L’Obs) and L’Express are weekly French general information magazines. They are among the most prominent ones in terms of audience and circulation, and stand at the political centre in the French media landscape. [Translators’ note] ↩︎
2
Itsuo Tsuda, The Non-Doing, 2013, Yume Editions (Paris), p. 12 ↩︎
3
Umberto Eco, Costruire il nemico e altri scritti occasionali [Creating the Enemy & Other Occasional Wiritings], 2011, ed. Bompiani (Milano). The conference Creating the Enemy was given in Bologna on 15 May 2008 and its full text is availble online (in Italian) ↩︎
Seizing in itself is not the difficulty, it is the coagulation of ki in the wrist, the arms or around the body that causes a problem and blocks us, and it is through detachment that we can get free of it. The way to achieve this is visualization. Tsuda sensei provides us with an example in his second book The Path of Less:
Drawing by Master Tsuda showing different types of seizures.
‘Aikido for me is an art of becoming a child again. […] It takes art to become a child without being childish.[…]] John, for example, tackles me from behind. I want to crouch down to sit, but he prevents me from doing so. He has biceps twice as big as mine and weighs almost 200 pounds (90 kilos). I cannot move, he is holding me so tightly. What should I do? Throw him before I sit down? I try but I cannot do it because he is too heavy and too strong.
So I become a child. I see a wondrous seashell on the beach and bend down to pick it up. I forget John, who is still grasping me from behind. (There is an important technical detail here: I move one foot forward to make two sides of a triangle with the other foot, because it is more concentrated that way.) There is flow of ki, starting with me and moving towards the seashell, whereas before, the ki was frozen at the thought of John. John’s 200 pounds become very light, and he falls forward over my shoulders.How is it that with different ideas, we obtain opposite results, while the situation remains the same?
The idea of throwing provokes resistance. In the child’s gesture, there is the joy of picking up the shell that makes one forget the enemy’s presence.’ (1)
Grabbing, appropriating
There are many ways of seizing and it is the intention put into it that is often determinant. Some of them can be considered as superficial or even unharmful, others more dangerous, like for instance those which carry a mark of appropriation or others which can sometimes be insidious and insistent.
The scenography which allows training in Aikido considers seizing as the result of an act manifesting itself with some kind of aggressivity. This act in itself is already an attempt to appropriate the other person, so as to use him in some way, rob him, destroy him, destroy his person or personality, setting apart the well-founded cases which are not of our concern in this example. What I am talking about is the abuse of a power, whether it be real or unreal, known or desired, over the other, this other person being presumed unable to react when faced to such a display of strength.
Assuming power
In the animal world, the power of an individual or clan in the bosom of a larger group of the same kind matches quite definite criteria, generally in relation to reproduction, preservation or to the defense of a species. As a consequence, it is borne and finally accepted by the whole group; in case of any attempt to contest, genetic or merely ancestral rituals are meant to clarify the situation.
In human societies, particularly in ours which would like itself to be more modern in some respect, the need for assuming power over the other person seems to me more like a dysfunction, or even a disease, which are fully created by the behaviours induced by civilization. Uncertainty about one’s own power, as well as the conditionings exerted by all those already installed in the bosom of society bring about frustration and lead human beings to try to reconquer their power through words or even acts, trying where this power does not lie, where they vill not find it, that is in the other person who anyway does not detain it. But on the other hand, it forces them mentally to take all the risks implied by this vain hope. The arising of such aggressivity is often due to a lack or deficit of one’s own power, whether admitted or not, that one tries to make up. Pressure undergone and felt, hence experienced as such, sometimes since early childhood brings in people the will to reappropriate what they feel intimately robbed of, deprived of, or even what they just lost. It makes them dangerous persons, merely due to their frustration. We can all understand and feel that kind of thing when helplessly faced to an administration, or when put under power by somebody against whom there is apparently no possible opposition. From that point, there is just one step to becoming aggressive, which some people take, while others manage to be reasonable, resign themselves because they have already accepted this state of domination out of habit and they daily undergo it. If a few people are only hardly moved, it is because they have already overcome these difficulties and are not damaged in their own power, never having lost it or having already recovered it.
Prisoner
‘It’s a case of the biter bit’ says the proverb and this reversal of perspective is indeed what happens when seizing. We forget too easily that the one who is seizing becomes prisoner of what he has seized. He canot get rid of it without risking to lose something in the process he has initiated. His freedom, if he has any at all, is now transferred to the one he thought he could detain or retain. He becomes a jailer to the other person, who will only think of getting free, who will put all his strength, intelligence, sometimes all his craftiness or even perfidiousness into it, because he is totally within his right and nobody can blame him for it. Our society generates this type of alienating behaviour in which both persons try to free themselves, one against the other, instead of moving to another dimension which would be more human, intelligent, and respectful of the this other person. Wanting to change these behaviours might seem utopic, yet if Aikido exists and continues to be an art at the service of mankind, it is maybe to assert and demonstrate that, like others have already stated, other relations are possible between people and we aikidokas are not the only ones who wish to continue in this direction.
Respiration, an answer to a specific situation
It is through ventral respiration and the calmness it brings about that one can find the immediate solution to some difficult situations. To prepare for that, it is not absolutely necessary to be an outstanding technician, or someone brave as a blizzard, or a very competent analyst but on the other hand there is need to recover this force which has taken refuge at the very bottom of our body, of our kokoro, or which even sometimes has been scattered in multiple defense systems. Trying to find a defensive solution in violent martial arts when faced with the awareness of our weakness, real or assumed, is just dodging the issue, seeking an alternative, or worse, forging ahead regardless. Aikido, by its philosophy, suggests another direction but if this fails to be heard and above all understood, it may well cause Aikido to lose its justification, its singularity.
Attacks in Aikido are just a way of setting a situation in order to enable practitioners to solve a problem, or even a conflict, which by the way puts them in opposition more with themselves than to with their partners. Seizings, for instance, often represent attempts to immobilize the body, therefore to block the other’s movement, through imprisonment of the wrists, arms, trunk, keikogi or any other part which can be grabbed for this purpose. Sometimes, however, seizings may follow on from an attempt to strike that has failed. They are seldom solely a matter of blocking; considered in the perspective of a fight, they should almost always be followed by an Atemi or a final immobilization. They are only the first act, the first scene of a play which is much longer, if one may say so. It might seem paradoxical but it is through working on seizings that one will discover detachment.
Sensibility, instinct
Quite before seizing or hitting materializes, our sensibility is touched by something invisible even though very physical. This may be inexplicable as scientific knowledge currently stands, but this is something we know well, and even sometimes very well. That is what makes us move, dodge, although we have seen nothing but simply felt it in an indefinable way. In order to give a clearer example, one which everybody has been able to verify in one way or another, in different circumstances, I would like to write about gazing. Gazing carries an energy, an extremely concrete Ki that our instinct can perceive. Have you not ever experienced, while taking a walk one evening or one night, feeling something indescribable behind you as if someone was gazing at you, watching you; you turn around, nobody there, and still the sensation lingers? The sensation, if you are not at peace, can turn into anxiety or perhaps trigger an “irrational-since-there’s-nobody” fear, when at the angle of the street behind a half-opened curtain you suddenly discover somebody observing you – or on an overhanging roof a cat watching you. The gaze of cats, and of animals in general, as well as the gaze of humans when intently observing something or somebody, carries an extremely powerful Ki. Our instinct can feel it, but it all depends on our state of mind at that moment. If we are talking with a friend, if we are lost in our thoughts after a love encounter for instance, our instinct, if not well-prepared, will have difficulty feeling this kind of things. The same obviously applies when we are worried, frightened or anguished, in this case all our being is somehow weakened, it loses its instinctive abilities.
Discovering the direction taken by Ki
Aikido enables us to re-discover and conduct our instinctive abilities. It is thanks to a slow work on ourselves and our sensations that will appear again what we have often let go to sleep, rocked as we were by the comfort due to modern society which may seem so reassuring to us.The work based on seizing corresponds, like everything we do in Aikido, to a process of renewed learning and to a training of the body as a whole so that there will no longer be any separation between body and spirit. First of all, when our partner gets closer, there is no question of waiting kindly for him to seize us as requested, our whole body must feel the directions followed by the different parts of his body: arms, legs, his bearing points, all of this without looking, without observing, because it would already be too late. With unexperienced beginners, if the exercise is done slowly enough, they will be able to discover the routes taken by their partner’s Ki, the force lines. Since they work without any risk, they start again trusting the reactions and sensations of their bodies. During sessions, I do not only show the techniques, I am constantly on the move, serving as Uke to one person, as Tori to another; without blocking them, I make them feel the direction their body must take by putting myself in the situation, making ki more material, by materializing the force lines, visualizing the openings they can use, while allowing them to act and respond as they will.
Discovering the Non-doing
Seizing can be a first step on the path that leads to what Lao Tseu and Chouang Tseu would name Wu wei, the Non-acting, and it was the basis of my master Tsuda Itsuo’s teaching. How to teach what cannot be taught, how to show the invisible, how to guide a beginner or even an experienced practitioner towards what is the essence of the practice in our School? What is difficult to explain with words is easily understood when we let sensation guide us. To do so we have to take a few steps backward. To let go of our acquiring and piling up habits, those consumer reflexes of people always ready to fill up their trolleys with various products, techniques which are more or less modern, fashionable or old style, miraculous, easy and effortless, or even tough but efficient. Advertising is today the source of many illusions, luring its clients with colourful wonders of a world that has become so virtual. When will the new Wii console enable us to practice Aikido with enhanced reality glasses and a partner whose potentiometer can be adjusted depending on our level, our shape, or our mood?
But maybe I am behind and it already exists.
Seizing with Ki
Young children know and naturally use a certain way of seizing which is extremely efficient. It is a seizure devoid of any useless contraction. When they seize a toy they put all their ki into the act and when they let go of this toy they do it with complete indifference, there is no more Ki in it. On the other hand they have an incredible capacity when they do not want to let go of what they have seized and are holding tight in their small hand. If this is something dangerous, their parents must sometimes unfold their fingers one by one, though their hand is so small and devoid of any true muscular strength as adults mean it. They know in a manner completely unconscious how to use Ki, they do not need to learn, unfortunately they often lose this ability for the benefit of what is reasonable and most of the time education and schooling are responsible for this.
To learn again how to seize like a small child, without tension, and thus discover natural prehension. I often give as an example the way birds alight on a branch: they have skin micro-sensors in the middle of their paws which inform receptors which, thanks to these indications, stimulate reflex functions at the level of the involuntary, and give the order to their fingers to close as soon as they touch the branch. This manner of seizing avoids contortions, failures, and enables a very subtle adequacy of the members to the place caught (they catch). A quality seizure is a seizure which uses the palm of the hand as first contact, then the fingers close up on the object, the limb, the Keikogi. If we act in this way, seizing is faster, without any excessive tensions, and it has remarkable efficiency, allowing therefore a good quality work with a partner.
The only seizures which respect the other one’s freedom are light but powerful, like for instance that of a small child who wants to take along one of his parents to look at a small frog he’s just seen in the tall grass and is curious about, or like that of two beings, friends or lovers, bound by tenderness and respectful of each other.
Starting with a theme taken from I Ching hexagram K’an (the Abysmal), Régis Soavi writes in this article about Aikido as a Misogi pratice.
Misogi 禊 is widely practised among shintoists. It consists of an ablution, sometimes under a waterfall, in a stream, or in the sea and allows a purification of the body at both physical and psychical levels. In a broader sense, Misogi encompasses a whole process of spiritual awakening. Misogi is also a way to relieve the being of what overwhelms him, so to allow him to wake up to life. Water has always been considered one of its essential elements.
Like water, Aikido is a way to achieve Misogi
Founder of Aikido O Sensei Morihei Ueshiba kept on telling his students that the practice of this Art is above all a Misogi.
Aikido is one of the Japanese martial arts for which the main character, the very nature, is, like water, fluidity. The teaching brought by Itsuo Tsuda Sensei who was during ten years a direct student of the Founder Morihei Ueshiba has definitely confirmed it. Although his words seem to have largely been forgotten, he kept on repeating that in Aikido there is no fighting, its just the art of uniting and separating1Itsuo Tsuda, The Path of Less, 2014, Chap. XIX, Yume Editions, p. 182 (1st ed. in French, 1976, p. 174–5). However, when you watch an Aikido session, it seems that two people are fighting each other. In fact one of them plays the role of the assaillant, but in real he is a partner, facing him there is no aggressiveness, you wont see any malicious gesture, no violence, even if the response to the attack may be impressive because of its efficiency.
Overall, the Aikido practised in the Itsuo Tsuda School is an Art of great fluidity, an art in which sensitivity and caring for the partner have the main part, and it is always through the smoothness of a first part practised individually that an Aikido session begins.Far from starting with warm-up exercices, an Aikido session begins with smooth, slow but still invigorating exercises. Breathing coordination is essential, as it allows us to harmonize with Ki, and thereby to take a step forward to discover a world with an additional dimension, the “World of Ki”.
This world is not a revelation, it is more what comes to light, what appears clearly when one recovers one’s sensitivity, when rigidity vanishes into thin air and that the living appears through. It is often women who first understand the importance of such a way of practising. That is why so many women practise in our school because they have experienced the bitter taste of sexist oppression in our society and they find in this art a way, a path, far beyond the simple martial art.
Ki, a driving force
Ai, 合 Union, Harmony
Ki, 気 Vital energy, Life
Do, 道 Path, Way, Tao
Ki is not a concept, a mystical energy nor a sort of mental illusion. We can feel Ki. In fact everybody knows what it is, even if, in Western countries nowadays, we do not give it a name. Learning to feel it, to recognize it, to make the most of it, is necessary for who wants to practise a martial art, and even more if you practise Aikido. In Aikido, if you dont focus on Ki, only the empty form of its contents remains, this form becomes quickly a fight, a struggle in which the strongest, or the most cunning will manage to defeat his partner. We are really far away from the founder’s teaching for whom it was an art of peace, an art in which there is neither winner, nor defeated. Each movement of the partner is accompanied by a complementary movement from the other partner, like the water that marries each roughness, every nook, leaving nothing behind or separate.
Calligraphy by Itsuo Tsuda
If the beginnings are usually tough, its because people have lost part of their mobility and mostly because they have become hard so to be protected from the world around. They have built a carapace, an armour, certainly protective, but which has become a second nature and an invisible prison. To have Ki flow in our body again, so to recover fluidity, and follow a teaching based on sensitivity enables us to understand physically the Yin and the Yang.
Bathing in a sea of Ki
Exercices and basic or advanced techniques have not only in common the breath which is nothing but the materialization or even better the visualisation of Ki, but they also allow to become aware of our body, physically and of our sphere of ki, which the Indians call the AURA, and that we have today practically forgotten almost everywhere.What modern science and in particular neuroscience has been discovering for a few years is only a small part of what everyone can discover on his own and put into practice in his daily life simply through the practice of Aikido as Itsuo Tsuda Sensei taught it.He would repeat over and over again that Aïkido as presented by his Master Morihei Ueshiba is the union of Ka the inspiration, the ascending force, the square, the weft and Mi, the exhalation, the downward force, the cercle, the chain.Ka being in Japanese a prononciation for 火 fire (which appears for example as a radical in the word Kasai 火災, wild fire) and Mi the first syllable of Mizu 水 water, the whole forming the word KAMI 神 which means divine in the sense of the divine nature of all things. Itsuo Tsuda would add that ‘in this gloss one mustn’t see a similar value to that of a scientific etymology. It comes from punning, the use of which is common among mystics’. 2Itsuo Tsuda, The Science of the Particular, 2015, Chap. XVIII, Yume Editions, p. 153 (1st ed. in French, 1976, p. 137)
I have never seen such fluid movements as when he wanted us to feel a technique he showed to us. Moreover, in his dojo there used to be no accidents, nobody injured, everything would be in a flow of Ki both respectful and generous but at the same time firm and rigorous, that I can hardly find today in the sports halls where aikidokas have their trainings.
The dojo, an essential place
Do we really need a special place to practise Aikido? If we talk about the surface we need for falls, we could lay tatamis anywhere, from the moment we are sheltered from bad weather.
In his book Heart of Pure Sky, Itsuo Tsuda gives us his extremely clear view of what should be a dojo, he who was Japanese was in the best position to give us a glimpse:
‘Concretely, L’École de la Respiration is a “Dojo”, a particular kind of space in the East, which refers less to the material place itself than to the energetic space.’3Itsuo Tsuda, Heart of Pure Sky (posth.), ‘Interviews on France Culture radio’, ‘Broadcast no. 1’, 2025, Yume Editions, p. 13 (1st ed. in French, 2014)
Régis Soavi
‘As I have already said, the dojo is not simply a space carved out and reserved for certain exercises. It is a place where the space-time is different from that of a secular place. The atmosphere there is particularly intense. We enter it by bowing to sanctify ourselves and we go out by bowing to desacralise ourselves.
Spectators are admitted, provided they respect the atmosphere[…]. They must not gratuitously parody the practice with words and gestures.
I am told that in France [or in Italy], we come upon dojos that are simply gymnasiums or sports clubs. So be it. As for me, I want my dojo to be a dojo, and not a club with a boss and his regulars, so as not to disturb the sincerity of the practitioners. This does not mean that they should wear a scowling constipated expression. On the contrary, we must maintain a spirit of peace, communion and joy.’4ibid., ‘Early Writings’, ‘Booklet n°3 – Respiratory Practice in Aikido’, p. 102
A sacred space therefore and yet fundamentally non religious, a secular space, a space of great simplicity where the freedom to be as we are exists, beyond the social. And not what we have become with all the compromises we had to accept in order to survive in society. This freedom remains inside us, deep within us in our intimate heart, our Kokoro 心 as Japanese language talks so well about it, and is only asking for a chance to be revealed.
Itsuo Tsuda, Heart of Pure Sky (posth.), ‘Interviews on France Culture radio’, ‘Broadcast no. 1’, 2025, Yume Editions, p. 13 (1st ed. in French, 2014) ↩︎
4
ibid., ‘Early Writings’, ‘Booklet n°3 – Respiratory Practice in Aikido’, p. 102 ↩︎
Noro Sensei, in the 70s, used to tell us that O-Sensei Ueshiba Morihei would sometimes reproach his learners for their lack of attention when they phoned from a phone booth, concentrated as they were on their conversation: You must be ready under any circumstances, whatever you do! he would say.
Aikido opts for a natural position, with no guard stance, which is called Shizen Tai. But a natural posture is not a laid-back posture as we understand it today, concentration and attention mustn’t be eased in any case. Given that the most widespread guard stance in Aikido remains Hanmi no Kamae, it depends more than we believe, on the polarization of energy in the body, as do all the other guards.
Kamae, the body’s instinct
I remember what Maroteaux Sensei had told us during one of my first Aikido sessions at the “Montagne Sainte-Geneviève” dojo: ‘You open the door, a dog jumps at your throat, what do you do?’ Obviously I remained speechless, but this question he had asked us had shattered me – I was a young practitioner of martial arts quite sure of himself at the time – and this became the root of my research on Kamae.
Assuming a guard stance is the response to an act of aggression or to the sensation of danger. This response, coming from someone who does not know martial arts, will be instinctive whereas it will be the result of training coming from a practitioner. Personal research can lead the practitioner to use his body in a manner different from what he had learned and for this he will find a positioning or a guard that suits him, sometimes a more appropriate one, sometimes one meant as a trap suggesting an opening or a weakness on his part. Even if there are many ways to assume a guard stance, hence to protect ourselves, we must take our own body into account, in spite of all we have learned, despite the many years of training, ultimately instinct will be our guide. The work in martial arts, far from being pointless, will rather be in this case a backing, a support. Training may sometimes induce over-confidence, a belief in techniques, postures which, though beautiful on pictures or on the tatamis, do not correspond to any reality in daily life.
Finding the right posture depends on each person’s body. Far too many practitioners try by working very hard to model their body in order to bring it into line with the idea they have of their art, or more simply with the efficiency they hope to gain. We consider the aesthetics of the art but then we miss its depth. We can see the work which has been done but we are not aware of the deformations acquired because of it. So many students repeat an incredible number of times the same exercise, the same technique thus hoping to reach the mastery of their art by imitating the master or simply the teacher, while they are instead following the path of deformation without realizing. One shall not be surprised by the number of accidents or disabilities resulting from this. How many people are unable to practice anymore because of a knee, an elbow, a wrist or their back, though they are still young and full of energy?
Noguchi Haruchika Sensei 1911-1976, founder of Seitai
The Kamae depend on the Taiheki
Seitai brought us a remarkable tool, the study of corporal tendencies which Noguchi Haruchika Sensei called Taiheki. Tsuda Sensei gave a first description of them, which though brief was already a revelation when his first book The Non-Doing was published in the early seventies. Later he supplemented this teaching in the books which followed over the years, continually giving examples which enabled one to understand Taiheki better. Reading Noguchi Sensei’s texts also enabled us to deepen our knowledge of human behaviours and particularly of their relationship with the body. Comprehending the bodily movements of individuals enables to help beginners improve their posture, so they do not deform themselves. Since explaining this teaching to uninformed readers would require a whole book, all I can do is give a few indications, without going into details.
The Taiheki classification developed by Noguchi Sensei is based on human involuntary motion. It is not a typology meant to make people fit into small boxes, but rather to identify the habitual behavioural tendencies, at the same time taking into account the interpenetrations that may occur between them.
This classification includes six groups: each of the first five is related to a lumbar vertebra, the last group being more related to a global state of the body rather than to the spinal column. According to either the Yang or the Yin aspect, each group is divided into two subgroups or types, called “active” or “passive”. In order to fully understand the interest of such a study, I have chosen a few examples which seem to me more telling than other in the light of the Taiheki.
Régis Soavi. Finding the right posture depends on each person’s body.
Taiheki, the revelator
According to the classification, the first group is also called the “vertical category” and it is related to the first lumbar vertebra. The energy tends to polarize to the brain.
Type 1, for instance, is extremely confident with respect to Kamae, his position is unchangeable and he is able to explain it to everybody, in a very logical way. Even with little experience he at once has an idea on the topic and sticks to it. Since his heels tend to get off the ground because of the tension he has in the cervical vertebrae, he will for example develop a theory according to which this position allows you to jump faster and further in case of attack and will refute any contradiction, until another idea emerges which will seem to him more brilliant and relevant.
Type 2 knows everything on the Kamae in almost all martial arts, the historical origins, the value of each one and its major flaws, the contribution of each master. He even knows little stories illustrating what he says, he is a mine of knowledge who does not hesitate to complete it as soon as he feels a lack somewhere in his argumentation or his references.
The second group is called the “lateral category” and it is related to the second lumbar vertebra. The energy tends to polarize to the digestive system.
Type 3 is a bon vivant, when he practices martial arts he chooses his club according to the ambiance rather than to the efficiency of the art he is being taught, or to the reputation of the master. All these stories about postures, guard stances, are of little interest to him, as usual he has his own little opinion about this topic, and he likes or dislikes, which means it is convenient to him or not.
Type 4, on the other hand is always restrained in his manner, it is hard to know what he thinks. An affable person, he seldom gives his opinion, even if a debate initiates about the value of different Kamae, he does not have any real opinion, everything seems possible to him depending on the circumstances. He is rather a diplomatic, moderate kind of person.
The third category is called the “pulmonary category”or “forwards/backwards category” and it is related to the fifth lumbar vertebra. The energy tends to polarize to the respiratory system.
Type 5 does not like to argue about nothing, a stance must have a practical meaning, either it is efficient, or it is not. We must check, and if it works, move ahead… Dodging is not his strong point, he prefers Omote techniques to Ura techniques. Because the bearing point of his posture tends to be the fifth lumbar vertebra, his shoulders lean forward and this incites him to act. He is easily combative but knows how to leave himself a way out if necessary.
Type 6 has too much tension in the shoulders to be able to act in a simple way. When this tension relaxes, it releases a huge amount of energy that goes off in all directions and that even he himself can’t handle. In front of him, no guard stance is possible, he is completely out of control and unpredictable at the risk of putting himself in danger.
The fourth category is called the “twisted category” and it is related to the third lumbar vertebrae. The energy tends to polarize to the urinary system.
Some Taiheki may a priori seem to be a help in assuming a good guard stance, as it is the case with the “twisted category” (type 7 or 8), because in order to defend themselves they instinctively adopt a kind of posture, rather a profile position, with arched lumbar vertebrae, one foot forward etc. The posture may look ideal, to strike a pose or on a picture. But apart from the precision of the position and the bearing points, the ability to move depends obviously and maybe mainly on the state of mind. There is a huge difference, which will completely change the deal, between a type 7 twist and a type 8 one. To put it in a simple way, I would say that the type 7 wants to win whereas the type 8 does not want to lose. The whole posture changes, one gets ready to pounce, the other to try dodging. Furthermore, the people of the twisted category have a permanent agitation which in this case turns out harmful. They are so restless all they are waiting for is to take action. Waiting is unbearable to them; unable to take it any longer, all of a sudden they get started, never mind if it is not the right moment.
The fifth group is called “pelvian” or “pelvis” group and it is related to the fourth lumbar vertebra. Its energy is not polarized towards a definite part of the body, it is the body as a whole which stretches and releases from the hips with one blow.
Type 9 is an example of continuity, when he practices martial arts, he tends to make it his unique reason of living, the trend of his pelvis to close gives to his koshi a lot of strength that makes his learning easier but he has got a predisposition to perfecting that may sometimes go to the point of absurdity. He cares about details and will perfect kamae to the slightest element, as long as his posture is not perfect according to his views he will not be satisfied, but this dissatisfaction, far from discouraging him, is precisely what pushes him forward. Nothing can be opposed to him, his only reference is inner satisfaction. Like O-sensei Ueshiba Morihei as well as other great masters, he may come to the conclusion that the natural position is the ideal kamae because it transcends all the others. But this natural position is the fruit of his many years of work and training, not a theoretical facility nor a slackening on his part.
As for type 10, he considers that a good guard stance is indispensable, that it is a guarantee of stability and that if we respected others, there would be no conflict. His open pelvis generally makes him someone very friendly, he has a great sensitivity and his intuition is fearsome. His open posture prevents him from being aggressive, he will tend to perform Ura techniques at which he is better and his guard will be more in the direction of absorbing the attack rather than repelling it.
Concentration and attention must not be relaxed under any circumstances.
The two last types that form the last group are, actually, states of the body called hypersensitive and apathetic.
Type 11 fails to have a precise and defined guard stand, because of his hypersensitivity, he is an unsettled person, unable to find benchmarks. His guard stand is imprecise, even confused or messy and almost every time totally ineffective. Fear tends to liquefy his legs. In his case, Aikido can be an excellent activity, provided the teacher understands his difficulties well and does not rush him, so as to to lead him to a normal sensitivity.
On the contrary, type 12 is an example of rigidity, his guard stance is very physical and often lacks flexibility, he is able to take any blow without flinching. His body may sometimes have a certain muscle laxity in the joints but this does not make him less rigid.
It is according to Taiheki that one can understand the uselessness of a given posture, hence of a given kamae. Support points being different from an individual to another, the potential for mobility or simply for movement is basically different too. So it is no use proposing an exercise, which even if it makes the apparent posture better, destroys the person in the very bases, or at least might cause physical as well as mental deformations.
Kamae and rigidification
Tsuda Sensei considered that rigidification and slackening of individuals are a part of the great flaws induced by our modern societies, but he did know that these problems existed long before, that they are inherent in human society. In his book The Path of the Gods he tells an anecdote about kamae which I found once more very evocative. It is significant of the risks to which imagination may expose people, even those whose profession it was, like the samourai.
‘Involuntary contraction gets stronger as imagination is filled with fear. Fear doesn’t remain in the head. It paralyses the whole body. The wrists especially lose flexibility and the arms become insensitive. That’s what happened to two samourais fighting a duel in a story I read somewhere. They were holding their sabre with both hands and were facing each other several meters apart. At this distance, they were still safe whatever they did but their faces were already pale. They were probably soaked in cold sweat. They stayed there at the same distance for some time. Finally they got closer, one of them was lying on the ground and the other was standing. The fight was over. But the winner was staying there, unable to let go of his sabre because his fingers were clenched on the handle. The contraction was such that it was difficult for him to loosen them ’.
If we want to avoid rigidification that can be caused by guard stands which dont agree with us or imply constraints that deform us, only commonsense and personal search for balance can allow that to us. There is no definitive solution for all problems and forever.
The fall in our art – Ukemi – is more than a liberation, mere consequence of an action. It is the Yin or Yang of a whole, the Tao. In practice, at the end of the technique, Tori emanates a yang energy: if he wants to avoid injuring his partner, Tori lets him absorb this yang energy and transfer it to the fall.
Breathing during the fall
Aikido is an art where there is no loser, an art dedicated to human beings, to the intuition of humans, to their adaptability, and going beyond the contradiction brought by a technique by means of the fall is nothing else than adaptability to it.
Not to teach a beginner how to fall would amount to putting him in a situation of handicap from the start and risking discouragement, or to shaping a spirit of resentment, or even of revenge.
There are different attitudes among beginners, those who hurl themselves at the risk of getting hurt, and those who, because of fear, contract when about to fall and who of course take a bad fall and suffer painful consequences if you force them. My answer to this problem is softness and time…
When surprised by a noise, an act, the first reaction is to breathe in and block the breath, this is a reflex and vital functioning that prepares the answer and therefore the action. Surprise starts a series of biomechanical processes which are totally involuntary, it is already too late for reasoning. It is by breathing out that the solution to the problem will come. If there is no risk after all, or if the reaction is exaggerated and the risk minor, one drops the blocking and the breath is released in a natural way (ha, the usual sigh of relief). If there is danger, whether great or small, we are ready for action, ready to act thanks to the breath, thanks to breathing out. Problems occur when, for instance, we do not know what to do, when the solution does not arise immediately, we remain blocked in inspiration, with our lungs full of air, unable to move. It is a disaster! It is approximately the same pattern that occurs when we are a beginner, our partner is performing a technique and the logical answer that will enable us to get free, and thus to fix up this contentious problem is the Ukemi. But if one is afraid to fall, if one has not had the technical training of many forward and backward rollings done in a slow, nice and easy way, one remains with lungs blown up like a soccer ball, and if the technique is completed, one ends up on the floor, with more or less damage done.
Bouncing painfully on the tatamis like the aforesaid ball would then be the least harm. Learning to let go as soon as absolutely necessary, not falling before by caution, as this impairs Tori’s sensation and gives him a false idea of the value of his technique and often of himself. Grasping the right moment to breathe out and land softly on the tatamis without any air left in the lungs. Then as for the clapped falls, which one does when more advanced, it will be enough to breathe out faster and let oneself go so that the body finds the right receiving position by itself.
Training the old way!
My own training through Judo in the early sixties, in Parisian suburbs, was very different. To us school youngsters, Judo was a way to expend our energy and canalize what otherwise ended badly, that is turned into struggles and other kinds of street fights. The training, twice a week, required two essential things: absolute respect to our teacher and learning how to fall. It was still a time when our teacher transmitted the « Japanese » Judo without weight categories. In spite of Anton Geesink’s recent victory at the Olympic Games, he would define himself as a traditionalist. Falls were one of the lessons foundations: rolling forward, backward, sideways, we used to spend about twenty minutes practising that before performing the techniques, and sometimes, when he would not find us focused enough, too much scattered, he would say: ‘Turn your kimonos inside out so you won’t dirty them’ and we would go out for a series of forward falls, in the small paved blind alley in front of the dojo. Afterwards, we were not afraid to fall anymore, well, that is, those who still wanted to continue!
The world has changed, society has evolved, would nowadays parents agree to trust such a “barbarian” with their progeny, besides there are rules, protective laws, insurances.
Bob – that was his name – felt a responsibility for our training, and teaching us how to fall whatever the circumstances and on any sort of ground was part of his values and his duty was to retransmit them to us.
Bodies have changed, through food, lack of exercise, over-intellectualisation; how can we pass on the message that learning physically how to fall is a necessity, provided that the results of it will be ascertained only several years later. What benefit is to be expected of it, what profitability, nowadays everything is accounted for, there is no time to lose.
It is the philosophy of Aikido which attracts new practitioners, so that’s where our chance lies to pass on the message of this necessity.
Dualism
Aikido, by nature and above all because of the orientation O-sensei Ueshiba Morihei gave to it, carries a vision of the fall completely different from that of Boxing or Judo for instance, where falling is losing. To an external viewer, and that is what falsely gives a certain character to our art, it seems that Tori is the winner when Uke falls on the tatamis. It is psychologically difficult to admit that this is not at all so. Society gives us but rarely any examples of behaviour other than this Manichean dualism ‘Either you win or you lose’. And it is logical, at first sight, not to understand and to see only that. In order to understand the matter differently, one must practice, and practice with another conception in mind, which can only be given by the teacher. Tsuda Itsuo sensei provides an example of this pedagogy in his book The Path of Less:
‘In Aikido, when there is a flow of Ki from A, who is performing the technique, towards object B, opponent C, who is grasping A by the wrist, is thrown in the same direction. C is pulled in and joins the main current that goes from A to B.
I have often used this psychological mise-en-scene, for example, with the phrase “I’m already there”. When the opponent grabs your wrists and blocks your movement, as in the exercise of sitting Kokyu, one is inclined to think that this is a pushing exercise. If you push the opponent, it immediately produces resistance in that person. Push against push, they struggle. It becomes a sort of sitting sumo.
In the phrase “I’m already there”, there is no struggle. One simply moves, pivots on one knee to make an about turn, the opponent is driven by the flow of Ki and flipped into his side. It takes very little for this exercise to become a struggle. As soon as the idea of winner and loser gets mixed up in it, exaggerated efforts are made to obtain a result, all to the detriment of overall harmony. One pushes, the other resists, bending excessively low and squeezing the wrists to prevent being pushed. Such a practice will not benefit either one. The idea is too mechanical.
[…] The idea of throwing provokes resistance. […] Nonetheless, to forget the opponent while knowing he’s there is not easy. The more we try to forget, the more we think about it. It’s the joy in the flow of Ki that makes me forget everything.’ (1)
Imbalance serving the purpose of balance
Balance is definitely not rigidity, that is why falling as the consequence of a technique may perfectly enable us to rebalance ourselves. It is necessary to learn how to fall correctly, not only in order to enable Tori to be free of any fear for his partner, because Tori knows him and anticipates that his capacities will enable him to come out of this situation as well as a cat does in difficult conditions. But also and simply because thanks to the fall, we get rid of fears our own parents or grandparents have sometimes instilled in us with their “precautionism” of the kind ‘Be careful, you’ll fall down.’ invariably followed by ‘You’ll hurt yourself’. This Pavlovian impregnation has often led us to rigidity and in any case to a certain apprehension as regards falling, dropping down.
The French word chuter (to fall) has obviously a negative connotation, while in Japanese the most commonly accepted translation of the term Ukemi is receiving with the body, and we understand here that there is a world of difference. Once more the language shows us that the concepts, the reactions, differ profoundly, and it underlines the importance of the message we have to convey to people beginning Aikido. Without being especially a linguist, nor even a translator of Japanese, the understanding of our art also involves the study of Eastern civilisations, their philosophies, their artistic tastes, their codes. In my opinion, extracting Aikido from its context is not possible, despite its value of universality, we have to go and look in the direction of its roots, and therefore in that of the ancient texts.
One of the basis of Aikido can be found in ancient China, more precisely in Taoism. In an interview with G. Erard, Kono sensei reveals one of the secrets of Aikido that seems to me essential although quite forgotten today: he had asked Ueshiba Morihei: ‘O-sensei, how come we don’t do what you do?’ O-sensei had answered smiling: ‘I understand Yin and Yang. You don’t!’ (2)
To project in order to harmonize
Tori, and this is something peculiar to our art, can guide the partner’s fall so that the latter may benefit from the action. Tsuda Itsuo tells us about what he used to feel when he was projected by O-sensei:
‘What I can say from my own experience, is that with Mr Ueshiba, my pleasure was so great that I always wanted to ask for more. I never felt any effort on his part. It was so natural that not only did I feel no constraint, but I fell without knowing it. I have experienced the surge of great waves on the beach that topple a,d sweep one away. There is, of course, pleasure, but with Mr Ueshiba it was something else. There was serenity, greatness, Love.’ (3)
There is a will, conscious or not, to harmonize the partner’s body. In this case it may be called projection. It is thus relevant to say that Aikido is not anymore in martiality but rather in the harmonization of mankind. In order to realize this we need to leave behind us any idea of superiority, of power over another, or even any vindictive attitude, and to have the desire to give the partner a hand in order to allow him self-realization, without him needing to thank anybody. The fusion of sensibility with the partner is indispensable to achieve this, it is this same fusion which guides us, enables us to know our partner’s level and to release at the right moment if they are a beginner, or to support their body if the moment is adequate for going beyond, to allow them to fall further, faster, or higher. In any case pleasure is present.
The involuntary
We cannot calculate the direction of the fall, its speed, its power, nor even its angle of landing. Everything happens at the level of the involuntary or the unconscious if we prefer, but which unconscious are we referring to? It is an unconscious devoid of what cluttered it up, of what prevented it from being free, that is why O-sensei would so often recall that Aikido is a Misogi, practising Aikido is realizing this cleaning of body and spirit.
When we practise this way, there is no accident in the dojo, this is the path Tsuda Itsuo sensei had adopted and the indications he was giving were leading us in this direction. This makes his School a particular School. Other paths are not only possible, but certainly match even more, or better, the expectations of many practitioners. I read many articles in magazines or blogs which take pride of violence or the ability to solve conflicts through violence and toughening up. To me, it does not seem to be the way indicated by O-sensei Ueshiba Morihei, nor by the masters I was fortunate to meet, and particularly Tsuda sensei, Noro sensei, Tamura sensei, Nocquet sensei, or others through their interviews, such as Kono sensei.
Ukemi enables us to understand better physically the principles which rule our art, which guide us beyond our small self, our small mind, to glimpse something greater than us, to be one with nature which we are part of.
Article by Régis Soavi published in October 2018 in Dragon Magazine Spécial Aikido n° 22.
Notes:
Tsuda Itsuo, The Path of Less, pub. Yume Editions (Paris), pp. 171–2
Guillaume Érard, Entretien avec Henry Kono: Yin et Yang, moteur de l’Aikido du fondateur [Interview with Henry Kono: Yin & Yang, the Drinving Force of Founder’s Aikido], 22 April 2008, www.guillaumeerard.fr
I discovered late in life that I was a girl. Of course I knew it, but it did not matter, it had no impact on my life, the way I would get in touch with other people and practice Aikido. I was not aware, unlike most of my fellow women citizens, that I was a “girl”, before being an “individual”. Part of the explanation for why I grew up outside of these ubiquitous schemes is that I have never been to school.
My parents had chosen a different path, it was a revolutionary decision, it was disobedience to “compulsory” schooling as Catherine Baker recounts in her book [1]… Of course this conditioning of women does not only take place within the school environment, but also within families, social circles, the media and culture in general. In families, it is always the little girls who are told that they are “so pretty, so cute”. Whether with a judo Keikogi or a pink tutu, they are being dressed like dollies. This is so present, as plain as the nose on your face, that we no longer consider it a problem. What is wrong with complimenting a little girl, a baby, on their clothes, their curls or smile? Well, precisely because the current importance of beauty and appearance is learnt during early childhood, and because this will brand them for life. It is with all those remarks and comments, these pink toys and these smiles that future women are being taught their traditional role: to please, and to enjoy pleasing. As writer Mona Chollet puts it: ‘the consequences of this alienation [for women] are far from being limited to a loss of time, money and energy. The fear of not pleasing, not meeting expectations, the subjugation to others’ judgments, the conviction of not being good enough to deserve love and attention from others both reflect and amplify a psychic insecurity and a self-depreciation whose effects reach every area of women’s life.’ [2].
In my case, I was preserved from this situation in my early childhood, I only discovered it during adolescence, I got shocked when I became aware that I was regarded and talked to, first and foremost as “a girl”! Of course I could not bear it and rebelled, as many other women did, against this treatment. But unfortunately no one ever fully escapes a culture, a society, I am part of it and I was affected by it too. The situation of Western women is obviously not to be compared with that of other countries where women have no right. Yet can that be a reason why we should not get things to progress? Because, even though women suffer from this situation, which they themselves perpetuate by raising over and over their daughters and sons to reproduce the same schemes, it is actually humankind as a whole which loses out from this imbalance. If men can be perceived as “oppressors”, I think women have the keys to get our society out of this impasse. Kobayashi sensei’s saying ‘Freedom is expressed by moving where it is possible’ (3) supports my thought that it is for women to exert their freedom. It is our responsibility not to reproduce over and over this story. And this is where, precisely where, that for me, this issue connects with Aikido.
Aikido, a third path
Aikido can be an answer to this “fight or submit” impasse which women have to face. Because Aikido is a martial art which has nothing to do with fighting. May one dare use the word ‘non martial art’? Many Masters and great experts repeat it (again recently Steve Magson, student of Chiba Kazuo sensei, in Aikido journal): it is ridiculous to raise the question of Aikido’s “efficiency” in a “real fight situation”. It is meaningless (which of course does not mean that one should do anything). But while a high level martial expert can write this without the value of his Aikido practice being questioned, a woman saying the same thing would immediately be suspected of not being up to it, not being capable enough. This issue however precisely concerns women, because we face very acutely the question of fighting as a dualistic situation. Even if it is not about fistfighting but rather cultural and social fighting. In addition, we are as soon as we are born potential victims of violence. Maybe we will escape it, but it will then be an exception. All women live knowing they will be a victim one day or another. And when we wish to express ourselves, get a job, again we are obliged to demonstrate our value, our right to stand where we are, all along our life. And, precisely, Aikido falls completely outside this framework! There will be no winner, nor loser. Aikido is like another dimension where our values no longer hold. If practised in a certain way, it can be a tool to practice, human being to human being, without any distinction. Régis Soavi sensei writes about Aikido that it is ‘a school for life, a school that arouses the life of those who practice it. Far from being just another string to our bow, it questions the fallacies and subterfuges which our society offers’ (4). I am also inclined to think that Cognard sensei follows the same line when writing about an Aiki ritual that could change us so much as to overcome history that has been legitimating violence for centuries (3). It is a pity that women do not take hold of this tool, this art, in order to escape submission, without imitating men in position of power, but rather by entering a third path. Where no one expects them.
Following this third path has always been my direction since my childhood, by walking, of course, outside of the school system, but also by practising Aikido since I was 6. I am not saying that I always manage to find the right way, but I am working on it. Daily reviving the practice of going down another path, of getting out of situations differently. I consequently practice with my own father being my Master. At the same time, it is a chance and it is not easy. I have always seen him ahead of me, on this path. He has been walking for a long time, before I was born, and I sometimes had the impression he was an unreachable horizon in Aikido. Benevolently, but with extraordinary firmness, he guided me, held my hand, without overlooking anything but letting time work. Now I walk by his side, I also teach Aikido myself… and I can better see how fortunate I am. I wish I could prompt other women (without excluding men of course) to practice this art with the state of mind I have experienced, the one of the Itsuo Tsuda School. And to practice it long enough, because it takes time, one cannot change one’s culture in a few years. One can acquire a few techniques, some self-confidence maybe. But really deciding for a different life course will require more time. The first step is daily practice, at least regular practice, which brings us back to ourselves. Writing on a seemingly completely different topic (calligraphy), sinologist J. F. Billeter gives us a remarkably vivid account which strikingly resonates with Aikido practice:
‘In the current world, practice also brings us back to ourselves by reintroducing us to the pleasure of gratuitous gesture. Dictated by machines, our daily activity more and more shrinks to moves that are programmed, domesticated, produced with indifference, without any imagination nor sensitivity taking part. Practice remedies this gesture atrophy by arousing our stiffened abilities. It restores the pleasure of playing, it brings back to life capacities which, even though not immediately “useful”, are nonetheless essential. As the most evolved among animals, human beings need more playing than any other species to maintain their balance. Practice also affects our perception of time. In our daily life, we keep going back in time and projecting ourselves into the future, leaping from one to the other without being able to stop at the present time. Because of this, we are haunted by the feeling that time is slipping away. By lining up with ourselves, practice on the contrary suspends the flight of time. When we handle the paintbrush, the present time seems to detach from the string that tied it to the past and the future. It absorbs in itself all duration. It amplifies itself and transforms into a vast space of tranquility. It is no longer governed by the flow of time, but it resonates with moments of the same nature which we experienced yesterday, the day before yesterday and the days before. These moments get threaded to each other, they create another continuity, a kind of majestic avenue that travels across the disorganized time of our daily activities. Our life tends to reorganize around this new axis and the inconsistency of our external activities stops impeding us. Daily practice performs the function of a ritual.’ (5)
Restoring sensation
But how did we get there? According to Tsuda sensei, today’s world tends to favour cerebral hypertrophy and voluntarism at the expense of the living. He said about it: ‘I don’t refuse to understand the essential character of Western civilisation: it is a challenge of the human brain to the order of the world, an effort of the will to extend the boundaries of the possible. Whether it is about industrial development, medicine or Olympic games, this character predominates. It is an aggression against nature. Superb human acts, yet without knowing it, against nature. Life suffers, despite our increased knowledge and possession.’
There also precisely lies the matter. We disconnect from our sensations, from the sensation of living inside us. It is also because women no longer feel their needs, their profound natures, that they let themselves carried away into situations that do not suit them. Too busy with acquiring and fighting, their instinct which should safeguards their life no longer reacts. It got atrophied. Even with their babies today’s women struggle to feel, to know what to do and turn to science and books to dictate them how to behave. Listening to their baby and listening to their intuition is outdated, it is archaic! And after centuries when being a mother was the only horizon for respectable women, we have nowadays achieved the feat of strength of reversing the imperative. Now, being “only” a stay-at-home mother is shabby! What a breakthrough!
Here also Aikido brings us back to our sensations. One cannot mentally compute a move. Upon an oncoming attack one has to move, it is too late to think. One has to sense one’s partner in order to move in a right, appropriate way. We (men or women) are often like the famous overfull cup in the Zen philosophy, which spills out when more tea is added. We are too agitated and too full of ourselves to be able to perceive the other. Let us not even talk about understanding them! This is also the meaning of the Non-Doing Tsuda sensei was talking about. We need to be empty, we need to start by listening. Women first should start by listening to themselves. Listening to their own body in Aikido everyday is rewriting their own experience. Relearning to trust themselves, restore the confidence in what their body says. Hino sensei makes the same observation, he writes about humans who have become ‘insensitive and incapable’ (6). He deplores the blatant lack of perception of what happens in the other person. Whether we grab his/her wrist or discuss with him/her, sensation is broken off. Intuition no longer works. We content ourselves with ‘Hi, how are you? — Fine, how are you?’, how superficial! If one is sensitive, it just takes a simple look to feel the other, to know whether they are happy or sad, whether they are half-asleep or on top form. But because of repeated stereotyped relationships we lose sight of authentic human relationships. Here again some masters have left us guideposts to reconnect with ourselves.
Tsuda sensei used to talk about intuition and authenticity of the relation we have with our child. Because, if when searching for intense sensations and experience some martial arts practitioners fantasize about past masters’ uchideshis, about experiences one can live under an icy waterfall, about the total availability for the Master, etc., there is one extreme experience which a woman can go through, a life experience rather similar to what Noro sensei recounts, he who once was Ueshiba Morihei’s Otomo. I can attest to it, it really feels like this: ‘If s/he sleeps, you have to watch over her/his sleep. If s/he wakes up at night, you have to be ready to satisfy her/his needs. If s/he gets bored, you have to entertain her/him. If s/he gets ill, you have to take care of her/him. You have to prepare her/his bath, her/his meals, and clean everything up as soon as s/he changes activity. […] It is obviously about adapting and even about becoming capable of anticipating the very precise desires in order to remain, day and night, awake or not, in total harmony.’ (7).
In total harmony with whom? With one’s newborn of course for a mother or a father! But why should one choose such a treatment? While there are so many solutions to relieve us from the burden of having a child. It is like slavery! Yet, for those who live this experience of a unique, wordless communication with a human being, it is an inestimable teaching. It is most likely when this state of fusion with the other person was reached that the genuine transmission from the Master, the transmission of the spirit of an art, could be achieved. Martial arts practitioners are looking for this life intensity! Unfortunately, when a woman experiences it with her child, this is relegated to a mere domestic task, which could be done by any underpaid nurse. Tsuda sensei used to talk about childhood as the only area where one could still live such an impossible experience. He was even saying that ‘knowing how to take care of a baby was the acme of martial arts’! Here again, if women became aware of this, would they realize the potential of hidden power they have? Would we then stop aiming at equaling men as the only path towards self-realisation?
Living in this world, while still being in another
If the purpose of our practice is human evolution, I believe the Dojo to be its casket. A Dojo can be a microcosm where we let go our social conventions, even temporarily. Through his books and calligraphies, Tsuda sensei prompts us to question the established order, to look further beyond the social organisation. If we practice in a certain direction, we can forget with whom we practice. If, and only if, we leave behind our social reflexes. It is obviously very difficult at the beginning not to bring in with us our baggage. It is as difficult for men as for women to forget who they have become in this world so to focus on what they are inside. Before any distinction, of sex, colour, age, fortune, culture, etc. Looking into ourselves for this shared humanity requires from us a voluntary act of breaking away from codes. The Dojo, its atmosphere of serenity and concentration (which cannot be found in a sports hall), the feeling of an intangible dojo, all this brings us into a certain state. The sequence of a session, with its first part of individual movements which brings breathing back to the center, followed by the practice with a partner, the harmonization of breaths, the attention to sensation. A combination that allows the Dojo to be a little bit “outside” the world, which prompts us to let go so to get into a different state during practice. Ivan Illich mentions such a state of consciousness when saying: ‘I don’t wan’t anything between you and me. [I am] afraid of the things that could prevent me from being in contact with you’ (8). In a dojo, we sweep these things away, conventions, fears, which stand between one another. It is not about abandoning our culture, no, it is simply about abandoning the manifestations of the social being in order to find each other so to walk along together.
For this to happen, we need women to wake up and come out of the shadows.
Article by Manon Soavi published in October 2018 in Dragon Magazine Spécial Aikido n° 22.
Notes :
1) C. Baker, Les cahiers au feu, Éd. Barrault, 1988
2) M. Chollet, Beauté fatale, Les nouveaux visages d’une aliénation féminine, Éd. La Découverte, p. 8
3) A. Cognard, « Rituel et Symbole », Dragon Magazine Spécial Aïkido n°19, janv. 2018, p. 22
4) R. Soavi, Mémoires d’un Aïkidoka, Dragon Magazine Spécial Aïkido n°19, janv. 2018, p. 60
5) J. F. Billeter, Essai sur l’art chinois de l’écriture et ses fondements, Éd. Allia, 2010, p. 164
6) H. Akira, Don’t think, listen to the body!, 2017, p. 226
7) P. Fissier, Chroniques de Noro Masamichi, Dragon Magazine Spécial Aïkido n°12, p. 77
8) I. Illich, Mythologie occidentale et critique du “capitalisme des biens non tangibles”, Entretien avec Jean-Marie Domenach dans la série “Un certain regard”, 19 mars 1972.
This seems to be a recurring question in the dojos and one which divides practitioners, teachers, as well as commentators in more or less all schools. Since no definitive answer can be given, one turns to the story of martial arts, to social requirements, to the history of the origin of human beings, to the cognitive sciences, etc. entrusting them to provide an answer which, even if it does not solve the problem, will at least have the merit of justifying what is claimed.
Aikijutsu has become a dō
From the moment it has dropped the suffix jutsu to become a dō, Aikijutsu has acknowledged itself as an art of peace, a way of harmony on the same basis as Shodō (the way of calligraphy) or also Kadō (the way of flowers). By adopting the word that means the path, the way, has it become for this an easier path? Or in the contrary does it compel us to ask ourselves questions, to look again at our own course, to make an effort of introspection? Does an art of peace necessarily have a compliant side, is it a weak art, an art of acceptance, in which cheaters may gain a reputation at little expense?
It is certainly an art that has managed to adapt to the new realities of our time. But do we have to foster the illusion of an easy self-defence, within everyone’s reach, suiting any budget, with no need to get involved in the least bit? Can you really believe or make people believe that with one or two hours of practice a week, furthermore excluding holidays (clubs are often closed), one can become a great warrior or acquire wisdom and be able to solve any problem thanks to one’s calm, peace of mind or charisma?
Does the solution then lie in strength, muscular work and the violent arts?
If a direction exists at all, it can be found in my opinion, and despite what I have just said, in Aikido.
A School without grades
Tsuda Itsuo never gave grades to any of his students and, when somebody had a question about that, he used to answer: ‘There is no such thing as a black belt in mental emptiness’. One might say that these words had ended all discussion. Having served as an interpreter between O-sensei Ueshiba Morihei and André Nocquet when the latter had come to Japan as a learner, Tsuda Itsuo later acted as an intermediary when French or American foreigners showed up at the Hombu Dōjō to start learning Aikido. This allowed him, since he translated the students’ questions and the master’s answers, to have access to what was underlying the practice, to what made it something universal, to what made it an art beyond pure martiality. He talked to us about O-sensei’s posture, about his amazing spontaneity, about his deep gaze which seemed to pierce him to the very depths of his being. Tsuda Itsuo never tried to imitate his master whom he considered inimitable. He was immediately interested in what inspired this incredible man capable of the greatest gentleness as well as of the greatest power. That is why, when he arrived in France, he tried to pass on to us what for him was the essential, the secret of Aikido, the concrete perception of ki. What he had discovered, and later summarized in the initial sentence of his first book: ‘Since the very day when I had the revelation of “ki”, of breath (I was over forty years old at the time), the desire to express the inexpressible, to communicate what cannot be communicated had kept growing in me.’1Tsuda Itsuo, The Non-Doing, Yume Editions, 2013, p. 9
For ten years he travelled Europe to make us Westerners, who very often had a Cartesian, dualistic frame of mind, discover that there is another dimension in life. That this dimension is not esoteric but exoteric as he liked to say.
A School with its own specificity
There is obviously a variety of motivations leading people to start this practice. If I think of the people who practice in our School (the Itsuo Tsuda School), apart from a few of them, there are not many who came for the martial aspect. On the other hand, many of them did not see anything martial about it at first sight, even though at each session I show how the techniques could be effective if performed with precision, and dangerous if used in a violent way. The martial aspect arises from the posture, the breathing, the ability to concentrate, the truthfulness of the act of attacking. Dealing with a learner, it is essential to respect the partner’s level, and to practice known forms.
But the discovery one can make by practising known forms goes far beyond that. It is about making something else grow, revealing what lies deep within individuals, freeing oneself from the underpinning influence exerted by the past and sometimes even by the future, on our gestures, on the whole of our movements, physical as well as mental. Indeed in our dojo everybody realizes that.
The session starts at 6:45am. The fact of coming to practice so early in the morning (O-sensei and Tsuda Sensei always started their own sessions at 6.30) has neither to do with an ascesis nor with a discipline. Some practitioners arrive around 6 every morning, to share some coffee or tea, and to enjoy this moment before the session (a pre-session so to speak), sometimes so rich thanks to the exchanges that we can have between us. It is a moment of pleasure, of conversation about the practice, as well as about everyday life sometimes, and we share it with the others in an extremely concrete way and not in the virtual way that society tends to suggest us.
Of course all this may appear regressive or useless, but it avoids the aspect of easy entertainment and does not encourage clientelism, which does not mean that it does not exist, but in that way there is less of it and with time it evolves. This is because people change, they are transformed, or more precisely they find themselves again, they retrieve unused capacities that they sometimes thought they had lost or often, more simply, had forgotten.
Yin the feminine: understanding
There are so many women in our School that equality is not respected, men are outnumbered, by a narrow margin of course, but that has always been the case. I would not want to speak on behalf of women but what can one do? As far as I know they do not form a separate world, unknown to men.
As a matter of fact, for many men, maybe it is so!… Nevertheless I think all a man has do is to take into account his yin side, without being afraid of it, to find and understand what brings men and women closer and what separates them. Is it a matter of personal affinity, is it a research due to my experience during the events of May 68 and to this blossoming of feminism which revealed itself once again in those days, or maybe more simply is it the fact that I have three daughters, who, by the way, practice Aikido all three of them: the result, whatever the reasons, is that I have always encouraged women to take their legitimate place in the dojos of our School. They take the same responsibilities as men and there is of course no disparity in level, neither in studying nor in teaching. It is really a pity to have to clarify things like that, but unfortunately they cannot be taken for granted in this world.
Despite everything, women scarcely take the floor, or I should even say take up the pen in martial arts magazines. It would be interesting to read articles written by women, or to devote space in Dragon magazine special Aikido to the female perspective on martial arts and on our art in particular. Do they have nothing to say or does the male world take up all the space? Or else maybe these sectarian disputes on the efficiency of Aikido bore them, for women seek and often find, so it seems to me, another dimension, or in any case something else, thanks to this art? Tsuda Itsuo Sensei gives us an idea of this “something else”, which is perhaps closer to O-sensei’s search, in this passage of his book The Path of Less:
‘Do people see Mr Ueshiba as a man completely made of steel? I had quite the opposite impression. He was a serene man, capable of extraordinary concentration, but very permeable in other ways, inclined to outbursts of ringing laughter, with an inimitable sense of humour. I had the opportunity of touching his biceps. I was amazed. The tenderness of a newborn. The opposite of hardness in every way one could imagine.
This may seem odd, but his ideal Aikido was that of girls. Due to the nature of their physique, girls are unable to contract their shoulders as hard as boys can. Therefore their Aikido is more flowing and natural.’ 2Tsuda Itsuo, The Path of Less, Yume Editions, 2014, p. 157
Yang the masculine: fighting
We are educated to competition from early childhood; under the pretext of emulation, school tends to go in the same direction, all this to prepare us for the world of work. They teach us that the world is tough, that we absolutely need to gain our place in the sun, to learn to defend ourselves against other people, but are we so sure about that? Would our desire in fact not tend to guide us in a different direction? And what do we do to achieve this goal? Could Aikido be one of the instruments for this revolution in social values, habits, should it and above all should we do the necessary effort so that the roots of this evil corroding our modern societies may regenerate and become healthy again? In the past there have been examples of societies in which competition did not exist, or hardly existed in the way it does today, societies in which sexism was absent too, even though you cannot present them as ideal societies. Reading the writings on matriarchy in the Trobriand islands by the great anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowsky, discovering his analysis, may help find new leads, and perhaps even remedies to these problems of civilization which have so often been denounced.
Tao, the union: a path for the fulfilment of the human being
The path, in essence, not that I am an idealist, justifies itself and takes all its value by the fact that it normalizes the terrain of individuals. For those who follow it, it adjusts their tensions, restores balance, and it is appeasing for it allows a different relationship to life. Is it not that what so many “civilized” people are desperately seeking and what in the end is to be found deep inside the human being?
The path is not a religion, furthermore it is what separates it from religion that makes it a space of freedom, within the dominant ideologies. According to me the way of thinking that seems closest to this is agnosticism, a philosophical current which is little known, or rather known in a superficial way, but which allows to integrate all the different schools. In Aikido there is quite a number of rituals that are kept up even though their real origin (the source O-sensei drew from) is not understood or there are sometimes other rituals that other masters found through ancient practices as Tamura sensei himself did. Those rituals have often been associated to religion whereas the fact could be checked that it is the religions which have taken over all these ancient rituals to use them as instruments serving their own power, and way too often they are used for the domination and the enslavement of people.
A means: the respiratory practice
The first part of the session in O-sensei Ueshiba Morihei’s Aikido, far from being a warming up, consisted of movements the depth of which it is primordial to retrieve. It is neither to get an intellectual satisfaction, nor out of some fundamentalist concern and even less to gain “higher powers” that we continue them, but in order to return to the path that O-sensei had taken. Some exercises, like Funakogi undo (the so-called rower’s movement) or Tama-no-hirebori (vibration of the soul), have a very great value, and if they are practised with the necessary attention, they can allow us to feel beyond the physical body, beyond our sensation, limited as it is, to discover something greater, much greater than ourselves. It is an unlimited nature which we take part in, in which we are immersed, which is fundamentally and inextricably linked to us, and yet which we find it so hard to reach or even sometimes to feel. This notion that I made mine is not the result of a mystical relationship with the universe, but rather of a mental and physical opening which many modern physicists have reached through a theoretical approach and are trying to verify. It is something that you can neither learn by watching Youtube videos, nor by consulting books of ancient wisdom, despite their undeniable importance. It is something you discover in a purely corporal way, in an absolutely and fully physical way, even though this dimension is expanded to an unusual extent. Little by little all the practitioners who agree to look in this direction find it. It is not related to a physical condition, nor to age and obviously not to sex or nationality.
Education
Almost all psychologists consider that the essential part of what will guide us in our adult life takes place during our childhood and more precisely in our early childhood.
The good as well as the bad experiences. Therefore particular care should be taken in education to preserve the innate nature of the child as much as possible. In no way does this mean letting the child do whatever he wants, making him a king or becoming his slave; the world is there and surrounds him, so he needs reference points. But very quickly, often shortly after birth, sometimes after a few months, the baby is put in the care of persons outside the family. What happened to his parents? He no longer recognizes his mother’s voice, her smell, her movement. It is the first trauma and we are told: ‘He will get over it’. Sure, unfortunately it is not the last trauma, far from it. Then comes the day care center, followed by kindergarten, primary school, junior high, and finally the baccalaureate before perhaps university for at least three, four, five, six years or even more.
But what can you do? ‘That’s life.’ I am told. Each of these places in which the child will be spending his time in the name of education and learning is a mental prison. From basic knowledge to mass culture, when will he be respected as an individual full of the imagination that characterizes childhood? He will be taught to obey, he will learn to cheat. He will be taught to be with the others, he will learn competition. He will receive grades, this will be called emulation, and this psychological disaster will be experienced by top as well as by bottom of the class students.
In the name of what totalitarian ideology are all children and young people given an education that breeds fear of repression, submission, decommitment and disillusionment? Today’s society in wealthy countries does not propose anything really new: work and free time are only synonyms of the roman ideal of bread and circus games, the slavery of the ancient times is only turned into our modern wage employment. A somewhat improved state of slavery? Perhaps… with spectacular brain washing, guaranteed without invoice, thanks to the advertising for products that is pushed on us, with its corollary: the hyper-consumption of goods both useless and detrimental.
The practice of Aikido for children and teenagers is the opportunity to go off the grids proposed by the world around them. It is thanks to the concentration required by the technique, a calm and quiet breathing, the non-competitive aspect, the respect for differences, that they can keep or, if necessary, retrieve their inner strength. A peaceful strength, not aggressive, but full and rich of the imagination and the desire to make the world better.
A practical philosophy, or rather, a philosophical practice
The particular character of the Itsuo Tsuda School derives from the fact that we are more interested in individuality than in the dissemination of an art or a series of techniques. It is neither about creating an ideal person, nor about guiding anyone towards something, towards a lifestyle, with a certain amount of gentleness, a certain amount of kindness or wisdom, of balancing ability or exaltation, etc. It is about awakening the human being and allowing him to live fully in the acceptance of what he is in the world surrounding him, without destroying him. This spirit of openness can do nothing other than waking up the strength pre-existing in each of us. This philosophy leads us to independence, to autonomy, but not to isolation, on the contrary: through the discovery of the Other, it brings us to the understanding of what this person is, also perhaps beyond what the person has become. This whole process of learning, or rather this reappropriation of oneself, takes time, continuity, sincerity, in order to realize more clearly the direction in which one wishes to go.
What lies beyond, what lies behind
I am interested in today is what lies behind or more precisely what lies deep inside Aikido. When you take a train you have an objective, a destination, with Aikido it is a little bit as if the train changed objective as you moved further, as if the direction became at the same time different, and more precise. As for the objective, it pulls away despite the fact that you think you have come closer. And this is where you have to recognize that the object of our journey is the journey itself, the landscapes we discover, which become more refined and reveal themselves to us.
One often tends to consider the spirit of an art as a mental process, a path that should be consciously taken, or rules to observe. All this because in the West we live in a world of separation, division. On one side there is spirit, on the other side body, on one side the conscious, on the other the unconscious, this is what is supposed to make us civilized beings while this separation actually generates inner conflicts. Conflicts which are strengthened by the systems of prohibition set up in order to protect society, to protect ourselves against ourselves.
The practice of Aikido leads us to the reunification of the human being.
Towards the reunification of human being, this is the Path we head for through practising Aikido. This reunification is necessary in a world where the human being is objectified, where the human being becomes both a consumer and a commodity. Without realizing the way taken, the civilized person executes life instead of living it. This society that leads us to consumption leaves little room for inner work, it leads us to search outside for what lies inside. To buy what we already have, to search for solutions to all our problems outside ourselves, as if other people had better solutions. This leads to the individual being cared for and supported by the different protection systems, which are at the same time social, ideological or health care, thus increasing supply and creating an ideal market for dream-sellers of any kind, charlatans, gurus and co.
Today I have heard that a new practice has just been created: “Respirology”, and as usual, customers abused by the power of words will certainly flock. Should we, in the name of body and mind normalization, of people getting back into shape, change the name of our art into: “Aikido therapy”?
The spirit of Aikido cannot be taught
I do not believe it can be told that there is a specific spirit of Aikido but rather that Aikido must be the reflection of something much greater that we, little human beings, have difficulties to realize during our life.
The spirit of an art cannot be taught, it is rather a transmission, but an Aikido without a spirit, what would it be: a struggle, a fight, a kind of brawl without head nor tail. Teaching the technique without transmitting anything of the spirit is quite possible, but then, it happens to be a totally different thing. It may be self-defence or a wellness technique.
Like in any martial art, we have the Rei, the salute, which is obviously the most immediately visible expression of it, but what is most important will be transmitted through the teacher’s posture. By posture I mean an extremely complex set of signs that students will find recognizable: of course the physical aspect, dynamics, precision, etc., but also the way of conveying a message, the attention given to each practitioner according to thousands of factors that the teacher must perceive. It is through developing intuition that one can get the greatest and finest pedagogy, and so provide the elements needed by practitioners to deepen their art, to better understand its roots.
The spirit of Aikido cannot be learnt
The spirit of Aikido cannot be learnt, it is discovered, it does not change us, it enables us to recover our human roots, to join what is best in human being.
‘Aikido is the art of learning in depth, the art of knowing oneself.’
The Aikido founder’s desire was to bring human beings closer, to him the world was like a big family:
‘In Aikido, training is not meant to become stronger or beat the opponent. No. It helps to get the spirit of placing oneself at the centre of the Universe and contribute to world peace, bring all human beings to form a big family.’
A hymn to joy
O-sensei used to say: ‘Always practice Aikido in a vibrant and joyful manner’.
We do not talk about joy often enough, our world incites us to sadness, to react violently to events, to criticize the systems’ failures, to see other people’s flaws, to be competitive. But all this eventually makes us grumpy, harsh and spoils our pleasure of living, quite simply.
Joy is a sensation that I consider sacred. The joy of living, of feeling fully alive in everything we do, or don not do. Joy enables us to experience in a totally different way what many people consider as constraints, to consider them as opportunities allowing us to go further, to deepen what my master used to call respiration.
Joy leads us little by little to inner freedom, which is the only freedom that is worth discovering, as so well told by the Taji Quan master Gu Meisheng (1926-2003) who discovered it in Chinese prisons during Mao’s era.
It enables us to get out of the conventions that different systems impose on us.
Aikido is the art of learning in depth, the art of knowing oneself
The spirit of Aikido is to be found in nature, not in a nature external to the human being but rather in the human being as a part of nature, as nature.
‘The practice of Aikido is an act of faith, a belief in the power of non-violence. It is not a type of rigid discipline or empty asceticism. It is a path that follows the principles of nature, principles which must be applied to daily life. Aikido must be practised from the moment you get up to welcome the day until the moment you withdraw for the night.’
To start every morning in the dojos quiet with a two or three minute meditation in order to refocus, to concentrate. Then switch to the Respiratory Practice, as Tsuda sensei named it, and which O-sensei Ueshiba Morihei used to do at every session. It is then possible to turn to the second part, the practice with a partner, the pleasure of communication through technique, the Ka Mi respiration and all of this very early in the morning while many people outside have just emerged from sleep.
When nothing is planned, when we are devoid of any thought, in these sublime moments when fusion with the partner takes place, then we are in the spirit of Aiki.
Like in Zen, it is suggested to us to live here and now, to be no different from what we are, but to look with lucidity at what we have become.
The transmission of the spirit
In order to understand the spirit of Aikido, one must, in my opinion, dive into the past, not only that of Japan but also, and maybe even mostly, that of ancient China. Go and search for the thinkers, philosophers, poets who enriched reflexion and gave weight to the Oriental way of thinking.It is thanks to my master Tsuda Itsuo that I dug in this direction: not that he gave lectures on philosophy or held seminars on the matter, he who only spoke with parsimony, but on the other hand he bequeathed to us through his books a reflexion on the East and the West, bridging the gap between these two worlds which seemed antinomic.
The immense culture of this master whom I was fortunate enough to know had flabbergasted me at the time but little by little I was able to enter the understanding of his message and philosophical work which had nourished me. But this man I had admired had also left traces I could see without understanding them, other signs in the way Zen masters did: he left calligraphies. As in this art nowadays called Zenga he transmitted a teaching to us through ideograms, maxims by Zhuangzi, Laozi, Bai Juyi, or folk proverbs. Each of these calligraphies introduces us to a story, a text, an art which actually enables us to go further in the understanding of this spirit which underlies our practice.
Awakening the inner force
‘There are forces in us but they remain latent, dormant. They must be awakened, activated’, wrote Nocquet sensei in an article published in 1987. To me this sentence echoes Tsuda sensei’s calligraphy The dragon gets out of the pond where it remained asleep, talent shows through. In both cases, these masters were referring to ki and they incite us to search in this direction.
Without the concrete sensation of ki we miss the point. How can we talk about the spirit of Aikido without making it a sequence of rules to observe, other than by following, rediscovering the foundations of the human being. Our modern, industrial society makes life so easy for us that we move no more, we get around too easily, in the cities we just have to cover a few meters to find food instead of running, hunting or cultivating. Aikido enables us to spend this excessive energy which otherwise would make us sick. But this is not only about the physical, motor aspect, its our whole body which needs to recover, normalize itself. Our mind, overloaded with useless information, also needs to rest, to find peace in the middle of the surrounding agitation.
The spirit of Aikido is Aikido
The spirit of Aikido just lies in practice and little by little it comes to be discovered. And this discovery is real enjoyment. Beginners, when becoming aware of its importance, get fully involved in this art of ours. That is often the moment when difficulties to explain what we do begin. We feel like talking about it, inviting friends to participate at least to a session.
We try to make what we feel understood. Other people witness our enthusiasm but do not come to understand what it is about. And the answers we get to our explanations, to what we try to hand down are often rather disappointing. They may vary from: ‘Ah yes, me too, I practised Yoga last year during my holiday at Club Med. But I don’t have time to do a stuff like this, you see, I really don’t have time.’ to ‘Yes, your stuff is nice but it racks brains, I practice Californo-Australian self-defence, you know, and it’s really efficient’. To move from a world to another requires to be ready, ready to just discover what you do not know yet but have sensed. We start practising because we have read a book, an article, and we have been shocked, we said to ourselves: ‘Strange guy but I like what he tells, I like this spirit, it’s close to me, to what I think’.
An art to normalize the individual
It is the spirit of the practice, quite often, that makes us go on for many years, and seldom physical or technical achievements which anyway will be limited by ageing. The only ageless thing is ki, attention, respiration as Tsuda sensei used to call it. This can be deepened without any limit and thats why there have been great masters.
If you awaken your sensibility, if you have persistence, and if you are well guided; if the teaching is not limited to surface but enables us to dig deeper, to open by ourselves doors that we did not suspect, then everything is possible. When I say everything is possible I mean that everyone becomes responsible for oneself, for one’s life, for the quality of one’s life.
As Yamaoka Tesshū says: ‘Unity of body and mind can do everything. If a snail wants to ascend mount Fuji then it will succeed.’
No seeking for reputation, no attempting to become something but rather seeking to be, thanks to self fulfilment. Pacifying internal tensions, unifying body and mind which quite often work in the wrong way if not one against the other. Heres the deep meaning of the research we can do in the practice of martial arts.
Article by Régis Soavi (about the spirit of Aikido) published in October 2017 in Dragon Magazine Spécial Aikido n° 18.
Quotations are from O-sensei Ueshiba Morihei’s collected talks, some through the book: The Art of Peace, teachings of the Founder of Aikido, compiled and translated by John Stevens, pub. Shambhala.
Aikido is an instrument of my evolution, it made me evolve, I just had to follow with perseverance and obstinacy the road that was opening in front of me, that was opening inside me.
Like many other people, I came to this practice for its martial aspect. However, its beauty, as well as the aesthetic of its movements, quickly fascinated me, and this with my first teacher Maroteaux Sensei already. Then, when I saw Noro Masamichi Sensei, and Tamura Nobuyoshi Sensei, I had confirmation of what I had sensed: Aikido was a wholly different thing from what I knew.
I came from the world of Judo, with the images transmitted to us, for example, that of the cherry tree branch covered with snow which all of a sudden lets the snow slide down and the branch straightens up. I had already gone beyond the ideas that had been conveyed by the beginning of the century and the fifties, of a “Japanese Jiu Jitsu which turns a small thin man into a monster of efficacy”.Read more →
Certainly the Jō, the stick, has always been used in Aikido. But does it really belong to our Art? Its teaching has always been particular and often even separated from the regular courses. Many of us have tried, through other schools of Jūjutsu, to find some forms, some kata, some “secret thrusts”. Some have taken an interest in Kobudō. Yet the art of the Jō in Aikido has its own specificities, its rules.
Personally, what has always fascinated me, is more the extreme accuracy that can be obtained by following a certain type of training. Instead of working on power, I found it more profitable to concentrate on motion, movements and above all precision.
Training to precision
I was a young instructor when I started to train more regularly with the stick. Back then, I tied a soda cap at the extremity of a rope that I hung from the ceiling. My training consisted in making tsuki on the soda cap and each time that it moved to immobilize it again. Then I changed heights. Later I worked on the yokomen and the hits from below, always trying to be precise and without increasing the speed.
I worked slowly looking for the right angle, using the displacements and little by little I increased the speed of the execution. Finally I started to hit by using the movement of the cap that flied around to the left, the right, with sudden leaps that were sometimes odd, or even scary if it had been the Jō or the Bokken of an adversary. I could go around that axle that I hung from the centre of the small dojo that used to be in the backyard of number 34 in rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Geneviève in Paris.
I still remember it with emotion because it was thanks to Master Henry Plée that I could do this type of work. Indeed, he had allowed and even supported me in this direction (an accomplished Budōka, he loved that we trained to the very best of our ability). After several months of this type of training, I moved on to the work on makiwara, but I have to admit, without insisting too much because I found it tedious. Instead I loved the hits in all directions, in the “shadow boxing” style.
In this exercise I found the difficulties of the work with the soda cap, plus the power that I had to control, the circular movements, the speed and above all the visualization. That work of visualization that I already glimpsed in the teaching of my master Tsuda Itsuo. It is also thanks to this that I have discovered the importance of having your own stick, I mean a personal working instrument. I am one of those teachers who believe that the Jō must not be a manufactured product of a predetermined length, thickness, or weight. The Jō has to be in proportion, with no exaggeration, otherwise we will be dealing with a Bō, to the person who uses it, his or her height and musculature: as there are enormous differences, it seems to me a mistake not to take this into account, but in any case it is the way the Jō is used that remains the most important point.
Pedagogy
As far as I am concerned, I now use the stick more as a pedagogical tool. As always it is about retrieving and understanding the ancient forms, of course, but above all about channelling the released energy, feeling it circulate and flow along this piece of wood.
Master Tsuda used to tell us: ‘The Jō has three parts, the two ends and a centre, unlike the Bō that numbers four parts due to the way one seizes it, with both hands at an equal distance from the extremities’. Doing tsuki the technical aspects of the strokes vary, whether one uses it in the ancient form suited to the spear, or as a Jō, that is something much shorter, holding it with both hands in the same direction or one opposite to the other. All this did not matter to him: what was important was the transmission of ki and the act of non resistance.
The Jō was only there to enable us to discover the Non-doing, to deepen our breathing.
Then the stick (I suggest to call it that way) is used as if it was an empty tube that gets filled with ki, that has a certain autonomy, that becomes alive again.
The stick exacerbates distances. It forces us to have another relationship with the distance, to feel the axes as well as the changes of direction, of orientation.
Some people have a particular affinity with the Jō, others prefer the Bokken. Even if it is part of my teaching, I give them the time to find out whether it makes sense to them, whether it helps them go deeper in their practice.
It is one of the means I sometimes use to make people understand how the strengths involved in our practice circulate: it is precisely with the stick that I can show this.
I ask uke to grab the stick very strongly and tori has to find the axis, the direction by the mere movement of his body, of his koshi, not of his muscles or arms, to slide the force applied, so that when tori moves, it creates such an imbalance for uke, that he accepts to fall and drops like a ripe fruit falling from the tree.
Practising outdoors
There is a moment in which it is particularly pleasant to practice the stick, and this is when you are outside, in the open air.
And the time for this is the summer workshops, which we have organized for almost thirty years at Mas d’Azil, in Ariège. There we are lucky enough to be able to change an old gym, practically unused, into a wonderful dojo, in the course of several pleasant working days. Since it is next to a soccer field, we can go outside to practice weapons.
I know that practitioners are then very happy to practice outside the tatami mats.The space is so much bigger that we can rediscover the dimensions that the old arts required.
After having been confined to an enclosed space, the whole point of these open air sessions is to expand physically: no more ceiling, no more walls, no more limits. It is the moment when everyone can experience different dimensions, the ideal moment to try, in this space, to feel further.
Practising outside, whilst we are used to the uniformity of the tatami mats, is a constraint for the entire body: the ground is no longer that flat, there are some holes, some bumps, all movements, taisabaki, and obviously the falls or the immobilisations become more difficult.The speed of the attacks is often reduced due to the unusual conditions. But in turn, when we practice on the tatami mats again, everything becomes easier: one has gained skill, speed, strength in the legs, and balance that one did not have before.
We then take the opportunity to practice with many people, three, four, six, or even up to eight attackers (one tori and seven ukes) who, in the respect of our Art and with no competitive spirit, try to reach out and put the one in the centre in danger. No need to pretend it’s a movie: we are neither samurai nor secret agents whom nothing can stop. Its about moving more and better than we usually do, feeling the movement of our sphere, the gaps in it and the risks there are of having an impact in those places.
The importance is not given to a perfect technical skill, whether in defence or in attack, but much more to the sensation of the other people’s movement, to distance, to the energy that one can throw.
Such a wide space allows circumferences of about eight or ten meters, sometimes. In circular movements Tori’s gaze, with its intensity and precise direction, relays the power and speed of the stick. This alone is sometimes enough to create the right conditions for a reply, a correct move.
I do not know if I am well understood: it is a game in which all participants, from the very beginner to the most experienced, have their own role depending on their level. The six or eight attackers will moderate the power and speed of the attacks (tsuki, shomen, yokomen) according to this.
Each of them seeks the right position so as to find the weak point, the speed of approach, the right angle.
The attacks are as much as possible genuine attacks, but they are always done without violence and even if possible not too fast, in any case not hastily.
It is important in this type of work to be careful not to block or corner the one in the centre, so as not to drive him into a spiral of fear that would lead to aggressiveness, but on the contrary to help him come out of his imprisonment, both physical and mental, and to allow him to develop his potential.
The summer workshop lasts for two weeks and is very concentrated: two Aikido sessions, two Katsugen undo sessions and one weapon session every day. It means seven or eight working hours per day, about fifty hours a week. That is why we need this kind of work with the Jō, enabling bodies to unwind, to open out and find another dimension.
Sticks spin, spaces move about, bodies which are at times weary stretch. The atmosphere remains peaceful, sometimes even cheerful, but accuracy is there.
Men, women, children of all ages, in the respect of the specificities of each of them.
The sensitivity of the foetus
However, a clarification: pregnant women sometimes practice until the very last moment in our School. But since the beginning of their pregnancy we pay particular attention to the fact that being in such a special state, even if of course we never touch the body with the stick, it is forbidden to do tsuki in the direction of the womb. Regardless of the risk of accident, to which we always pay a lot of attention. The point is not to direct the ki in that way, in other words with “the intention to hit”. Such a directed and guided ki would be instinctively recorded as dangerous and felt by the mother, and most of all by the baby, who is nothing but sensitivity, as an aggression, to the point of risking to cause at least a fear, or a contraction that would harm his good development. When we work on tsuki strokes, pregnant women step aside and watch, but do not participate.
A centripetal force can become a centrifugal force
Sometimes we work with Jō against Bokken. The point then is, precisely because the weapons are different, to understand on the one hand the way to use them and on the other hand their limits and capabilities, without forgetting that behind all this there is a human being. At other times, it is only uke who has a weapon.
A stick, a Bokken, can be frightening if you have no weapon.You do not know in which direction it will start, men, yokomen, tsuki, you cannot stop the stroke with a simple wave of your hand. Only by dodging, doing taisabaki, can you avoid the shock. Taking hold of the stick or of the Bokken, is then one of the chances to stop the attack, to transform it and make it harmless, so that we can use its energy in the opposite direction or divert it towards another direction. It is a wonderful opportunity to see, to feel how for example a centripetal force, when it gets in contact with a centre, can turn into a centrifugal force so that it is driven towards the outside.
What do we mean by “stopping the spear”1? The real point is not a question of winning or losing but rather of changing the system, of allowing something else to arise, and for this, the knowledge of the partner, the understanding between both partners is essential.
In every person there are some good and some bad sides, some good and some bad habits: all of this has to be guided towards harmony. Harmony is at the origin of our life, the thing is to get back to what is natural and always there deep inside every individual. That is, for me, the way of Aikido.
Our horizon can light up if we understand better the words of O-sensei Ueshiba, transmitted by my Master Ueshiba Itsuo in his teaching and through his nine books. These words did not remain a dead letter; on the contrary they have come to life, once more, and continue through those who are willing to follow this path.
Talking about omote-ura as an Aikidō subject immediately reminds me about yang-yin (in Japanese: yō-in).
Nevertheless in the West the general trend is to perceive it as black and white; they are opposed to each other, divided between light and dark, categorised as positive and negative, like at school or even with sexist references. It is very easy, we have habits and we do not even realise that.
The Tao is represented flat, to be more exact as a ball where yin and yang interpenetrate each other, but in fact each one keeps its own space: you, me, him, the other.
Philosophically we talk extensively on one or the other, but we forget the great Chinese thinkers: Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Li Tzu, or Sun Tzu, to name just the most famous.
Black or white, yin or yang. And what is grey?
If we keep on thinking in a dualistic way, it is a mixture of both.
My Master Tsuda Itsuo hardly ever quoted omote or ura, besides that, he rarely gave a Japanese name for what he did or showed. Fluently bilingual, he has always preferred French for his explanations, and particularly in his books he wrote in one go, almost without correction.He could guide our sensitivity and make us feel thanks to the practice of Katsugen undō (Regenerating Movement), yuki, and particularly through his touch or even his silent presence, this non dualistic world that he had come to help us discovering.
Discovering with the body
Aikidō is a way of discovering your own body, I mean physically, concretely feel those fluids that run following networks with a yin or yang tendency.
yin becomes yang
When during the practice omote or ura is mentioned, it usually refers to the whole movement, the tendency, possibly his ending.
The breathing can help us understand it better, feel, what it is all about. It is better to start working with a rather slow pace, if you go too fast at the beginning there is a big chance not to succeed. The focus is on breathing, by following the inhale, then the exhale, you move focusing on the inner feeling, you can work on this kind of exercises with a partner, closing your eyes and remaining focused on the center. Arms for example open or close independently of our will, they obey to a necessity that comes from the yin or the yang.
If you want to practice Aikidō as the practice of the not-doing, all the work must be about feeling, you dig, deepening more and more and gradually something will move within us; and one day you will realize that you have overcome something. The wall that was blocking us, which resulted in a stiff or uncertain technique, and therefore artificial, completely unrealistic, it has dropped. At that point you feel free, extremely free.
The research takes then a different turn. The perception of the yin/yang becomes self-evident. It is something that I find difficult to express in words, because everything becomes simple: gestures, movements, there is no mental action. It comes directly from the center, and then a great sweetness naturally arises, a sweetness that can be yin or yang, but very strong in any case, a powerful sweetness which has an effect on and knows how to act in harmony with the partner or the opponent, depending on the circumstances that led the one in front of us to act like this or that.
The tendency during the inspiration is rather towards an opening and thus is yin; expiration closes the body and its tendency is yang. Already just with the breathing you can hear, if you pay attention, the yin and yang, but they are only the expression and the direction of the energy that has materialised.
The visible part, the one that the physical body can finally use, is ready.
When looking at the body, the front part is yin and the back is yang, although the front leg is yang and the back of the leg is yin: this is admitted in all schools, but the passage of ki from one to the other is rarely explained in martial arts, it often remains only looked at the surface.
Meeting Tsuda Itsuo, the practice of Katsugen undō and the discovery of the Seitai by Master Noguchi Haruchika were fundamental during my research and gave me an understanding of the body and its movement that was missing until then. Some areas that had remained vague in the teaching of Aikidō, as the hara, have become extremely accurate with the Seitai. One can for example verify the state of the “three points of the belly.” The first must be yin, the second one should be neutral, the third yang, positive and reactive.
‘The purpose of the Regenerating Movement is to regulate our body, normalize it. Regulate our body is not only necessary to make us healthy. Whatever kind of activity we practice, whether is calligraphy, or drawing or practising martial arts, the first need is the one to start regulating our body, otherwise you miss an opportunity.’1
Non-Doing and non-dualism
In Aikidō we let the ki arise from Seika Tanden, the hara (3rd point in the belly in Seitai), and its tendency is yang because it results from the strength that comes from the back, force that is not expressed in the shoulders, as we see too often, but naturally thanks to the koshi.
The crossing point of this force, of ki that became yang, is the 3rd lumbar vertebra which is actually in a yin position in the spine. By visualizing the abdominal breathing one can tell that the yin inspiration inflates the abdomen and prepares the action which is going to be yang, and at the same time, ki goes down along the spine and permeate the entire body2.
When the ki gets out directly from the center its tendency is yang, but depending on the circuit that it will take it will express as yin or yang. If it follows the internal circuits of the stomach and arms, the inside of the body, then it becomes yin, otherwise its expression will be yang. The resulting force will also be yang or yin depending on the moment when it is used.
Of course, in a world that is not separated, time is also part of this unity. Although we can slow down or speed up the moment of an impact, for example to be precisely in the right place, at the right moment with the right breathing and the right ki, this cannot happen without the coordination happening in our “involuntary system”. This is precisely where the teaching by Tsuda Itsuo has brought decisive elements. To make us enter the world of sensation, insisting on the Non-Doing, allowing us to discover the non-dualism, he gave us the keys we can still use today, because they are within reach of all, as his books testify.
Yin and Yang
If we break down a movement like ryote-dori tenchi-nage in the omote form, uke comes up with a yang force. He is in the middle of the exhalation, tori receives that at the end of his yang, yin has already expanded in him, it has become in-compressible, it will still expand and will ultimately overwhelm uke. Then its the time for yang to expand, you notice that because the arms turn, this time it is the dividing line between yin and yang that goes from bottom to top. For uke the movement started already at the beginning of the inspiration, unable to resist it breaks off and falls, like when a fruit is ripe and falls in the hand. In the ura form, tori must wait because yang is still too powerful, he turns to deviate the force but as soon as he gets his yin force back, it can use the yang force to start in omote or let the yin force continue its work until total envelopment of uke.
Similarly in kokyū hō, there are different ways to do it: either you project immediately the yang force or you allow the yin force to expand and at the end you use the yang. Again it all depends on the condition, the moment, the partner.
The yang force is more direct, more interventionist than the yin force, but can easily harden people. The authoritarian fathers know this problem with their children and a fracture is often accomplished during the adolescence.
The yin force is enveloping, sweet but sometimes misused, like some mothers do. They may risk to imprison their child and he will then struggle to get out of the footprint of the family cocoon.
Ideally when yin ends it allows the radiant take off, after the “dark” inner work of preparation during childhood, a real detachment without fracture, like the ripe fruit falls off the tree at the right moment. The radiant take off is freedom without thoughts. The ability to be the own Tao. Simply the realization of being.
The body spheres
Our body is in between others with an external surface: the skin is somehow the material sphere. But we are not limited by the skin, it only defines the internal yin from the external yang, ura and omote. This surface is a sphere that has taken the form of a human being.
Beyond this there is another sphere that everyone can instinctively feel. It occurs rather in the form of a deform-able egg as needed. This sphere is often represented in religions, it is called Mandorle or Aura. It is the visual representation of a reality experienced by everyone, and kept alive in martial arts. It is also yin internally and yang outside with an extremely precise limit, it is possible to observe that what is yang compared to the skin it is yin compared to the energy sphere.
Irimi and tenkan
When doing irimi for example, we allow uke to enter our yin sphere, he is relieved from his yang ki excess that had became hard and rigid, his terrain is normalised, we allow him to find an internal balance. Then with irimi nage we end up with a yang movement that will cause in him the desire to fall in order to avoid the worst. On the other hand with tenkan both spheres barely touch each other and only merge at the level of the hand. The Yang surfaces push, sustained by the internal yin, become strong, standing side by side, rejecting and sliding against each other.
If tori lets his elbow slide to enter the sphere of uke, then his yin movement will grow so to overwhelm uke that, once again, will fall to avoid the inconvenience of this turnaround.
In our school, the first part of the Aikidō session is dedicated to a solitary practice. One of the exercise involves lifting the arms palm facing the sky to then lower them. Tsuda Itsuo told us: ‘Lift the sky then push the earth.’ There are different ways to do this exercise. If we try to raise them using the yang the shoulders will contract, if we try to push the earth with the yin we will remain stuck in the middle of the movement. Raising the arms unifying with heaven (yin) and down in harmony with the earth (yang), it was this kind of work, the visualization that I started with my master and I still continue after forty years.
Allowing a conscious circulation of ki, improving our perception of this movement, of this sphere of energy that many speak about but only a few can perceive so clearly, this is how I intend my current work.
To allow the normalisation of the terrain of those people who come to the dojo and give them visible or invisible instruments, conscious or unconscious to enable them to achieve independence, autonomy, inner freedom.
For this the awareness about omote-ura, as an expression of the yang-yin, is in my opinion essential.
Article by Régis Soavi (on Omote/Ura) published in January 2016 in Dragon Magazine Spécial Aikido n° 11.
Notes:
Abstract of the conference Regulate the body by Noguchi Haruchika sensei, translated by Tsuda Itsuo into French (Eng. trad. The Unstable Triangle, Chapter XIX).
Master Noguchi Haruchika, on the other hand, advocated the exercise Sekitsui Gyōki 脊椎 行気法 or Breathing through the column that starts from the “second points of the head” and that allows the normalization of the terrain (the whole body, of course in a unified manner, physical, mental, etc.).
We are pleased to propose this short video showing the work of Régis Soavi.
A work that he keeps on doing for over thirty years, during workshops and in the daily practice.
You can find all the dates of the next workshops on this page: https://www.ecole-itsuo-tsuda.org/en/stages/ (subtitle available in French, click the first icon to the right of the video)
In one of his booksTsuda Itsuo gives us his views on kokyū:
‘In learning a Japanese art, the question of “kokyu” always arises, strictly speaking, the equivalent of actual respiration. But the word also means to have a knack for doing something, to know the trick. When there is no “kokyu”, we cannot do a thing properly. A cook needs “kokyu” to use his knife well, and a worker his tools. “Kokyu” cannot be explained; it is acquired.
When I was young, I saw a labourer working with his screwdriver on very rusty machinery. I tried to unscrew a piece of the machine, but in vain; it was too rusty. For the labourer, it posed no problem; he unscrewed it with ease, not because he was stronger but because he had “kokyu”.
When we acquire “kokyu” it seems that tools, machines, materials, until then “indomitable”, suddenly become docile and obey our commands with no resistance.
Ki, kokyu, respiration, intuition are themes that are pivotal to the arts and crafts of Japan. It constitutes a professional secret, not because people want to keep it like a patent, or a recipe for earning their living, but because it cannot be passed on intellectually. Respiration is the final word, the ultimate secret of learning.
Only the best disciples gain access to it, after years of sustained effort.
A martial arts master whom dogs bark at is not a good master, they say. The French know how to silence dogs by sliding a piece of sugar in their mouths. That’s the trick, that’s “the thing”, but it is not kokyu, respiration, which is something else entirely.’
Tsuda Itsuo, The Path of Less, Yume Editions, Paris, 2014, p. 33-34.
I discovered kokyū with my master Tsuda Itsuo. Previously, it was to me just the name of a technique, with Tsuda Itsuo this notion became much more concrete, firstly by the orientation of his practice. He said: ‘To me technique is simply a test of knowing whether I have evolved in my breathing.’ Thus our attention was brought directly to kokyū. There could not be aikidō and breathing. Aikidō is breathing. And then, from his first books on, Tsuda Itsuo illuminates us in terms I did not knew; almost too simple and yet so difficult to achieve.
When I attacked him it was crystal clear, regardless the strength I put in he remained both, relaxed and powerful.
He made us use visualization to teach us kokyū. E. g. for kokyū hō he said: ‘It is the lotus flower opening.’ Today few people have seen the lotus flower, so I speak of a daisy. Visualization should talk to us, directed to us. For it to act, it must be anchored in the concrete life of each person. So sometimes to help someone to get beyond a partner that is holding the wrists to prevent him or her to move, I say, ‘You welcome a friend you have not seen for years, who steps out of the train, take him in your arms!’ Then the person forgets the other and ki, instead of being coagulated, flows in the given direction, the person raises the arms without any effort. The power of visualization is colossal.
Sure, posture is essential, I would even say primordial. If the body stiffens to become an impeccable posture; it is screwed. If it is too flabby; it is screwed. If the third lumbar is wrongly positioned: it is screwed. With the practice of aikidō and Katsugen undō I see that my students are gradually recovering. Ki begins to flow without blockage, without disruption, it is the discovery of unforced abdominal breathing, but clear and limpid, from the kokyū. In my view, without kokyū, all the work in aikidō is only intended to strengthen the body, it is a work of hardening.
With the deepening of breath little by little the needlessness disappears, we do not need to work on flexibility or strength, stiffness and our ideas of strength and weakness are leaving. So ki circulates better.
For this direction, the respiratory practice we do in the beginning of the sessions is important.
You can not teach kokyū, but you can guide individuals to discover it.
If we practice kokyū ho every morning at the end of each session, it is precisely to make people sensitive and also to improve our posture. As our posture and the way we behave refines and improves, we are able to help the normalization of the terrain of our partner. If you breathe deeply from the hara to the hara of the partner, you revitalize the channels through which ki flows, you enable these circuits to function better, and the other understands (feels) with his entire body what it is about.
It is not about looking at the demonstration and working harder and harder, but rather about being pervaded with this kokyū feeling of the other. I often say: to work on the kokyū we must start by listening. We listen to the other, not with the ears but with the whole of our body, we feel the breathing, the ki, of the other. It is like a perfume. We listen to the inner movement, so the feeling becomes more accurate and we can guide him or her to a better posture, towards a release of tension.
It is also the work of senior practitioners to encourage this discovery. By bathing the other in breath, they help them to feel it, by dint of being soaked with “something”.
In the practice of Katsugen undō Tsuda sensei introduced in Europe, first comes the awareness by the breathing, by the movement of ki. Tsuda wrote: ‘In the regenerating movement (Katsugen undō), we do the opposite of the tradition: we begin with the supreme secret, straight off’1.
Kokyū is no more magical than ki is an energy. As soon as we launch ourselves into an explanation, even if we let know that it will be approximately, big chance we blow it.
The ancient tales, such as those recorded by the Grimm Brothers, can show us an aspect of kokyū powers. As in fairy tales, it can transform toads into a prince or princess and grow people more beautiful by the simple fact of transforming their posture. This posture, the result of many years of contraction, weakness, or attempts of correction. When the posture finds back something natural, it is the return to the source, to the root of being.
The discovery of kokyū leads us to different behaviours in everyday life. This respiration, far from being seen as in “New Age”, awakens in the individuals’ daily life forgotten qualities, lost simplicity, and intuition finally found. It is what can be admirable in the work of a craftsman and an artist, but it is also what surprises those who do not know it. Because we did not understand nor felt what is behind this entirety in the performed act: kokyū is a revelation of the unity of being.
Tsuda Itsuo has guided us in that direction, leaving us free to go further or stay put. This freedom was fundamental in his teaching.
It is said that sometimes when the posture, the breathing, the coordination was perfect, Ueshiba O-sensei exclaimed ‘Kami Wasa’. God-technique? Supreme realization? Could we not talk about kokyū or Non-Doing in the greatest simplicity? Like a child who drops a toy to take another, in the same way as he aspires us to take him in our arms for protection.
A small child has kokyū. ‘The baby is as big as the universe, but treated poorly fades quickly’2, Tsuda Sensei wrote in his last book. Is it not our duty to enable him to preserve it? And to us adults, it to regain?
Aikidō is not made for fighting, but to allow a better harmony between people.I breathe deeply, I listen to the body of the other, in his or her body I visualize the flow of ki, I hear and clearly understand it, so I let ki passing into the body of the other. This circulation brings us fullness, the feeling of being fully alive, everything disappears, there is nothing but the present moment with its sensations, its colours, its music.
Born in 1914, Itsuo Tsuda would now be one hundred years old. This atypical character, fiercely independent, considered himself first and foremost a philosopher and he is a key figure of the Aikidō in France. He is the one who introduced Katsugen undō* in Europe in the early 70s.
Direct student of O-sensei Morihei Ueshiba during the last ten years of his life, Itsuo Tsuda did not consider important the sporty or martial art aspects of Aikidō, but rather the chance to make use of this art for inner search, for personal search. He qualified this dimension as “solitary practice” and devoted himself to pass it on in his books and in his teaching.
By beginning Aikidō at forty-five years of age, the ki and Non-Doing were the two aspects that mainly attracted him. These aspects were particularly tangible in a series of exercises preceding, during O-sensei Ueshiba sessions, the technique, which Itsuo Tsuda named after the expression “Respiratory Practice.”
O-sensei Ueshiba gave a lot of importance to these exercises that meant to him something completely different then warming up. Itsuo Tsuda in an interview with France Culture said:
‘For me what is important is what I do at the beginning: I sit, breathe, I breathe with the heaven and the earth, that’s all. Many people love aikido as a technique, don’t they? For me, the technique is simply the test to find out if I have evolved through breathing.’
In the technique that happens during the second part of the session there is no struggle, but an opportunity to develop sensitivity, the ability to fuse.
The voice of Itsuo Tsuda, who died in 1984, still resonates today through the nine books published in French and through his students. One of them, Régis Soavi, he has dedicated more than thirty years to Aikidō and Katsugen undō teaching. He is the technical adviser for the Itsuo Tsuda School .
— Good morning, Mr. Soavi, when you met Itsuo Tsuda in the 70s you were already engaged in the practice of martial arts. What made you decide to consecrate to the Aikido of Itsuo Tsuda?
— I had just started Aikidō when I met Itsuo Tsuda, my teacher was Roland Maroteaux. I met Tsuda during a workshop organized by this teacher. What struck me at first was his ability to dodge. During this workshop I saw my teacher, who was an actual budōka, attacking him with determination and at any time Tsuda was not there, he was dodging, he had created void in front of him. That was what shocked me. I had already experienced a lot of Jūdō, Jūjutsu and weapons and then, more or less at the same time, during my training as a professional Aikidōka, I worked with other teachers like, Master Noro, Master Tamura, Master Nocquet, as well as I took part of some workshops with Master K. Ueshiba, Yamaguchi sensei, etc.. At the time we were all a bit like Rōnins, we were going from a dojo to another trying to uncover the masters’ secrets. At first I was timidly interested of Master Tsuda, but the quality of this void, this emptiness that was moving around, it was very impressive and that was what made me decide: you have to go and see this master.
— What does represent for you the first part of the Aikidō practice that Itsuo Tsuda called “Respiratory Practice”?
— Master Tsuda used to say that it was the essence of Aikidō. At the beginning, when I was about twenty years old, I saw this part as a kind of respiratory warming up, not to mention muscle warming up. And then little by little I found out that it was something much more intimate! And after seven years, the Respiratory Practice had become the most important part of Aikidō for me. The rest was, as Tsuda said very well, a way to verify to what extent I was getting with my breathing.
— You speak about Aikidō proposing the translation “the way of the ki fusion”. How does this differ from the definition “the way of the harmony” that it is normally used?
— Now, “Aikidō” is an ideogram, there are no words therefore in itself. What I try to pass on through “the way of the ki fusion” is the direction we take. In Aikidō this fusion of feelings between people allows you to practise in another way. It completely differs from the idea of fighting. It is rather a complementary. I think Ueshiba had such a fusion capacity with the person who attacked, by anticipating his acts, his gestures. For me, harmony is insufficient as a translation, this may purely be aesthetic. The fusion turns into something deeper. When two metals come together into a fusion to become for example bronze, they become Bronze, it is not only harmonizing them, they become something different. And it is in this sense that I want to translate it with “the way of the ki fusion.” But this is purely ideograms interpretation.
— What role do you think the technique plays?
— It is essential. It is the base. For me, technique must be extremely precise. It is the technique that leads the breathing. The technique also means the body, the posture. If your posture is correct, if the positioning is right, then it is easy, breathing is better. when one is blocked, congested, closed or too open, too soft or too hard, nothing will really happen. The technique is there to allow through its precision to find the lines that help us breathing better, to get better into the fusion. It is also for this reason that I often ask to work slowly. It is no use doing something quickly and badly.
— Does the practice of Katsugen undō, you’ve discovered with Master Tsuda, affected your approach to Aikidō?
— I think if I had not practised Katsugen undō I would have not practise Aikidō the way I do today. We should never forget that Katsugen undō is something that normalizes the ground, the body. And only now I see Aikidō as a process of normalization of the body as well. The practise of Katsugen undō allows you to practise Aikidō in this way, it is for me a base, the basic. It develops in you the breathing, once we breathe better, we are more relaxed. Aspects like aggressiveness, competitiveness disappear, they fall by themselves. Instead of practising by hurting the others, one goes towards the normalization of the body, for example I usually show how, by twisting the arm in a certain way, during the mobilization, you allow your ki to get up to the third lumbar in fact the person’s body twists slightly on that point. Well, it is a process of normalization of the body through Aikidō, which I discovered because of the Katsugen undō practice. This applies to many other techniques, the way to get in, to reach the center, the hara, and so on. I’m not saying that you cannot find out if you only practise Aikidō, but Katsugen undō was an open door, it has allowed me to feel better, to understand better, to be more in the spirit… I think this was very important for Tsuda as well. He practised with Ueshiba for ten years. But when he started Aikidō he had already been practising for more than ten years Seitai and Katsugen undō. His terrain was thus in a certain condition, for example with regard to the flexibility – which is often lost when at forty-five years of age. And then the kind of spirit condition: for Tsuda was clear that we were not there to destroy ourselves, but rather to find a certain tone, and at the same time a balance. Aikidō should lead to a balance. And Katsugen undō task is the balance.
— you practise early in the morning, this may be surprising.
— Sessions during the week start at 6:45am while at the weekend they are at 8.00. I know we live in a society where you go to bed very late and you get up very late too. In my case I really love the morning. One can be tired in the evening, people after working hours are stressed. Sessions of martial arts then very easily turned into a relief valve, and so on. Rather in the morning, competitiveness does not have too much importance … you get up, you are in the dojo, you can easily breathe, you start your day. Furthermore we are very lucky to be in a permanent dojo. One comes and it is like being at home, in an association but at home, the dojo are used only for this reason. There are gyms with more or less clean changing rooms where you can not even leave your watch otherwise they might stole it, and so on. So you come here in the morning, take a little coffee, tea, and then practise. And so the day begins and starts well, it is a real pleasure. Every morning I have a great pleasure to see people getting there and taking their time, we are in a world where we do not take our time anymore…
— Your sessions are designed for all without distinction of age and levels, you talk about a school without grades.
— Master Tsuda said: ‘There is no black belt for mental emptiness.’ With Ueshiba there was no national program for black belts. When Master Noguchi was teaching he was used to say “Forget, forget, when you will need it, it will come back naturally” It’s a little bit like this, the technique is important, but we do not repeat ten thousand times how to get attacked or some other staff. It makes no sense. Hierarchy, degrees, kyu, dan, and so on. For me this is not really important … And then in terms of age, why should we make a difference? Modern society created that difference, it has created the teenage (which by the way teenage is now up to forty years), the third and then the fourth age, and so on. All these categories do not correspond to anything. For me, when we talk about life within us we are all equal. Then, of course, it makes a difference, if I work with a six year old child it is not like when I work with a sixty years old person or somebody on their twenties.
— Other then passing on the bases, what can you really teach through Aikidō?
— Ah, not much, actually, on a given moment people are going to start their own search by themselves. So, since I’m older, and my own search is also a long-term one, I can give them some information, and then I can help them to better understanding through visualizations. It’s my way of teaching people today. I suggest visualizations, for example by saying this movement looks like when you place a baby in bed. At the same time people search, there are a number of people who I consider companions they are no longer students. As sensei, as a good craftsman with a greater seniority, I can say, ‘Look further, that is it’, by looking further, the body opens and the person says, ‘Oh, okay It is fine.’ It is very subtle. It is a kind of communication that I establish with my students. And then people go and search in that direction. We do not work on making the technique perfect, that does not exist. Aikidō is not going to become more effective, more aesthetic, and so on. But we will be closer to ourselves, I think that this is the most important thing.
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Katsugen undō, translated as Regenerating Movement, is a technique developed by Haruchika Noguchi, creator of Seitai.
Morihei Ueshiba O-sensei used to recite the norito, a Shinto invocation, during his practice. Itsuo Tsuda recited it daily during the last few years and the tradition is still kept within the Itsuo Tsuda School.
‘The norito does not belong to the world of religion world but certainly to that of the sacred in the Animist sense. The vibrations and resonance flowing from the pronunciation of this text brings to each practice a feeling of calmness, fullness and sometimes something that goes beyond and remains inexpressible. The norito is a Misogi1Misogi, translated as “purification”. In its essence, it is never perfect, it always changes and evolves. It is the reflection of a moment in our being.’ (Régis Soavi)
This norito is very popular in Japan, it is called Misogi no harae. The Norito version of Master Tsuda is in some way a short version. Itsuo Tsudareceived this Norito from the hands of Nakanishi sensei, met during a trip to Japan. She also passed on the position of the hands, which, without being stiff, reflects high accuracy. It is a KI knot; all the fingers must touch each other and the position of the elbows has its own importance too. Nakanishi sensei was the Kotodama teacher of Morihei Ueshiba.’ (from an interview with Régis Soavi)
Itsuo Tsuda himself wrote: ‘At one point in his life, Mr Ueshiba felt stuck in the pursuit of the Way and faced a dead end. He was very strong physically, but he felt that something was missing. He was extremely strong physically, but he felt he was lacking something. It was then that he got to know the Nakanishis. He was fifty-six or seven years old, and Mrs Nakanishi, twenty-something years old.’2Itsuo Tsuda, The Way of the Gods, Chap. XVI, 2021, Yume Editions, p. 125 (1st ed. in French, 1982, Le Courrier du Livre (Paris))
In his book The Way of the Gods, Itsuo Tsuda attempts to clarify Shinto and Kotodama, some difficult subjects to access. We will publish some extracts as part of the listening of the Norito recitation by Itsuo Tsuda.
‘It is very difficult to define that which is called “Shintoism” – translated word for word: the way of the gods. It is a name adopted due to the necessity of comparison with other forms of “belief” that have been introduced to Japan over the centuries.’3ibid., Chap. XIII, p. 99
‘If I have to say what Shinto is, in a word, I will quote a French proverb:
“Eau qui court ne porte point d’ordure – flowing water carries no filth”. (fifteenth century).
What matters is not dogma, but an immediate feeling of serenity.
Is it possible to constantly maintain the feeling of serenity, under any circumstance? If you can do it, I have nothing more to say. I tend to agree that most of the time we experience a precarious serenity, under certain specific conditions. We try to keep hold of this serenity by tensing up. It is a maintaining of appearances. Not to admit that we have weaknesses and flaws is blindness.
This proverb is almost unknown today.’4ibid., Chap. XVIII, p. 141
Kotodama (vibration)
‘The whole Universe is conceived as filled with sensations of vibrations.
These vibrations already exist before they become noticeable.
So, Master Ueshiba often spoke of kotodama of the vowel “u”, for example, which is a vibration that springs from the belly. He explained the functions of all the vocalism, which were basically very simple but it was very difficult for me to understand them because these are things to which I was not accustomed.’5ibid., Chap. XIII, p. 101
‘According to Mrs Nakanishi, the defining quality of budo, martial arts, lies in the inclination to respond to different resonances. This is where martial arts unite with kototama. This is also where they differ from sports.
Indeed, the martial arts were born in times when one was exposed to fate at every moment, without warning. It was not about showing off physical technique in front of spectators who admire you, as in a circus. You had to foresee the approach of danger before any data of perception could confirm it. The moment of confirmation is already too late because it does not determine scores, but life or death.’6ibid., Chap. XVIII, p. 142
‘Aikido, conceived as a sacred movement by Mr Ueshiba, is disappearing to make way for athletic Aikido, a combat sport, more in accordance with the demands of civilised people.
“True budo must be like a kind of mai,” says Mrs Nakanishi,” the others are circling around you, but the master does not move.”
In Shinto, there is no opposition between God and man, as there is in Christianity. It is about finding God in yourself.
This is called chinkon kishin, calming the soul and returning to God. In fact, one can neither calm nor agitate the soul. We purify the ki that attaches to us to keep us alive, but at the same time exposes us to constant agitation.
[…]
“Miracles – you don’t need them,” she said, “the hard part is being natural, being normal.”
The beautiful sea reflects the moon in its round shape. The rough sea gives only burst reflections.’ 7ibid., Chap. XVII, p. 133
‘Mrs Nakanishi’s teaching revealed to me a new dimension of the universe. The Shinto universe does not correspond in any way to the geocentric conception that existed before Copernicus, nor to the heliocentric conception consolidated by Newton.
The universe she talks about is not located anywhere. It creates itself from the original Void, when and where it is needed, and disappears as soon as the matter is finished.
From the Void, Nothingness is created and Nothingness creates Existence. And Existence ends in Nothingness which returns to the Void.
Therefore, there is no creation that takes place at the beginning of the world, once and for all. Every moment can be the moment of creation. Anyone who tries can create the Universe, wherever he or she is.
So we don’t have to argue with Gagarin to deny or affirm the existence of God in space.
Shinto is too fluid to freeze, to become ossified. Each day is the first day of creation. Each day is perhaps the last day of returning to the Void.’8ibid., Chap. XVIII, p. 144
This coverage was published in the journal Question de [Topics of] in 1975. Claudine Brelet (anthropologist, international expert and a French woman of letters) who wrote this press coverage and did the interview and was one of the first students of Itsuo Tsuda.
First Part
At the fringes of Bois de Vincennes, in the rear of a garden in the suburbs of Paris, there is a particular At the fringes of Bois de Vincennes, in the rear of a garden in the suburbs of Paris, there is a particular dojo. Dojo, meaning, a place for practising the Art of breathing and martial arts. It is not a gym. It rather is a sacred place where ‘space-time’ is different from that of a profane place.We salute when we enter to sanctify ourselves and when we leave to desacralize.Read more →
Writer and director Yan Allégret is interested in aikido and traditional Japanese culture since 20 years. He practiced in France and Japan and became interested in the concept of a dojo: what makes at some point a space “the place where we practice the way.”
6 am. People leave home and head for a place. On foot, by car, by subway. Outside, the streets of Paris are still sleepy, almost deserted. Dawn is near. Those outside have not put on the armour needed for the working day ahead. There is something in the wind. At the break of dawn it feels like walking in a twilight zone.
It is in this gap we find Tenshin dojo of the Itsuo Tsuda school. In this place dedicated to Aikido and Katsugen undo, the sessions are daily. Every weekday morning, a session at 6:45 am, on weekends at 8am, regardless the weather or holidays, except January 1, the day of the ceremony of purification of the dojo. Dawn influence practice. At all times this porosity was considered in the Japanese tradition. Just read the Fushi Kaden from Zeami, creator of the Noh theater, to understand how the traditional arts were on the lookout for the “right moment” (taking into account time, weather, temperature, the quality of silence, etc.) to perfect their art. Walking towards the dojo at 6:30, we will realize, practising in the morning creates a relief. The mental capacity is not yet assailed by concerns of family and social life. The mind has not yet taken control. We come as a white sheet at 120, rue des Grands-Champs in the 20th arrondissement.
The association Tenshin is established here since 1992. It was founded by a group of people wishing to follow the teaching of Itsuo Tsuda, transmitted by Régis Soavi. Itsuo Tsuda was a student of Morihei Ueshiba and Haruchika Noguchi (founder of aikido and katsugen undo). Concerning Régis Soavi the current Sensei, he was a direct student of Master Tsuda. The dojo is not affiliated to any federation. He follows his path, independent and autonomous, with continuity and patience.
When passing the doorstep, we feel that we enter “into something”. A mixed form of density and simplicity emerges from the place. In Japanese, one would say, the “ki” of the place is palpable, the space is silent. People are gathered around a cup of coffee, accompanied by the Sensei. On the other side the space with the tatamis, yet at sleep.
A void at work
The dojo is vast. All the walls are white. The central tokonoma includes a calligraphy of master Tsuda. Portraits of founders (Ueshiba for Aikido, Noguchi for Katsugen Undo and Tsuda for the dojo) are located on the opposite wall.It is 6:45. The session will begin. The mats were left to rest since the previous day. The space is not rented for other courses because of profitability. One begins to understand what this “something” is we felt entering. A void is at work. Another crucial element in the Japanese tradition: the importance of a linked emptiness.
Between sessions, the space is left to recharge, to relax, like a human body. You should have seen the place, naked and silent like a beast at rest, to understand the reality of this fact. Practitioners sit in seiza, silence falls and the session begins. The person conducting faces the calligraphy, a bokken in hand, then sits. We salute a first time. Then comes the recitation of the norito, a Shinto invocation, by the person conducting. Master Ueshiba began each session accordingly. Mr. Tsuda, customary of Western mentality, did not deem it necessary to translate this invocation. He insisted only on the vibration that emanates from it by the work of the breathing. Of course, the sacred dimension is present. But no religion so far, no mystical “Japanese style” Westerners are sometimes fond of. No. Here it is much simpler.
Beyond the combat
Hearing the norito, we feel resonating something in the space that facilitates concentration, the return towards oneself. As one can be touched by a song without the need to understand the words.
Thereupon follows the “breathing exercises,” a series of movements done alone. Master Tsuda kept this part of the work of Master Ueshiba that wrongly could be considered as a warming up. The term warming up is restrictive. It engages the body only and assumes that true practice begins after. In both cases, this is false. One movement can infinitely be deepened and involves, if you work in this direction, the totality of our being.
Then comes the work in couple. We choose a partner, one day a beginner, the next day a black belt. Any form of hierarchy predominates. We work around four to five aikido techniques per session. The Sensei demonstrates a technique, then everyone tries it with his or her partner.What emerges from practice, is the importance of breathing and attention to what circulates between the partner and yourself. A circulation, when taking the premise of a fight as a starting point, that leads beyond. A beyond the combat.
It isn’t no doubt by chance that Régis Soavi uses the term “fusion of sensitivity” to speak about aikido. “The way of fusion of ki”.
The art of uniting and separating
On the tatami, no brutal confrontation. But no weak condescension either. The aikido practiced is flexible, clear, fluid. We see hakamas describing arabesques in the air, we hear laughter, sounds of falls, we see very slow movements, then suddenly without a word, partners accelerate and seem drawn into a dance until the fall frees.
We think back to the words of Morihei Ueshiba: ‘Aikido is the art of uniting and separating.’
There is no passing grade. No examination. No dan or kyu. Instead, wearing hakama and black belt. Beginners, meanwhile, are in white kimonos and white belt. The time just to wear the hakama is decided by the practitioners theirselves, after talking with elders or the Sensei. To choose to wear the hakama involves to assume freedom, but also responsibility. Because we know that beginners take more easily as a model those who wear the traditional black skirt. The issue of grade is turned inside out. The key is not outside. It is our own feeling we must sharpen, to recognize the right moment. Of course, mistakes can be made, the hakama is put on too early or too late. But the work has begun. It is obvious that we must seek inside. As for the black belt, the Sensei gives it to the practitioner the day he thinks the person is ready to wear it, the latter never being informed of this decision. And that’s all. The person wears the black belt. No blah-blah. The symbol is taken for what it is: a symbol and nothing more. The path has no end.
A special atmosphere
Seeing the Sensei demonstrating the free movements, in which techniques are linked spontaneously we think again about a term often used in the literature and the teaching of Itsuo Tsuda: “The non-doing”. And this is what probably brings this special atmosphere in the dojo at dawn, the smell of flowers at the tokonoma and the emptiness. A path of non-doing.The session ends. Silence returns. We greet the calligraphy and the Sensei. He leaves. The practitioners leave the space or fold their hakama on the tatami.
Around 8:30, we find ourselves around breakfast. We seek to learn more about how the dojo functions. For this lively place is both alive and financially independent, considerable energy is invested by practitioners. Some have chosen to dedicate much of their lives to it. They are a bit like Japanese Uchi Deshi, internal students. In addition to the practice, they manage the spine of the dojo, then taken in turns by the other practitioners that could be involved as external students. Everyone involved is encouraged to take initiatives and to take responsibility.
Work with less
An elder summarizes the instructions received: “Aikido. Katsugen undo. And the dojo.” The life of a dojo is a job in itself, an unique opportunity to practice out of the tatamis what one learns on the tatamis. Rather than a refuge, a greenhouse, the picture is rather that of an open field in the middle of the city, in which we lay fallow at dawn, where we clear weeds to allow gradually its place to other blooms.Before leaving we look at the empty space with tatamis one last time. It seems to breathe. The day dawned and the city is now in a fast and noisy rhythm. It awaits us. We leave the dojo and walk away with a wisp of a smile.
In a world of unbridled accumulation and filling up, there are places where you can work with less. This one makes part of it.
What are Aïkido and the Regenerating Movement? How can we use them to live in daily life? Those are the subjects dealt with by Régis Soavi who was a direct disciple of Master Itsuo Tsuda,himself a student of Master Ueshiba and Master Noguchi. Article of Francesca Giomo.
About the Aïkido the only thing I knew was the name, before I was invited to take part in four sessions of practise of this “non-martial” art at the Scuola della Respirazione, Fioravanti Street in Milan.
The sessions for beginners were on Mondays evenings at seven, with no theory at all, only practise. First one watched the technique being demonstrated by the more experienced students, then one “performed” it directly.
The Aïkido we’re going to talk about, the Aïkido I was introduced to, is that of Master Itsuo Tsuda, a student of the founder, Morihei Ueshiba. Régis Soavi is presently continuing the research started by Master Tsuda, teaching in several dojos in Europe, for example at the Scuola della Respirazione in Milano. Tsuda’s work, during his life-time, also included the Regenerating Movement (Katsugen undo), devised by Haruchika Noguchi, which is also practised, besides Aïkido, at the dojo in Milan. Those are the two practises Régis Soavi tells us about in the interview that follows.
– What is Aïkido? Can it be defined as a martial art?
Aïkido is a non-martial art. The origin of Aïkido is in fact a martial art called Ju Jitsu. Master Ueshiba’s vision transformed this martial art into an art of harmony and fusion between persons. That is why we no longer have a martial art as was originally the case, but a non-martial art.
– So, it was Master Ueshiba who created Aïkido?
Yes, it was Ueshiba, who died in 1969. But an important fact to be aware of is that at the basis of Aïkido there was Ju Jitsu, because then you understand how Ueshiba changed the spirit of it, with Aïkido. Aï-ki-do means way (do) of the harmony (aï) of Ki, way of the fusion of Ki. The direction he took in fact transformed a martial art into something else. In Aïkido, one cannot, for example, talk about defending oneself, but rather about fusing.
– Ueshiba is the founder of Aïkido, but the teaching at the Scuola della Respirazione refers to Master Tsuda.
Yes, Tsuda died in 1984. Through his books, he passed on Ueshiba’s message: Ueshiba was Tsuda’s master for ten years, just as Tsuda was mine later. After Ueshiba’s death, different Aïkido schools developed. Some of them chose to go back to a Ju Jitsu type of martial art, others have turned Aïkido into a sport. We are seeking to understand what Ueshiba actually said.
– Master Tsuda met Master Ueshiba rather late in life. Did he practise any martial arts before that?
Tsuda was an intellectual. He had never practised any martial arts. He had studied in France with Marcel Granet and Marcel Mauss, he was interested in Ki. He started his research in that direction and first discovered Katsugen Undo, then later Aïkido. Thanks to Ueshiba, Tsuda saw how one could use Ki in a martial art. He was forty-five when he started, without ever having done any karate or judo or any other martial art before.
– It is not easy for a westerner to understand what Ki is
Everybody talks about it nowadays. Just think of Taï Chi Chuan, Qi Qong… Everybody knows about it from a mental point of view, yet very few people have a physical experience of it. But that is something you cannot explain. It’s up to everyone to feel it, there is no explanation for it. We are not interested in explaining what Ki is, what we’re interested in is only the way to use it. It’s a bit like explaining what love is. Nowadays, one can analyse the smell of women, that of men etc… But that isn’t enough, otherwise it means we’re only animals… One cannot explain love, love is the meeting of two human beings and it doesn’t happen because the man has a beard, etc…etc… It is also like that with Ki.
– Since we’re talking about the practise of Aïkido, what are the different moments of a session?
An Aïkido session is a special moment in the day. I practise everyday, there is a sacred aspect one can retrieve in that. At the beginning of the session, there are ritual gestures: it is not important to know what they mean, but it is essential to make them, it brings about something. Also there is the norito (a text of shintoist origin recited in Japanese) which is a recitation of purification. Nobody knows what the words mean, but when the recitation is good, there is a vibration in it which is active.This may seem very mystical. But if someone listens to lieder by Schubert, for example, sung by a good singer, and doesn’t know German, he doesn’t understand anything, but as he listens to the singing, something sad or something cheerful happens, it produces an effect. It is the same if you attend a No theatre performance, you don’t understand anything, it’s in Japanese, but the gestures and the movements create effects. And this is not mystical but real.
– When we watched the part of the session towards the end, when free movement is done, the succession of attacks and « fusions » made me feel as if we were watching an improvisation.
Yes, it was in fact an improvisation.
– Does one need a particular technique to do the free movement?
Even though it is an improvisation, there are gestures which are a bit like a ritual. You cannot attack at random, but, in a way, it depends on your partner’s posture, let us put it that way. The “attacker”’s gestures correspond with the posture of the person he is “attacking”. But in the case of an improvisation, as when musicians improvise together, there is always a harmony, otherwise it generates chaos. So one goes beyond technique and one creates harmony. Everybody can do it. Everyone does it at his own level. One does it more slowly at the beginning, with a technique one knows. One doesn’t invent anything completely new.
– What is the significance of respiration in Aïkido?
When talking about respiration in this context, it is Ki we’re talking about. One mustn’t think in terms of respiration through the lungs. It’s a respiration of the body that enables you to be more in harmony. When one is acting it’s expiration, when one is receiving it’s inspiration. When one starts practising, the pulmonary respiration becomes more ample. The whole body is breathing and becomes more elastic and supple, Ki flows more easily. In that sense, respiration helps making people more supple, it helps finding a rhythm in the practise, because if someone is not breathing correctly, after five minutes he has no strength left. That is why one practises slowly at the beginning of sessions, to allow for the harmonization of gestures through respiration. So gestures become harmonized through respiration.
-At the beginning of the session, the master breathes in a very particular, very strong way, what does this correspond to exactly?
This type of respiration is done to breathe out completely, to empty. There is a very common and widespread deformation as far as respiration is concerned. In fact people nowadays have a tendency always to retain a little air, they don’t breathe fully. They hold their breath so as to be always ready to defend themselves, to act in reply. In the end, as they are never really empty, their respiration cannot be deep and their breath is short. So at the beginning of the session one first lets out all the air, in that way thoughts also come out. They become empty, new.
-On what does Aïkido have an action from a physical point of view? What sort of muscular response does it require from the body?
It’s the same as in daily life, normally you use all your muscles, in Aïkido also. It is true, though, that some Aïkido schools have been trying to make the body become stronger. Our School doesn’t want to do that. We do not want to become stronger, only less weak. The muscles don’t have to become stronger to do something special. In Aïkido, one moves normally and one makes everyday life movements such as running, turning, normal gestures which, however, are done with a special attention.
-Is it possible to transfer this “special attention€ to one’s own daily life?
Of course, otherwise Aïkido is useless. Some people come here to become stronger, to defend themselves, but no. Aïkido is there to make people more sensitive, and therefore it is useful in daily life. One regains a certain suppleness. If the respiration was too short and high before, it gradually becomes calmer. Something that helps you in your relationships with children, at work… That is where Aïkido really is useful, in daily life.
– You always practise very early in the morning, why is that?
As far as I am concerned, in the Itsuo Tsuda School, I practise early in the morning but not all those who practise Aïkido do the same. I like the morning best because then one is more in the dimension of the involuntary, in a condition which enables the body to wake up and to prepare for the day.
– At the Scuola della Respirazione one also practises Katsugen Undo, the Regenerating Movement. What are its origins?
It was a discovery Master Noguchi made. At the beginning, Noguchi was a healer. He used to pass on Ki to people so that they would get better. But at one time he discovered that the human being’s capacity to cure itself was something inborn, which, however, wasn’t functioning any more, or not so well. It was Noguchi who discovered that when one does Yuki, that is to say one passes on Ki through the hands, people’s bodies move all by themselves and this enables the body to restore its balance. Noguchi therefore found that some movements enable the body to awaken its capacity to cure itself. This discovery gave birth to the Regenerating Movement or Katsugen Undo, an exercise which enables the body to rouse capacities it doesn’t know it has.Tsuda introduced the Regenerating Movement in France and I took an interest in it because I found the connection there is between Aïkido and the Regenerating Movement. I realized the existence of such links, by the fact that when the body is healthy and retrieves its capacities, Aïkido cannot go in the direction of fighting other people any longer, on the contrary the desire to act in such a way disappears. So, the Regenerating Movement is very important, in my opinion it is difficult to practise Aïkido in our school without knowing it.
– The only way to start practising the Regenerating Movement is to come to one of the seminars you hold every other month?
During seminars, I give talks, I explain and I show the « techniques » which allow one to get into the state where the movement may occur. I come again every other month so that the persons who practise regularly may continue on the « right path ». A lot of people may very easily deviate, perhaps because in the Regenerating Movement there is in fact nothing to do, just be there, close your eyes, empty your head. Some people think it’s better to have music during sessions etc, etc… But the path is what is the most simple.
– Is the Regenerating Movement something we already have, but have forgotten about?
Not really. The Regenerating Movement is a normal human activity, what we have forgotten is letting our body live all by itself. We have lost faith in our own body, in our capacities, as if after a traumatic experience. The Regenerating Movement enables one to retrieve all that: if before there were things I couldn’t do, now I can do them. I have only trained my capacity for action, nothing else. It’s a capacity of the extrapyramidal motor system, the involuntary system. When trained, it regains its ability to restore its own balance. That is the capacity we already have. Even people who don’t practise the Regenerating Movement know how to regain their own balance: someone who is tired goes to bed, and while he is asleep, his body moves, that is the body’s capacity to restore its balance. The Regenerating Movement is something everybody still has a little, but the capacity to let the movement occur weakens and, by training the extrapyramidal, one retrieves it.
– What is the extrapyramidal motor system?
It is the involuntary system, which allows the body to restore its balance. But the Regenerating Movement also has an action on the immune system, which does not depend on the extrapyramidal system but is also an involuntary faculty of the body.Our body’s movement isn’t something we can learn, we can only discover it and accept it. The Regenerating Movement has an action on many things, for example the capacity to maintain body temperature, but it’s different for each person, no movement is identical to another, no reaction to another, because each person is different.
-Dealing with people he doen’t know, the master needs to have a special sensibility to understand which movement each participant needs to do?
No, because the master cannot do the movement for the “student”, the movement is something spontaneous, so everybody has to find his own movement. The training of the involuntary system must, to start with, give a free hand to the involuntary. So, during the seminar, I explain, I show exercises, I just do “Yuki”. I may sometimes help someone empty his head thanks to a few technique, but then the movement occurs all by itself. It’s the same thing as when a person is scratching, she knows where and how to do it, without anybody telling her anything.
– What does Yuki and doing Yuki mean?
Yuki means ‘joyful Ki’ and to do Yuki is ‘to pass on joyful Ki’, but that is an interpretation… To do it, you lay your hands on the other person’s body.
– We are talking about restoring the body’s balance, but the Regenerating Movement isn’t a therapy, but exercises which allow for something to wake up…
Yes, because a therapy implies that one is concerned with the symptom of the illness and that one is taking a responsability regarding that. It isn’t the case here. Here we just let the body do what it has to do. If people have problems and need something, one can do yuki and this rouses the capacity of the rest of the body. So it isn’t a therapy. There are therapeutic consequences, we can say that.
– Can anybody practise the Regenerating Movement?
No. It is not recommended to people who have had transplants, because if a person has had transplants, it means she has in her body a part coming from somebody else. With the practise of the Regenerating Movement, her body will tend to reject that part which doesn’t belong to it. In fact, people with transplants must take medicines so that their bodies accept the foreign element. The Regenerating Movement activates the body’s capacities to restore its balance, so it works in the direction of expelling any foreign element. It may be alright, though, if the transplant comes from the person’s own body, for example if skin has been taken from one part of a person’s body to another. We also refuse people taking very strong medicines, like cortisone etc… because this type of medicine goes towards desensibilizing the persons, whereas the Regenerating Movement makes them retrieve a more vivid sensitivity.
– How many years do you need to practise to conduct a Regenerating Movement session?
Talking about years doesn’t mean anything. It is the practitioners themselves who conduct the sessions. One year of practise is enough. Of course the respiration of the person who conducts the session must be calm enough, and she must be in the right state of mind, warm, simple, not disturbing for the others. In fact, it is only the practitioners’ involuntary which is at work.
-Aren’t there things that may happen during a session, on an emotive level, coming from the most fragile persons?
Nothing of the sort happens, because one finds out that the Regenerating Movement is really something natural. It would be like saying that someone who is scratching an itch is making himself bleed. People have tensions inside themselves but the Regenerating Movement doesn’t make them come out, it makes them melt. If something has no reason to be there any more, it just melts.
-To allow the Regenerating Movement to occur, one must first free one’s head from thoughts, have a blank mind, but how does that come about?
To empty your head, you first drop the thoughts that come into your mind. An empty mind means that if there are thoughts, they go away. The mind needs to be active in any case, but the thoughts are not important. At the beginning it’s a bit difficult, but after some time, you don’t worry about that any more and gradually everything goes without saying.
Article of Francesca Giomo, published in the webzine “Terranauta” on 04/01/2006.
Our appointment is at 6:45 AM, in Milan’s Chinese quarter. The place: a former garage, transformed into a traditional, spartan-looking dojo where, once inside, you are told gently but firmly to remove your shoes. The participants arrive little by little, sleepy-faced; they murmur their greetings as though reluctant to disturb the pale atmosphere of the Milanese dawn.
I had been invited to an aikido session by Régis Soavi, during one of the periodic courses he conducts in Italy. Régis Soavi teaches and transmits the message of Itsuo Tsuda (1914-1984), a direct disciple of master Ueshiba. I had read a few of Tsuda’s books; he was Japanese and lived in France. His books are strange. They cannot be classed with “martial arts” books, or as “essays”, or with “stories”. In Tsuda’s school, we find the convergence of two fundamental experiences: Aikido and Katsugen undo (Regenerating Movement). I wanted to speak more in depth of that, with Régis Soavi.
Who Itsuo Tsuda was
You were a direct student of Master Tsuda. Tell me a bit about him.
He was very simple. We called him Mr. Tsuda. I myself only began to address him as “Master” in his last years. He wished to be considered above all as a philosopher and writer. His quest was of a personal nature. When you met him, you realized at once that he had a strong personality, but at the same time, he seemed to be an Oriental like any other. If you were to come across him in the street, you’d never realize he was an expert in Martial Arts, he just seemed to be an ordinary Japanese. In any case, on the tatami, he was a real discovery. Tsuda addressed himself to each person individually, he never generalized. In the morning, after aikido, we would have coffee together and he would tell stories, speaking to all who were there; but we understood that, each time, he wished to reach certain people in particular. He was characterized above all by his simplicity.
I’m looking at Tsuda’s biography: ‘At 16, he rebelled against his father’s wish for him to inherit the family patrimony; he left his family to wander, in search of freedom of thought. Later, reconciled with his father, he came to France in 1934, where he studied under Marcel Granet and Marcel Mauss until 1940, when he returned to Japan. After 1950, he became interested in Japanese culture, studying the recitation of “Noh” with Master Hosada, the “Seitai” with Master Haruchika Noguchi, and Aikido with Master Morihei Ueshiba. Itsuo Tsuda returned to Europe in 1970, to disseminate the practice of “Regenerating Movement” and his ideas about the “Ki”.’ What did Itsuo Tsuda do during the Second World War?
In 1940 he was mobilized and had to return to Japan, on the last boat to go through the Suez Canal. The canal was then closed. He was enrolled in the army, where he worked in an administrative capacity. He never fought. Right after the war, he worked for Air France as an interpreter. That is how he met Master Ueshiba. A French Judoka, André Noquet, came to Japan to discover the practice of Aikido, and as he spoke no Japanese, he needed an interpreter. He found Tsuda, who until then knew nothing about Aikido, but he was deeply interested at once.
Did Tsuda know Ueshiba first, or Noguchi?
Noguchi. He was about 30 when he first met Noguchi, and 45 when he encountered Ueshiba.
What was the meaning of his refusal to accept the family heritage?
His father came from a family of Samourai, who became factory owners and business heads at the Meiji modernization. Tsuda did not want to work in the family business. He wanted to live his own life. At first it was very difficult; he even worked for a time in a chemical factory. Then, when he had reconciled with his father, he decided to study in France. Tsuda was very fond of France.
Aikido
For you, is Aikido a martial art?
No, you already know the answer. Aikido is a non-martial art; it is the practice of non-doing. Master Ueshiba, in another epoch, could have responded that Aikido is a martial art. Still, if I say it is not a martial art, then people respond, ‘Oh, it’s a dance then’. That is why I define Aikido as a “non-martial art”. In any case it is something quite different; That is why Ueshiba called it ai-ki-do. The term is often translated as “The Way of Harmony”, but a more appropriate definition is “The Way of Fusion of Ki”. Two people can undergo what we call fusion. They do more than simply harmonize. From two, they become One, then two again. Habitually in martial arts, two adversaries confront each other and only one remains. But in Aikido we have the fusion of sensitivity. In our school, he who attacks, attacks; the other becomes one with him: he accepts and absorbs the attacker and from two creates one. He acts in such a way that the other begins to be a part of him. In this way he disarms the attack, which no longer works.
Does that mean that one learns to take responsibility for the other as well? Or to put it differently, in a relation between two people, does the will of one of them suffice to modify the quality of that relation?
One learns to take one’s own responsibility. In our school, the attacker will help the other who is not yet able to create the state of fusion; he makes it possible. If he were to attack brutally, the beginner would be unable to create this fusion; but if he acts as a guide, he helps the other rediscover his own capacity for movement. He already has that capacity. If, when crossing a street, a car suddenly arrives, we jump to the side. It’s the art of avoidance. These capacities manifest themselves spontaneously, in certain exceptional circumstances. Here, we reintroduce them, so that they become more natural, so that they are present in every moment of our lives.
You practice early every morning. Why?
Master Ueshiba practised early in the morning, Master Tsuda as well; I continue to practice early in the morning. That is the first reason. The second reason is that only those who are very determined, very well motivated, come in the morning, because to be here at this time, you must get up at around 5:30 AM. In the morning we are fresher than at the end of the day and it’s easier to practice “non-doing”, at least for beginners. We are also more “involuntary” – still a bit half asleep, we are not yet entirely into our “social being” that we use during the day, to encounter others and go about our work: smile when we should, or not; say ‘thank you’, etc. In the morning we arrive at the dojo still clean, not very structured yet, and there is something more authentic there.
How is your Aikido different from that of other schools?
There is no difference, it is Aikido. I do not know what is done these days in other organizations, at Aikikai for example; I left them 20 years ago. I do believe that certain things have been forgotten; for instance, the first part of the “Respiratory Practice” that Master Ueshiba did every morning, and that we have preserved. In other schools, some forms of this have been maintained, but a large part has been lost. I think that those schools have adapted themselves more to Occidentals and to our epoch; as for myself, I prefer to remain more traditional.In our Aikido sessions, there is a first part, where we practice alone for about 20 minutes, and a second where we practice in pairs: one partner attacks, and the other executes the technique. The techniques are the same as those practised at Aikikai or with Master Kobayoshi, or any other master. The difference is in our approach, which gives much more importance to the role of the partner. We take the other person completely into account, and for that, I feel that our practice of Katsugen Undo has played a fundamental role.
The Regenerating Movement
What is Katsugen Undo?
In our school there are two practices, united through a common spirit: Aikido, of which we have just spoken, and the Regenerating Movement, which Tsuda learned from Master Noguchi – a ‘movement that permits a return to the source’. This is what allows us to better understand the aspect of “non-doing” in Aikido.
Often, when people arrive from other dojos, I see that they possess a technique: they respond to the attacks in a certain way, but there is no spontaneity. Everything is calculated, inculcated, schooled, and ordered.
The regenerating movement is supposed to bring the individual back to a state of spontaneity?
Yes, it is the art of spontaneity par excellence.
It is derived from Noguchi’s “Seitai”, if I have understood correctly?
Yes.
What does Seitai mean?
It means a “natural condition”; “Seitai Soho”, for example, is a technique used to “Seitai-ise” the individual, that is, to give him the possibility of a return to a natural condition. Katsugen Undo, on the other hand, is the movement of the extrapyramidal motor system, the involuntary movement that is activated spontaneously, and that, in itself, acts to take us to a condition of seitai. It is not a method of acquisition, on the contrary, it is a Way of detachment. We do not acquire greater flexibility; rather, we free ourselves from rigidity. We acquire nothing; rather, we lose things, we free ourselves from what hampers us. This is important in Aikido as well. Aikido is not a Way of “acquiring” techniques, or of “obtaining” results, but rather a Way of coming back to simple things. On this subject Master Tsuda spoke of ‘becoming a child again, but without puerility’.
Did Ueshiba know of Seitai? How did Seitai and Aikido come together?
It was Tsuda who united them. I do not believe that Ueshiba knew of Seitai. However, Master Noguchi once went to see a demonstration by Master Ueshiba, of which he said, ‘It’s good’. In Japan, that is sufficient.
The Ki
Did Noguchi create the discipline of Seitai, or did a tradition already exist that he perpetuated?
No, he created it. Initially, Noguchi was a healer, until his “discovery” of involuntary movement. One day, he realized that people fell ill, and came to see him; he would allow the ki to circulate, they would recover and go off. Then they would fall ill again and come back to see him…. Any other therapist would have been happy to observe that, as they would be guaranteed a steady clientele. But Noguchi started from a different point of view: ‘What good is it to heal them since they just fall ill again? Every time they fall ill, they depend on me.’ To him it was absurd. He had discovered that, with Katsugen Undo, there was no more need for someone to heal us. The body does not need anyone, it does everything all by itself.
Can we say then, that our ki heals us?
No, ki does not heal us. Ki activates the vital capacities of the individual, but we are already full of ki! If our body works normally, we need nothing else. If I have some microbes in my body, the body creates a fever and produces home-made antibiotics, antibodies, etc. Noguchi did nothing but activate the life force, when the individual was too weak. What is even more interesting is that the individual can activate his life force on his own, with no need for another person, no need to ask someone else to do it for him.
Does this method work to cure people?
We are not cured. If we break a bone, once the bone is back in place, what makes it knit back together? It is not medicine, it is not doctors, and it is not the ki either. Even if we do nothing the bones knit, simply because we are alive! If we find this capacity again, the whole body will function in this way.
And with cancer, what happens? Is it more difficult to find a normal function when the cells have gone crazy?
In the case of cancer, it is a matter of a certain corporal laziness: the body is so damaged that it is near death. But there are people who survive a cancer. How does that happen? That is not my domain, as I am not a therapist; I do not attempt to cure people. But it is clear that there are people who have not allowed their bodies to do their work normally; for every little problem, they take medicine. Today, that is how it is as well, for giving birth and for pregnancy. From the beginning of life, we are medicalised, hospitalised, even though these are natural events, where life manifests its workings in us.
Can we say then that it is our ideas that have become ill?
Not only our ideas. It all goes together. But what is new with Noguchi, is the possibility to awaken oneself if one wishes it . It’s not a question of awakening each person at any price, nor of proposing a great new method that will cure everyone. It can be useful only to those who wish to go in a certain direction. The others, the lazy ones, do not belong here. In this society, there is already an infinite number of specialists to take care of them: doctors,priests, psychoanalysts, gurus, etc. As for me, I prefer to live my own life totally. I prefer that no one need to take care of me.
In our magazine, we have begun a discussion about the ki, about the way each Oriental discipline interprets and uses it. It would be interesting to hear your point of view.
Ki is an untranslatable word today. The ki has a thousand forms; good ki, bad ki… it is indefinable. When we enter a certain place, with a certain atmosphere, one can say we feel a certain sort of ki. But what seems a pleasant sort of ki to some can be quite disagreeable to others. In Aikido, there is, effectively, the ki of the attack which is to come. Sometimes, walking along the street, we can feel something at the nape of the neck. We turn, see no-one, but then notice, up on a roof, a cat observing us. We have felt the ki of the cat’s look. How can we explain that? We can observe it, but as for explaining it… “To be in harmony with the ki.” But which ki? It is not simple.
I remember one of your conferences where you said that when something hurts it is natural to put one’s hand on the painful spot. For example, if we have a headache we naturally put our hand to our head, and that is already a way of using the ki.
Yes, the “laying on of hands” is yuki. When you have a headache, you put on your hand, and the ki circulates. In this way, the ki is concentrated. The ki is already there, it circulates already, but we concentrate it. When we have something wrong somewhere, we lay our hands on the spot without thinking of it, it happens spontaneously. When, on the contrary, we do yuki with someone, it adds a certain concentration, a direction.
So in your school you do yuki with each other?
When we practice the regenerating movement, we also practice the exercise of yuki. All the same, rather than doing yuki, it is a matter of a rediscovery. We come back to something everyone already knows, from when we were children.
The translation of yuki?
Joyful ki.
The perception of the sacred dimension
Does Seitai contain a reference, close or remote, to a religious tradition, as does Aikido?
Neither discipline adheres to a religious belief.
But Ueshiba was so deeply influenced by the sect Oomoto-kyō (a Shintoist religious group), that in his thoughts, Aikido and his religious practice are not always easy to distinguish.
But Aikido in itself is not at all religious. It does fit into a sacred tradition, that yes. Ueshiba had without doubt a very strong relation to what is sacred. Master Tsuda also considered the dojo to be a sacred place. After all, what is the dojo? It is a place where we practice the Way. And the Way is represented in Japanese by the ideogram of Tao. One does not practice the Way just anywhere. A place consecrated to that practice is necessary.
But what is the sacred dimension for you?
I cannot give a precise definition. People do say, The sacred dimension, yes, but religion, no! One particularity of our school is that we don’t practice before a picture of Ueshiba or of Tsuda, but before a calligraphy. The calligraphy that hangs in this dojo, for example, is Mu, the Void.
Is it the same in each dojo?
No. In Toulouse, there is a calligraphy that signifies “The dragon emerges from the pond, where he had been asleep”. At Avezzano the calligraphy signifies Bodai, that is, the state of illumination.
What is the meaning of this custom?
To practice before a calligraphy creates a different atmosphere than would a picture. Personally, to stand before a calligraphy that signifies The Void, gives me a feeling of plenitude. To practice before a picture of someone, even if he is the founder of the school, seems to me to indicate a religious attachment or devotion. Ueshiba did not practice before a photograph. A calligraphy is by nature “void”. Also, I find it important that those who come to the dojo to practice, understand the sacred aspect, but at the same time, that there are no gods to venerate here.We are not concerned with peoples’ religious or political beliefs. At the same time, this space is not only physical. It is not a gymnasium, where one trains, sweats, and showers. It is a permanent dojo, where we practice only Aikido and the regenerating movement.
I think that people are also interested in the cultural, philosophical and religious origins of the discipline they practice. In the Chinese tradition, for instance, the classical martial arts were born, or in any case, greatly developed, in the Buddhist and Taoist monasteries.
Everything began in religion. Art in Europe began in religion. Today, it is publicity which gives its impetus to art. Publicity is the new religion. Ueshiba himself said that Aikido is not a religion, but that it sheds light on religion, allowing a better understanding of it. In fact, he himself recited the “Norito” before a little altar, either Buddhist or Shintoist, or even before an image of Jesus.
Why do you recite the “Norito”, a Shintoist invocation, before each session?
It is not Shintoist. I do not know what it is. I say that it is not Shintoist because it is something older, something which has since been adopted by Shintoism. Master Ueshiba spoke in this case, of “Kotodama”.
What is “Kotodama”?
It is a resonance.
Like a mantra?
If you like. Shintoism has its source in ancient traditions, in the same way that Christianity has integrated earlier traditions like Easter (originally a Hebrew celebration) and Christmas (the Roman “Saturnalia”, the Celtic and Nordic “Yule”).
What is the “Norito” exactly?
It is a short text. It takes just a few minutes to recite.
Do you teach the meaning of the words to the participants?
No. What is important is the vibration, the resonance.
And people accept participating in something they do not understand?
Yes.
But do you yourself understand the meaning of the text?
No. It is my inner sensation that is important to me. We do so many things that we feel, but do not understand.
Everyone already knows what they need
Stage d’été de l’Ecole Itsuo Tsuda
From the person who begins to practice a martial art, a great deal of confidence in the master is always required. The disciple supposes that one day he will understand, and that he will obtain some results. He hopes to see some visible effects, the proof that what he is doing works, even if it’s perhaps not immediate.
We always behave according to reason. We do something, then we understand, then we change, etc. But with Master Tsuda we discovered something different. I practised Aikido with other masters before him, I have known different forms, different schools, but with Tsuda, I discovered the “non-form”: in fact, the form exists, but it is very vague. With Tsuda, the orientation changed. In the practice as he taught it, one comes back to oneself. The sensation of coming back to myself is what led me to abandon the other things I did; federation Aikido, Jujitsu, etc.One no longer needs explanations. I think that those who come here feel that. They rediscover sensation, and don’t need one to explain that we do this for this reason and that for that reason… They feel, they see, they understand deep inside, they discover; that’s what counts for them.In any event, today, the consequences of knowledge are harmful. The more things we discover, the more problems are raised. I don’t want to say we should know nothing, or learn nothing, but we must have confidence in what is instinctive for humans: in women’s intuition when they care for their newborn babies, for example. When a woman takes a newborn into her arms, she does not wonder, ‘Is he hungry, is he wet, is he sleepy?’ She already knows what the baby needs, intuitively. She has always known. When she was a child herself, she did not need to use that knowledge, but when she becomes a mother, she uses it, that is all.People do feel these things, but generally this sort of perception stops at the unconscious level, and doesn’t emerge into our consciousness. So, officially, we say, ‘I don’t know’, but deep down, we already do know it all.
Individual responsability
How can you define what Master Tsuda’s school proposes?
Simply, to provide, for the individual, a place where one can discover oneself to be autonomous and responsible. For example, here in Milan, the dojo is named Scuola de la Respirazione, and it is the members who manage it and share all the responsibility. Naturally, there are people who come to the courses looking for solutions to their problems, but that is not what we propose- just as we don’t propose an ideal model that one can copy to lead one’s life. That’s why our practice of Aikido is suited to individuals who are very different one from another; it is not at all a matter of one style, one school. We are all different individuals who practice together, to return to what we have at the deepest level inside us; he who comes here, doesn’t come to be taken care of by others. He comes to discover something which must be of service to him in his daily life, and which, otherwise, would be of no value.
Some concrete examples, of the way your practice can come into play in daily life?
The individuals find themselves less stressed; they take more time for themselves and are more concentrated. Be careful, it is not a miraculous method, that makes everyone become handsome, intelligent, rich and generous. It can serve you at work, in your relations with others, in your relationship with your own children, but it is not a panacea.
There are those who begin to practice martial arts to become stronger, but then discover something else, other values. One can, for example, learn to give way instead of responding aggressively to an attack, as in Tai Chi. To take the example of Tai Chi Chuan, one lets the adversary enter instead of opposing him in a block, and then one goes in the same direction, taking advantage of his movement. This attitude can also be applied to human relationships outside of the gymnasium.
Certainly, instead of having aggressive relationships with others, we can enter into a certain harmony with them, and so find something more authentic. Today, relations among people are too superficial. We don’t take care of our children anymore: we put them in child care centres, then in school, then they do their military service… To get back in touch is important- or to return to the pleasure of working, doing work because it interests us. That does not mean we should all act in the same way. For each of us, different things are important. We must respect each person’s rhythm. Some take a hundred years to discover the simplest things; others find them right away, but without putting them to use: they hastily discover piles of things, then disappear.
The important thing is that it has been useful to them.
The important thing is that there exist places like this, where those who are seeking something, can come to find it.
But perhaps what is even more important is that, once one has found that something, one begins to give. Once having found it, one can then serve someone else.
I agree, but there are so many people who live only to give: they give, and they give. In the end, the others cannot take anymore. It is like feeding a baby: ‘here is a spoonful for mama, a spoonful for papa, a spoonful for little sister’ – the baby finally bursts out crying, he cannot take anymore. Parents do that for our own good. But dictators also do things for the good of the nation. What can we do for the good of others? Piles of things.
It is an expression of ecocentrism.
Certainly. There are also people who give to others to avoid doing things themselves, or for themselves. I am rather mistrustful of that. But it is true that when one gives in the right way, a balanced way, we can feel that, and then it is something authentic.
That is why in certain martial arts influenced by Zen Buddhism, one seeks to eliminate the ego…
But it is not possible to eliminate the ego. One can say that we should not be egoistic, or egocentric. However, the little me represents the unity of our personality. The important thing is that it not become the “boss”.
Once the session is finished, the participants at the Scuola de la Respirazione set up a large, low table, around which they breakfast together, seated on tatamis on the floor. Although it is now well past 8 o’clock and everyone is wide awake, their voices remain quiet, as if they wished to postpone for a little bit more, the entry into the daily rhythm and hullabuloo of the town, to keep in themselves for as long as possible, that other rhythm, interior and peaceful.
An interview with Régis Soavi, by Monica Rossi, published in February 1999 in Arti d’Orienten° 2
The Aikido founder’s desire was to bring human beings closer, to him the world was like a big family:
live in a society where you go to bed very late and you get up very late too. In my case I really love the morning. One can be tired in the evening, people after working hours are stressed. Sessions of martial arts then very easily turned into a relief valve, and so on. Rather in the morning, competitiveness does not have too much importance … you get up, you are in the dojo, you can easily breathe, you start your day. Furthermore we are very lucky to be in a permanent dojo. One comes and it is like being at home, in an association but at home, the dojo are used only for this reason. There are gyms with more or less clean changing rooms where you can not even leave your watch otherwise they might stole it, and so on. So you come here in the morning, take a little coffee, tea, and then practise. And so the day begins and starts well, it is a real pleasure. Every morning I have a great pleasure to see people getting there and taking their time, we are in a world where we do not take our time anymore…
received this Norito from the hands of 
