• Aikido: the art of fighting without fighting

    Aikido: the art of fighting without fighting

    Indulekha Aravind 

    April 5, 2014 Last Updated at 00:15 IST (Business Standard)

    In his interview with the Hindi daily Dainik Bhaskar, Congress Vice-president Rahul Gandhi mentioned he loved swimming and running, and also did meditation and aikido. This last revelation might have left a few scratching their heads, or reaching out for Google, and with good reason. A Japanese martial art that originated in the early 20th century, aikido has not attracted the kind of following karate, judo or taekwondo has in India.

    “It takes a long time to master aikido and people prefer martial arts where you can master some kicks and punches in a few classes,” says Paritos Kar, who has been teaching aikido in Delhi for 10 years and whose students include the Gandhi scion. Kar spent 10 years in Japan learning the martial art, and another few teaching it in Russia, before returning to India.

    Kar says aikido is different because though it is used in self-defence, it is a non-aggressive martial art. “There is no winner or loser, and there are no tournaments. The objective is not to beat anybody.” It is not a sport, but a way of life, he adds.

    The Aikido World Headquarters website says the goal of aikido training “is not perfection of a step or skill, but rather improving one’s character according to the rules of nature. One becomes ‘resilient’ inside yet this strength is expressed softly.” If that sounds a bit esoteric, it goes on to add that “a pure budo (or way of martial arts) comes with the unification of technique, body and heart” and that its manifestation depends on the practitioner’s heart. The aim of aikido, it says, “is a kindness of heart expressed through this spirit of budo”. Not exactly what one might expect to read on a martial arts website but the idea of peace and harmony is central to the philosophy of aikido, as paradoxical as it might sound.

    The martial art was developed by Morihei Ueshiba, referred to as O Sensei, in pre-war Japan, though it is said to have been consolidated in its present form in the 1940s, with the word “aikido” being used first in 1942, according to a website dedicated to the history of aikido. After Ueshiba’s death, many different style of aikido developed. Kar follows aikikai, the method helmed by O Sensei’s grandson, Moriteru Ueshiba. There are other schools all over the country teaching different styles, including in smaller cities like Varanasi, while the aikikai style is taught in Mumbai and Chennai, apart from the capital.

    Coming to the more practical aspects, aikido focuses on developing power, irrespective of actual physical strength. Practitioners are taught to use the energy of the attacker to control them, rather than punching or kicking them. It’s a martial art that can be learnt by anybody, but to practice, one needs a partner.

    There are different levels, and it would take a beginner at least five years to reach the first black belt, before which there are a couple of preliminary exams to be cleared. The final level is ninth and only a few people in the world are said to have reached it in the aikikai style. Kar himself is at the fifth level, while Rahul Gandhi is reported to have a first-level black belt. Courses begin at Rs 2,000 for 12 classes a month.

    Though there are three centres in Delhi, growth has been at a snail’s pace, say Kar. “There aren’t too many people learning aikido because it requires a lot of patience. And in Delhi people don’t have patience,” he says bluntly.

  • Mysteries of the masters

    Mysteries of the masters

    Remember Sensei Sethi, the man who taught me Aikido? No? Doesn’t ring a bell?
    Let me jog your memory a bit.
    About a decade ago, while strolling through a park in south Delhi, I happened to see a portly figure  engaging in a graceful dance-like tussle with two others. Their moves were elegant and one might even say gentle, and yet the martial quality of their actions was undeniable. Eventually, the burly gent whirled around and held his opponent’s arms, wrenching them with a degree of controlled fury that ended with his opponents writhing on the ground, their faces a twisted mask of agony and appreciation.
    I went up to the group while it was engaged in the process of finding its feet again and asked what they were doing. I had read a bit about Tai Chi Chuan at the time though I hadn’t seen much of it. But the graceful expression of power in the master’s moves reminded me of the internal power that surreptitiously courses through the limbs of a true Tai Chi practitioner.
    “No, this isn’t Tai Chi. We are practicing Aikido, a Japanese martial art that is as gentle as it is firm. However, Aikido draws influences from Baguazhang, an internal Chinese martial art, much like Tai Chi”,  said the master. He wasnt a very big man. About 5’8″, but heavily built, and from a distance, with his heavy paunch and chubby arms, looked decidedly fat, but on closer inspection, all that chubbiness had this unshakeable dense quality about, much like  a sumo wrestler’s, but on a far smaller scale. Since they were all wearing a ‘gi’, I should have realized that the art had Japanese origins. The master also wore a black skirt like wrap-around called a hakama. Only black-belts were allowed the wear them, I was told. But let’s not linger here for too long. After that intriguing introduction, I signed up for a few classes and was drawn to the art’s philosophy – created in the wake of World War II in a Japan that stood shamed, bruised and battered. Though potentially lethal, the techniques however allowed a practitioner to control the degree of punishment meted out to one’s opponent. Minimum force, maximum compassion seemed to be the aikidoka’s credo, which makes this art unique in the reasonably violent world of self-defense with its flying kicks and hammer punches.
    One of the most interesting aspects of aikido is ‘ki’ training. A rough translation of the word ki would be ‘universal energy’. Aikidokas do a lot of breathwork at the end of every training session to try and align with the universal force and try and harness this energy and channel it though their bodies.
    Legends and a few grainy videos   would have you believe that ki training enabled the man who created Aikido, the venerable Morihei Ueshiba (1883 – 1969), to walk on the rim of tiny tea cups filled to the brim, without dropping a drop of tea. During the same demonstration, Morihei invited a few men from the audience to come up on stage and try and lift him up. Lifting or at least pushing the great master’s then frail 80 year old body, not many inches above five feet, should have been child’s play for most average sized men. For five of the biggest and burliest men in the audience, it would be easier than snapping a match-stick in two. But neither individually nor as a team could these men lift or even budge the little old Japanese master from his stance. It was an astonishing spectacle. Many other miraculous abilities are attributed to this great martial artist

    They said he dodged a hail of bullets from border guards in Mongolia because he could see the trajectory of the bullets even as they were fired. Morihei’s miracles inspired my early practice but I guess I needed tangible evidence of this ki force.

    I guess I had been pestering my teacher for a while. So on a balmy summer evening, Sensei Sethi decided that it was time for his students to sample the incredible force of ki.

    By now, the class had shifted from the park to a gymnasium where we shared the floor with a muay thai group. We had finished our class and were wrapping up the evening with some ‘kokyoho’ – ki breath work, a bit like pranayama. The muay thai students were also done with their sparring and were sitting around their ‘ring’ and rolling glass bottles filled with sand all along their shins to toughen skin and bone so it could both deliver and take punishment.

    In the idyll of the late evening, akidokas and nak muays were winding down after a tough workout, but our tired happiness was zapped out of its reverie when Sensei announced that it was time for us to feel the power of ki

    Sensei declared that he would demonstrate the difference between muscular strength and the strength of the universal life force but for that we would need to test our muscular strength first. We arm wrestled each other to settle who was the strongest amongst us. My modest arms didn’t take me very far from the middle of the pack but who won the mini-tournament was the son of a local weight-lifting federation president and had been schooled well on the nuances of the iron game. The guy who came in second best was big and muscular and had beaten a hall full of well conditioned kickboxers and aikidokas but this beast beat his knuckles to pulp within mere seconds.

    After the champ had rested, Sensei said that Aikido’s code of honour forbade him from trying to beat a competitor in a test of strength but he would hold us in the neutral position for as long as we wanted.

    Anybody who has engaged in an arm-wrestling match would know that it is far tougher for an athlete to control the flow of strength and momentum and hold the neutral position against an opponent than it is to try and beat him. But one by one, we all pulled and pushed and wrestled and struggled but we couldn’t move his arm an inch. Nay, not even the beast.

    While we gasped with awe and congratulated Sensei, he just nodded and without a trace of emotion, sat down in ‘seiza’ – on his knees and haunches, much like vajrasana. He extended his arms and asked three people to grab his right arm and three others to grab his left. He instructed us to push and pull as much as we could till he was thrown to the ground. We knew what we had already witnessed was pretty special but just in case he was just way too strong physically than the rest of us, this test, should Sensei succeed should put our doubts to rest.

    Sensei had also announced that if he was truly using ki, even after we have all failed to dislodge him, he would still be breathing at a slow and easy pace and wouldn’t even have broken a sweat. We got into a huddle and agreed to push and pull with all our might.

    The six of us heaved and hauled, pulled and pushed but all to no avail. We couldn’t move the man an inch. We were huffing and puffing and sweating buckets while Sensei just smiled beatifically. Then Sensei waved his arms, almost unmindful of the weight of three grown men on each arm, folded them and then extended them with a fair degree of force. Like ants on a branch swaying in a storm, we were flung one way and the other. Like cows caught in a tornado, we felt this force literally lift and push us trough our core and we went sprawling to the floor.

    Stunned and exhausted, we lay on the floor for a while, struggling with the implications of our experience. “All ok, boys?”, boomed Sensei’s voice. I turned to look at him, as he towered over us, with a smile adorning his face and not a bead of sweat could I catch glistening on his temples. Sensei’s ki had truly made its point.

    After a week or two from then, Sensei moved to Dehradun. He taught Aikido to some of the schools on the Doon-Mussourie circuit. He even stared a career as a performing ghazal singer and I lost touch with Aikido and him.

    I missed the camaraderie of the classes and the joy of learning an art from an exceptional teacher and expressing myself through it. The strength and compassion that Aikido demanded was making me into a better person and I missed the person I was beginning to become. But most of all I missed that touch of the near divine – the pursuit of ki.

    Dulled with the dust of time, I had forgotten all about Aikido until a recent call reignited that once bright flame. Sensei Sethi is back in town, I was told, and all the memories, and the montage from that evening stood out the boldest, came flooding back to me. This time, I will pursue and explore the elusive yet potent ‘ki’ with all the physical, spiritual, intellectual and emotional energy that I can muster. And like always, I will keep you updated on the adventures on the Aikido mat. Try on a class for size at a dojo near you meanwhile, for an Aikido class is one of those rare experiences that makes you both stronger and kinder in the same long breath…

  • Aikido Principle

    Aikido Principles

    A.
    Merge with energy to shape actions.
    All human actions result from the merger of intention and energy. When someone punches you in the face he is combining energy stored in his arm with the intention to strike you. In traditional martial arts like Karate or boxing, a punch is defeated by blocking it physically. Aikido chooses a more harmonious route. Aikido teaches you to get control of the punch by observing and acting on its structural components – namely energy and intent. Learn to merge with the energy of an attacker. You can use your opponent’s energy to reshape his actions.

    B.
    Energy cannot be owned.
    Energy is mobile and has its own trajectory. It flows constantly. It is what the Hindu’s call Bhram and the Japanese term Ki. Ki can never be owned. Once applied, energy can be used by anyone. Once a person throws a punch and puts energy behind his intention, he has no control over the punch. You can easily use his energy. The belief that energy can be owned makes you inflexible.

    C.
    Attachments blind you.
    When someone punches you, your reaction is to flinch and move out of the way. People call this instinct but it is your attachment to the idea of avoiding pain that makes you move. We think of this as fear but it is simpler than that, it is attachment. This attachment prevents you from observing the true nature of the punch and coopting its energy. You are scared of the punch because you fear what happens when you will be hit. Detach yourself from the fear that the punch creates and you will be able to observe both the energy and intent behind it. You will instantly understand how to use the energy behind your opponents intention.

    D.
    Balance is fluid.
    Properly observing the relationship between intent, energy and action will allow you to understand balance. In a system of two aikido practitioners you derive balance by creating imbalance and vice versa. Don’t allow your opponent balance and he will not be able to apply energy against you. Learn to get comfortable in a state of imbalance. Understand that imbalance and balance are actually the same thing.

    E.
    There is no enemy.
    Your opponent in Aikido is not the enemy, rather he is your partner. He is an integral part of your system. He is you without your attachments. You are him without his attachments. When you fall, learn to protect the mat.

    F.
    Conflict ends when harmony is created.
    You will never end conflict except through harmony. Use observation to restore harmony, not to crush or hurt your opponent, remember he is your partner. Have compassion for him because he is a reflection of you.

  • Nippon Budokan of Japan is sending delegations of Japanese Martial Arts

    Dear Aikido Lovers,
    Nippon Budokan of Japan is sending delegations of Japanese Martial Arts which includes Sumo,Aikido,Judo,Kendo,Kyudo,Karatedo etc for a grand demonstration in New Delhi in the month of November 2012.The demonstraion will be held at Indira Gandhi Stadium on 03/11/2012 Saturday.
    A group of six members from Aikikai Hombu Dojo will represent Aikido headed by Shihan Yoshiaki Yokota Sensei,7th Dan.
    Yokota sensei has agreed to conduct a seminar in our dojo at Thyagraj Stadium in the evening of 2nd November 2012, where other five senior Aikidokas from Hombu will assist him.
    Kindly make your plan well in advance to attend the seminar and the demonstration.Thanking you.

    With Regards,
    Paritos kar Dojo Cho,New Delhi Aikido

  • New Address for New Delhi Dojo

    Greetings!

    New Delhi Dojo has moved.

    Our new addresses are:

    For Morning Classes:

    Reinforced Earth India Private Limited

    B-1 Extension, E-11, Mathura Rd, Mohan Cooperative Industrial Estate, New Delhi, Delhi 110044

    011 4645 7600 https://g.co/kgs/JNdNc1

    For Evening Classes:

    Thyagaraj Sports Complex.Shri Ganganath Road

    Paritos Kar

    Dojo Cho

Photo Gallery

« of 4 »