Unlike martial arts with kata like karate and Iaido, taekwondo and styles of kung fu, Aikido cannot really be practised on its own.
Nor do we use a wooden dummy like wing chun practitioners or a makiwara (striking post) like karateka.
I know that Terry Dobson says in his book “It’s a Lot Like Dancing” that after he discovered aikido he didn’t have anyone to practise with so he started practising with the apple tree outside his window, learning to be gentle and not break the branches.
And certainly there are jo and bokken suburi, tan ren uchi (striking practice with a bokken, traditionally on bound bamboo and now often on car tyres), and even the famous 31-count jo kata which teach us something about footwork, hanmi, balance, extension and correct use of the hips, but ultimately aikido requires a partner for practice.
In aikido we practise kumi waza which translates roughly as a couple (kumi) and technique (waza). This means two human beings in relation to each other. Aikido is all about relationships.
First of all there is our relationship with ourselves. As Wendy Palmer says in her book “The Practice of Freedom – Aikido Principles as a Spiritual Guide”:
One of the first steps that we take in our journey toward happiness and freedom is to develop a relationship with ourselves.
If a technique is going badly I know that first and foremost I am not relaxed. For whatever reason, I am not at ease with myself, or in myself. I am thinking about the past, some aspect of the technique I think I have learnt or been taught by some other sensei and I am trying to apply it that teaching to what is happening now.
Or I am thinking about the future and imagining how it will turn out. The one thing I am definitely not doing is being present and doing the technique Now.
In order to do a technique it is important not to be divided. If you have been practising long enough it is possible to do a technique without being present, relying on muscle memory alone whilst you think about something else, something that happened before practice or what you are going to do afterwards – your shopping list, or a project at work, or that worrying little rattle in your car. But when you practise like this, you are not having a relationship with yourself.
So to start with it is important that you are not ignoring yourself. Today are you happy or sad, irritated by something that happened at work or pleased by something that happened at home? Do your knees ache or is there no suffering in your body today? When you walked in the dojo did you feel a connection with something greater than yourself, did you have that feeling already or have you never experienced anything like that?
You must learn to pay attention to yourself; not necessarily trying to fix what you perceive to be wrong or feel smug about what is going well, but to accept that how you perform your techniques today won’t be the same way you did last lesson or how you will in the next.
This acceptance, not forcing the technique to be what it is not, is one of the steps towards experiencing ki.
Gozo Shioda kancho once said that on a day when you feel right, the dojo feels right and the technique feels right, ki is flowing.
I don’t think this means that ki is only attainable infrequently. I believe its meaning is that when you are fully present, and not engaged in an internal monologue, even if your technique is not perfect, then ki will flow.
Of course, having established what sort of relationship you have with yourself, you need to consider your partner.
Bruce Lee once said if he was attacked and injured or killed someone in the course of defending himself, then his legal defence would be that he didn’t do anything, but that “it happened.” He had trained himself to such an extent that he would have reacted instinctively, and without thought.
This denies an important part of our martial arts practice – our relationship with uke, our attacker. We should be able to respond, and not react to the attack, and this gives us an important tool. It allows us the choice of what to do – how much or how little.
Because everything that you are experiencing, your partner is experiencing too – thinking about that shopping list, or a project at work, or that worrying little rattle in the car. They feel happy or sad, irritated by something that happened at work or pleased by something that happened at home. Either their knees ache or today no suffering in their body? They may have a feeling that they are connected with something greater than themselves already or they may never have experienced it.
Added to all this is the feeling they have about the technique that they are about to receive: will it be applied sharply, barely giving time to adjust for a breakfall? It may be that this is a technique they hate to receive and so their attack is a little tentative, or one which they find it difficult to breakfall from, so they stiffen up midway through the technique.
You must be aware of all of this as tori. You are never applying the technique for your sake alone; it is always a shared endeavour. As Newton points out, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Everything we do affects everything else.
This is relating to your uke on a physical level. Your extended awareness is sensitive to changes in your partner’s body. This ensures that you can maintain their unbalancing in order to perform your technique effectively with causing unnecessary pain or harm.
And as the physical body reflects the mind, you can sense what your partner is feeling, provided you remain relaxed and open. Then you respond to the attack rather than attempt to impose yourself on your partner.
Shioda says “Total Aikido – the Master Course”:
The meaning of ki in the phrase “harmonise your ki,” refers to sensitivity to your partner, and covers all of the elements that come out of your partner’s state of being … how your opponent is going to attack you, which direction he is going to move in, and where he will focus his power.”
As you come to accept yourself and your state of mind and all of the emotions you are feeling, so through touch you become aware of those thoughts and feelings your partner has which are reflected in his or her body.
Finally of course, there is the relationship between you, Life, the Universe and Everything. In his book, “The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are”, Alan Watts says:
As the ocean ‘waves,’ the universe ‘peoples’. Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe.
That is to say you, your partner, everyone in the dojo, and everyone in the world is a manifestation of the universe, so it is important to learn to relate to it, rather than live in isolation from it.