In our organisation there is an instructor who does a lot of work teaching aikido to young people.  These are often teenage boys who, like most teenage boys, have the potential to get into trouble, only with in their case there may also be the opportunity.

He says that aikido is about control.  First of all, aikido teaches self-control and from that comes the ability to choose what degree of control it may or may not be necessary to use on other people.  Interestingly, I found out recently that that the word “intelligence” derives from two Latin words: inter meaning “between” and legere which means “to choose”.  So you could say he is teaching intelligence.

The first choice he says that aikido offers them is that of self-discipline.  When their friends may be out following around it is the choice to turn up every week rather than follow their lead.

That echoes the scene from the original “Karate Kid” movie where Mr. Miyagi says to Daniel:

“Walk on road, walk right side, safe.  Walk left side, safe.  Walk middle, sooner or later, get squished just like grape.  Here karate, same thing.  Either you karate do yes, or karate do no.  You karate do ‘guess so’ [he makes a squishing sound] just like grape.”

He is offering them the choice to accept instruction, rather than just doing what they want, because they see some benefit in the future that fooling around and getting into trouble in the present just won’t give them.  It’s a simple Yes or No choice, and one in which he doesn’t interfere.  Simply those that turn up get taught and when they work hard they get praised.

Once they start to get proficient in the art, it begins to offer them choices: remember, these are teenage boys who could get into trouble and fights (and, honestly, watching them on the mat as they tease and goad each other only half in jest, I would say confrontations outside the dojo would be almost inevitable when all it takes is the wrong word or the wrong look to the wrong person on the wrong day).  Aikido offers them a range of options in a confrontation that they would not have had before.  Rather like the old TV series “Kung Fu”, in which Master Kan says:

“Avoid, rather than check. Check, rather than hurt. Hurt, rather than maim. Maim, rather than kill.”

This not to say for one minute that they are being taught, but rather that there are options other than fighting, not least of which is avoiding trouble in the first place.  And if these young men feel confident in their ability to defend themselves, they may well feel more confident about walking away from a confrontation.

It is simply the hook with which to catch them, because the more you practise aikido the more choices it gives you; but I doubt you could tell a fifteen-year old boy that one of his choices in a confrontation is to “relate” to his attacker.  But you can tell him that principles of awase (blending or agreeing) and the movement of tai sabaki (sometimes called irimi tenkan) gives him the option of avoiding an attack and escaping from a dangerous situation unscathed.

In “Going Postal” the late Sir Terry Pratchett wrote:

Not doing any magic at all was the chief task of wizards – not ‘not doing magic’ because they couldn’t do magic, but not doing magic when they could do and didn’t.  Any ignorant fool can fail to turn someone into a frog.  You have to be clever to refrain from doing it when you know how easy it is.

Swap the word “magic” for “aikido” and I think you have an idea of what this man is teaching.  And it clearly is intelligence!

And intelligence is what we need to use in making our own choices because aikido itself also offers a variety of styles to study, broadly speaking from “hard” styles like the Yoshinkan Aikido of Gozo Shioda to the “soft” style of Koichi Tohei’s Ki society; although anyone who has studied aikido for some time knows that soft styles can be hard and vice versa!

There are those who believe it is possible to throw someone without touching them by manipulating their ki and those who take pains to be absolutely technically correct: you place your foot here, you move your hand this way.  And everything in between.

Usually in the course of an aikido lifetime you will touch on many styles and, to quote Bruce Lee, “absorb what is useful”, but it will be what is useful to you at that particular stage in your journey.  Some will find a style, or a teacher, that suits them completely and remain there.  Others will move on from teacher to teacher and style to style, absorbing what is useful to them and discarding what is not.  And one of the most difficult choices is to discard something that was useful at one time, but no longer is.  Because we stand so close to our art, it can be hard to stand back and see the complete picture.

Aikido also offers choice in the variety of teachers.  Most of them good, some average and a few bad.  And they’ve all been through the same process of making choices and many are continuing to do so.  One or two become stuck, Western sensei who choose to become more Japanese than the Japanese sensei themselves, speaking in pidgin English, barking out criticisms at them and demonstrating techniques on them to the point of injury – and students who choose to the regard the injuries so received as an honour or a “teaching”.  And the occasional one who becomes a virtual cult leader, giving the impression they are holding back “secret teachings” for “special students” and students who choose to do anything to gain those secrets.

But for the most part, there are teachers who regard themselves as fellow travellers on an aikido path that never ends, who are prepared to share all they have learned, are open to learning more, or even unlearning.

There are many paths in aikido, and perhaps we would be better off translating the “do” as “a way” instead of “the way” because then we might remain more open to possibilities rather than insisting on the rightness of our interpretation of Kotegaeshi or irimi nage.

If we don’t, we’re not a lot different from the boys who choose not to come to our instructor’s class and we reduce our choices instead of increasing them.