Training a group of teenagers is a privilege: being around young people helps you stay young. At least “on the inside,” because “on the outside,” the body struggles a bit more to keep up with their pace.

Last week, we asked them to share their thoughts on the concept of freedom. What is freedom? What is it not?

Young people always reflect the environment and society they live in. The answers were slow to come. We’re not really used to – and clearly not taught enough – how to give personal answers to concepts that are on everyone’s lips.

With some effort – and a good deal of facilitation – the answers finally came, though they were quite obvious. Freedom was defined as “being able to do what you want“; “Doing something without invading someone else’s space”; “Having no rules”.

So we asked them to work in pairs, attacking however they wanted and responding however they wanted. The outcome, unsurprisingly, was that some started attacking using familiar patterns and responding exclusively with known techniques. And with such vehemence that the poor uke ended up getting slammed to the ground.

Others, meanwhile, gave a martial-arts-style performance of the classic nativity scene figurines. Still, frozen, embalmed.

It’s not all that different with adults. Ask any adult to express themselves “freely” in a jiyu waza or a randori, and inevitably, as the pressure increases, they’ll retreat into an obsessive-compulsive repetition of their “comfort techniques” – the ones they feel safe with. Often to the detriment of their partner.

Or worse: ask any adult to give a representation of “their” Aikido, and more often than not you’ll witness a performance – more or less well-rehearsed – of a kata. The grave of expressive freedom.

It’s always fascinating to see the reaction of a beginner when faced with a solid grip. Their wrist or forearm is caught in a grab, and as if under a spell, the rest of their body becomes paralyzed – even though it’s free.

A slightly more experienced practitioner will often feel the same awkwardness, especially when changing groups or styles.

Generally, when someone is given the experience of freedom – the chance for the body to move around a fixed point – you’ll witness a mix of amazement and a small internal crisis. That moment often determines whether a person continues with his/her Aikido practice or not.

Because everyone, young or old, is smart enough to make a simple deduction: if it only takes a grab on the wrist to paralyze us, maybe we’re not as free as we think – even outside the dojo.

Partly because we’re unable to give freedom a constructive and plausible definition.

Partly because we don’t have the tools to nurture that definition and put it into practice.

In its own small way, a discipline like Aikido reveals a lot, for those who are interested, about our relationship with freedom.

An attack comes, and rather than moving into the empty spaces, our body often moves to the one place it absolutely shouldn’t go: right into the attack.

We are, by nature, terrified of emptiness and solitude. We are herd animals, even before being social beings. That’s why when a hand, a punch, a slash from a wooden sword comes at us… the first thing we do is move toward it.

Toward the hand, the punch, the sword.

Which are just the periphery of a center we must come to terms with. The problem is not the hand, the punch, the sword. The problem is the center that moves them.

Defining freedom is essential if we are to experience it and make good use of it.

Aikido, like other disciplines, can do important work in the ecology of conflict. It provides a solid foundation to understand it, to grasp its grammatical rules, and to be able to make a conscious choice.

Choice – the definition our students gave for freedom at the end of the practice.

Disclaimer picture edited from Odette Giuffrida personal profile