A very dear friend, based on his over fifty years of experience practicing and teaching Aikido, shared with us a reflection, which we summarize as follows:
People who approach Aikido are sick, and Aikido is like a homeopathic medicine. It either heals you or worsens your illness, killing you.
We’re not discussing homeopathy itself; rather, we focus on this very powerful statement.
Martial disciplines, when properly understood, taught, and practiced, help individuals find effective tools for psychophysical and emotional balance. As a result, they exert a magnetic, instinctive appeal to all those who live in a state of imbalance.
Over time, we’ve met many people, in various contexts. Some of them are living examples of a balance that is cultivated, achieved, and redefined day after day through ongoing work on themselves.
But, generally—and especially in the beginning—we can calmly state that most of us live like a pendulum. We swing from states of calm and serenity toward states of greater inner turmoil.
A condition that renders people “sick,” using our friend’s strong term.
Aikido is a discipline that can generate small but radical changes in those who practice it. It does so through two elements: the first is the technical language, inherently rigorous. The second is the relational dynamic through which the practitioner expresses themselves via that technical language.
If these small changes manage to speak to the practitioner’s heart, and the practitioner—despite everything—is able in turn to speak to their partner’s heart, then the homeopathic dose of Aikido begins to trigger a “healing” process.
The posture changes, and with it, the way of seeing things becomes more patient, deeper. More capable of clarity with oneself and with others, and, for this very reason, more open to creating connections, bridges, relationships.
As muscular tensions become conscious, certain mental rigidities begin to loosen. Real bars that the ego constructs to prevent itself from being seen for what it is: if not sick, at least immature.
This leads toward what was and still is the central insight of Morihei Ueshiba’s Aikido: a path to purify oneself and thus a tool to make human beings one single family.
In conclusion, can one heal through Aikido? Certainly yes: it was designed to help us become better people.
Can one die from Aikido? That risk probably exists. If we remain the same in the end, if we become skilled manipulators of language and pass off our comfort zone as growth, then we may be high-performing—but dead inside.
To quote our friend again, in the face of change, we can always slip away like a fish, taking things in tenkan—running away.
Disclaimer: Picture by Nataliya Vaitkevich from Pexels