Can the essence of an experience be communicated in a single post?

The 2025 edition of the Riviera Seminar presents a complex challenge. The theme – “Aikido as the Art of Freedom” – together with the depth of the instructors and the profound impact of their teachings, makes this mission particularly demanding.

Let’s begin by stating that the Riviera Seminar is a well-established format, developed by Patrick Cassidy and Miles Kessler Sensei, often held with guest instructors. It takes place every year around Pentecost, in the stunning setting of the French Riviera on Lake Geneva, between Montreux and Vevey, Switzerland.

What makes it intense is that it’s not just a technical seminar – it’s a deep dive into the perspectives that underlie the practice. Yet since Aikido uses a physical and technical grammar to express these perspectives, we can safely say the Riviera Seminar requires a total psychophysical commitment.

This year, Miles Kessler was unable to attend, and the reconfiguration of the teaching team brought together Patrick Cassidy, Roberto Martucci, Dan Messisco, and Richard Moon.

We’ve known Roberto Sensei for a long time. It’s thanks to his efforts and sacrifices that we were able to study with Seishiro Endo during the seminars in Rome he organized – an encounter that deeply inspired our view of Aikido. Roberto is a courageous person, capable of radically transforming his path in search of greater sensitivity and connection.

We didn’t know Dan Messisco and Richard Moon personally – only through brief online information.

And as we all know: when you’re used to a format and its ingredients change, you can’t help but feel a mix of curiosity and skepticism. We’re all creatures of habit, after all.

Yet from the very start, this proved to be an incredibly rich seminar.

Dan Messisco and Richard Moon belong to a generation of instructors who refined the essential nature of technique after – and thanks to – a lifetime of training on the mat, in constant practice and teaching. Their training began in an era of rigorous technique, clear angles, and full energy – when no allowances were made for uke.

Despite their differences, these two teachers have arrived at a shared destination.

Richard Moon anchors his teaching in the words of Morihei Ueshiba, framing the creation of a solid center as a physical response to the idea of Aikido as a floating bridge between Heaven and Earth.

No pre-set technique, just listening within the relationship during an attack, until technique arises spontaneously – a way to experience an Aikido that moves beyond the visible to reveal the hidden and point toward the divine origin of all things.

Ultimately, the search for a reconciled relationship, untainted by dominance or control, opens the way to understanding the Founder’s vision of natural progression: from harmony to peace, and from peace to joy.

A joy that begins with self-awareness, deep listening, and continual work – mediated through the relationship with one’s training partner – a path that gradually teaches us not to “tell the Universe what to do.” A powerful metaphor for our attempts to control life, rather than meet it where it is.

Dan Messisco, by contrast, arrives at the same conclusion – a conscious, relaxed, and connected center – through a completely physical pathway.

His is a meticulous work of shifting and balancing mass, of deep rooting coupled with total mobility. This enables a kind of neutrality toward external stimuli. The center attracts what is aimed at it, and in the discovery of this total freedom and responsibility, not only the outer form of the practice takes shape – but so does one’s attitude toward life itself. Life, with its unpredictability, gives no discounts – it overwhelms those who refuse to meet it as it is and cling rigidly to their positions.

This is a powerful centering practice, a constant purification of the urge to fall back on known techniques, and instead to patiently guide the partner into a space where movement is co-created. In other words, the essence of jiyu-waza, or free execution.

In such a context -where under the ashes of tradition burns the fire of a deeper message – Roberto Martucci’s contribution focused on complete listening to the partner’s energy. A listening that opens to the guidance of that energy, to movement, and the inevitable destabilization of uke’s balance. A vision grounded in the “we” – feeling, asking what and how we feel. A powerful response to the growing need for meaning, which emerges sooner or later, as technical programs accumulate over years and ranks.

Three different methodologies, with very distant roots, yet producing similar fruits and converging toward a total approach.

Total because uke’s commitment must be absolute, combining power and agility in the legs – the physical base of intention. Total because the intention behind the attack and ongoing connection requires uke to be fully coherent with their choice to initiate the action. That coherence is always paid for with a fall – which is why it’s tempting to disengage or believe you’re a good attacker because you reach the target by changing your intention.

But the essence of Aikido lies in facilitating transformation, more than in combat effectiveness.

As a skilled conductor and gracious host, Patrick Cassidy synthesized these teachings and offered participants a direct, physical experience of change.

Because while it may take years to refine the geometry of a “good” technique, developing that “we” the world so desperately needs now – exploring one’s shadows, sparking personal growth, using the metaphor of attack to reveal who we are under pressure and uncover our immense inner potential – that doesn’t require decades of Aikido.

The greatness of teachers like Patrick Cassidy lies precisely in this: the ability to craft experiential journeys with tools that are simple, effective, and profound.

And in the end, seminars like this place each practitioner in front of the eternal questions: Who was I? Who am I? Who could I become? With the inevitable and revolutionary truth – as Richard Moon reminds us – that the decision depends entirely on our heart.