Rejection in Aikido – and of Aikido – is a topic rarely discussed properly.

Interestingly – though not entirely surprisingly – the world of waste management has organized itself with bins colored according to a progression familiar to martial arts practitioners.
White, yellow, orange, green, blue, brown, and black appear not only in Lego Space figures, traffic signs, or ski slope difficulty indicators.

We also find them in the last act of our consumer habits: the creation and disposal of waste.
And since there are also red and purple bins, the parallel can cover virtually any belt or rank.

Shoshin and the Seasons of Practice

Rejection in Aikido has many shades.
We often talk about shoshin, the beginner’s mind.

We should retrace our history and remember the seasons of practice, even in their challenges.
This helps us direct our efforts constructively and experience relationships in the Dojo collaboratively, making exchanges between different experience levels truly fruitful.

The White Belt

A white belt is an explosive mix of confusion and enthusiasm.
A new world opens in front of old habits.

Rejection appears:

• in the fear of engaging with the instructor’s guidance,
• or conversely, in overconfidence, used to hide the difficulty of learning techniques.

Our school supports beginners with safe, trauma-free teaching, while immediately introducing them to the 20 jo suburi and 7 ken suburi.

This is a solitary practice that can also be done in free time.
It exposes the beginner to the necessity of choosing, that is, engaging.
This is how the first balance between difficulty and desire arises, the two poles connected by the path of a discipline.

The Yellow Belt

After the first exam, the belt turns yellow.

Technical progression is minimal: the novelty is the introduction of nikyo, the second principle.
In self-defense courses, it’s taught in ten minutes. Learning to control someone’s wrist with nikyo doesn’t take long.
It’s the first taste of the darker side of Ju Jutsu (and its “hippie, pacifist nephew,” Aikido).

The yellow belt is where one tastes absolute power and then must let it go.
Think of the complexity of shomen uchi nikyo omote waza: instead of imposition, there is connection.

Rejection emerges here: the practitioner may see the practice as responsible for a personal change that is not always pleasant.

The Orange Belt

The orange belt is one of three key evolutionary stages (the others are brown to black, and second to third dan).

After a relatively quick exam, the practitioner faces another mountain: all principles tested in three ways each, plus a weapons program that elsewhere corresponds to the second dan.

Weekly practice is no longer enough. The required skills demand more time and focus.
This is where the feeling of resisting schedule changes emerges, a love-hate relationship with practice.

Those who surpass this stage usually reach the black belt.

Green and Blue Belts

Green and blue belts mark a period of technical deepening.

Preparation from blue to brown covers almost all the techniques required for the black belt exam, plus the study of 10 kumi jo and 5 kumi tachi, required in some places around the third to fourth dan.

The toughest challenge is “biting the curb” – restraining impatience.
Typically, reaching this level requires four years of consistent practice, which in a fast-paced world feels like an eternity.

In seminars, practitioners often experience two extremes:

• not understanding anything in schools different from their own, being ignored or thrown on the tatami;
• or feeling more prepared than higher-ranked students in their own style.

This is also when one experiences the rejection of hierarchical comparisons: you are a green belt, the other is a black belt.

Approaching the Black Belt

As the black belt approaches, rejection becomes clearer.

Having worked hard on personal limits and found ways to overcome them, one learns to see them in others.
The instructor loses their sacred aura and appears as what they are: a person with talents and flaws.

This phase often involves crises: training never feels enough, skill levels never sufficient.
It’s the critical and inevitably transformative moment of becoming a new individual.

Transforming Rejection and Waste

A person who, despite struggles and frustration, chooses independently to engage in something not imposed by society.

There are many forms of rejection.
As in waste management, the key is to transform what is discarded into something useful.

A discipline works continuously on the practitioner.
If the practitioner stops, the discipline loses its transformative power.
If they have the courage to stay, they can give new life to what seemed worthless, whether in themselves or in discarded material.

We shouldn’t worry about the fate of Aikido or martial arts.
We should ask ourselves whether we understand their true essence: human beings with limits, rejections, and potential.

Effectively witnessing the possibility of gradual awareness and fulfillment is all that is needed.