Pain is an experience shared by everyone -alongside many others that are far better and more positive, fortunately.

It appears very early on: no newborn comes into the world laughing loudly and striking a pose for a selfie. As we grow, bruises and scraped knees become countless. We learn not to touch a pot left on the stove. That riding a bike with no hands requires balance. That stopping a ball with your face is generally a bad idea.

And if pain punctuates everyone’s existence, its prolonged form -suffering- certainly doesn’t take long to appear. Parents who anxiously live through their children’s illnesses know this well.

When a person, at any age, steps onto the tatami to practice a martial discipline, they bring with them their whole life story and their own deeply personal relationship with physical pain. And also -above all- with non-physical pain.

From the three-year-old child with their fears, to the slightly older one grappling with the anxieties of a heart inevitably encountering the world; from adolescent frustrations to the complex mosaic of light and shadow that makes up every adult life.

A martial discipline like Aikido bases much of its technical grammar on locks, throws, and joint leverages. There is no practitioner who hasn’t learned to receive and apply locks without having felt their impact on their own body.

If we were to stop at this simple fact -that pain is also experienced in Martial Arts practice- then practice would add nothing meaningful to an experience that life already offers freely and with a certain regularity.

In other words, a practice that aims to inflict pain -or to “sanction,” as some circles say using elegant words to dress up violence- is useless. Usually, at this point, the reader thinks to themselves: “Hey I’m not like that.”
Strangely enough, though, at some seminars you always run into the same blacksmith who fires off an open leverage, much to the delight of everyone’s joints.

Much like those parents who explain to their children to move out of the path of a swing by grabbing the seat and bringing it close to their face -eliciting a smile that signals understanding- properly modulating a leverage means progressively guiding the partner to the edge of the abyss from which there is no return.

Or rather, you do return. But with a wrist down, aching with every change of season.

Slowly, practice restores awareness, because the body sends unmistakable signals about its limits. Who doesn’t dream of doing things well, with a certain degree of effectiveness and even aesthetic performance?

One therefore learns to accept, in order to avoid unnecessary injury. To fall when it’s time to fall, and not to fall -or engage- where our body has insurmountable limits (inflammation, calcification…).

Pain plants a few stakes in our territory. But the net stretched between such points is elastic enough to allow us to experience areas of freedom that only the acceptance of those reference points can reveal.

This is the case with injuries, which -when experienced with the support of everyone- become opportunities for growth and renewal.

And it is especially the case for those who discover at a physical level that the same mechanisms govern relational and existential pain and suffering.

An Aikido practitioner does not deny pain, nor the futility of resisting a joint lock. They study the remaining, powerful freedom.

They do not deny the fragments of defeat, the difficulty of balancing the books, the fatigue of persevering. They widen their horizon and perceive a broader design.

A space in which they realize that the experience of pain is entirely their own -and, as such, with the support of teacher and group, it can be transformed into fuel for becoming a better person.