The words of Aikido form a strange vocabulary.
A hybrid made of Japanese terms, Eastern concepts, and our own mother tongue.

Like all languages, it draws its origin, meaning, and sense from experience. After all, this is our nature: whether a word describes a concrete reality or an abstract concept, the word –the words– that describe it change profoundly in depth and scope according to each person’s lived experience.

Ask a three-year-old child what “loving one’s mother” means, and then ask the same question to an elderly person.

This is true for everything, and it is also true along the path -whether short or long- of practicing a martial discipline.

One learns to “speak” Aikido training after training, repetition after repetition. We trust our teachers and, inevitably, after a few years of practice, we absorb their dialect, their perspectives, their terminology.

We do not know how it happens, but we are born unable to speak and, a few years later, we are children and teenagers who talk, talk, talk.

Yet this does not mean that we truly know the meaning of the words we use. And often, unfortunately, we witness such a poverty of language that it prevents people from expressing their thoughts clearly and broadly.

It is the precise responsibility of parents and educators to encourage children to speak as much as possible, to ask them the meaning of the words they use, in order to help them discover that sense.
It is the duty of every adult to educate themselves and to provide -to themselves and especially to minors- as many tools as possible, suitable for the development of cognitive and psychophysical skills, so that everyone may be fit for a full life and meaningful relationships.

That Aikido is a discipline founded on relationship, like all Martial Arts, is a fact. One cannot grow without interaction within the training pair.

At a certain point, however, one leaves the nest, and it is there that the ability to understand terms, technical and expressive language, and the purposes of communication is put to the test.

Just as in society, there are situations in which one can spend an entire existence sealed inside one’s own nest. There are also a kind of “martial hikikomori”, more numerous than one might think, and not necessarily part of dojos made of only two people. Sometimes even large groups gathering around a charismatic individual do nothing more than attend themselves.

While this falls within the legitimate freedom of choice of every human being, it must nevertheless be observed that Aikido –at least in the perspective of its founder–
“is not a technique to fight or defeat an enemy. It is the way to reconcile the world and make human beings one family.”

Everyone knows that there is no better place than the family to experience differences and diversity. And yet, from the outside, every family unit appears with clear and recognizable traits. And sometimes there is nothing more annoying -or gratifying, depending on ppint of view- than being told: “You are exactly like your brother.”

What is required, then, is not an effort toward homogenization, but toward understanding -which could well be the true legacy of a tradition.

By visiting dojos and attending seminars, one realizes that each teacher has their own understanding of terms and of the geometric lines they teach. In the vast majority of cases, one can observe a healthy passion born of commitment and good faith.

However, it is precisely through comparison that differences emerge. Obvious stylistically. Much less obvious terminologically and semantically. Often, foreign words are copied and pasted -distorted in pronunciation and meaning- alongside a blend of terminology borrowed from more or less authoritative sources and experiences.

The primary result is fragmentation. Much is said about groups, divisions, and factions within associative worlds. Responsibility for divisions is often attributed to this or that organization, whereas, upon closer inspection, they arise from each teacher’s insistence on defending their own point of view.

An initiates’ language and terminology that often blur, obscure, and distort the original message.

A set of circumstances that leads to anything but collaboration, so that human beings may truly be “one family.”

Regardless of organizational affiliation, we believe there is an unavoidable need to undertake a shared path to deeply question the meaning of the terms we use so casually.
What is a discipline? What does martiality mean today? What is the difference between waza and jutsu? And, if you allow us, what should be meant by ai and ki, and also by aiki? And finally, what does what we repeat in Japanese actually mean -and how should it be said? What is a perspective? What is a value?

At best, each practitioner has their own experience of such domains. But between one’s own experience and that of others there is often a wealth of perspectives worth recognizing.
And above all, between “in my opinion” and “what actually is,” there can be an abyss that a group leader, in particular, cannot afford to ignore.

Not for an impossible and dangerous cloning of minds and hearts, but to move toward O Sensei’s waka:

合気にて
よろず力を
働かし
美しき世と
安く和すべし

(Aiki nite yorozu chikara o hatarakashi, utsukushiki yo to yasuku wasu beshi).

With the harmony of Aiki, by making all forces work together, a beautiful and peaceful world must be brought into harmony.

Disclaimer: Picture by Suzy Hazelwood from Pexels