One of the many gifts of practicing and teaching Aikido is certainly the greater care we give to words and how we use them.

“If” and “when,” for example. Two very small words, yet very powerful.

The first is dangerous, because we have learned as practitioners and teachers that every time it is used, it activates parts of our mind responsible for creating scenario after scenario.

This attitude is useful to understand, for example, that if I stand still on a railway track, a train will likely hit me. Building scenarios certainly helps in decision-making.

However, creating too many of them -especially during technical learning- puts the student in a state of extreme distraction. On the other hand, a teacher who overuses “if” while explaining would not only muddy their message but would also become difficult to follow and understand.

For this reason, from a teaching perspective, it is far more effective to anchor fewer scenarios to “when.”

“When” refers to a situation that does not remain hypothetical. Intuitively, our system recognizes it as real -something that has happened or will happen.

In katageiko 形稽古, formal practice, roles and attacks are so codified that both “if” and “when” become unnecessary. Within the pair, it is already known what tori and uke will do. There is little surprise and no need to reason about “when”: time expands, allowing repetitive, geometric study of form.

There are training modes (timing of the attack, and fluid movement practice in general) where greater emphasis is placed on the moment of the action; on “when.”

The teaching and practice of ki no nagare 気の流れ, go no sen 後の先, sen no sen 先の先, and sen sen no sen 先々の先　are necessary complementary components to the study of techniques in static form. From geometry to spatial movement, Aikido explores every dimension of the physical relationship within the training pair.

And yet, even within “when,” we have often seen the invasive weed of “if” reappear. We have observed this across all styles and teaching methods encountered so far.

The reason does not lie in the style or the discipline, but in the way our psychophysical system approaches reality.

The very interface on which we are writing -and you reading- these lines reflects, in electronic and computational terms, the “if–then–else” scheme through which we model, predict, and manage events, shaping how we live and interpret reality.

“Uke attacks tori, who sets up an action like this and that, then uke repositions because then they can…”

And “if” and “when” overlap, suffocating the only experience that truly brings a discipline like Aikido to life (in fact, all martial arts): living in the here and now.

Or maybe not. Perhaps this is one of the traps, to quote Dave Lowry, available to teachers -to let practitioners directly experience how strongly they are conditioned by the need to build scenarios, turning practice and its reflection in life outside the Dojo into a massive narrative-building exercise rather than a path of self-discovery.

Between “if” and “when,” suddenly appears “why.” The reason behind one’s intentions and consequent actions.

Aikido, by its nature both a psychodynamic activity and a “rational Budo,” can provide abundant geometric “whys,” but it also activates -whether we want it or not- powerful needs for meaning and coherence.

It is precisely our response mechanisms –attack, flight, and denial -that trigger the internal work which, from within, leads each of us toward personal growth: the simultaneous care of form and principle, discipline and relationships.

Seen from the outside… well, let’s think for a moment about how “others” appear to us. Other practitioners. Other schools. Other teachers.

We are so attached to “if and when” that when their pressure -technique after technique- reveals the need to bring order, we often prefer to give in to it rather than use it as a springboard.

We retreat into technical and cataloguing study. Or into flights of ideological sophistication. Or into experiential excess. Sometimes into dysfunctional relationships based on imposed or self-imposed hierarchies, where roles, weight, and importance are assigned.

“When and if” all this becomes evident, many quit. It is a common experience.

But perhaps the truth is that Aikido has just begun.

Disclaimer: Picture by Pixabay