Peter Sensei will be covering a range of principles and techniques relevant to Aikido Yushinkai, with particular emphasis on those relevant to the new syllabus and our school’s revised direction.
The cost of the class is $10 and all Aikido Yuishinkai practitioners are welcome to attend. For persons who have not trained at Aikido Warrior Dojo previously, please arrive 30 minutes before the class commences for registration.
Address details for the dojo may be found on our home page (see here).
A photo album from our Saturday morning training session on 26 April 2014. This was our first class with Thom Hansen Sensei (who has been practising Aikido for some 30 years) as guest senior instructor.
Our dojo is most fortunate to have Thom Sensei not only as our patron and mentor, but also as guest senior instructor on the last Saturday class of each month.
A Big thanks as always to Eden for taking the photos.
The decision to open up a new Aikido dojo is certainly not for the faint of heart. In the modern world, its establishment alone is filled with many challenges and responsibilities, including arranging insurance, dojo space, affiliations, mats, licences, management and financial systems, compliance with legislative obligations, policies and procedures, advertising, …. and the list goes on.
With all these issues, and the fact that it’s much easier to be a student or guest teacher at someone else’s dojo, the most common question I get asked is why did you open up a dojo?
For me the answer to this question is simple – it’s something I’ve dreamed of doing since the first day I stepped on a martial arts mat some 40 or so years ago. Back then it was a Judo mat, but as time went on I transitioned into Judo’s sister art, Aikido. While the martial art changed, the dream to start my own dojo never waned.
So what is it about a dojo (or “place of the way”) that makes it so special? The obvious answer is that it’s a place where you get to learn, explore, share, and practice your Japanese martial art of choice with those who have a similar passion and interest.
For me, however, a dojo is more than this. It’s a place where we can leave our problems at the front door and for the relatively short time that we are there, live in a world which is positive, encouraging, free of politics, welcoming, non-discriminatory and fun.
The way I see it, the world is full of institutions, systems and individuals apparently hell-bent on putting people down and stripping them of their confidence. A dojo is an escape from this. My suggestion to anyone who has walked into an Aikido dojo and experienced feeling worse about themselves than when they went in – find another dojo.
And so when I opened the doors of Aikido Warrior Dojo for the first time on Saturday morning 8 March 2014, I had no doubts about what I was doing – this is where I was supposed to be. The fact that we were immediately greeted by 2 “welcome swallows” who decided to join us while we set up seemed only appropriate.
Finally a big thank you to everyone who helped set up Aikido Warrior Dojo in the last couple of weeks. I couldn’t have done it without you.
Ian Grant Sensei
Head Instructor
Aikido Warrior Dojo
The need for a cooperative dynamic in Aikido practice is widely acknowledged by most of us who practice the Art. Aside from the non-competitive philosophy that underpins Aikido, there is the practical reality that many techniques would be unsafe to practise without at least some element of compliance from our training partner.
A question worthy of consideration, however, is where to draw the line between cooperative practice and pointless practice (i.e. practice that removes or substantially diminishes the opportunity for both parties to learn).
For example, having our training partner just “tank” at the first opportunity removes the learning opportunity for both the nage and the uke. The same could be said where an often well-meaning training partner just rolls out of a technique regardless of whether the person supposedly executing it has functionally done anything to cause such a reaction.
For training to have learning validity, I think a good starting point is an acknowledgement that Aikido practice is between two equals. That is, it’s not between a human and a rag doll, or a human and some form of “uke-bag”.
Quite the contrary, Aikido practice involves an ongoing 2 way interaction between the attacking and responding partners (i.e. the uke and nage) who are acting as equals with a view to enhancing their mutual knowledge and skills. This is so, whether it be in the form of kata or free-form practice (taninzugake).
That being said, where one draws the line between 2 equals engaging in productive cooperative practice, as opposed to pointless practice, is something that might cause reasonable minds to differ. Certainly, even the very notion of such a concept as “pointless practice” imports an element of subjectivity.
However, as a working model for uke’s trying to keep on on the right side of the cooperative line, I think a practice methodology whereby the uke acts as follows is not a bad start:
The uke does not give up their centre (this is something the nage learns to take, which is not possible if it is sacrificed by the uke);
The uke gives the nage their weight to work with (without this, the nage has no sense of the reality of what they are doing).
The uke gives an honest attack (e.g. if the attack is a strike to the head, they don’t aim to miss or predict the nage’s response).
The uke gives a committed attack (i.e. the uke follows the attack through to the end and doesn’t stop half way);
The uke stays mentally connected with the nage from the beginning through to the completion of the attack (aside from importing an element of realism, this also enhances the safety of the practice);
The uke ensures that the intensity of the attack is commensurate with the abilities of the nage, the skills of the uke to safely respond and the purpose of the practice.
How far the uke can go beyond this line before degenerating into competitive and potentially dangerous practice is worthy of an article on its own. Certainly, enthusiastic free form practice can inadvertently and quite quickly slip over into competitiveness and potential danger. Fortunately, one of the roles of the class sensei is to intervene at this point and save us from ourselves!
For Aikido to be practised with any element of martial integrity, the ability to employ kuzushi when applying a technique is a critical skill.
I would go as far as to say that in the absence of employing kuzushi it would be almost impossible to successfully apply any Aikido technique against a structurally centred and non-compliant aggressor of equal size and strength.
For those not familiar with the term kuzushi, it is most commonly used in a martial context as a reference to unbalancing the person who is initiating the attack (uke). In other words, it involves bringing the uke’s center of gravity beyond their base of support and hence removing their ability to regain uncompromised balance. While in this unbalanced position, it becomes very difficult for the uke to resist or counter the application of an appropriate Aikido technique.
While it all sounds so simple, learning to employ kuzushi is far from easy in practice. Amongst other things, it requires relaxed sensitivity, timing, and the ability to redirect an attacker’s energy. If that isn’t challenging enough, kuzushi also needs to be employed at the time of first contact with the uke and then maintained throughout the application of the technique.
Unfortunately, I note there are a number of Aikido commentators around the web that appear to be concerned there is a trend in modern Aikido to de-emphasise and in some cases disregard the important role of kuzushi. I certainly hope these concerns are unfounded.
Excluding kuzushi from our practice would effectively render Aikido useless from a martial perspective. For me, Aikido without kuzushi is like pizza without cheese. It’s not something I’m interested in trying.
Aikido Warrior Dojo will be hosting a special class on Saturday 17 May 2014 (2.30 pm – 5.00pm) by Peter Kelly Sensei.
Aikido Warrior Dojo 
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