Aikido Spirit

image credit: Dokiai

One of my first experiences with the martial arts was with an Aikido instructor who, along with teaching the classical forms, applied the principles of Aikido to a kind of emotional/psychological processing work. Aikido practitioners learn how to receive the energy of an attack in a way that allows a transformation of that energy into the force of a counter-attack. In other words, the "enemy's" own energy is ultimately used to defeat them.

In a similar way, we learned to receive and integrate the energy of emotional/psychological "enemies" (appearing internally or externally) and transform this energy in a way that was ultimately empowering. It was excellent work, grounded deeply in principles of nonviolence and nonduality, infused with a spirit of playful exploration that allowed us to have quite a bit of fun with it all.