Finding the Correct Feeling in Aikido

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From the moment we first bow onto the mat in a Kokikai Aikido class, we can work on finding the best feeling.  One mistake many students make is practicing too fast. This encourages stiffness and does not allow the opportunity to be sensitive to how you feel or how your partner feels. Once you're comfortable with practicing a technique slowly, then you can start to increase your speed, but always stay aware of how it feels. You may decide to slow down again to try to catch a new idea, or to regain your best feeling.

Another mistake beginners often make is to focus on the outcome. It's easy to pay most attention to whether, or how hard, your attacker fell, or whether you could overcome his or her resistance. Remember that if you practice stiffly and without the correct feeling, you will get better and better…at being stiff and having incorrect feeling. In order to help their students practice with correct feeling, some instructors discourage resistance in general practice.

If you practice slowly and correctly, then when you have to defend yourself in real life at street speed, you will do so as quickly as necessary, and correctly. If you practice fast, and incorrectly, when you have to defend yourself in real life...well...what do you think will happen?

It’s worth mentioning that it is possible to go too far and focus only on feeling: Maruyama Sensei cautions us against having “formless” technique. We must balance correct feeling with correct form. Ultimately feeling and form work together.

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This post is part of a series that's based on an article I wrote about Kokikai Aikido. Here's the first post

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