Category: Aikido

Aikido

Touch me/Don’t touch me: Bodies, boundaries, and non-sexual physical intimacy

Sam B3 Comments

 

 

There’s an awful lot of physical intimacy in Aikido. I continue to find it fascinating how comfortable we are with that and how much trust it requires. I also think there’s a lot to learn from the experience of non sexual physical intimacy.

Aside people who work with bodies (doctors, massage therapists etc) few people spend a lot of time in close proximity to the bodies of people other than sexual partners and family members. Indeed our society has pretty strong taboos against touching the bodies of strangers. When these are violated, most often when those in positions of power claim the right to touch those they believe to be subordinate, anger results.

Now in the dojo you consent to allow others to touch you. Training partners get up close and personal. You get to know the bodies of those in your dojo quite well. I know who is flexible and who isn’t. I know who is strong and who isn’t. I could easily guess how much people weigh.

But it’s even more particular than that. I know how certain people smell. I can tell you who has a stiff shoulder. I know who just tolerates pain and who enjoys the pain of a good pin. I know the speed with which people move. Indeed when I recognize people from the dojo out on the street, it’s often their gait, their movements I recognize first.

I also put other people, and they me, in very vulnerable positions. Most strikingly, I throw them. I also take them to the ground and pin them, holding the pin until they tap the mat. Sometimes we don’t just hit the mat we slap it loudly or we hit the arm or the leg of the person pinning us. That slap means stop.

You don’t immediately let go of the pin. That might hurt too. Instead, you gradually and gently release the pin and move away. You turn to face your training partner and then the two of you make eye contact and return to standing together.

Sometimes it’s serious. Sometimes it’s playful. We have quiet moods as a club and at other times there’s a lot of laughter.

There are three observations I want to make about this kind of training and the intimacy it brings about.

First, as unusual as it is to have this kind of contact between adults, it’s especially unusual to have this kind of contact between men and women. There was one man who joined our club who, for religious reasons, wasn’t able to touch women. He trained only with the men. It made me uncomfortable and I’m frankly glad he didn’t stay. That’s been controversial in other Aikido clubs. See Teen felt ‘degraded’ after teacher backed aikido student’s request to avoid touching females on religious grounds. I’m with the teen here and I’ve never been sure how to deal with men who won’t shake my hand. (For a time I had an academic colleague who wouldn’t touch women. It was awkward.)

Second, women don’t often get this kind of opportunity for rough, physical contact. See Jessica’s guest post, In praise of physically aggressive sports and my post on the clash between ladylike norms and sports performance.

Third, it’s a terrific chance for younger women and men to learn about consent and bodily autonomy. You, the person on whom the technique is being performed, get to say when enough is enough. Yes, attack me. Now stop. Personally I find that pretty empowering.

Further reading:
The rules of engagement: Negotiating painful and ‘intimate’ touch in mixed-sex martial arts
Alex Channon and George Jennings

“Within a social-constructionist, feminist framework, we suggest that heteronormative, patriarchal and paternalistic gender structures can potentially be challenged through sustained mixed-sex practice. As such, this article contributes to work on transformative sporting bodies, martial arts and gender subversion.”

 Sociology of Sport Journal, 2013, Volume 30, 487 – 503

Towards the “Undoing” of Gender in Mixed-Sex Martial Arts and Combat Sports
Alex Channon

This paper addresses sex integration in martial arts and combat sports, discussing the implications of mixed-sex training for challenging orthodox Western constructions of gender. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 37 long-term martial arts practitioners from around the English East Midlands between 2007–2011, the paper argues that restrictive, essentialist and hierarchal conceptions of sex difference can be challenged through integrated training practices. The paper advocates the “undoing” of gender in this regard as helping to build a more progressive, inclusive and liberal form of physical culture, seen as a key potential of sex-integrated training. To that end, the paper makes a number of proposals for instructors and practitioners interested in developing such inclusive environments in their own clubs and training settings.”

Societies, 4 (4). pp. 587-605. ISSN 2075-4698 (Print), 2075-4698 (Online) (doi: 10.3390/soc4040587 )

aging · Aikido · athletes · body image · disability · injury · martial arts

Broken: How a serious sports injury damaged more than my body (Guest Post)

Michelle Lynne Goodfellow4 Comments

broken

 

It happened, as most accidents do, in an instant.

One moment I was aiming a punch at my aikido partner, preparing to take his subsequent throw, and the next moment, instead of executing a neat forward roll, I found myself falling shoulder-first into the mat.

The fall hurt a little, and I head a distinct crunch as I landed, but when I put a hand up to check the area things felt pretty good, so I was determined to keep practising. I’m tough. I can take a hit like a guy. I bounce back. An instinctive voice inside my head told me to STOP, however, and so I quietly moved to the sidelines to rest for a few minutes. I got an ice pack to put on the shoulder, and mentioned to a couple of people that I’d hurt it, but I figured it was just a sprain.

It wasn’t until the next morning that I decided to go to the Urgent Care Centre, where my shoulder was x-rayed and I was given the unexpected news: my collarbone was broken. Truthfully, I was pretty nonchalant about the whole thing. My first response was, “Cool. Can I take a picture of the x-ray?” (That’s the photograph at the top of this story.)

Both my family doctor and my physiotherapist told me, when I visited them in the following days, that I must have an extremely high tolerance to pain, because not only had I broken the collarbone, I’d also dislocated the AC joint (where the collarbone joins the shoulder blade at the shoulder), and in many people those injuries are extremely painful.

I was given strict orders not to raise my arm, push doors, or lift heavy things, but I was also cautioned not to keep it immobile, or I would risk getting frozen shoulder (I’m the prime demographic for that immobilizing condition (women 40-60)). So I set aside the sling they’d given me at Urgent Care (I figured that since it was, in the words of the attending resident, “for the pain,” and I didn’t have much pain, I could manage without it), and forged ahead with my day-to-day life. I’m a strong and independent woman, and a little broken collarbone wasn’t going to slow me down. To be honest, I felt kind of badass to be a 47-year-old with a teenager’s injury. It was nice to see the shock (and respect?) on people’s faces when an overweight, middle-aged woman told them she’d broken a bone doing martial arts.

Thankfully I have a sedentary job where I sit at a computer or in meetings most of the day. And although the injury was to my right shoulder, I was still able to drive my standard transmission car. I was going to have to give up aikido for at least four weeks, as well as give up putting my hair in a sock bun and unpacking the rest of the boxes from a recent move, but that seemed a small price to pay. The biggest hardship was sleeping on my back every night. (I’m not a back sleeper.)

What I didn’t count on was a turn in the November weather, which left the sidewalks slick and slippery. I suddenly became terrified of falling – not because I didn’t know how to take a fall, but because I knew that if I fell, I could really mess up my shoulder and prolong my recovery by weeks or months. (To add insult to injury – or injury to injury, as the case may be – I’m also dealing with a serious tear in the meniscus of my right knee, which is itself vulnerable to further injury from falls.)

And then one morning during my first week of healing, I tripped going up some concrete stairs at my workplace. Since I couldn’t carry my heavy rolling briefcase in my right hand, I had it in my left, which meant that when I fell, my right hand was the one that instinctively reached out to break my fall. So much for not pushing things with my right arm.

When I got to my office I cried for about five minutes – not from pain (thankfully I hadn’t done any more damage to my shoulder), but from the feelings of helplessness and vulnerability that were now washing over me. I started wearing my heaviest Sorels (a brand of winter boots with lots of traction on the soles) whenever I had to go outside, and walked between my car and the indoors with a tentative, old-lady shuffle.

I also started seriously worrying about my return to aikido. I’m a big fan of Dr. Google, and I was doing all sorts of research into collarbone healing. I realized that, as an adult practising a high-contact sport, I was a) going to take a lot longer to completely heal than I had originally hoped, and b) going to be putting myself at increased risk of re-injury when I did start doing aikido again.

A few of my aikido colleagues came to me with stories of their own broken or dislocated collarbones. One older female black belt talked about being fearful when she had to start doing breakfalls again. Yeah, don’t remind me, okay?

My injury was five weeks ago, and at four-and-a-half weeks I had a follow-up appointment with my physiotherapist. He examined the collarbone and shoulder, gave me the okay to start moving the shoulder through its full range of motion, and sent me home with exercises to strengthen and stabilize the dislocated AC joint.

Aikido weapons movements feel like a great supplement to his exercises, since they involve large, circular slicing motions with a wooden sword called a bokken (think Fruit Ninja). And I was excited to start lifting mats again at my last aikido class (I’ve been going faithfully to classes since my injury, but sitting on the sidelines). Before my injury I would help set up and put away the 20-lb. mats four times a week, and I loved what months of this activity had done for my biceps, deltoids and traps.

I wasn’t prepared for how freaked-out everyone was to see me lifting mats again, though. It took a lot of reassurance on my part before they let me continue. I have to say it felt really good to lift again. It made me feel strong.

I’m going to be off the aikido mat for at least another six weeks and preferably eight, on the advice of my physiotherapist. Between now and then I’ll be faithfully doing my rehabilitation exercises and, if I know myself, probably a lot more than that.

I’m not as scared of falling as I was – I can handle a backwards fall now. The real danger is a bad forward fall. I have a feeling I may still be very nervous about aikido throws, pins and forward rolls when the time comes. I know that being nervous may itself lead to greater chance of injury, through not committing to a technique.

I don’t want to live in the fearful place, though. Three-and-a-half weeks there was enough (the time it took for the nauseating pain that I felt whenever I accidentally raised my arm after the injury to go away).

I’m still struggling with how to reconcile my self-image and my ability level, however. I don’t like feeling weak and vulnerable. But I’m not sure how to feel strong and capable when my body’s broken. I don’t want to live in a bubble. The body’s going to get broken again from time to time. Maybe there’s an aikido lesson still to be learned about diverting the fear…?

___

Michelle Lynne Goodfellow works in nonprofit and small business communications by day, and also enjoys writing, taking photographs, making art and doing aikido. You can find more of her work at michellelynnegoodfellow.com. Michelle has also written about her breast cancer journey on her blog, Kitchen Sink Wisdom.

Aikido

Slow progress is still progress

Sam B9 Comments

“After you have practiced for a while, you will realize that it is not possible to make rapid, extraordinary progress. Even though you try very hard, the progress you make is always little by little. It is not like going out in a shower in which you know when you get wet. In a fog, you do not know you are getting wet, but as you keep walking you get wet little by little. If your mind has ideas of progress, you may say, “Oh, this pace is terrible!” But actually it is not. When you get wet in a fog it is very difficult to dry yourself. So there is no need to worry about progress. It is like studying a foreign language; you cannot do it all of a sudden, but by repeating it over and over you will master it. This is the Soto way of practice. We can say either that we make progress little by little, or that we do not even expect to make progress. Just to be sincere and make our full effort in each moment is enough.” – Shunryu Suzuki, (Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind)

It was two years between my belt tests in Aikido. Slow progress. That’s in part because of the usual stuff. Aikido is hard and takes a life time of practise. You’re never done. And I’m far from a natural. It’s graceful and beautiful and I’m more strong and into getting the job done. Jokingly in our house we call Aikido “whee, thump” but truth be told I’m more “thump” and less “whee.”

But it’s also because I don’t only do Aikido. When not injured I do CrossFit and I run. I ride my bike a lot. This winter I’m going to cross country ski. I’ve also been known to enjoy a hot yoga class or two. (I also end up taking time off due to work travel.)

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I preach the gospel of moderation and avoiding specialization. Fitness has lots of different elements. Strength, balance, power, flexibility, endurance…
At times, especially with Aikido, I’ve wondered if I’ve been making a mistake thinking I could do it slowly. Most of the black belts at our dojo work very hard. It seems they’re there just about every night and few of them have other physical activities in their lives.

So my recent belt test was a success not just for me but also for the path of moderation and slow progress.

See also:

Aikido

Zanshin and semester’s end: Lessons I’ve learned from Aikido #2

Sam B1 Comment

In my September post On back to school and starting as you mean to continue I talked about the importance of setting habits and beginning well. The idea of getting off to a good start is a familiar one but I think we ought to pay just as much attention to endings.

As end of term fast approaches (Wednesday’s the last day of the fall semester, woo hoo!) I started thinking about Aikido and its emphasis on finishing well.

In Aikido there’s this term “zanshin.”

Zanshin (Japanese: 残心) is a term used in the Japanese martial arts. It refers to a state of awareness – of relaxed alertness. A literal translation of zanshin is “remaining mind”.

At the end of technique zanshin means continuing to pay attention to your partner, seeing the movement through to its conclusion, being alert and present as your partner returns to the starting position.

“This is the mind of complete action. It is the moment in kyudo (Zen archery) after releasing the arrow… In shodo, it is finishing the brush stroke and the hand and brush moving smoothly off the paper… Zanshin means complete follow through, leaving no trace. It means each thing, completely, as it is… a mind of continual readiness, like a mirror ready to reflect whatever is shown to it…” (Zen monk, The Venerable Anzan Hoshin Roshi, 1988). from Memoirs of a Grasshopper

I’m sure there’s a lot more to it than just ending well, but as a beginner I’ve noticed that you can get the middle of a technique wrong and make mistakes but it you begin well and end well, people don’t pay so much attention to the mistakes in the middle.

Over time, I’ve acquired the habit of maintaining eye contact with my partner, rising to stand in time with them, and returning to our starting position together. The idea is that you don’t just throw the person and walk away. You keep the connection. Smooth and rhythmic at the start and the end and no one remembers the middle.

What’s that got to do with the end of the semester?

I’ve been thinking these past few weeks how courses tend to go off the rails a bit in the middle. Students get grades they don’t like and you’re disappointed in how you’re teaching. Class prep gets squeezed with meetings and conferences. They’re late handing in work and then you’re late grading it. It’s just the messy middle of term.

But you can rescue a course, just like an Aikido technique executed clumsily, by refocusing your energy at the end.

Friends have been joking about their standards of dress slipping throughout the term. One friend wrote about forgetting to tie his tie one day. I showed up on campus every day this week with my big weekend purse (dubbed by my kids as the “hippie side bag”) rather than my briefcase. Some of my lectures just trailed off rather than having a coherent narrative structure. I ended with the “well, that’s it for today.”

But it’s my plan for the last classes to prepare as if they were the first day. I’ll come in with a story to tell and get them excited about the ideas and arguments along the way, just as I did on Day 1. It’s why I tell my students to make sure they write good conclusions for their essays. Don’t just let the paper trail off. End strong.

Students can also do the same when it comes to the end of semester. Focus on getting enough sleep, do the readings, come to class prepared and ready to learn as if were the first day.

Start well, end well. Zanshin.

 

Aikido · cycling

“Trust the technique”: Life lessons from Aikido, #1

Sam B1 Comment

So in the drafts folder of this blog I’ve got a post that just keeps getting longer. It was called “Six Things Aikido Taught Me” but then that turned to “Ten Things…” and so on. And it’s also too long. So I’ve broken up the post into series of small posts. Here’s the first one. 

In Bikido I wrote about this odd thing I’d been doing, going straight from a fast 40 km group ride, led by a cycling coach, to Aikido. (By the way, there’s another person blogging about biking, running, and Aikido. See  Run, Bike, Throw.) At the end of the ride, it’s fair to say I was pretty exhausted. If the overall pace hadn’t knocked me  out, the sprint at the end, followed by a Strava segment I’m trying to reclaim, certainly did. Typically once the ride was over I grabbed a sports bar and coasted to Aikido.

Fast outdoor riding is over now but it seems Bikido isn’t over just yet.

Coach Chris is now leading indoor cycling classes on trainers. We all bring our bikes and trainers to his basement and pedal away. Fine. And again it’s straight from there to Aikido.

I’m pretty exhausted when I bow onto the mat but I think it might actually be improving my Aikido.

How could that be?

Well, in many ways Aikido isn’t a particularly athletic activity. The goal is to use your attacker’s energy to disarm them. It’s pretty non violent as self defense goes. And the best Aikido is all about efficient technique.

By temperament, that’s not my way. I’m strong and bouncy and often try to succeed using muscle, not form. But that’s not good Aikido.  I can recognize excellent technique when it’s performed on me. It doesn’t hurt but I have absolutely no choice but to go where my partner is taking me (short of tapping the mat). I notice this especially when I’m working with one of the senior women, who is older and much smaller than me. I could lift her up and carry her off but when we’re working together, she can just throw me around. It’s no surprise that the big men in our club can throw me around but the magic of Aikido is that at half their weight and twenty years their senior she can do it just as well.

When training for my last test, my partner kept reminding me to stop trying to use muscle. His motto for me was “trust the technique.”

Turns out it’s easier to trust the technique when you’re exhausted and power and muscle just aren’t there to rule the day. Exhausted Aikido means my movements are more efficient and I need to concentrate on form to make the techniques work. When my body is tired, my brain takes over and when it comes to Aikido that’s not a bad thing.

It also occurred to me that there might be other areas of life where this is true, where it’s better to trust the process rather than try to muscle your way through.

And hey, if I’m ever attacked after an exhausting bike ride, I’m ready to go.

Aikido

It takes a village, or a dojo…

Sam B4 Comments

… to teach me to breakfall and I’m very grateful.

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No photos or videos of my break falls just yet!

I am simply feeling overwhelmed at the moment by how much the entire community of senior belts at the Aiki Budo Centre seems committed to my next test. Each class there are different people helping and offering advice and working with me on aspects of it. I’ve been joking that after it’s done, pass or fail, I want to buy everyone a drink.

This doesn’t come naturally to me and I think the black belts have the patience of saints. I keep thanking people for their help and support but it doesn’t feel like enough. I like that everyone seems to recognize how hard I’ve been working and a large number of people seem excited about the test. Barring disasters such as illness or injury, it’ll happen on November 22nd.

Stop by and watch if you’d like. We train at the Carling Heights Optimist Centre in London, Ontario. The kids class is 9-10 and the adult class is 10-11 and then an optional second hour 11-12. Visitors are always welcome.

It’s the fourth kyu test in Aikido. It’s the one which after I pass, they’ll remove the white stripe from my green belt. I’ll be a “full green,” as they say.

An aside: This expression, “full green,” reminds me of the children’s book, Verdi.

Young Verdi doesn’t want to grow up big and green. He likes his bright yellow skin and sporty stripes. Besides, all the green snakes he meets are lazy, boring, and rude. When Verdi finds a pale green stripe stretching along his whole body, he tries every trick he can think of to get rid of it–and ends up in a heap of trouble. Despite his efforts, Verdi turns green, but to his delight, he discovers that being green doesn’t mean he has to stop being himself. “Cannon is on a roll, her gift for creating memorable characters and scenes on glorious display in this tale of a feisty python hatchling.”

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Back to Aikido: There are two different things about this test. It’s the first test on which there is a choice on the examiner’s part on what techniques are called, after the mandatory techniques. That’ll be tricky. Did I mention that at this level the test is called in Japanese? But it’s not the thing about which I’m most nervous.

Instead, it’s the first test with the advanced number three break fall on it. With this break fall someone is holding your hand and throwing you. You don’t have that hand to guide you through your roll. It’s tricky. It requires some confidence.  No hesitation they keep telling me. Just go. I’m getting there.

I’m spending time each class working on falls. I’ve been rolling over folded mats and over a “jo.” A jo is a wooden staff used in Japanese martial arts. In my case the ends are being held by large men in “angry white pajamas” and my job is to roll forwards over the jo. It looks the limbo except I’m going over the top, not under. They’ve also had me rolling over people, more large men. “Don’t worry, you won’t break them.”

Here’s the jo in action in this video, Aikido Advice for Women and a Few Men.

And more jo action here, with lots of rolling:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1aS4IB-7HM

You can see all the mandatory techniques on my test here.

Here’s some how to roll and fall videos:

Aikido · Crossfit · cycling

November goals

Sam B10 Comments

I find it helps to have short term goals, medium term goals, and long term goals. Five years from now, what do I want to do be doing? What do I want to do next summer? But also, what do I want to do in November?

I’ll confess that November isn’t my favorite month. It’s the start of the cold and the dark, for one. It’s also the anniversary of my sister’s death and that makes me sad. And it’s also that point in the university term when I’m up to my ears in meetings, writing letters of recommendation, grading papers, preparing lectures, giving talks, etc etc etc.

So it’s good to have something else to focus on. For November I have three things I want to accomplish.

First, I’m training to test in Aikido. There’s no guarantee that I’ll get to test. Lots to learn and new skills to master between now and the test date, November 22. I’m committed to the process even if my progress is slow. Aikido, like yoga, is a practice. You can read about what’s on my test here: Training for my 4th Kyu Test in Aikido.

Second, I’m getting back to CrossFit  after taking the summer off due to injury (stupid knee), learning to once again to fit early morning high intensity exercise back into my schedule. The challenge is, as always, getting to bed early enough so I can get eight hours sleep and make it to a 6 am workout. The math isn’t pretty.

Third, I’ve never used a trainer over the winter before though I’ve done other things. See Seven winter cycling options (I’ve tried them all!) But this winter I’ve committed to working with a cycling coach and that’s part of our plan. I bought the trainer below and it just arrived in the mail. Now that weekday evening rides are over, Tracy and I will be both taking trainer classes with Coach Chris. and with Cheryl of Happy is the New Healthy. I hope to still get out on my actual bike in the actual outdoors on the weekends when I aim for the middle of the day when it’s lighter and warmer.

November can be a tough month for me fitness wise. University life is super busy, there’s no challenging rides to keep in shape for, and it’s tempting to let everything slide, rest, and start fresh in January. But this year I have other plans. A change is as good as a rest, my grandmother used to say.

Wish me luck!

What do you have planned for November?

Aikido · cycling

Bikido! This weird thing I’ve been doing lately

Sam B4 Comments

I’ve started doing an organized weekly ride with a coach and a group of athletes he trains. So far it’s been all women which is lovely. Speedier than my usual rides with friends. Fun.

We ride 40 km with a sprint thrown in at the end. Bonus fun. I love to sprint. Even though the town sign we’re sprinting for is up a small hill. Ouch.

But it’s Thursday evenings. Usually I do the advanced belt Aikido class on Thursdays and I’ve been reluctant to give that up. I’m one of the few green belts who has been invited to train with the blacks and browns. It’s an honour and I learn a lot.

To my surprise three weeks in a row now I’ve gone straight from the ride to Aikido. I’ve been arriving close to 7 pm, parking my bike in the dojo, and quickly throwing on my white pajamas over cycling gear.

There have been some glitches in packing for such a long day: lunch, dinner, and extra food because, well, cycling. But I’ve been good at remembering lights for my bike and glasses, other than my sunglasses, to ride home with.

My ability to do this, when I add in my commute and ride to the ride, about 65 km total, some of it speedy, is surprising me. It’s new.

It used to be that riding fast meant I was done after. Done, done, done. Now it appears I can do more. There’s no Aikido + bike duathlons, shame really, but if there were, I’m your woman. And this woman is feeling pretty fit for fifty.

Admittedly after it’s straight to the hot tub and sometimes second dinner after that.

I’ve even started riding Saturday mornings too, before two hours of Aikido, since the the Thursday combo is going so well. The Saturday rides are slower, more social, and they end in coffee and cake. See Natalie’s post about our first one.

Interestingly I’m not the only cycling plus Aikido fan out there. In my browsing, I found another fitness blogger who is all about cycling, running, Aikido, and more. His blog is called Run Bike Throw.

I know the whole “keep calm and…” thing has totally jumped the shark but I like that this appeared in an image search for bike aikido!

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Aikido · fitness · Guest Post · injury · martial arts · meditation

Why I Love Aikido (Guest Post)

Michelle Lynne Goodfellow2 Comments

image

I was standing watching the children’s class, waiting for my adult aikido class to begin, when I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was my aikido sensei (teacher).

“I saw your name in the paper.”

I winced. The organization that I work for had recently had some bad press. I handle PR for the company, and had been quoted in one of the news stories.

“It’s just like on the mat,” Sensei said, and made a sweeping motion with his hands, as if stepping out of the way of an attack and throwing off an invisible assailant.

I held my breath as my mind processed this idea. I had fallen in love with aikido the very first class I’d attended, but it wasn’t until Sensei suggested that aikido was more than just a fun physical activity with a practical purpose (self-defence) that I began to understand its deeper value.

I’ve never been interested in sports, and until I started aikido in March of this year, my physical activity had consisted of exclusively solitary pursuits – walking, hiking, yoga, bodyweight exercises. Sam had been encouraging me to come out to aikido for years, but there was always something else going on in my life, and the beginner classes on Tuesday evenings or Saturday mornings never seemed to fit into my schedule.

Then suddenly I’d run out of excuses, and realized that I really did want to try aikido. I already had a sense that I would like the people – I had engaged some of the volunteer black belts from the school to come give a presentation on self-defence at my workplace a few years earlier, and they looked like they were having a lot of fun “hurting” each other. It remains one of my company’s highest-rated staff development presentations.

Other than that, however, I had no clue what I was going to experience. I went to my first class in yoga pants and a t-shirt like the club’s website suggested, and asked one of the brown belts what I should do. Thankfully Sam showed up before class started, and shepherded me around for most of the hour.

Five months later, I’ve graduated to a yellow belt (one step above absolute beginner), and I’m regularly attending four classes per week. Aikido is one of the very best things in my life, and I’m a blissfully obsessed with, addicted to, and entranced by this Japanese martial art. A big piece of that obsession is trying to figure out the lesson Sensei was trying to teach me all those weeks ago – how could I use aikido in every moment of my life, not just on the mat?

Six things I love about aikido:

    1. The philosophy behind it. Aikido was founded in the 20th century by Morihei Ueshiba, a Japanese martial artist who, legend has it, became disenchanted with the aggressive aspect of martial arts, and developed a means of self-defence that practitioners could use to protect themselves, while also protecting their attacker from injury. In aikido we don’t learn how to attack (kick, punch, strike) – only how to evade or diffuse an attack. In my early 20s I studied hapkido, a Korean martial art, and back then one of the things that made me most uncomfortable was having to spar – to attack somebody else, to try and beat them. Aikido, on the other hand, reminds me of some of my more spiritual interests, like yoga and zen meditation. It seeks to cause no harm, and to leave a situation better than it started. That really appeals to me, as does the idea that my physical training in aikido can give me insight into mental and emotional conflict, including self-inflicted harmful thoughts.

 

    1. The beauty of the movements. Aikido is pretty graceless the way that I do it as a beginner, but watching the black belts practice is breathtaking. I’ve also watched a number of aikido videos online, and I find aikido stunning, although it’s not like the “movie martial arts” that most of us are used to seeing. That said, Aikido can still be pretty wild – people do get thrown around, rolling and tumbling all over the place. The calm, measured movements of a long-time practitioner in the centre of the maelstrom are like a dance.

 

    1. The people. I don’t have any other aikido school to compare to mine, so I don’t know if this is universal to aikido, but the people are wonderful – generous with their time and their bodies as training partners, full of good humour and camaraderie. A far cry from the social isolation of my solitary fitness pursuits up until now. I’d been looking for a “tribe” to belong to before I joined aikido, and this happily fits the bill for me. They’re also a pleasantly diverse bunch – from teenagers to practitioners in their 60s and beyond, men and women, a variety of sizes and nationalities and socio-economic backgrounds. I knew I was finally starting to “belong” when some injuries (more on that below) kept me on the sidelines for several weeks, and everyone kept asking me with concern when I was going to be back on the mats to play with them again.

 

    1. The physical-ness of it. Much like wrestling, I imagine, aikido is a pretty physically intimate sport. You have to be comfortable not only touching your training partners, but getting right into their personal space – chest to chest sometimes, hands wrapping around heads and pulling them close, palms or shoulders pushing chins. It reminds me of the rough-and-tumble physical chaos of raising small children. I love this part of aikido, and it’s the part I miss the most when I have to sit on the sidelines with an injury. It’s also a full-body sport – from head to toe, there’s not one part of me that doesn’t get a workout during a class. Think lots of falling down and getting back up. Over and over again. And a lot of rolling. I love breakfalls.

 

    1. The way I feel during and after class. I’m not that physically fit – I rarely do anything else that gets my heart-rate up – so aikido classes are sometimes a physical challenge for me. The intensity gets endorphins flooding my body, however, and I always feel amazing during and immediately after class. If I have to sit out due to injury, I make a point of going to classes just to enjoy the atmosphere. My job is stressful, and aikido classes are a vital release valve when everything else in my life seems to be falling apart.

 

  1. The fact that it will take me a long time to master it. At 47, I’ve tried a lot of new things over the course of my life, and I’ve grown to love the disorienting feeling of “beginner’s mind,” when everything is new and strange and confusing. Five months (and a lot of extracurricular reading and practice) in, aikido is not so shiny-new as it was, but thankfully it’s an art that can take a long time to master, and will keep me engaged for years to come. Having said that, aikido also feels really comfortable to me; based on feedback from some of the senior belts, I think I’m picking it up fairly quickly, and that feels good too.

Six things I’m not so keen about:

    1. It’s hard on the body. I’m not going to lie – aikido is not kind to a middle-aged, out-of-shape body. After my first few classes I was seriously sore – I mean, to the point of hardly being able to walk when I got out of bed in the morning, even after a long soak in a hot bath the night before. And the senior belts are pretty unapologetic about the fact that sometimes, despite everyone’s best efforts at practising safely, you’re going to accidentally get hurt. A lot of time is spent teaching beginners how to fall and roll safely, because the throws and pins that we’re learning are potentially dangerous. So my biggest question for Sam and her friends when I was considering joining the school was, does it get better? The answer was yes… although I’m still waiting for it to get better… 🙂

 

    1. It hurts my knees. I had knee problems for years before starting aikido, and after just a few classes I had worse knee problems – to the point where I’ve sat on the sidelines for two extended periods of time in my five months of aikido. I wept, not from the ongoing pain, but from the anguish of possibly having to give up an activity I loved so much. Thankfully my doctor finally referred me to a physiotherapist (shout-out to John Smallwood, who’s funny and awesome and, did I mention, funny and awesome?), and the diagnosis is a relatively reassuring gait problem (weak hips, over-pronating ankles) that can be resolved with strengthening and stretching exercises, not anything more dire. I’m still in recovery mode, however, and my knees still hurt after class. I have to keep reminding myself that I’m in this for the long term. I don’t need to rush my healing.What’s the issue with aikido and knees? We practise barefoot on mats, which is deadly for over-pronators, because it strains knee alignment. Also, there are a lot of quick, irregular, side-to-side and turning movements with the legs, similar to sports like volleyball or basketball, along with occasional deep knee bends that can put stress on unstable knees. Plus there’s a lot of kneeling, and falling onto your knees. Some people (including me) wear knee pads and/or knee braces for every class. I’ve spent a lot of time outside of class breaking down the techniques and working on the alignment of my hips, knees and ankles, retraining my body to do aikido movements in healthier ways.

 

    1. It hurts my wrists. I got carpal tunnel syndrome in my early twenties after planting trees in Northern Ontario for two summers while I was a university student. It’s long since ceased to be a problem for me… until big burly guys started grabbing my wrists in aikido class, and hanging on for dear life so that I could learn how to break free from their grasp. At first I just toughed it out, but I quickly learned – in aikido, you need to let your partner know when you’re hurting. Nobody wants to hurt you. You don’t need to be hurt.

 

    1. I hit my head on the floor more often than I’d like. Have I mentioned there’s a lot of falling on purpose in aikido? There’s a lot of falling on purpose. And they teach you how to do it well, in order to avoid injury. Part of doing it well involves tucking your chin when you fall backwards, so that your head doesn’t hit the ground. I’m getting better at backwards breakfalls, but when I was starting I hit my head on the ground a lot, and every now and then I still fall awkwardly and give myself a little knock. Sam has posted enough frightening articles about sports concussions and brain damage on Facebook for me to be more than a little leery of the cumulative effects of head injuries.

 

    1. Bruised ribs. Are you sensing a theme here? Before my most recent physical rest from aikido, I landed awkwardly when I was practising backwards rolls on the mats before class one day, and bruised a rib. I foolishly toughed it out for several more classes, and every breakfall practice left me doubled-over in pain, unable to take a deep breath. Thankfully I stopped participating in class for a few weeks to let my knees heal, and the rib healed as well.

 

  1. I can’t wear my glasses on the mat. Well, I could wear them – many people do. But I’m very near-sighted, and very protective of the (expensive) appliance that allows me to see. I don’t want my glasses thrown off or damaged during a throw or a roll. So before I ever attended my first class, I went to my optometrist and got contact lenses, which I hadn’t worn for twenty years. I wear the contacts only for aikido, and I can’t read anything when I’m wearing them, but they let me practise without the worry of breaking my glasses.

As awful as the above may sound, I do love aikido. I don’t want to give it up. I’ve been reading about several famous black belts’ experiences with aikido, and many of them talk about taking one class and being hooked. That’s what it was like for me – aikido was beautiful and mysterious, and I wanted to keep learning it. My sensei talks about being drawn to aikido and not quite knowing why you’re drawn to it. As woo-woo as that sounds, it’s true for me. I keep practising on the mat so that I can take aikido’s lessons off the mat, into my everyday life.

Six things Sam likes about and struggles with in aikido

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Michelle Lynne Goodfellow works in nonprofit and small business communications by day, and also enjoys writing, taking photographs, making art and doing aikido. You can find more of her work at michellelynnegoodfellow.com. Michelle has also written about her breast cancer journey on her blog, Kitchen Sink Wisdom.

aging · Aikido · athletes · Crossfit · injury

Hold my calls, CrossFit, but I’ll be back!

Sam B5 Comments

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Since my knee injury I’ve been reluctant to continue at CrossFit. It’s not them, it’s me.

The coaches at CrossFit are very good at modifying workouts to accommodate athletes’ particular injuries, abilities, and limitations.

But me? I’ve been told by a physiotherapist to stop the minute my knee hurts. I’m not sure that in the competitive CrossFit environment I’d be able to listen to my body in quite the way I need to. As many reps as possible? Sure. But then ouch? Not so sure I’d stop as needed.

Definitely no box jumps for me!

So I’m taking the summer off in hopes I’ll be well enough to go back in September. This will give me more time to focus on Aikido and cycling, neither of which seem to hurt my knee. I’ve had an x-ray, working with a physio, and an MRI is scheduled. Fingers crossed I can get back to running, CrossFit, and soccer soon.

If I’m not better in September my injured knee and me will report back to CrossFit London and learn to cope.

I’m missing you CrossFit! Even the burpees….but for the summer, I’ll be out on the road, keeping my injured knee happy.

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