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Ikkyo

Start ikkyo as if drawing a sword.

In an interview, when Paul Linden Sensei was asked about how someone should choose a dojo one of his points in the answer was the following: go and visit several dojos and see how people treat each other. If you want to be treated like the people there are treated (either by other students or by the sensei of the dojo) it's probably the place for you. I intended to keep this in mind when looking for a new dojo in the Netherlands.

Five years ago I had to leave my dojo because my studies took me to England. Now I'm doing the same thing again, leaving my dojo and going to another country. Before the last trainings at the dojo in Wimbledon I had been wondering if the two leaving experiences would be very similar.

In this post I am going to discuss the relationship between aikido techniques and the concept of self defence, and – finally – I will also touch upon the effectiveness of techniques.

A couple of days ago I was walking towards the train station after work. It was around 9pm but it was still not very dark. As I was walking I heard someone saying in a nervous-sounding voice: "Excuse me!!" It was a woman on a bycicle and she was saying this to an other woman walking just behind me. The pavement was wide, there weren't many people there walking but the bycicle woman wanted to cycle in the middle of it and anyone in her way had to get out.

At the very beginning of my aikido studies I read a book that contained a quote about two techniques. I think it was a quote from O-Sensei and it said something like the following: "[to master] iriminage - [it takes] 15 years; ikkyo - your whole life". I didn't really understand this statement at that time because iriminage seemed to be one of the hardest techniques and ikkyo seemed pretty straightforward, even easy with the beginner partners I trained with. Although I'm still far from mastering any technique, I'm starting to understand the background behind the above quote.

The next aspect of self defence that still does not need to end with executing a technique, but that is a very important basic principle of aikido, and no technique can be done without it, is getting out of the line. What does that mean?

In the past couple of days I have been noticing an interesting thing when I talk to some people: They don't listen. I don't want to complain about it because I'm not a perfect listener either and I kind of understand that people have some needs that need to be met; some needs that require that they can freely think what they want even if they are in a training environment and they are there to learn from the person they are talking to. By training environment, I don't really mean aikido training here, however, any kind of training environment can easily be compared to an aikido training which I hope to do towards the end of this post.

As mentioned in one of the previous posts, I had learned about the concept that through some movements, even some very simple ones, it is believed that enlightment can be achieved. I have been focusing harder on body movement, state of mind, connection and openness for about a month or so, and I think I realised some interesting points.

I have been getting questions recently about the applicability of aikido in self defence situations. How effective are the techniques of aikido as self defence techniques?

Before going into the details of the techniques and their effectiveness, however, let us examine the ways self defence can manifest itself.