Part 1 - Aikido, sensei, learning

Why did you start doing aikido?

There are two levels of depth for this question. The first one was that I moved to University from a village where I grew up in rural Cambridgeshire and I was at Leeds University and I thought it was a big, bad, scary city, and wanted to learn some kind of self-defence and also to be healthy. I was aware of the student lifestyle, you know, eating pizzas, drinking beer, it would be good to have something healthy to do. I kind of rather liked the idea of martial arts, I fell in love with the idea of martial arts probably first, it seemed exotic and cool somehow. So that's one level of explanation. Another level was my experience of walking into a dojo for the first time and I saw Ken Marsden who was my first Sensei, he's now 5th or 6th dan with the British Aikido Federation. He was throwing his uke, they were wearing hakamas and gis, it was just absolutely beautiful. And there was a stillness and order and peace to the dojo which I loved. And something resonated in me, it wasn't exactly a voice but there was some sense of 'you need to do this', 'you need to this, this is good for you, you need to do this'. And even though it was very difficult at first, there was a very traditional teaching style, I stuck with it, and it was a great, great help to me for university. So, yeah, I did it because I had to [smiles].

You talked about your first training briefly, and about your teacher and I'm just wondering what he was like. And the second part of the question is what do you think makes a good master?

My first teacher was sensei Ken Marsden at Leeds University, and the other teachers there. There was a 3rd dan from New Zealand called Karl Dahm, my senior at that time who taught me quite a bit was Jon Dietch who now runs a dojo in Milton Keynes - there's a businessman there training as well - called Robin, they were the yudansha. Now Ken was taught by Chiba sensei and Kanetsuka sensei and has a very traditional style of teaching. The average number of words he said in a class was about five, and I think he didn't learned my name for the first year, and didn't throw me for the first year, and I just took ukemi of the other dan grades and learned the basics. We'd spend a term on ikkyo, a term on iriminage and a term on shihonage. So it was the basic, fundamental techniques of aikido, suwari waza, and just straight down the line, Hombu aikido taught in traditional way, basically. As to what makes a good sensei, I think it depends on what level of training you are at, what you need. So in the beginning, like having those very firm boundaries for me it was fantastic as a student living a kind of wild lifestyle, also, as a beginner in aikido, just having the fundamentals, the basics was really good and I'm grateful to Ken for this day for that. The emphasis on etiquette was also that was a haven for me and also very necessary. There are disadvantages to that kind of incorporation of the Japanese teaching style, now I appreciate more verbal explanation, and breaking down techniques, more space to kind of explore and play, kind of creative, co-creative learning style, I find much more enjoyable these days.

So would you say that at the beginning if you go to more technical it might be better?

There are two ways of looking at this. One is the Japanese model which is you learn the basics, you learn the fundamentals, you learn to do it exactly by heart, by row, by form and structure, and then eventually forget about that, usually after 4th dan is what they say in Japan, some people in the West say after shodan or 8th dan if you’re not Japanese.... So that's the traditional model of you learn the static, basic form, and then you get flow and you get a kind to ki and creativity. That's one model. Another model is that actually you can learn the essence or principles of aikido from day one, and actually the forms are a lot less important, and I've seen that model applied as well. The first model is certainly appropriate for many Japanese, it can be appropriate for people of the West too, if that suites you. This sort of path of the essence rather than form is Larry Barry sensei says, I enjoy myself and I see people making rapid progress in that and they don't need to spend 25 years learning ABC-s to get some really good quality aikido. The problem with the first is that it can lead to brainwashing so you never get creative and relaxed, the problem with the second is that you don't have a good foundation to move from, so they are both rubbish [smiles].