Impressions

When I came to the Dojo, during the first weeks, I was given an inscription form to complete. It had some questions about personal information, about other sports I had practiced, etc. but there was a question that called my attention and to which I hadn’t an answer. It was something like “Why did you decide to practice Aikido?”

That question released a series of reflections and today, after three and a half years of practice, it still hasn’t an answer, or actually, it has a different answer every day.

I think every practitioner goes to the Dojo seeking something personal, each one seeks something different, but within this variety there’s an essence which is the same for everyone, students and masters. Trying to find a guide for the answer I started looking in the Internet and reading what other people had answered and I found a Blog of a Sensei in Panama who made himself the same question: “Why do students come to the Dojo?” After asking himself that for a while he realized that finding the answer wouldn’t solve the enigma. He should’ve asked “Why do students keep coming to the Dojo?” that was the right question to ask! The fact is that no one knows with certainty or at least it isn’t easy to put it into words. It is the sensations, the relationships, the martial spirit, there’s no way to know what happens within each student and master’s head. I once heard Daniel Picciola Sensei saying he practiced Aikido in the search of something he wasn’t sure what it was, but surely it was a search. I think all of us who are close to Aikido would accept that answer as valid.

With time I started to comprehend the basis of Aikido and I understood that it is based on 4 principles (Ikkio, Nikkio, Sankyo, Yonkyo), everything comes from there, just 4 elements… It seems easy, but each principle can be executed in almost infinite ways. O’ Sensei said once that there were 3,000 basic techniques which could be executed in 16 different ways (ver cita) what gives an almost infinite combination. We could say that this gives origin to different “types” of Aikido but O’ Sensei always said the Aikido is only one, Aikido is the universal harmony, the rest are interpretations. The best of all for a soul avid to challenges is that one can get to understand Aikido after several years of practice where the “black belt” is the beginning of an infinite path and not an arrival point.

Understanding these 4 basic principles may make me forget all the prejudices and customs and allow me to look at the world from a purer place.
As from now all that lefts is keep practicing…
It’s my humble opinion.

Juan Pablo Fava