Alchemy of Aikido

FYI: This blog post started out with the intention to think through the process of creating our own martial art. Instead, we found ourselves thinking about the spiritual alchemy one might find practicing Aikido! Fodder for future writing, no doubt.

Ever wonder how a martial art gets started. I mean at some point in time someone thought to formalize their evolving style of fighting. Eventually, it even gets a name.

What if you wanted to invent your own martial art?

I’ve been thinking about this lately. Last month my Aikido instructor commented before class. He said we were inventing our martial art.

Since then I have been thinking more and more about what it would take for me to come up with my own fighting system. Which is kind of funny since I don’t have any combat or street fighting experience.

But that’s okay. Martial arts can be about more than dealing death and destruction to one’s mortal enemies. The head instructor at the dojo being a good model for such an approach.

One of the things I like about how I am learning Aikido is that it is not focused on the martial application. Which I imagine some would find odd or even nonsensical. Turns out though that I feel like I am getting a better feel for the techniques.

Basically, what we are doing is starting with the sensitivity, spiraling motions, tuning into the hara, being completely aligned in our body and with our partner, and not interfering with the partners motion, direction or force, at all.

After spending 6 months getting all that developed something fun has started to happen. The various techniques I was learning in other instructors classes are revealing themselves!

Even more fun is techniques show up naturally as part of movement with the partner. They have a meaningful context. Which to me means my ability to apply a technique in a more free form encounter is improving quite a lot now.

Back to inventing your own marital art. Using the evolution of Aikido for ideas I am getting a start at how to develop a system of my own.

Of course, I don’t have decades of experience so I am going to treat this as a fun exercise for now. Worth going through not just for fun but as a way to find new perspectives and ways of thinking about martial arts and Aikido in particular.

For me, spiritual philosophy and perspectives are important. My primary motivation for pretty much everything I do in life is personal spiritual growth. Including, learning Aikido.

What core philosophy or belief system would I choose? If I wanted to be able to teach others I think it would be important to not be too focused on a particular religion or formal belief system.

Maybe looking at what the point of the martial art is in the first place is where to start. Like Aikido, bringing harmony to disharmony? Not seeking to harm an opponent if possible? Maybe, resolving opposing forces?

Okay, that’s good enough for now.

Now for the physical side of the art. Let’s pick some fundamental motions to study in our training. We observe everything in the Cosmos is moving. (Other than matter cooled to absolute zero?)

Most of it, with the proper perspective, you find is spiraling in some manner. Alright. Also, like Aikido, spirals are important. If we look more specifically at the human body we even find spirals and potential spirals in our anatomy! Twisting wrists and arms for example.

Spirals it is then.

What have I learned in my spiritual practices and Aikido which would be good to include in my new martial art?

The hara is a big one. There are effectively three. A hara below the naval, another centered in the shoulder girdle, and a third in the skull. Each are centers of movement. They can spiral and also be the center of a spiral.

The lowest hara is probably the best known. It is the center of gravity for our physical body and also where the Will is concentrated. In Aikido learning how to connect this hara with one’s partner’s hara is a fundamental principle.

I feel like even this short list of ideas is a pretty good start. Though it is pretty much Aikido. Which is why as I’ve been exploring I am wondering if Aikido can be seen as much as a template as it is a specific system?

Instead of inventing a brand new martial art what about taking foundations of Aikido and mixing them with one’s personal philosophy or spiritual practices? Or even taking the concepts into other established systems? With more experience I think there might be some illuminating experiments one might conduct!

But all this thinking isn’t enough to get us to a martial art. Time in the dojo is important, too! What I’ve described so far with all the spirals and such would look a dance. In fact, that is what my instructor, Rob Staveland, picked Hara Dance for his web site name.

A dance though with something extra. The clarity that comes from the martial aspect and expectations. Dealing with a knife, a sword, or a fist adds a clarification and purification process to the practice.

Taking it further, here is a brand new idea for me. Maybe there is an alchemical process happening? This martial art alchemy is happening within each individual, between partners, and even within the class and dojo itself.

Whoa. Very cool.

Martial and spiritual practices leading to an alchemy of the hara. Or something. There are all kinds of possibilities to explore when we consider spiritual alchemy might be happening.

I wonder if other martial arts have such a thing? Alchemy of Karate?

Thinking through this there seems to be a lot of potential in the Aikido as a template idea. What little I read of the Founder and his creation of Aikido, he appeared to be guided a lot by his spiritual practices. Being able to mix the martial and the spiritual was pretty amazing.

I also think there is a lot of territory to explore when it comes to energy bodies or planes. There are physical and ki energies of course. Thinking about astral and mental body (in a more neo-platonic model) opens up some fascinating possibilities. Let alone duality and non-duality between partners, the environment, the self, and so much more.