Aikido is Life

Aikido is Life

​Reflections on the elusive question of what is life?

A sandan essay by Cathy Garrett.

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Life is, of course, a physical and biological state. More than that, it is a personal journey. At any time in life, it is evolving, never remaining one unchanging thing.

My musings here meander from the large scale to the small—from glimpses of life as the BIG question to the images of the day-to-day that, together, constitute living. These two scales of thinking are inseparable. The accumulation of countless snapshots of moments that ultimately fill in one’s experience, one’s picture, one’s path.​

On richness…

Aikido is community.

Aikido is friendships that emerge from standing face-to-face with a partner, no words exchanged. Feeling their movement and energy. This creates shared knowledge. Can this knowledge be called something we consider “socializing”? Beyond words, it is a kind of connection.

Aikido is perseverance.

At first, on a purely physical level, perseverance pays off. Subtly, even surreptitiously, something beyond the physical slips in and feeds the desire to expand one’s understanding and delve more deeply. Sure, part of life is showing up. Yet there’s more to this statement than first appears. Showing up is, in itself, an act of perseverance. It is the beginning of remaining present long enough for something to reveal itself.

Aikido is mysterious.

How is it that the mental engagement that entices you into aikido, that is strangely and simultaneously sustaining and challenging, is so present in what, on its face, seems utterly physically oriented?

Perhaps this is part of the richness of aikido. What appears to be physical is never only physical. Something else is always happening alongside the movement. Maybe even several other somethings.

These musings on the richness of aikido are not my main point, though. They are just a preamble to the main thought.

Aikido is not one thing.

​For me, it keeps changing.

When I started, I was hungry for physical vigor. I wanted the physical challenge, the movement, the feeling of becoming stronger through practice. At that time, perhaps, that was what I needed from aikido.

Now, somewhat older, while that hunger remains, I find the best way, perhaps the proper way, for me to train has shifted. When strong, I train as vigorously as I am able. When either ill or injured, there is another way that is appropriate to train.

It dawns on me that even, perhaps especially, in life’s challenging moments, there is also a correspondingly proper way to train.

Is proper training a goal in itself?

Perhaps it is. The always-adjusting nature of proper training means it can be both sustaining and sustainable. The way I train cannot remain fixed if I am not remaining fixed. As circumstances change, the practice changes with them.

Training may not always be achievable in the way I want it to be, but it remains the goal.

Injury is a special case

How to train properly when something hurts? How to build strength in the face of physical weakness? How to continue the practice when the body itself imposes limits?

That, to me, is amongst the transcendent mysteries of aikido.

When asked by Mariye Takahashi What is Aikido, O’Sensei said aikido is “intellectual training, virtue training, ki training – these produce practical wisdom.” Takahashi continued: “it wouldn’t do for even one of these to be missing. That lacking of any one of them would render everything for naught and inevitably slow one’s overall development….one must always maintain a harmonious balance among these.”[1]

Constantly evolving, my physical, mental/intellectual and personal journey through and in aikido is inexact; always intriguing, often elusive, and hard to grasp.

And perhaps that is part of what makes it meaningful.

For me, aikido is tender, gentle, and beautiful; aikido is martial and severe.

Life is both, too.

That’s not incompatible.

Not black and white, but an infinite number of shades of gray.

Perhaps the point is not to resolve these contradictions, but to learn how to move within them—to recognize what is appropriate at the moment and to remain willing to change.

Aikido is not one thing because life is not one thing.

​Aikido keeps changing because we keep changing.

Aikido is life.

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Respectfully submitted:
Cathy Garrett

(Sandan test taken 11/22/2025)

[1] Gold, Josh, “Interview with Mariye Takahashi Part 2,” Aikido Journal, August 26, 2002.
Mariye Takahashi was a writer, professor, and aikido pioneer who trained under O’Sensei.