Thoughts on Coming Full Circle (Dan Essay)

By Scott Roberts.

I stepped out of the car and breathed the fresh air. I immediately noticed three Turkeys crossing the road. I laughed to myself and walked inside to the Doyle Street dojo, filled with emotion, nostalgia, and anxiety. This would be my first class at Aikido Institute in...almost 7 years, and my first time visiting the new Doyle Street dojo. I had moved to the Inland Empire of Southern California 7.5 years prior, in the fall of 2010, for work, days after taking my 2nd kyu test. That move was incredibly challenging, a significant part of that due to the Telegraph location of Aikido Institute. Aikido became such an integral part of my life since my first class 2.5 years prior in the Spring of 2008. It got me in better physical shape and connected me more deeply with the joy of being in my own body (I can still remember the excitement when I learned to take high falls without apprehension); it helped me stay focused, positive, and light in the grueling years of my law school education; it helped me structure my study of guitar; it helped me better feel and accept my emotions; and it gave me a wonderful intergenerational community unlike anything I had experienced before. But the economy was not in great shape, so for longer-term career goals, I packed up and moved to San Bernardino, where I could be a practicing public defender, walking away from the life I had in the Bay.

There were no Iwama Ryu schools anywhere near where I moved. I started attending a dojo operated by one of Donovan Waite Shihan’s students that was located in Upland. (Waite Shihan has studied with many Aikido masters and his ukemi is breathtaking.) The dojo was about a 25-mile drive each way after work. Classes were held 3 times a week and, while it was different that what I knew, it was still worth the trip despite the extraordinarily long days when I would train. I was able to adjust and fit in. The more experienced students enjoyed the Iwama style I brought, and I enjoyed learning about the different yet still very effective ways they practiced. We had fun. Classes were small: no less than 4 and never more than 9 students, no familiar bokken or jo suburi (Waite Shihan studied Iaido so they did some bokken work that didn’t overlap with Iwama bukiwaza at all as far as I could tell), and a new community that...just didn’t feel the same. Waite Shihan came to visit once for about a week. He was phenomenal and it was a treat to train with him. It was a reminder that there are incredible martial artists and teachers all over the world, in all types of practice. He had a special awareness of all that was happening on the mat and seemed to know exactly when and exactly how much input to provide. This was starting to seem not so bad, after all.

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I visited my AI community for the 2011 Memorial Day Gasshuku and had a blast. I was reminded of what a special place AI was, and I left invigorated to continue my Aikido path back home. I continued to train at the Upland dojo, and I joined some AI friends on a trip to Reno for a Hitohiro Sensei seminar, which was incredibly special. However, soon after returning home from that trip, the Upland dojo relocated 20 miles west to Pasadena so that they could be a larger and more robust school. A student body of no more than 10 was not sustainable. A 90-mile round trip commute after work was not sustainable, so I quit the dojo. I felt lost.

I had to stay physically healthy, so I let some coworkers talk me into running a half-marathon. Around that same time, I started going to the gym to lift weights (something I never thought I’d seriously do once I got past my teenage years of thinking Arnold Schwarzenneger was the coolest). I primarily focused on the “Big 3” lifts: the barbell squat, bench press, and deadlift, all three make up the lifts in a powerlifting competition. There was a pretty good online community of amateur powerlifters who were incredibly helpful and supportive of people looking to get stronger and more competent at the lifts. This “hobby” had clearly defined goals, and there were various templates of strength training routines that one could choose - and, when one is more ​competent, modify. So my physical practices started to change, and fairly rapidly. I started to get reasonably strong and noticeably leaner. I was experiencing a very different relationship with my body than when I was on the mat but I was still in my infancy of this path.

​In May of 2012, I went to the Memorial Gasshuku after months of no Aikido training. It was great to see my Aiki family but it was ultimately bittersweet. It was so exciting to be there but I had no dojo or community to practice with. I knew when I left Tahoe that it was the last Gasshuku until and unless I was able to move back to the Bay or some area with a thriving Aikido community. I grieved and went back to lifting weights. 
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I soon moved to Riverside and was now living close enough to a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu dojo to make it to class after work. I started going to about 3 classes a week on top of my powerlifting training. It was extremely hard and a lot of fun. A lot of the fun from efficiently taking someone’s balance or applying an Aikido joint lock is also found in BJJ. Details appear infinite. I learned so much in such a short period of time and felt much more comfortable defending myself if I ever found myself in such a situation. After 6-8 months of training, even though the instructors and fellow students wanted to help each other improve, I still didn’t feel a bond with the dojo, community, or art as I did with Aikido. There is definitely a deeper BJJ path but what I was seeing struck more of the “fighting” notes and less of the “personal development” ones than I was looking for. I stepped away and focused solely on powerlifting.

While powerlifting training was solitary (there are powerlifting gyms that exist but nowhere near where I was living), there was a robust online community that helped with the feeling of community with like-minded others. I competed in a few competitions and made some real-life friends, too. Life wasn’t bad but it was lacking the sangha-like feel of a vibrant Aikido dojo.

​I finally moved back to the Bay late in 2014. At that point, I was fairly serious about powerlifting, and had plans for more competition to see how far I could go. I was very motivated and disciplined for a while. It was very much a solitary thing for me at this point, although I had friends in the sport, but I was progressing well and had incorporated powerlifting into my identity by this point. The inner world that is cultivated by regular training is fairly mechanistic and valorous. By this time, I had also lost all real memories of what my robust Aikido community felt like. Unsurprisingly, I ended up hitting a fairly serious plateau. It occured in 2017 and lasted months. Training strategies can and must be adapted, but I was at a level of strength where getting stronger would have required even more of a commitment. The modifications I made weren’t cutting it. 
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In strength sports, all that matters is how much weight you move. There are no points for style or form. I faced a choice of pursuing bigger numbers and...every other area of my life. Most of the people stronger than I was at my weight treated powerlifting as a second job and a core part of their identity. I didn’t have that interest. There are many good and inspiring people in that community but the path wasn’t something I felt could be sustainable long-term for most people. So I drifted while still training, and I started to think more and more about Aikido until, one Sunday in March of 2018, I impulsively fetched my gi. Having it in hand, I immediately decided to go to class on Monday. I felt rejuvenated for the first time in a long time just thinking about it. 
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Returning to the dojo filled me with many conflicting emotions. I was excited to get back to the fluid movements that I hadn’t practiced for years. I was happy to see all my old friends and many new faces. I grieved what I had lost for so many years, and imagined the parallel universe in which I had been able to progress on my aikido path for all that time. I was also frustrated by ​how my body forgot how to be soft, fluid and elastic, yet I was excited and determined to get back there. Other than being 7+ years older, I was also about 30 pounds of muscle heavier. I could deadlift 250 kilos but I was as much of a klutz as I was at 4th kyu. At least I still opened doors with kokyu. What overshadowed all of these thoughts and emotions, however, was the excitement to be back on the Aikido path and to be doing it in this community.

​I slowly tapered down my weightlifting exercise to allow my mind to dust off the cobwebs and deepen my Aikido neuropathways. I started training at the dojo 4-5 times a week and slowly remembered how I once moved. So much was happening internally for me at this time that stemmed from the reconnection to Aikido philosophy, to my personal Aikido mind-body history, and to the Aikido community that I’d missed for so many years. My training deepened, as did my internal sense of harmony. Training became more fun, too.
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One of my biggest regrets was not being able to visit Japan when I trained previously. There was an Iwama trip planned relatively soon after I had relocated to Southern California - and I was invited - but I was too disconnected from the Iwama style world to feel right going. I felt like I didn’t belong...or at least it didn’t belong in my life. Not then, not like that. 

I was finally able to visit Japan in October of 2019. I didn’t understand much of what was being said but it barely mattered. I felt so energized (especially for waking at 5am to do chores, and not really having any downtime time until bed) and felt connected to O-Sensei and all of those who spent time at the Iwama dojo, including so many of the wonderful instructors in our organization. Every moment there felt like a slice of history and a deeply spiritual experience, whether it was daily training in the dojo, cleaning the Aiki jinja, cooking and eating in the shokudo (kitchen), going to the grocery store, or hearing Inagaki Shihan recite the same prayers every morning before class that O-Sensei would during his life.

I returned home with a greater appreciation how our teachers (Kim Peuser Shihan, Deborah Maizels Sensei, and many more) brought back the physical training from Japan but also brought back and cultivated within themselves Aiki and internal peace that was modeled at the Iwama dojo. It is my hope and belief that by modeling the Aikido of great practitioners that all of their students could also begin to cultivate their internal peace and strength.
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O-Sensei once said, “The purpose of training is to tighten up the slack, toughen the body, and polish the spirit.” He also said, “Aikido is not a technique to fight and defeat an enemy. It is a way to reconcile the world and make human beings one family.” Ultimately, through the loss and rediscovery of my Aikido practice many years later, I have gained a greater sense of appreciation of how Aikido benefits my physical, emotional, and spiritual health than I may have otherwise. The more I train, the more I am coming to understand how Aikido has a special, multifaceted ability to help us cultivate the body, mind, and spirit, and move us towards both inner and outer harmony.