A Toast to Serious Aikido Students

What Does It Even Mean to be “Serious” in Aikido?

Some time ago, I had a nice, small chat on Messenger with a friend. He’s a dedicated Aikido professional—deeply rooted in his dojo and fully committed to our art.

Out of the blue, he wrote a statement starting with a cryptic sentence¹:

Cant force people to recognize to Ur work.

what i mean is we are serious people doing serious job in serious place but most of students are not serious 🙂

and it will not change 😛

I didn’t see this coming. Yet, I often hear similar sentiments from Aikido teachers. This was my reply:

Well, I must say that I see my students differently.

Mostly they are serious about their stuff - they are serious in their work or business, they are serious students at highschool or university. They are serious parents, partners...
I have great respect to them, very often they are serious as I am. Just in different fields.

Of course, they are not professional aikidokas - aikido is just a part of their lifes. And my work is to contribute to their lives with aikido as much as possible.

Well, for some of them, aikido will be more and more important and they eventually become as serious in aikido as you or me. But that's not for everybody and I think it's good 😀

I’m writing the following text to raise a glass to serious Aikido students I see around.

Cheers! (Photo by Pavel Danilyuk)

Sure, as teachers, we’re the ones constantly on the tatami, always practicing on seminars, exploring new things, traveling, organizing stuff, staying available to students and what’s not. And yes, few carry as much of the load in the dojo.

But hey, it’s our work, isn’t it? That’s what we have chosen!

Our students have different work to do in their lives—each of us has unique talents and walks of life. Some of us are clerks, medics, designers, managers, businesspeople, travelers, lawyers, photographers, programmers… not many people are meant to be professional Aikido teachers.

Tamura sensei said in an interview² that "Aikido is a way that allows one to discover oneself and to construct oneself as a human being in order to live a full and happy life."

If it’s true, the work of us, teachers, is to contribute to the lives of students through Aikido, so that students can discover and expand their talents and shine in their field.

I’m convinced that life is much broader than Aikido. Therefore my intention in practicing and teaching is to contribute to life, not just the Aikido community.

I’m deeply grateful to my students for allowing me to do this work. Many of them teach me what being a 'serious' human truly means.

Wishing you a wonderful New Year filled with great Aikido practice ahead!

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1. The pieces of conversation are not edited, I’ve just copy-pasted them from Messenger as they were.

2. Interview “The Eagle of Aikido” with Nobuyoshi Tamura by Leo Tamaki, published in The Samurai Magazine. You can find the full text with the quoted part here.