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Jenny Mason and John Partenope demonstrate “jo awase,” a blending exercise, using the jo, a wooden staff at the Mason Center./Photo by Zach Hively
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How the Grinch learned aikido
One noobie’s foray into the ‘gentle martial art’
by Zach Hively
Samurais are on the loose in Durango, and there’s more of them than you might expect. Many of these local warriors practice aikido at the Shin-Budo Kai dojo, housed in the Mason Center on 12th Street. For the uninitiated (and if your wrists don’t hurt, you’re uninitiated), aikido is called “the gentle martial art” because of the delicate way it torques your arms into fresh-baked pretzels as you crumple to your knees.
Samurais are on the loose in Durango, and there’s more of them than you might expect. Many of these local warriors practice aikido at the Shin-Budo Kai dojo, housed in the Mason Center on 12th Street. For the uninitiated (and if your wrists don’t hurt, you’re uninitiated), aikido is called “the gentle martial art” because of the delicate way it torques your arms into fresh-baked pretzels as you crumple to your knees.
I speak from experience. I am no samurai, but I do have several participation ribbons for playing the dummy in “living room aikido.” That’s where Jenny, my beloved, brings home techniques to share. Simply hearing the phrase “Hey, grab my wrist, I want to show you something!” makes me feel about as stable on my legs as a landlocked octopus.
The aikido students like to call what they do “harmonious.” I rebut, “Yeah, planting someone’s face in the mat so deep it won’t sprout til February is real harmonious.” Of course, I always rebut silently, in the privacy of my head, where the samurais can’t bring me harmony.
When invited to try out an aikido class, I agreed so that I could finally braid some pretzels of my own. In my extensive experience gained through the single two-hour session, I can say with expert authority that “harmony” indeed has a much more diverse definition, which includes “having your pressure points pulverized.”
When I wasn’t doing my best impersonation of a Celtic knot, I struggled to distinguish right from left, up from down, hand from foot. I can be a spaz on my own time, thank you very much.
I couldn’t imagine why anyone would enjoy being thrown around in this “recreational” activity. So I asked some of them.
“It’s empowering,” Jenny claims. “I can protect myself wherever I go, and I can deflate tension to keep others from fighting. I move through the world with confidence.”
Another student, John, alleges, “What makes aikido so precious to me is what it does for me outside the dojo in connecting with others in my personal, social and business relationships. It is easy to hurt others, as opposed to blending to resolve a conflict peacefully, safely and harmoniously.”
(Full disclosure: I cannot guarantee that my sources have not experienced head trauma at some point in their lives.)
Based on the students’ responses, I figured there was more to aikido than meets the eye. So I still trek to the dojo once in a while. Most often, I attend to support the students who are demonstrating for a test.
The first time I observed an aikido demonstration, I watched John throw to the mat, in quick succession, a young boy, a woman and a retired doctor. He did it gleefully, with manic eyebrows like Jack Nicholson’s in “The Shining.” Real peacefully, to use his word.
When it was the doctor’s turn to demonstrate for an ikkyu test, one degree below black belt, I wondered whether he would have his “harmonious” revenge.
The doc – let’s call him “Bob,” because that’s his name – took to the mat with his fellow classmates. One at a time, they attacked Bob. The sensei called out their move, and the two Jedis came together for a brief waltz, which always ended with the attacker on the ground.
The throwing and dropping parts of aikido get the most Hollywood screen time. They’re the ones Matt Damon uses in the Bourne movies and that Steven Seagal uses, I presume, to brush his teeth and make his bed. These moves allow old men and tiny women to toss around Marine-sized opponents. And they all have the same end result: bringing “harmony” to an aggressive situation.
Through all his techniques, Bob barely moved. He was like a boulder directing the flow of the river. A tree parting the wind. No one could rattle him.
The moves, the throws: they all blended together. But the finishing touch to each move, the point when Bob dropped his attackers to the ground, stood out.
Each time Bob pinned someone to the mat, he had the air about him of an attentive bedside doctor. He might as well have been checking their pulse. He brought peace to a conflict as naturally as a doctor brings care to a patient.
It was easy for me to forget that Bob was twisting his attacker’s arm like ribbons on a barber shop pole. Really, it was clear that he was using as little pressure as possible in order to halt any aggression. He applied honest consideration and careful practice, without violence.
With a light tap on the mat from the prone patient, Bob released his grip. Both he and the attacker rose to their feet, ready to do it again. And smiling.
I had thought I could just watch Bob whup up on some whippersnappers. But like the Grinch after stealing Christmas, I realized I had it all wrong. Bob’s test came without revenge. It came without strain. It came without vehemence, malice or pain!
Aikido, I learned, is not about learning to fight. Rather than trying to overpower or overcome an adversary, it’s about handling aggression through harmonizing energy.
The art focuses not on how to kick someone’s face in – there’s no kicking at all, actually – but on how to become surer in body and mind, how to actively redirect conflict, and how to fall without busting your back. (As one who cracked his ass on icy patches more than once last winter, I like this application of aikido most of all.)
Aikido is like baseball, Yogi Berra-style: ninety percent mental, and the other half physical. Because so much of the martial art is in the mind, it is empowering for practitioners of all ages and any gender. Even the teachers remain life-long students, and everyone, whether martial master or nervous noobie, comes to the dojo with the willingness to learn.
The lessons must be pretty effective, if even I can learn something about harmony while watching from the back row.
For more information about Durango Shin-Budo Kai, including class times, visit www.durangoaikido.com/.
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