Michael Godawski

Why are you training? Why do you go to the dojo so often? Always the same way tho and fro. How many times now?

What’s the point of being thrown? What’s the point of getting hit by an atemi? What’s the point of feeling pain in every muscle, in every tendon, in every bone?

But still, you go and I go, you train and I train. There must be something hidden that is worth it. Let’s try to find out what this may be.

Martial Arts as the Art of Live and Death

Budo is about living and about dying. Budo is live and death. That’s it. Simple and clear. That is why once started you get caught by the aspects taught during the training. It is all about live and death. A truly complete art. Budo can tell you how to live, how to preserve life, how to create life, how to enhance your life and the life of others. It will at the same time teach you how you can heal yourself, how you can heal others. By teaching how to help and heal others it will simultaneously whisper to you how to destroy others. That is the obvious purpose of martial arts but not the most advanced one and surely not the goal of the Way.

Of course the healing aspect is much more difficult to grasp than the clear fighting art. But because Aikido does not stress the destroying of your opponent, but blending with him, the “healing” is much more visible than in other so called hard martial arts. Budo teaches you how to regain the ability to move naturally. Yes you can walk and jump a bit. But a rabbit does this far better than you do. So you think you are moving well. But you do not. I can tell you from my own experience that during my first Aikido lesson I was feeling like a wood plank. I could not tell which hand was my right and which was left. The six space directions were mixed up. The lungs cried for air. The blood rushed through the veins, as if for the first time in my life. It was like a complete renewal. A new human being was born. I am Universe.

After the first enlightenment  the hard work begun. During many lessons the Ego made it very difficult to accept the teachings. Slowly the essence and true meaning of the techniques become clear. I won’t tell now what the true meaning and real application of the technique are. Find it out for yourself. For me the meaning changes every day. It changes when I change. The movements work not only on the uke, they work also on the one who executes them. When you had a hard day, had physical and psychical stress and you have to perform an Aikido technique in class, the technique has first to break your stiffness, has first to “heal” you, the tori, before it can be applied on the uke. That is the basic level of the healing. I think there is also a more advanced one, but that is another story.

What’s the point of the uke? Why do you attack knowing that you will loose? In the question lies the answer. Aikido is not about fighting. Aikido will not teach you how to fight. Fighting is aimless. Aikido applied with full intent, full force can only mean the end of the fight. Actually there was no “fight”. There was no “You hit me, I hit you, you hit me, I hit you again…”. Real Aikido is like “You try to hit me, and you are lying on the floor not injured, or slightly injured, or with broken bones and ripped tendons or dead.” How the fight will end lies not in the hands of the attacker, so there is no “fight” sitiuation ever. Do not be fooled by the beauty of the Aikido movements. They are beautiful because they are effective and they are effective because they emanate a beauty. It is the universal law of Nature to create only effectiveness. Every animal and plant is pure effectiveness. Would it be something other it would not exist. The whole system of the nature always tries to achieve a state of the lowest energy level. Effective movements cost less energy. What do you like more: to attack or to apply the aikido technique? What is less exhausting: being the uke for 20 minutes or being the tori for the same amount of time?

The uke in Aikido gives the energy. Without energy there is no movement. When you only hold tori’s hand without intent, he will think you are just shaking hands. But imagine you grap the hand of the tori, because you see a knife edge shining in the starlight in a dark corner of the forbidden town quarter. Your intent is different now. When you become more advanced you will learn counter attacks to the techniques. The advanced uke is always trying to find a weak spot, a moment when the balance of the tori can be broken. The part of the uke is as rich and true as of the tori. You can tell by the way how someone performs an attack what a character the person has. How he/she goes through life.

There we are again. The Art of Life. The true life. Is the attack performed seriously and wholehurtedly? Or is it only a fake. Would the hand really hit the aim, or would it only cut the air? The behavior in the dojo is the same when you leave it. You are afraid in the dojo? You mean you feel angst in a safe and organized place like the dojo? HOw did you survived in the real world in the first place? You are afraid of loosing the ground beneath your feet? You do not want to be confronted with your flaws?

Movement has an impact on the internal processes going on in your body. When you move hormones and chemical stuff (sry I am not a scientist) are produced en masse. The Chi begins to flow. The human body was made to move, not to sit and type in front of a PC. It was created by the evolution to resist the whole wild and untamed nature out there. Unfortunately we have forgotten what real movement in real nature is. We are living between squares made of concrete. The nature is squeezed into unnatural forms. We are directed into an unnatural direction. I do not mean: “Hey let’s start to live in a den and hunt my next lunch with a wooden spear.” I mean that there are increasingly more directions which are forced upon us from the outside. Which are not appropriate for us. Which change our inner self. Budo is the defending wall, the guardian of our natural I. Through the Budo training you learn to cope with forces which cross your liveline, like meteors which cross the orbits of planets and solar systems. In comparison to the planet which does not have the possibility to avoid the impact of the asteroid, we do have the ability to interact with the force. The Force is with you, Luke.

Did I partially answered the question at hand? I don’t know. I am still a beginner. Perhaps I can grasp the essence of Aikido more quickly than others, but there is so much to learn that I will perhaps need only 50 lifetimes to learn everything whereas others need 100.

But that is the Goal.