How Traditional Japanese Martial Arts (Aikido) Have Shaped My Views On Life

 How Traditional Japanese Martial Arts (Aikido) Have Shaped My Views On Life

Choosing a certain type of exercise is important. People need exercise to be healthy, but it also helps your mental state and your overall well-being. Consistently doing exercise over time while staying motivated, you need to choose a certain type of exercise that you will keep doing over a long period. Hopefully, you can find something fun and exciting, and also something that you can integrate into your lifestyle in the future. In this article, I’m going to talk to you guys about how traditional Japanese Aikido helps me shape my view of life.

Becoming calmer

The more that we become attached to technology, it’s so difficult for us to be calm. Some people talk about the body and mind connection, and these days it’s become very weak. People just want to stare at their cell phones, and I know that it’s become really cliché. People don’t really wanna hear that anymore, the fact that people are so attached to their cell phones. While it’s just common knowledge, and it’s true, perhaps in the future, we need to focus on how to strengthen that mind-body connection. 

Aikido is one of those ways that you can do that. You can focus on self defense techniques, and also how to make a connection with your training partner. An aspect of Aikido that’s important, is how to calm yourself, and how to meditate. Without having that calmness in Aikido, it’s very difficult to do Aikido. I’ve never heard of anybody angry while practicing Aikido. The fundamental philosophy of Aikido is to dissipate your anger and the negative energy of your opponent. Using that philosophy has helped me to become a much calmer person. 

Less Focused on Fighting

When people usually talk about martial arts, they are focused on fighting someone. We want to overcome our opponent. You’ll probably hear in traditional martial arts especially, that the conflict that you need to focus on vanquishing is the inner conflict within yourself. 

While a lot of people say that Aikido is not very useful in a fight, I think that if you use some of the techniques in Aikido and surprise your opponent, you can probably overcome them, but that’s beside the point.

The point that I’ve realized about Aikido, is that I don’t need to fight anyone. But some people might say that you need to learn how to protect yourself, and you need to learn how to handle yourself in the street. I do agree with that sentiment, but at the same time, in the street, per se, there are no rules. So why would I use traditional martial arts to focus on street fighting? I would rather focus on self-improvement, and not fighting people in general. If it’s a fight, to win an argument, then I think it’s just ego anyway.

Exercise focused mobility

I had a discussion with my friend about this before. I was telling him how, I don’t care how muscular you are, but if you’re old, and you can’t move, it’s not useful. What I mean to say is that, if someone doesn’t increase their mobility with age, it becomes difficult for people's lives in general. 

While I would say that most martial arts focus on mobility for exercise, I would say Aikido focuses on that a lot more. You’re always moving around, with your training partner, and it’s really good cardiovascular exercise. Also, you are falling a lot because of the self defense techniques. Without getting too much into detail about the techniques in Aikido, I would say that Aikido does a really good job of helping you with exercises where you increase your mobility. Aikido just doesn't focus on the strength-building aspect of exercise.

Working together with others

By nature, I would say that Aikido is focused on working together with other people. Because it’s a partner exercise, you have to focus on the relationship that you have with your training partner. 

While other martial arts, for example, Karate, you can practice by yourself. In karate, there is a specific type of exercise called a kata, where you practice the form by yourself of Karate. In Aikido, there is no such thing. Also, you probably need to go someplace and do Aikido with a partner, if you want to do Aikido over the long term. 

Some people study Aikido by themselves, but they are very rare, and it’s really difficult to do so. That being said, you need to learn how to work with other people to do the techniques and exercises. 

Overall, I would say that Aikido is a really good mental and emotional philosophy for dealing with life. There are people in your life who you obviously may not want to work with, and unfortunately, you must be in that situation, for example at work. You can always choose to leave that situation with that person if you want to. 

If you have to work with somebody and they have a lot of negative energy, sometimes it’s useful to learn how to figure out which part of that relationship you need to have. All the rest of the negative energy, you can just get rid of it.

Aikido isn’t popular

Although Aikido is not probably the most popular martial art, I recommend it anyway. I had joked with my teacher about how in my country, most of the people that are in Aikido clubs, are probably over 50. I would say that Aikido is a philosophy as well as an exercise.

If you’re the type of person who wants to get rid of the negative energy in their life then Aikido is probably for you. If you’re the type of person who in the long run, doesn’t want to focus on fighting, then you could probably benefit from Aikido. If you are kind of a pacifist by nature, then definitely Aikido could be for you. Regardless of all of these different reasons, I think there is something in Aikido for everybody. Why do we need to focus on fighting all the time anyway in our daily lives? Life is too beautiful to be always focused on conflict.