Aikido Strenghens Mind and Body

by Allison Grande

Thursday February 15, 2007

Typical martial arts classes teach students assertive ways to handle an attack against them. However, one Sarah Lawrence physical education class is teaching martial arts students that there is another way to respond to an attack.

“Aikido is a martial art of self-defense,” Aikido student Virginia Fumagalli said. “The way I explain it to people who’ve never heard about it is that you receive the energy of an attack and redirect it in a way that’s safe to you and your attacker. In order to do that, one needs to respect the attacker and be centered.”

Created in Japan by Morihei Ueshiba, Aikido is concerned with blending with an attacker by using the attacker’s energy to fight back instead of adding additional physical force to the altercation. Aikido training is mental as well as physical, emphasizing the ability to relax the mind and body even under the stress of dangerous situations. The concept of “ki,” the ability to harness onoe’s own poiwer or energy in a non-physical way, is important in this discipline, and one’s “ki” must remain focused in order to meet the attack with confidence and directness.

“Aikido is a martial art that’s mainly interested in harmony and non-conflict,” Aikido Sensei, the instructor, and second-year graduate student David Clark explained. “It’s purely a defensive martial art. The aim is to neutralize, not necessarily the attacker, but the attack, without blocking or striking so you end up redirecting the attacks into pins and throws and holds.”

The path to non-conflict proves informative and beneficial to students both inside and outside the class as students apply what they learn in the dojo (the training facility) to other aspects of their lives.

“Aikido helps tremendously with your confidence because when you’re on the mat, you’re there and now,” Fumagalli said. “It doesn’t matter who you are, where you’ve come from, or what your worries are in life, you have to be present in your body and in your mind, stay focused, and deal with what’s coming at you. This helps tremendously in finding yourself and keeping centered, which can really help if you start losing it with stress.”

“The ki training that we do in class can be really valuable because that part affects your life if you actually apply it to everyday activities,” sophomore Anna Thorn added.

“The philosophy of practicing the spirit of non-conflict is very bound up with the idea of not fighting with your attacker,” Clark explained. “Basically, it takes two people to fight, so if you can control your own desire to fight back and just remain calm, you take yourself out of the fight, and it’s easy to deal with your attacker. That sort of spirit you can take and apply to all sorts of other things in your life.”

Although there are supposedly 10,000 throws that can be created from different Aikido techniques, Clark is able to pick out a handful of basic throws to demonstate to the class. Students enjoy watching the demonstrations and learning different non-confrontational techniques.

“I like the demonstrations partly because different people from the class, even people who have never done it before, wil come to the front to demonstrate something, and it will work just because it does,” Thorn said.

Overall, Clark has been impressed by the intelligent, challenging questions his students pose to him each meeting. Ultimately, Clark hopes his students will come away from the class with a greater appreciation for the martial art.

“I hope people take away the idea of non-conflict from this class,” Clark said. “I want people to understand a little more about how their minds and bodies work and how they can go through the world without jumping to react to everything that happens. Aikido is not about pushing down your emotions, but rather how to control them. A lot of times something will happen to us, and we’ll immediately think that we have to push back and get angry, and then we’ll get caught up in that anger and hold on to that anger. However, usually that’s not the best way to deal with things. Really, I want to show people that there’s a way of navigating the world that allows for peacefulness, happiness, and passion being centered and that you can have a lot of fun doing anything you want.”

Aikido classes meet on Sundays from 12:00 to 1:30 this quarter in the Dance Studio at the Campbell Sports Center. Clark is planning on teaching the Aikido class next quarter as well.