Hannah’s Aikido Origin

Aikido made its way into my dance training as a vague concept because of a dance form called contact improvisation which was initiated (some would say developed) by a dance icon named Steve Paxton. Paxton had a history of martial arts training and he used some of the principles he extrapolated from aikido (rolling, finding points of contact between bodies, redirecting energy, what to do with mass and energy coming at you with force, etc).

In this clip Paxton is performing contact improvisation with another dance luminary, Nancy Stark Smith, circa 1972. 

So. Although I had heard about aikido and practiced contact improvisation as a dancer, I had never done any martial arts and hadn't even watched any aikido, let alone taken a class.

Then I met Galen.

Because of my background with movement, I felt comfortable taking a few classes with him at TCAC (someone else was teaching). Galen quickly informed me that if I was going to really try out the art, I needed to commit on some fundamental level for a few months at least. 

I had my reservations.

But I took his input to heart and I gave it go. After some months I became pregnant with Alma and I wasn’t interested in training anymore at TCAC. Even after she was born, I didn’t return.

Fast forward a couple years. We open East Lake Aikido. I start training again. One month after we open the dojo, I am pregnant with Sky.

A huge part of my practice (when the dojo is open) is to cook dinner at 3pm, pack it up, wrestle the kids into carseats and then once we are there, constantly be pulled on and off the mat by their little hands. I’m gradually making my peace with this and feeling gratitude for impermanence and the potential for movement.

In my heart, the more I do aikido, the more I miss dancing and performing. It’s not the sort of thing that’s easy for me to explain and I won’t get into now but let’s just say aikido satisfies many of my dancer sensibilities and also pushes up against them in uncomfortable ways.

I enjoy being engaged in a physical practice. I like learning movements and feeling and sensing the movements of others. I like being in contact and falling and rolling. But I don’t consider myself to be very disciplined. I was raised Catholic and I’ve done enough personal inquiry by now to know that subsequently I have some serious reservations about authority figures and the partriachy - both of which I perceive as lurking in the shadows of aikido (let’s save further discussions of this for a future series of posts).

It’s not in my nature to get excited by people coming at me with a strike or a jab or a weapon. I didn’t grow up in a household where there was rough housing - at least not physical rough housing (certainly other forms of rough housing were present). I’m super resistant to getting pushed around physically, even playfully. 

I know that part of my personal practice is to find more physical play, more levity. I know that I can be very “cutting” emotionally actually so I suppose aikido is a good medium for me to re-channel some of that internalized aggression that I feel. I get angry with Galen often while I am training with him and I get tired of being my husband’s student. And yet I know I get angry with him because he’s the person I actually feel safest exposing those undesirable parts of myself to. 

My own internalized misogny has me undervaluing my labor, my worth and my contributions to the dojo community.  All the more reason to keep at it though, since I’d rather work on chipping away at what stands between me and growth than feeding that which no longer serves me.