Me
I never practiced anything besides walking and riding the bike, I’m not particularly tall or muscle-cut, I don’t have an excellent cardiac rhythm, the same goes for breathing, I don’t have much physical endurance etc. In short, I’m not exactly what you’d call ’suitable’ for a sports person, even less for a martial arts practitioner. Moreover, since I was a kid I didn’t like the idea of ‘moving’ too much and in high-school I did my best to obtain false medical certifications that would call me ‘inapt’ for participating in the physical education classes.
Martial what?
However, as most people, I always had a respectful attitude towards the martial arts, perceiving this field as ‘occult’ or ‘mystique’ from all the stuff I’ve seen and heard about it. Before starting Aikido, all I knew on martial arts was to distinguish if a certain movie clip featured Karate, Judo or Taekwondo moves.
How it all started
So how and why did I start training in Aikido?… I kept thinking about this over and over, and I’ve come to realize it’s not so much of a ‘fortunate random thing’ as I initially thought (I’ll come back later to this point, in a future post, as I feel there’s much to be said on this).
At work I had a colleague we were all making fun of when he was telling us he used to wake up two days per week at 6 a.m. in order to get to the Aikido class in the morning, before arriving at work, just (as we thought, more or less serious) from the masochistic need to put if not his life, well, at least his body integrity in great danger. And then he was aching all over for the next 3 days, until the next Aikido class, and so on. While he tried to explain to us that Aikido, just like any other martial art, is much more than just physical exercise and that it can help you in many fields of your life, …we were still laughing. This went on for a few months until I finally began to be interested in Aikido, so I started reading a little and watching a few demos and techniques on youtube. Then my interest grew and… one morning I went with him at the dojo. And continued ever since :)
Training? No, wait… I can’t
It “caught me up” almost instantly once the great step forward was taken, that is actually going to the dojo.
However, before doing this, my greatest fears were:
- “I’m too lazy to do anything physical”;
- “Even if I’d overcome my laziness I’m not ‘made for’ physical activities”;
- “Any martial art encompasses a lot of violence”;
- “If martial arts are violent in nature, then martial arts practitioners must be violent too. They’ll be harsh on me and they’ll break my wrists.”
Yes, well, as stupid as it may sound, this is what I thought at first. And from what I’ve seen at the people who only have a vague idea (such as I had) on martial arts – the kind of people that think martial arts are just some fancy sports and very effective killing methods :) – the general idea is somewhere around the points I was making out to myself before even entering the dojo for the first time.
The first contact
This was a first lesson for me, on being open minded (and maybe a bit curious). Otherwise I wouldn’t have gotten in the dojo in the first place. The sense of “Aikido community” that I got once meeting the people there surprised me in a positive manner. And, although I was still inner trembling with fear at the thought that I can’t do this, I can’t do that, I’m not flexible and my wrists might go crack! at the slightest innocent twist, I agreed not only to sit and watch, but I joined the regular class while attentively following everybody’s indications. After two hours, I was firmly convinced that my perception was wrong, that it’s easy to imagine things on martial arts training for instance, without being directly involved, and have a totally wrong general picture. Yep, those people definitely knew how stiff and clumsy a beginner is and – wow! – they were actually very friendly and helpful.
If you really want to do something…
One of the next lessons I learned is that the mind of the human being is such a… complex and wonderful thing! Given the right stimulation and a constant motivation, it can change the person to a very large extent. This is what happened to me, when I realized that if I really want to do something, then I need to put up everything in my “arsenal”. So, when taking the decision to keep going regularly (initially 2 times per week) at the dojo, I had to overcome my laziness, I had to modify my biorhythm in order to wake up early in the morning (I always preferred staying up at nights until 2-3 a.m.) and, most important, I had to overcome my own limitations: the uncertainty, the skepticism, the negative perspectives and the “I can’t” thing.
Until now, I see I made a progress… having my attitude change this way. Hopefully, this is a “to be continued” thing.
As I said earlier, I don’t stand out for being exceptional, at anything. I’m not a quick learner, I don’t have good physical capabilities, I’m not tall, I’m not strong etc. But I have something that not everybody has: a rock-solid like will when focusing on something that I really want to do or to achieve. This personality trait never stops amazing me… but it’s a good thing. The truth is that nobody will ever be able to help you if you are not willing to help yourself first.
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Well, that’s that. A long and boring post on how I started practicing Aikido. Still, I feel I’ve still got lots to tell regarding the little “wars” that took place in my plain and untrained beginner mind. This is why blogs are good for, after all.
