An Ugly Aikido Black-Belt Test

So why having passed and received compliments and congratulations from peers and mentors do I feel like crap? Because I know I didn’t do my best? Yes, and more than that, because pass or fail doing a beautiful test was the most important thing for me. I imagine the word “beautiful” is not one strongly associated with martial arts for most people, but this was the adjective my late teacher used when describing good aikido. Aikido has an ethical, connective and aesthetic dimension when it’s fully realised, anything less is not really aikido but shoving people around with muscle and trickery. Immediately after the test I trained with my old dojo-mate Polish Pete as a cool down. “Ah, now you’re doing your aikido again, what happened?” he said to me. What he was calling my aikido is to me precisely the opposite, ego-free relaxed, pure movement aikido not concerned with fighting or achieving results. During the test Mark and passing were in the way of this grace. You could say that under the stress of the exam I went down several levels of functioning, not so much in technical terms, but in this essential aikido nature. During the test I was on the surface quite calm, but after was stiff and tired, unusual for me, and despite being put through my paces disproportionate to the exercise.

Perhaps the devil of aikido, is it asks us not just to cope, but to soar beyond prosaic reactions, then puts the precisely the kind of pressure on us that makes us sink into our baser nature.