Finding Aikido – Reflections from Paul Linden

The following was sent through by Paul Linden Sensei, of Columbus Ohio.

“If someone had told me when I was in high school that I would spend my life teaching Aikido and body work, I would have said that they were genuinely nuts. I was a bookworm, not an athlete. In addition, the whole idea of spending time and effort learning how to fight would have struck me as evil. And body work would have been totally incomprehensible to me: I was interested in the mind, and the realization that the mind and the body were the same would have to wait many years.

It was 1969, and I was in the bookstore at the University of California at Berkeley. I was there to buy a text book on brain physiology for my graduate program in experimental psychology. Of course, I meant to pick up the book and leave, but I walked down the wrong aisle of the bookstore, and I became curious about the books on display. The shelves were piled with books for a course on the psychology of meditation. That struck me as strange, since the psychology faculty was so sensitive about the “mystical” elements in psychology and was trying to be totally scientific. In any case, I did register for the course, which was taught by a psychologist who had recently returned from a trip to Japan, where he had studied the art of Aikido with the founder, Morihei Ueshiba. What the instructor said about Aikido didn’t connect for me. But then on the last day of the course, he showed a film of Ueshiba fighting six American soldiers simultaneously. Uesheiba was in his late seventies at the time, but the soldiers couldn’t put a finger on him. He was never quite where the attackers expected him to be. I watched and something in me responded. The next day I dropped in at the Aikido club, stepped onto the mat, and began the practice.

In retrospect, I realize that I saw a film of a man who was awake. He was calm, perceptive, and purposeful. Though at the time I didn’t understand quite what I was seeing, I recognized that Ueshiba was awake, and that prompted a small awakening in me. At least, it woke me up enough to know that Aikido was a path I had to follow.

I remember a practice session in which I was working with my partner on a defense against a wrist grab. I said to my partner that in Aikido the defender is supposed to use the attacker’s own energy to control him. I remarked that I knew that I was supposed to go along with him, but I didn’t know what to go along with. That question became my koan.

The first element that I could think of to go along with was physical movement and momentum. I spent a lot of time trying to make my muscles soft so that my own inner tension would not cover up my attacker’s pulls and pushes. That small awakening eventually blossomed into the sensitivity to and awareness of body structure, body alignment, and movement organization. I found that the body awareness I was developing in Aikido could be practiced outside of Aikido itself in all the activities of daily life, and it improved every action I performed. Eventually, that sensitivity to body/movement became the foundation of the body work I do. And just recently, I have begun to teach no throwing/no falling Aikido classes, which offer the opportunity to focus on awareness training without the complexity and vigorous movement of a regular Aikido class.

The next element that presented itself was the attacker’s thoughts as they expressed themselves in his movements. I began to experience that underneath and in advance of the physical movements of the attack were the attacker’s attention and intention. He was paying attention to me in a structured manner, and out of that grew his intention to execute the specific movements of the attack. That led me to awareness of the thoughts and feelings that were hidden in my own movements, and it eventually blossomed into the sensitivity to and awareness of how body work clients’ feelings and meanings and purposes show up in their bodies.

Another element that presented itself was necessity of responding effectively to the attack. For all that Aikido is a meditation on harmony, I couldn’t simply stand there being harmonious. I had to do something! Or I would get hit. Going along with is not a passive yielding but instead is a very active process of discerning and fitting into the attacker’s movements. That understanding became important in how I structured my body work to include exercises in assertiveness and self-protection. I’ve often had clients experience that it was not enough to feel stuck feelings, or even to talk about them. The final thing that worked to release stuck feelings was to role play centered, powerful, loving actions which would have been effective and successful in the situations which produced the stuck feelings to begin with.

I also experienced that I had to keep practicing. Developing the ability to go along with that attacker is something which demands constant and unending practice. There are always subtler and subtler levels of awareness. However much insight I may have developed about my motivations and feelings, there’s always more. Once at a demonstration of my body work, a participant asked whether the results of a session would last. I said “Of course not.” Then I explained that the results of a lesson are not like the results of an antibiotic, which do indeed last. The result of a body work lesson is the knowledge of what to practice. And it is by incorporating practice into your daily life that you can create changes in yourself.

I think that in the end, the most fundamental understanding that I have gained through Aikido was the realization that practice is an unending process. Paul’s work focuses on the application in daily activities of an integrated mindbody state of awareness, power, love and freedom. “


PAUL LINDEN, Ph.D., is a body/movement awareness educator, a martial artist, and author. He is co-director of the Columbus Center for Movement Studies (
www.being-in-movement.com), at which he teaches Aikido, Being In Movement® mindbody training, and the Feldenkrais Method® of somatic education. Paul is the author of a number of books, among which are
• Feeling Aikido: Body Awareness Training as a Foundation for Aikido Practice.
• Comfort at Your Computer: Body Awareness Training for Pain-Free Computer Use.
• Embodied Peacemaking: Body Awareness, Self-Regulation and Conflict Resolution
• Winning is Healing—Body Awareness and Empowerment for Abuse Survivors.”