Re: Hungry for Aikido
For whatever reason, the average age in my dojo is mid-forties, beginners and senior people alike. (I'm 41, started when I was 39 and a couch potato.) If you come to aikido later in life, while the hunger is still there, neither your body nor your lifestyle can so easily adjust to training every day.
I do the four days a week that my dojo offers, and occasionally one more somewhere else; but for me, where I am in my life right now, the hunger to do more is a temptation rather than a virtue. Physically, I don't bounce back the way a younger or fitter person might--after a seminar I'm wiped out for days, and in danger of botching my ukemi if I train at all. Personally, I have a web of family and work obligations which deserve my attention just as much as aikido does.
Life is short, the art is long; everyone has to come to terms with that in their own way.
This week I'm looking at the Nevelius and Ostoff seminar, and at the schedule of my own dojo--put together that's Thursday through Tuesday without a break. I *really* want to do all that, but when am I going to hit the point of exhaustion where I'm a hazard to my own safety? (Monday, I'd guess. If I'm lucky.) I sure couldn't do this every week; my home-dojo training would suffer, and my personal life would too.
Mary Kaye
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