Enthusiasm flagging - pls help

I've been training in Aikido since last October and it's getting harder and harder to get up and get out to go to class at 7:00 pm. I used to go to class three nights a week (a 3hour class, and two 2hour classes) then I went for two nights a week and now I usually go just on Saturdays and now I'm feeling like just not going anymore. i hate feeling like this. I want to go but I just don't go when the time comes. I need motivation like some cool quotes or something. Thanks.

Hi !
Means you're getting close,in my opinion keep going, this is really also a spiritual training,your spirit is something that will get stronger this way and eventually will overcome your body.The devil loves quitters,
so maybe you have a real gift on the other side,this you will only find out if you keep going.
rock on - Chr.B.

You've hit your first plateau (as defined by George leonard). You probably feel like you're not making any progress, right? Well you are. you'll see if you stick with it and come out of that plateau (the first of many be warned).

Stick with it, if you like it. Otherwsie you're just like the 95% of people who start and quit, and there's no shame in that.

--Chuck

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http://www.playerhata.com/Videos/brian_fighting.avi

Hi again !
It's important that you decide on two days
(minimum) of attendance,and stick to it.
Your mind will always try to tell you :
not today,I need to heal from last times bruises,tomorrow,etc.
I don't know why but, this must be the nature of the mind,so even after now 7 years my mind does this 'til I step outside the door and head for the dojo,and when there it's gone, and so you train.
Til this day I haven't felt like I wanted to go,always slightly terrified,but again if you give in to emotions you'll never build stamina,when you develop a good routine you'll be able to tell your mind :
I ain't listening to you ,if you're trying to keep me from going out the door.
Yours - Chr.B.

Ah yes, the plateau, not wanting to show up anymore. Usually just beyond this plateau is another great level of new lessons.

Now your real training begins. Self-discipline comes from not really wanting to but making yourself show up anyway.

Its a choice we all have to make. Do you want to be a spectator or a particpant in life?

Until again, (for over 7.5 years at 3 times a week)

Lynn

I think that most of us have been there at some point, I remember in my early days, coming home from work, sitting down before going to keiko, and thinking, "too tired tonight, I think I`ll give it a miss today". Before I knew it, I hadn`t been for 6 or 7 weeks, very close to jacking it in. When I realized how easy it was not to go, and how much I had missed, I made it a point to force myself out of the door regardless. I soon found that once I was on my way, any feelings of being too tired or wanting a break, soon disappeared.

After more than ten years training at 3 times a week, I still come home from work sometimes feeling that I am too tired to train, and I know that if I go, the tiredness will soon disappear, but on occasion now I do take a night off (which also allows me some extra time with my toddler ). I am lucky to be in a place where I could train every day if I wanted too (and the family situation permitted). What I do ensure is that if I do take a night off from my regular schedule, I always make up for it by going to one of the classes that I usually miss.

As has been mentioned in other posts, it`s all really about the self discipline, if you push past it, a whole new world of training will present itself to you.

Go to a seminar.

Meet new people and see a larger slice of the Aikido world.

It's amazing how that can refresh your enthusiasm.

If you practice only once or twice a week, it's easy just to get busy with other stuff or just feel like too lazy or tired for training. If you practice 5-6 days a week (such as in my case), then it becomes addictive. The tiredness has nothing to do with it, I usually am very tired in the early evenings before class, but the moment I put my feet on the mats, I become a new person. The important thing is to get myself to the dojo, and I know I won't regret it once I can achieve it. I read somewhere that streniuous exercice releases some substances in the body which are addictive. Why don't you try to get your body to release such substances

When I was in high school I ran cross country. One of my team-mates was a nationally ranked runner and a great individual. One day before practice, when I was complaining about how tired I felt, he said, "The hardest thing about running is putting your shoes on."

He was right. Once I stopped being by own worst enemy by trying to convince myself how tired I was, and just put my shoes on and started running, I found that I was not nearly as tired as I thought.

I think the same thinking can be applied to aikido. Sometimes the hardest thing about training is just getting to the dojo and putting on our gi.

Personally, I just make going to practice as automatic as getting up and brushing my teeth in the morning. I never even start considering to miss practice unless there is a very good reason to do so.

Originally posted by mike lee Sometimes the hardest thing about training is just getting to the dojo and putting on our gi.

Very true Mike and I bet you that you have never in all your years training felt worse at the end of the seesion.

I find that the days you really don't feel like going are the very days that a good Aikido session does the most good - physically, emotionally and mentally.

Originally posted by jaxonbrown I've been training in Aikido since last October and it's getting harder and harder to get up and get out to go to class at 7:00 pm. I used to go to class three nights a week (a 3hour class, and two 2hour classes) then I went for two nights a week and now I usually go just on Saturdays and now I'm feeling like just not going anymore. i hate feeling like this. I want to go but I just don't go when the time comes. I need motivation like some cool quotes or something. Thanks.

Maybe you DON'T really want to do it. I have been teaching for a long time now and it has been my exeperience that all the pep talks, counseling and advice that I used to give people were really worthless. There might have been a short term change in theitr attitude but in the end they drifted away anyway. The folks that have stayed with it over the years have done so without much in the way of oustide help.

Aikido training is not for everyone. In my own case I took one look at the art twenty five years ago and was in the dojo the next week. Within a few months I was training six or seven days a week. Many times I have been frustrated. Many times I have questioned what I was doing and why. I have gone years at a time in which I wasn't sure anything was happening in my training only to have a sudden explosion and a quantum sudden jump in my level. But I could never stay away. The fact is that I love Aikido. There is simply nothing I have ever done that makes me feel the same way. I think that if you feel that way you will stay. If you don't you probably won't. And does it matter?

If Aikido is your Path you won't need a bunch of us fanatics to give you a pep talk about ways to motivate yourself. If it isn't then nothing we say will really make any difference.

Pema Chodrun in one of her books talks about the typical student who comes to Buddhist practice and is initially inspired and enthusiastic. They rave about how practice is changing their live and how much they love it. Nothing has ever been so amazing etc.

After some period of time, different for each individual. the student comes in and says that something is wrong with the practice, the teacher, the community, something. No longer is it the great and inspiring eneterpriase that had been so fantastic. Now it was losing its glow and wasn't fun. Then they quit.

I have to say that I was heartened as a teacher of Aikido to see that she found the same thing in Buddhism that I had in Aikido. I had thought it was something I was doing wrong. But no, it's simply human nature at work. What Pema Chodrun tried to tell the student was that all of their training up till that time was simply about reaching that point. That's when the training REALLY starts! Any real transformative work could only be done after they had hit that wall not when it was all new and fun and exciting but when they started to come up against their own issues.

You don't need anyone else to tell you this answer or to supply motivation that you say you are lacking. You already know the answer yourself. This is your decision and it doesn't matter at all what you choose to do. If you stop training fine. If you continue training fine. Just don't do it based on avoidance of things you don't want to do but rather on going towards that which you really want to do, passionately and with full commitment. Dinking around in Aikido is no better than dinkning around in anything else. Find something you love to do and do it. If it's Aikido then stop worrying about the difficulties and simply get yourself into the dojo. If you can't do that then you have your answer right there.

Should I stay or should I go?

Funny thing about that little question ... it spurs to do both.

Both I and my teacher have ask ourselves if Aikido had more to teach than merely learning the physical practical techniques that are the basis of mat practice?

He found Tai Chi. It opened his eyes to the depth of Aikido being so much more than meets the eye, and he found new interest after thirty years of practice.

I found new interest with pressure points, study in jujitsu, and finding the basis for ancient fighting arts from which Aikido was taken then modified into our modern practice.

Sometimes taking a side road puts you back on the path to Aikido, and sometimes it does not.

I don't know what your goal is in practicing Aikido ... or any martial art, but if you find yourself looking at the clock when you miss class ...

Good luck in finding what is right for you.

I would just throw in my $.02 and say that my bottom line is that I have never been sorry that I went to the dojo. As we used to say in the Army, "just say 'f___ it and drive on.'" F.I.D.O., baby.

True aikido is done in your Heart and your Mind, not your body.

I read somewhere that streniuous exercice releases some substances in the body which are addictive. Why don't you try to get your body to release such substances

It's called endomorphin Edward... the same substance those Predator Aliens sucked out of human brains back in the 80s. Lucky for you and me, Arnold did them over... otherwise all us aikido folks would have a field day doing ikkyo on all them aliens.

Originally posted by Ben_t_shodan True aikido is done in your Heart and your Mind, not your body.

Damn, you mean I can just stop going to the dojo and become an armchair aikidoka? Should've told me years ago.

If you're not physically training, you're not doing aikido. Developing your "Heart and your Mind" comes from physical training, not the other way around.

Aikido is not a set of "throws" or "techniques". It is a set of princibles.

A true Aikidoka is doing aikido all the time. even off the mat.

Some of the best Aikido Aikidoka i have ever met or seen dont pratice any more.the have not steped on the mat foe 3 or more years. But, they still have the Aiki Spirit. that is all that counts.

Thanks for the information

Are you gonna be at Sugano Shihan's seminar next month?

Originally posted by Abasan It's called endomorphin Edward... the same substance those Predator Aliens sucked out of human brains back in the 80s. Lucky for you and me, Arnold did them over... otherwise all us aikido folks would have a field day doing ikkyo on all them aliens.

Originally posted by George S. Ledyard Many times I have been frustrated. Many times I have questioned what I was doing and why. I have gone years at a time in which I wasn't sure anything was happening in my training only to have a sudden explosion and a quantum sudden jump in my level.

Amen!

I don't know if I've accomplished anything as exalted as the SHOSHIN folk so sanctimoniously intone we should adopt, but I don't suffer that spontaneous resentment anymore when stopped by a white belt. I'm annoyed, but with my attitude, not them; with the complacency I suddenly realize I've fallen into in thinking the I "have" this or that technique down.

You know that queasy feeling you get when you come up unexpectedly on a mirror in a department store and you see that without the usual prep and primping you don't look like Brad Pitt after all? I'm always finding that with my aikido. Train with a beginner, he doesn't know "how to lose" and my technique doesn't work. Train with a stranger, doesn't work. Change techniques from what the teacher showed and UKE expects, doesn't work. And then seemingly for no good reason, things suddenly--SUDDENLY--work and you're hitting the sweet spot every time.

I've come to be suspicious of when things are working: Doesn't my UKE trust me enough to resist?
----------------------

But I digress and Jun's going to transfer my post to a different thread (').

I certainly see the wisdom in George's response, but I want to know more about Mr. Brown's situation than he told us. In my own case, I've had my own high motivation deadened by poor teachers or a poor atmosphere for learning. Mr. Brown, WHY do you feel the way you do?

Do you honestly enjoy the benefits of training? The results you get?

Can you imagine what it would be like to miss training for the next two, or eight years? Or what you'd be like if you didn't quit and kept training? Jaxon with twelve years under his belt ... twenty??!

Jim23

Hope so Edward... be seeing you I suppose?

Originally posted by Abasan Hope so Edward... be seeing you I suppose?

Definitely

Originally posted by Ben_t_shodan Aikido is not a set of "throws" or "techniques". It is a set of princibles. A true Aikidoka is doing aikido all the time. even off the mat. Some of the best Aikido Aikidoka i have ever met or seen dont pratice any more.the have not steped on the mat foe 3 or more years. But, they still have the Aiki Spirit. that is all that counts.

Sounds to me like their spirit is lagging.

The physical principles you can only get through practice - so too with spiritual understanding. If practice isn't necessary why bother in the first place.

I feel like i cant get enough aikido, i used to do Karate and i lost interest within a few months but aikido seems to be fun yet challenging( some of those moves!)i find it really kewl it gets me out too and even though my wife is preggers it wont stop me i'm still gonna go (but shirk when sensei asks what that yellow stain is on the shoulder of my gi)

imagine at this stage your testing yourself can you make it past this period? consider it a type of grading are you good enough to proceed? you could always visit another Dojo and get a different view on aikido from a different Sensei worth a try?
pete