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Re: Daily Applications of Aikido
I thought I’d give a shot at answering this question in a way that isn’t as silly as my last comment (and sorry for the double-post, but I guess there is a time limit on editing posts).
My feeling now, after having left Aikido, explored other things and come back is that I apply the same things that I apply in my daily life that I apply in Aikido. It is more so that Aikido puts a form on things I understand, or have realised with myself. Explaining that is going to be difficult.
What I saw in myself and other people when I started Aikido is that the difficulties I had and have doing the techniques well were, to some degree, a reflection of aspects of myself that I had been having trouble with. Fears, doubts, insecurities and all of that come right out in my techniques. They come right out in my life at times of pressure too. Just as events invoke all these issues, so too does having to do the different techniques on different people (especially that big foreign guy who gave me concussion in ’98 in Tokyo who even the teachers had trouble moving).
In a similar parallel, in my break from Aikido, I had chiropractic treatment. It wasn’t unusual for people to have a treatment and suddenly break down and cry as an emotion that had rooted itself in the body had manifest itself as a mis-aligned vertebrae. I did Emotional Freedom Technique and learned much the same thing about the body holding onto emotional energy as well. I realised that will power could overcome illness and it is possible to cure oneself (I just wish I was good at that, I’m not, and the foot I landed hard on still hurts over a week later, despite my best efforts at…oh never mind).
Most importantly I learned two things: Keeping your one-point is important, always. Once you “get it” physically then it is hard to move you on the mat if you don't want to move somewhere. Once you “get it” outside the dojo, events around you do not move you emotionally as they once did (not even that stupid ****** who decided to change lanes into the lane I was moving into in heavy traffic, almost causing an epic accident).
The trick is always being in that “I get it” one-point balance/focus all the time. That ain’t easy. The problem is that we aren’t always the same person with the same focus throughout the day. We are a different person at work, at home, with old high-school friends, browsing stuff we like in a store, or even when we drive a car. I found a way to work on these different personalities we have, similarly to the way I work on keeping my one-point in different techniques, some of which I’m reasonably good at (for where I’m at) and for the ones I’m not so good at. This is because I found that in an Aikido class these different aspects of myself can be invoked depending on the technique, as long as there are at least moderately more senior students there. It requires developing a degree of genuine conscious awareness even as one's personalities shift. Easier said than done. In my old class before I stopped I was one of the senior students, so I could hide behind my seniority and ability relative to the others to hide my fears. This was bad and I knew it and part of the reason I quit practicing all those years ago.
Like the chiropractor working on the body to re-align not just one’s physical well-being, but one’s physical/emotional/spiritual well-being, similarly by being “attacked” by my fears and learning to re-align and blend the negative and positive into something greater, I can use Aikido practice to work on my self and my life as a whole, applying “technique” within myself.
This is by far not a complete explanation
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