Sensei Berry on Aikido

November 20, 2008 is when I start my 70th year on the planet and my 25th year studying Aikido. I remember ten years ago my senior Leon Brooks Sensei stating that 60 years old is perfect for practicing Aikido. He was correct. The aches and pains didn’t last as long back then. I still get thrown by my students now and then but I could handle the falls much better back then. Of course Leon was talking about 60 year old students as opposed to much younger students.

However, as I am entering my 70th year, my understandings come a little clearer and quite a bit deeper. Principles tend to stick out a little more prominently now. Though they tend to be mystified by how I do it, I’m able to see lines of progression and continuation when my students are executing techniques. I still have to work at some understandings, but not nearly as hard as before. As I teach advance concepts I find myself going back to the basics more now. You realize of course that there’s no such thing as advance techniques, just combinations of basic principles. And I’m more patient with others now. The exception is my lack of patience with stupidity. That has not changed, which shows, obviously, that I’ve not evolved as much as I’d like.

Looking back at all the students who’ve left the dojo I sometimes wonder whether they would have stayed if I had been softer and easier on them. Which is an odd thought when the comments from some of my old Ji Do Kwan students is that I have softened my approach to training since I’ve been in Aikido.

It is a little discomforting that many of my contemporaries are no longer here and many who are have damaged or broken bodies. I don’t know if it’s genetics, living properly, training properly, positive thinking, or just plain luck, that I am in relatively good health. I do know, or at least I feel, that my search for mental and spiritual training has had a positive effect on me. I’ve always felt, even in the beginning, back there in the sixties, that something was missing from the training I was given.

It’s getting a little bit clearer.