The challenges of applying Ki Aikido principles in daily life
Training and teaching Ki Aikido is a big part of my life, and if you have been reading this blog over time you’ve probably already seen a few articles on it. If you haven’t, you can get a quick introduction here, or look at a list of articles here.
In this article I want to go over a topic that I haven’t focused on much before: applying Ki Aikido principles (or simply “Ki principles”) in daily life. I’m targeting readers that are already into this martial art, but if you are interested in learning more about Ki Aikido this will give you some good supplementary information.
Perhaps one of the biggest fundamental differences between Ki Aikido and other styles of aikido is that applying many of the things learned on the mat in your daily life is a major focus. While I have seen some of this in other styles (I trained in another style of Aikido a long time ago), in my experience it’s a pretty big differentiation. However, I should also point out that depending on the teacher, there can be a big difference in how Aikido is taught. So it’s possible that there are Ki Aikido dojos where application in daily life is de-emphasized, and non Ki Aikido dojos where it’s emphasized.
Before talking about the application of Ki principles in daily life, let me introduce a simple principle that is also one of the most fundamental. It’s “keeping one point”, where “one point” is a place slightly below the navel while standing; this is our center both physically (a bit like our of gravity, though not exactly the same), and mentally. By focusing our attention to the one point (in Japanese 臍下の一点, “seika no itten”), we can stabilize and calm our mind and body, as well as unify them.
When performing martial arts techniques on the mat, we often say “get your one point” before starting, and then perform the technique while trying to maintain our one point. This is not only for the nage performing the technique, but also for the uke who is attacking and being thrown. But at the same time we avoid obsessing over the one point, and instead try to maintain the feeling of one point instead of explicitly thinking about our one point every second. We also practice getting one point before Ki tests, which are a somewhat scientific way to show the effectiveness of keeping one point. For longer exercises like jiyuu waza (free technique that involves five throws back-to-back), or even a belt promotion test, those participating should maintain one point from start to end
But in this article I want to focus more on how to apply a principle like this in our daily lives. Even though in my main dojo we talk about how to apply the concept of one point and other principles in daily life, the fundamental problem I see is that inside the dojo and outside the dojo (in other words, the real world) are very different places. The dojo is a controlled environment, where generally (hopefully!) we train with people that we enjoy training with. There are many fewer variables and distractions than in the real world.
So even if we can keep our one point very well in the dojo, once we go home it’s easy to forget about all of this completely and just fall back into your old habits.
In this specific case, the steps to apply the principle are pretty simple. When something happens that makes our one point go up (which basically means we get nervous, excited, or upset––notice that “upset” contains the word “up”), we should be aware of that and try to lower our one point. We can try to do a meditation (like “bigger bigger” or “smaller smaller”) or a breathing exercise (Ki breathing), and those may help things work better. But I feel the biggest problem is that we don’t have a trigger to remind us to do this in the middle of, for example, a heated argument in daily life.
Many years ago I used to study and attempt lucid dreaming (the practice of becoming consciously aware in your dreams), and to me this is a similar concept. I think the answer to both of these problems is the same: getting it somehow in your subconscious so you can act in the moment without having to consciously think about it. That’s because ultimately much of our behavior is done on auto-pilot instead of logically thinking through each and every action.
Making anything unconscious can take a great deal of time, but I think the more serious practice we put in, the better chances we have. A lot of training in the dojo can help us get these principles ingrained, but it’s not enough.
Doing meditation in “real life” (say when you wake up, or go to bed) is a good way to help mix these two worlds and get Ki principles (or anything else) into your subconscious. You can either reflect on what you will do if a problem occurs, or reflect on what problems occurred and what you could or should have done about them. By repeating this daily you can become more self-aware, and learn to coordinate mind and body better (one of the other central principles of Ki Aikido).
I also think that talking in the dojo about actual examples of applying Ki principles in daily life is a good way to help facilitate the process. From what I have seen, the more experienced senseis often talk about personal application of Ki principles in their lives, but the lower-level students tend to just listen and not talk about their lives as much. During COVID a few years ago, we had online meetings and did something called “jissenkai” (実践会, meaning “meeting [for] practical application”) which is basically a way of going around the (virtual) room and sharing experiences about daily life that relate to Ki principles. While I always enjoyed those, some other students seemed less excited about them (though I totally understand since talking about yourself can be embarrassing or uncomfortable for a variety of reasons). Unfortunately, now that we have mostly ended online meetings and train primarily via in-person––which itself is a great thing–– we have stopped doing jissenkai.
Reading or watching Ki-Aikido related things at home is another way to connect these two normally disparate worlds. You can even try to teach your family some of the principles. For me, since my son does Aikido with me it’s been much easier to bridge the gap. I sometimes have a different problem: being told by family members that I’m not extending Ki enough at home. (:
Personally, I have a few stories about applying Ki principles in my life that I’ve been meaning to write articles about, and I hope to get those out in the next month or two.
Besides the “trigger” problem, the other issue I see is that it can be hard to know if you have applied a principle correctly. For example, you may have become aware you were upset, tried to keep one point, and yet things still didn’t go well. Part of you might doubt that you did things correctly. But I think it’s important to separate your actions (including internal actions like calming down) from how things turned out in the end. Since you never know what would have happened if you didn’t keep one point, it’s hard to say if the result was any better or worse. It’s important to realize that you did try to keep one point, which is probably an improvement from your usual behavior, and in most situations being calm is a good thing.
You can share such experiences with others and ask for feedback, but ultimately you have to learn to be able to judge yourself regarding whether you actually did your best to apply Ki principles, and what you could have done better.
It’s important that you also have reasonable expectations about the benefits of what Ki principles will do when properly applied in your life. One of the overarching goals of Ki Aikido is to enable you to use your abilities to their fullest extent, to quote a nostalgic phrase: “be all you can be”. This also applies to your everyday life; for example, keeping calm can help you act properly and make the right decisions when the moment comes. In the best case, you may achieve something like the “zone” that sports athletes refer to, when you seem to have a heightened sense of awareness, and possibly even intuition. But this doesn’t give you God-like abilities, and even in the best case your problems will not automatically be solved. You will still have to try, and you might still fail. But when all things are said and done, you know you truly did your best, as opposed to letting anger cause you to act rashly, resulting in a critical mistake.
Ultimately, I think there are some people who train Ki Aikido more for the physical aspect, and some who train more for the mental aspect. There’s nothing wrong with having different reasons to train, but for the long term I think if you don’t really buy into the Ki and mental aspects, you’re losing out on what is one of the major advantages of this style of Aikido. Fortunately, I think as a Ki Aikido practitioner gets older, it’s more likely he or she will de-emphasize the physical and seek out the more abstract and esoteric aspects of Ki Aikido. One reason is that as we grow physically weaker, it’s hard to rely on things like muscle strength, whereas using Ki and keeping one point can allow us to break barriers and achieve things we couldn’t do at a younger age.
An interesting side point, after a certain level of black belt (I think san-dan or yon-dan), there is no longer any physical waza test. Instead, promotion is by recommendation, based more on how the student has applied Ki principles in his or her daily lives. While your sensei is probably not following you around all day to check on what you are doing, over the long term an observant sensei should be able to get a feel for how things are going for students outside of the dojo. (To be honest, I’m still not sure how this requirement works in practice, but this is my guess.)
If you train in Ki-Aikido, please leave me a comment about how you have applied any of the Ki principles in your daily life.