I’ve been training and teaching Ki-Aikido for a few years now, a martial art that tries to combine conceptual principles with physical techniques, with a focus on relaxation, being in the moment, and applying these principles to your everyday life outside of the dojo. This last point is perhaps one of the most important, in that it separates Ki-Aikido from other styles of Aikido and other martial arts, at least to a certain extent. (For the record, I have done another style of Aikido sometime ago, and while there was some talk of applying things to real life, it was very rare.)
Having said that, saying you want to apply some sort of principle to your everyday life and actually doing that are two things that are often worlds apart. I actually wrote about this topic in this article around a year ago.
While I am gradually learning to be able to teach Aikido, including the principles as well as the physical aspects, I admit that I still don’t have a great collection of personal stories where I applied Ki-Aikido to my real life, at least those that are impressive or interesting enough to talk about.
In truth, a few years ago I did have such an experience, but for some reason while I have considered writing about it, I had hesitated and never actually put (virtual) pen to paper. In this article I have finally decided to write about it. Even though it isn’t a recent event, it is still vividly burned into my memory.
Roughly three or four years ago I was living in Tigard, Oregon, and taking a peaceful walk. Right as I was approaching a four-way intersection, a car came speeding in from the left and, without slowing down, attempted an abrupt right turn onto the road that ran about a meter or so to my right. He––I’m not for sure if it was a guy, but let’s just use this pronoun––ended up turning too far, and came barrelling towards the sidewalk that I just happened to be walking on.
At that moment, time seemed to stand still as I watched the car come speeding towards me, attempting to adjust course to center back onto the road. I felt a strange sense of calm as I watched, realizing that I couldn’t move faster than the car, and yet trying to walk away from the road to put even a little more distance between me and the vehicle.
A split second later the car bumped into the curb a few meters in front of me and then managed to straighten out and continue down the road, eventually turning onto a side street.
At that point I was still filled with an odd sense of calm and thought to myself something like, “Well, sometimes even things like this happen.” (I might have actually been thinking in Japanese at the time: こういうこともあるさ) There just happened to be another pedestrian on the far sidewalk, and I believe he had made some exclamation, or at least gave me the impression he was upset or riled up from seeing this dangerous driver, to which I literally shrugged and smiled.
To be honest, I don’t think the few inches I moved at that critical moment are what made the car avoid me, but what was surprising was how calm I was through the whole thing, and just accepted reality as it was. Right after that I just continued on my daily walk as if nothing unusual had occurred.
Even now I wonder: had I never done any training in Ki-Aikido, would I have acted any differently? As with many experiences in life, you can never experience the same exact thing twice, so I doubt I’ll ever know that. I might have panicked, causing undue stress, heck I might have even tripped while trying to escape and got a bruise or scrape.
I have a strong feeling that my training did affect how I felt on that (mostly) normal day, though. One reason is that we sometimes do an exercise where we ask one person to attack, and the other person says “now” whenever they feel the other party begin to attack, or even begin to have the intention to attack. There is something undeniably similar between that exercise and my experience that day.
Actually, I have had a similar, but less dramatic experience several times before. Normally it isn’t worth talking about on its own, but since it’s related I’ll mention it here. Sometimes when moving around in the kitchen with one or two other people trying to move around, I also feel like I am doing that “now” exercise, and it feels like I can avoid bumping into others with ease.
I talked about this a bit in that other article I referred to, but I feel the best way to help make the jump from the mat to the real world is by training enough so that you start building these things into your subconscious. Meditating at home and also doing things like studying Ki Aikido (via books and videos, etc.) can also probably help to get this stuff deeper into your mind.
While some of what I applied in that experience could be called “reaction time”, really the key (or “Ki”) thing was being able to maintain calm and act confidently, something we describe as “keeping one point”. For the more spiritual and philosophical minded out there, we also sometimes refer to this as “being one with the universe”.
For the average person, at least for adults, I think getting the Ki-Aikido principles and other related things deep into your mind can take years, if not decades. (Don’t let this deter you from training though, since I think you’ll reap some benefits soon after starting.) Depending on your training frequency and intensity, I think many adults can get a black belt in 5-10 years, but some people reduce their training frequency after getting their black belt. It’s those that keep training after their black belt who seem to really understand these things on a deep level.
I will continue to look for places in my everyday life where I can apply Ki principles. If you train in any type of martial art, how have you applied what you learned to your life?