2020 ... That year
​It's the end of 2020. I am tired, worn, distracted, spent. My body and mind feel like I've been on a marathon overseas flight that took off in March and hasn't yet landed. Periodically a constant, low-pitched humming noise breaks into my awareness. Not jet engines. Only the drone of the current rules of engagement that repeat constantly in my brain: mask, distance, hand-sanitizer.
To ground myself, I work to remember all of 2020. Starting with the pre-pandemic time when we were training in the dojo, when we shared strong grips and throws, and when we were about to celebrate our 50th anniversary. ​I remember the excitement and focus as we prepared for our big celebration and then how quickly everything changed.
We've come a long way since those first days of lockdown. We've found ways to keep training, to keep the Dojo open even though the doors are shut. In fact in 2020, despite the pandemic, not only did we do a lot of keiko, but we also held 1 yondan, 3 sandan, 2 nidan, and 2 shodan exams plus 5 Adult kyu tests and 5 Kids' Class kyu tests!
And, in case you are wondering, we are still planning to hold our 50th anniversary celebration whenever doing so is again safe!
Below is a short, 21st-century Journal of a Plague Year.
January through February - Pre-Pandemic Normalcy
For New Year's Day Training, we did a bunch of Kokyunage.
The dojo was filled with good energy! Sensei Scott Berg of Aikido of Alamo joined us.​
3 New Shihans announced: Hoa Newens Shihan, Kim Peuser Shihan, Bernice Tom Shihan​​​
Kangeiko 2020
Kumitachi and henka
1000 Bokken strikes
New Aikido Institute SWAG: The logo beer glass.
​Workshop with Kim Sensei included three Dan Exams
Eduardo Guardarramas, sandan.
Joshua Langenthal, yondan.
Scott Roberts, shodan.
Big kanpai after to celebrate Kim Sensei's new honorific title: Kim Peuser, Shihan
February/March: 50th Anniversary Preparation
Our 50th celebration was fast approaching: March 21st. The First Day of Spring.
Dave Lewin created a special logo and a Terrific Video, "The Oakland Dojo" for the event.
We had an amazing line up of guest instructors who were each important in our Dojo's history.
Event organization revolved around making room for all our visitors and guests. Not only finding additional parking and additional changing areas, we also needed additional space for all visitors AND their shoes.
Another focus was on clean up, painting, and prep.
Cleaning and fixing and painting
Seating Chart for Bento Lunch
​We investigated Bento options and designed a lunch seating plan.
Held rehearsals to work out the kinks in serving, eating, and cleaning up from lunch.
Rehearsals of greeting and directing guests to changing areas.
And we also began stockpiling provisions for a giant kanpai. ​
We gathered historical documents such as schedules, advertisements, photos, promotions.
Michal Zimring found that photo from Beth Hall's nidan test. Hoa and Kim were the Dojo Cho. The test was suddenly stopped because Beth had lost her contact. Uke and Sensei joined in the search.
We found several proposed ads for a marketing campaign created by Richard Levitt. Hoa and Kim had taken turns throwing and falling for the camera.
March 9: 50th Postponed. We tracked the novel coronavirus news closely as we were nearing the event day. Sadly, it became clear that due to Covid we just couldn't assure a safe venue for all sensei, students, alumni, and friends on 3/21. With heavy hearts, we postponed our long-awaited 50th anniversary celebration.
March 11: Dojo Closes. As the news continued to get worse, and phrases like "flatten the curve" and "social distancing" became part of everyday speech, our Board of Directors met and agreed that to assure the health and safety of our community, the Dojo would close until the situation was stable and safe.
March 15: California Lockdown. Four days after we closed the Dojo, the State of California ordered a Lockdown of all businesses.
First virtual dinner after lockdown
Stunned by the news, saddened by the lockdown, Dojo things went quiet for about a week.
But then we discover Zoom and had a chance to gather together at our first Dojo virtual dinner.
We began to schedule classes again but now via Zoom.
​April - June: Aikido during a Pandemic
Unable to meet at the Dojo, we established a virtual class schedule. Instructors broadcast Zoom classes from their living rooms, bedrooms, backyards, and kitchens.
Rather than one, central, beautiful shomen, we now had a distributed network of personal shomens to which we bowed when beginning or ending each class.
Many technical challenges were overcome: WiFi not strong enough, picture freezing, voice freezing, Zoom crashing, lighting (... and how do you get your feet as well as your head in the shot at the same time???).
Additional adjustments included learning how to demonstrate a technique with an invisible uke.​​
A Home Shomen
Creative ethernet cord management
Some good news: we get to meet everyone's dog or cat via Zoom.
Our Kids' program kept going, too.
Led by Zoe Laventhol with help from Josh Langenthal, Susan Martinez, and Cathy Garrett, our kids kept training and took their kyu tests in June.
Simona and her yoga cat
July - Our First Pandemic Dan Exams
Determined to keep moving forward, we scheduled our first pandemic Dan exams via Zoom for Cathy Garrett, nidan, Simona Balan, nidan, and Zoe Laventhol, sandan.
Socially distanced, masks on, invisible ukes only.
For Zoe and Cathy, a location on the Oakland waterfront provided a flat surface, space for camera, monitor, and camera operator as well as sufficient space to maintain distance. For Simona, her living room transformed into a small dojo in which she did her test.
We discovered another perk of virtual tests: remote visitors. Kim Sensei and Kathy Montgomery Sensei were able to attend via Zoom from Mendocino. Simona's sister could attend via Zoom from Romania.
Hanging out after the tests. Socially-distanced. Masks On.
July to December: More training and more tests!
Learning the virus wasn't as much of a threat when outside, we maximized our training at Emeryville Marina and held some classes at other parks.
Due to the California forest fires that burned throughout the late summer, before confirming outdoor class times, we checked air.gov and adjusted locations based on the latest information.
Outdoor classes plus Zoom classes meant that by the end of 2020, we were offering 9 Adult Aikido classes as well as 2 Kids' classes and 1 yoga class every week.
Training outdoors.
2020 draws to a close
We ended 2020 strong with Kyu tests and Dan Exams
4th kyu tests for Ryan Silvan and Jeff Paris.
3rd kyu test for Alexis Keenan.
1st kyu tests for Kirsten Williams and Randy Seifert.
Shodan exam for Mocha Shelton.​
Sandan exam for Michal Zimring.
​Other Dojo Updates
Lots of new FDA-approved cleaning products are now on site at the Dojo, ready for whenever we're able to re-open.
We've added a QR code on our lawn sign that we display when we train outdoors. Passersby often stop, watch, then use their phones to get info on the Dojo.
​Even More SWAG: An AI facemask!​​
2020 Ends
As every year before it, 2020 ended on December 31st. We hoped the pandemic would end on the same day, but it has not.
I'm happy to report that our Dojo's spirit stays strong. We are blessed with a committed core of students who are dedicated to the art of Aikido.
We continue to maintain social distance, wear masks, and to train outdoors or virtually.
​And we look forward to the time when we're back inside the Dojo throwing and falling on our beautiful mat.
December 31, 2020: The shomen decorated for the upcoming New Year.
Adaptation and the Journey (Dan Essay)
by Cathy Garrett
​Ai-ki-do is the Way I had never imagined.
One day I was given a gift certificate for four classes. I put off attending.
"You'll like it", she said.
I had never wanted to fight. The "martial" part of "martial arts" was the bit I was cool on.
"The Aikido Institute looks like the real deal", she said; "a long history and it's a not-for-profit, so they are in it for the love of the art."
I sat and watched a whole Aikido class before I attended one. With suspense she asked, "What was it like?". After I'd attended it, I was immediately cognizant of the role of the fourth dimension - Time. The hook was set.
​The scale of time, in aikido, runs the gamut from the transitory moment of weight-shift during kokyu ho to the unending journey of aikido practice itself. The experience of a test is a marker somewhere on this time-line of continuum. During my recent test preparation, I mused "How did I get here?"
As a beginner, I was open, receptive, and continually surprised, first by the techniques themselves, second by what they promised, and then on occasion when they worked. I came to aikido as an adult who was neither the youngest nor the oldest in the dojo. My mind was immediately engaged, it made me want to know more. The physical joy of rolling made me radiant.
Practice, it turns out, is a remarkable thing. With skilled and warm-hearted guidance, what is strange reveals a certain logic. First it becomes less strange, then alluring, then, like a difficult puzzle, engrossing. Learning with a beginner's openness, I was trying to connect with the place from which techniques flow.
​Everyone around me was learning too, and helping each other to learn. Little by little I worked on assimilating the techniques. It's funny how as your knowledge grows, so too does your lack of knowledge.
Shifts in ability and understanding are based, in part, on adapting. Adapting initially to unfamiliar ways of moving, then adapting to partners whose bodies are larger, stronger, older, more fragile or more slender, and perhaps sometimes obstructive to a specific practice. As a white belt I avoided practicing with a few individuals because I was intimidated by their dimensions. Then, after a time, I sought them out for the same reason, because of the challenge of their size.
​"Adaptation" is defined as "a change, or the process of change, by which an organism or species becomes better suited to its environment". By receiving the Senseis' teaching, generously offered, I gained the appetite for greater challenge. The concept of the phrase "better suited" from this definition is not about a destination but about a path. It hints at the continuum of improved ability through time and ongoing adaptation.
I've been reflecting on my aikido experience as my knowledge and rank have changed. Regular training at the dojo remains the foundation, attending seminars offers new perspectives, learning from highly diverse and skilled Senseis, and of course adapting to other groups of aikidoka.
​I've been lucky to be able to attend a range of seminars and dojos in the Bay Area, Tahoe, Washington DC, Sydney, Viterbo, Bolsena, Berlin and a couple of weeks in Iwama. These experiences, adapting to other groups, plus a healthy dose of binge-watching Saito Sensei, has helped expand my horizons. Helped me to adapt.
It is a beautiful sensation when something clicks in a moment of insight, during classes, a seminar, or through the month-long pre-dawn weapons practice during Kangeiko. When an abstract notion comes into focus in the spotlight, it seems to glimmer like a pearl. Before Covid, after class someone would occasionally say "that was fun and really clarified something for me", and it seemed they too were glimpsing a treasure.
In these times of Covid-19, adapting has taken on a greater significance.
​The way of Covid means imagining your partner, their energy and extension. Working to feel and envision them as they move; trying to intuit the dimension and position of their hand, wrist, or elbow as you grip it. Sometimes that fell into place. Other times, usually in motion, I found I would lose where they were and be left not able to capture their energy. I was sometimes frustrated by the absence of the partner's presence. There were moments when it could be baffling. I tried to remain open and receptive to what this new context ​had to teach. Movement and flow of a technique without a partner allows you to concentrate on balance, the shift of weight, and the precise sequence of the maneuver. With intense practice, the focus sharpened and comfort with an increasing range of techniques emerged. New patterns formed, founded on the learning of the past, but with an utterly new zeitgeist.
Conditions that change constantly require adaptation. Having a partner is a luxury. On the other hand, aikidoka offered to meet to train together at a distance. Their readiness and support was tremendously valuable. This kind of coming together is perhaps the very definition of community. A side benefit was a growing familiarity with the parks of Oakland, Berkeley, Emeryville and El Cerrito where we met. The persistence of encouragement was boundless and uplifting and I am grateful for it.
Now, newly woven into the evolving fabric of my aikido experience, is the imperative to adapt. Whether compelled by Covid or embraced as broadening a perspective, this is our collective milieu.
- Cathy Garrett, Nidan, Aikido Institute
*This article was submitted for a Nidan test taken on July 26, 2020 ... through Zoom. Students of the Aikido Institute must submit Aikido-related essays as part of the dan testing requirements.
Aikido in 2020 Vision (Dan essay)
by Simona Balan
Sheltering
It's 2020, a couple months before my nidan test, but it might as well be 1989. There are long lines at grocery stores, food shortages, curfews, a wannabe-dictator with an insatiable ego, and here I am in Emeryville, California, wondering if one of the many heavily armed police officers chasing people right outside my window might accidentally shoot me. ​
Back in 1989, when I was only four years old, Romania was in the midst of ousting its totalitarian government. For a couple weeks I couldn't go near the windows of our apartment in Bucharest. It wasn't safe. The bullets could find me there, like they found many others, some even younger. That violence lasted only a few weeks, but the fear of being near windows lingered with me for years, the kind of fear that makes it hard to move, think, or breathe.
Today though, the fear does not return. It left me back in 2014, a few months after I stepped into the Aikido Institute dojo on Telegraph Avenue one Sunday morning in early January. So I wonder, if aikido was able to heal my childhood trauma in just a few months, could it also heal our collective trauma? Might it help dissolve our fear of otherness? Might it offer us a way to emerge from our current predicament without further violence, trauma, and suffering? ​
​We've now been sheltering-in-place for half a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic that has divided our society even further, revealing the massive health inequities within and between countries and the deep-seated racism that underlines it all. Half a year since I last trained at the dojo, wore my hakama, rolled on the mat, or got to throw ukes. Half a year of aikido classes via Zoom. And the future seems more uncertain than ever, including the future of aikido itself. The pandemic has truly put us all to the test. But, like all great challenges, it is also a great opportunity. An inflection point.
O-Sensei said that "the world will continue to change dramatically, but fighting and war can destroy us utterly. What we need now are techniques of harmony, not those of contention. The Art of Peace is required, not the Art of War." O-Sensei's art, however, relies on artists to actualize it. So are we, practitioners of the Art of Peace following in O-Sensei's footsteps, up to the challenge that 2020 has laid before us?
A week before my Nidan test -which was to be held through Zoom, I almost gave up. I would freeze trying to demonstrate even some of the simplest techniques by myself, unable to recall where and how I was supposed to move. It felt like I had to relearn the whole curriculum, and time was running out.
This made me realize just how much I relied on feeling where uke's body was and responding to that. However, if I were truly one with uke during an aikido technique, I would know exactly where their feet are, how their hips are turned, what their hands are doing. That knowledge is absent from my mind-body because I have never gathered it.
Gathering that knowledge, I realized, requires filling up the space around uke and taking up the slack from both bodies. In other words, it requires internal power – the mysterious mind-body phenomenon found throughout martial arts (and yoga). As far as I understand it, internal power is generated not by using major muscles or joints but by concentrating everything in the center, which is known as hara in Japanese, dantien in Chinese, and dristi in Sanskrit. Tapping into our internal power involves relaxing all major muscles and transferring forces along myofascial continuities, the soft tissue connections inherent in our bodies. And, it involves splitting forces, such that movement extends in all directions at all times, simultaneously away from and towards center. This generates ki, that invisible energy that radiates through and throughout us.
I've felt what it's like when someone who has developed their internal power touches me. They instantly travel from our point of contact to my feet. Through that touch they know not only where every part of my body is in space, but also where I hold my tension, how I distribute my weight, and when I'm about to move.
As my yoga teacher put it, beginners take yoga, more advanced practitioners do yoga, masters give yoga. I believe it is the same with aikido. True masters give aikido. As nage, they give uke everything: a center, an axis of rotation, a perspective, a path to follow. And in return, they give up all tension within their own bodies, all the striving and reacting and fighting and overthinking and wanting, and all that other stuff that comes with a 'small self'.
Paradoxically, the past months away from the physical dojo have helped remind me that aikido is much more than throwing, pinning, and rolling. It's not just about learning how to move my body, where to place my feet, what to do with my hands, or how to more efficiently pin or throw uke. Practicing in the time of COVID-19 has challenged me to become more aware of the subtle aspects of aikido and to strive to further develop my internal power.
Since the beginning of the shelter-in-place, I've also been supplementing my aikido training with other internal power practices (for instance, Sally Chang's Qigong classes on Patreon), further studies in yoga, somatics, and myofascial anatomy (for instance, Shy Sayar's Eight Principles of Posture & Movement, Thomas Hannah's Somatics book, Tom Meyer's Anatomy Trains,), and even with going on walks, silent sitting, and cutting vegetables - all of which have helped me immensely.
The reality of the pandemic requires us to change how we practice aikido, but that doesn't mean it lessens our practice. Like O-Sensei said, "The Art of Peace should be practiced from the time you rise to greet the morning to the time you retire at night." He also famously said, "The Art of Peace begins with you."
Similarly, in an online talk after George Floyd's murder, Sally Chang explained that our first job as internal martial artists is "to make ourselves a safe person for other people to be around," so we can provide refuge to others rather than cause more harm. That, I think, starts with recognizing the role our actions and inactions play in the current state of our bodies, our minds, and even our world.
And we do play a role in the current state of our world, however difficult that may be to hear. If the COVID-19 crisis has shown us anything, it's that we truly are all connected. Unless we all can thrive and achieve our full potential for a healthy life, everyone's potential for living a healthy life is compromised.
Most of us understand this inherently, yet our own lifestyles may fuel these inequities. For instance, when I calculated my ecological footprint using this online survey, I was shocked to discover that if everyone lived the way I did prior to COVID-19, we would need no less than 2.6 Earths! Clearly, not everyone can live like this. Such unsustainable consumption patterns create suffering somewhere else, by depriving others of their most basic rights to a clean, safe, and healthy environment. Perhaps the coronavirus that keeps us away from the physical dojo is precisely what we need right now in order to turn inwards and begin to work on ourselves, from the moment we wake up until the moment we fall asleep.
Learn about the Story of Stuff
Perhaps now is precisely the time to remember that O-Sensei said that "True budo is to become one with the universe, not to train to become powerful or to throw down some opponent. Rather we train in hopes of being of some use, however small our role may be, in the task of bringing peace to [human] kind around the world."
When he said that "the Art of Peace is medicine for a sick world," he probably wasn't talking about nikkyo or koshinage. But could we apply the principles we learn through aikido technique to heal racial and social inequity, tyranny, war, climate change, pollution, biodiversity loss, hunger, poverty, pandemics, and other diseases that ail our world?
​O-Sensei taught that "there is evil and disorder in the world, because people have forgotten that all things emanate from one source. (…) The Way of a Warrior, the Art of Politics, is to stop trouble before it starts. It consists in defeating your adversaries spiritually by making them realize the folly of their actions. The Way of a Warrior is to establish harmony." But how can we help establish harmony in the world, without first finding harmony within ourselves?
Like it or not, we are all guilty of at least one thing we condemn in this world. Perhaps we need to start by observing and understanding all parts of ourselves without judgment, without more violence towards ourselves, but rather with utter peacefulness, compassion, and loving-kindness. What happens if we sit with that discomfort of embracing every single part of ourselves?
And I wonder, how much power could all aikidoka around the world, working together as one, generate towards peace? What happens when we give up all fighting within and amongst ourselves so that we can give aikido to the world? Can we, practitioners of an art dubbed "the Art of Peace," become the myofascial continuity that generates a new center and axis of rotation for humanity at the COVID-19 inflection point?
I think all those aikidoka from different styles, ethnicities, and nationalities who joined the virtual Aikido Summer Solstice Seminar in June 2020 demonstrated that we not only can, but we are already beginning to. And that gives me hope. But we have a long and difficult road ahead of us that will continue to test us in unexpected and unprecedented ways.
Back in 1989, a poem called "Awaken, Romanian," became Romania's national anthem at that inflection point. It called on us to awaken from our deadly slumber and, now or never, forge another fate for ourselves. Now in 2020, we are once again being called on to awaken, not only to the ways in which each one of us has contributed to the current environmental degradation and human suffering, but also to our duty to build a kinder, more equitable and peaceful tomorrow. And that call rings especially true for us aikidoka, just as it does for other internal martial arts practitioners.
​If not for that, then what are we training for?
So awaken, aikidoka. Awaken.
by Simona Balan, Nidan
*This article was submitted for a Nidan test taken on July 26, 2020 ... through Zoom --a first of its kind for the dojo. Students of the Aikido Institute must submit Aikido-related essays as part of the dan testing requirements.