Last night Ritchie, my godson Rory and myself attended our first Aikido class at Dinton near Ayelsbury, England. To start I would like to thank the members of that club for the very warm welcome we received. We will definitely be going again !
But what on earth is an article on Aikido doing in a horsemanship blog ? As it turns out a huge amount.
Aikido is a non-aggressive martial art which concentrates on avoiding conflict. If attacked then the defender uses the ideas of Aikido to deflect the attack, use the attackers energy to defeat themselves and do all possible not injure the attacker.
What was interesting was the very light forces that were involved by the defender to achieve their aim, often it was the back of the hand that just pushed lightly on the attacker, throwing them off balance and depositing them gently on the floor.
Talking of being deposited on the floor, we were told "the mat is your friend, you are going to spend a lot of time on it and getting back up off it! ". This was very very true, for two hours I spent more time on the floor than I have since I was a young kid !
The first part of the session concentrated on how to roll properly, forwards and backwards. Apparently it takes anything up to 18 months to get really proficient at this, by which time you can be thrown to the floor from a good height and be unharmed. A useful skill for riding in itself and one which one of the club members said he had had to use in the past, getting up with no injury at all.
We then joined in with the rest of the club and learned to perform several techniques to overcome various attacks. All performed in slow motion as we tried to learn the complex sequence of moves required to get the correct result. There is a lot of emphasis on slow and right, rather than quick and wrong. As one of the members pointed out to me "if you do it to quickly you can mask many holes in your technique". Sounds familiar for horsemanship as well.
The inspiration for getting invloved in Aikido comes from Mark Rashid who practises the art and also runs Aikido for Horsemanship workshops ( http://www.markrashid.com/ ). He emphasises the ideas of not fighting the horse, but using their energy and redirecting it in a constructive direction. For example if the horse tosses its' head don't just tie the head down with bits of leather, that just masks the problem. In a clinic I watched he got the lady with the problem horse to not fight the head toss, but redirect it. When the horse threw its' head up she was told to just turn the horse using a direct rein. Thus the energy of the head toss is just directed into a turn, useless energy becomes useful energy. After around ten minutes of this the horse stopped tossing its' head and walked around with lowered head and a slightly puzzled look on its' face as it realised that its' previous tactics to evade the bit no longer worked.
Mark also emphasised the ability to breathe properly from the diaphragm whilst riding. Many people lock up and this creates a brace in their lower body which results in a lock up in the hips of the horse. Many of the riders at his clinic improved dramatically just by breathing properly. I heard this so many times last night at the Aikido class. At times I was told to stop a roll and get my breathing sorted before continuing over.
One last, but major, similarity was the concept of intention. It was astonishing to me that when I was playing the part of the attacker, just a shift in the intention of the defender would deposit me gently on the floor. There was one technique where the intention of the defender moved from my belly to a point on the floor behind me. With no other discernible change I found by back bending gently backwards, my knees bending and I arrived in the spot the defenders attention had shifted to. That rings all sorts of similarity to horsemanship bells in my head. Being able to shift ones attention to the place where you wish horse to be, rather than on where the horse is, seems like following a focus and feel to me.
Thus, to me, it seems that this gentle (and it was very gentle) art has a lot to offer to horsemen and I look forward to studying it further.
On an aside I described Mark Rashids work to the instructors last night and they were very interested in the concepts, and immediately understood the similarities. One even related that a friend in Scandinavia had used Aikido to tackle reindeer, land them gently on their backs for veterinary procedures.
But what on earth is an article on Aikido doing in a horsemanship blog ? As it turns out a huge amount.
Aikido is a non-aggressive martial art which concentrates on avoiding conflict. If attacked then the defender uses the ideas of Aikido to deflect the attack, use the attackers energy to defeat themselves and do all possible not injure the attacker.
What was interesting was the very light forces that were involved by the defender to achieve their aim, often it was the back of the hand that just pushed lightly on the attacker, throwing them off balance and depositing them gently on the floor.
Talking of being deposited on the floor, we were told "the mat is your friend, you are going to spend a lot of time on it and getting back up off it! ". This was very very true, for two hours I spent more time on the floor than I have since I was a young kid !
The first part of the session concentrated on how to roll properly, forwards and backwards. Apparently it takes anything up to 18 months to get really proficient at this, by which time you can be thrown to the floor from a good height and be unharmed. A useful skill for riding in itself and one which one of the club members said he had had to use in the past, getting up with no injury at all.
We then joined in with the rest of the club and learned to perform several techniques to overcome various attacks. All performed in slow motion as we tried to learn the complex sequence of moves required to get the correct result. There is a lot of emphasis on slow and right, rather than quick and wrong. As one of the members pointed out to me "if you do it to quickly you can mask many holes in your technique". Sounds familiar for horsemanship as well.
The inspiration for getting invloved in Aikido comes from Mark Rashid who practises the art and also runs Aikido for Horsemanship workshops ( http://www.markrashid.com/ ). He emphasises the ideas of not fighting the horse, but using their energy and redirecting it in a constructive direction. For example if the horse tosses its' head don't just tie the head down with bits of leather, that just masks the problem. In a clinic I watched he got the lady with the problem horse to not fight the head toss, but redirect it. When the horse threw its' head up she was told to just turn the horse using a direct rein. Thus the energy of the head toss is just directed into a turn, useless energy becomes useful energy. After around ten minutes of this the horse stopped tossing its' head and walked around with lowered head and a slightly puzzled look on its' face as it realised that its' previous tactics to evade the bit no longer worked.
Mark also emphasised the ability to breathe properly from the diaphragm whilst riding. Many people lock up and this creates a brace in their lower body which results in a lock up in the hips of the horse. Many of the riders at his clinic improved dramatically just by breathing properly. I heard this so many times last night at the Aikido class. At times I was told to stop a roll and get my breathing sorted before continuing over.
One last, but major, similarity was the concept of intention. It was astonishing to me that when I was playing the part of the attacker, just a shift in the intention of the defender would deposit me gently on the floor. There was one technique where the intention of the defender moved from my belly to a point on the floor behind me. With no other discernible change I found by back bending gently backwards, my knees bending and I arrived in the spot the defenders attention had shifted to. That rings all sorts of similarity to horsemanship bells in my head. Being able to shift ones attention to the place where you wish horse to be, rather than on where the horse is, seems like following a focus and feel to me.
Thus, to me, it seems that this gentle (and it was very gentle) art has a lot to offer to horsemen and I look forward to studying it further.
On an aside I described Mark Rashids work to the instructors last night and they were very interested in the concepts, and immediately understood the similarities. One even related that a friend in Scandinavia had used Aikido to tackle reindeer, land them gently on their backs for veterinary procedures.
2 comments:
Hey Tim, I am just researching the idea of studying aikido as a way to further my horsemanship. Like you, I stumbled upon this through Mark Rashid's books, and I've been blown away just by the difference I've felt in myself after watching a couple of short videos with him--I want more!!! Thanks for this excellent post. I, too, study Parelli, and it looks to me like Mark's insights really complement some of the things that are under-emphasized in Parelli (like the idea of softness and re-directing "negative" behaviors). I think Parelli is great and Mark is great and together they are astounding. Can't wait to learn more about aikido, and hopefully take a clinic with Mark and find a local dojo. How's your own practice of aikido going?
When I get a chance to train my Aikido is going really well. Check out this very recent post for more details :)
http://fillybilly.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/aikido-at-jrfs.html
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