5 Steps to Learn and Progress in Aikido
I am listing five steps that have helped me develop my Aikido:
Put your ego in a box – is to practice remaining humble and with humility.
Learn with beginner’s eyes – always be receptive and take in new things you did not know.
Practice joyfully – embrace the present or ‘now’ moment and enjoy feeling the technique whether you are Tori or Uke and the interaction with your partner all with a good heart from inside.
Practice seriously – Aikido is a Martial Art so it should be studied thoroughly in every details to get the techniques working. If the technique has failed it isn’t because of Aikido, it is simply that you have not got the technique correct.
Use your mind, body and spirit when you perform any techniques so that you are focussed on the movement you are performing. When you use your mind, body and spirit you will eventually make the technique become alive and real.
None of these 5 steps are easy but they all require some discipline and determination to continue with our own practice through repetition.
To put it simply, we all have a mountain to climb and there are no shortcuts in Aikido, in fact with any Martial Arts, to get to the top. So, it is up to us where we wish to climb but to be absolutely focus, we need a vision or a dream to see where we would like to be and when you have this vision in mind, it can help you push yourself further and who knows you may even be surprised how far you could exceed this vision, but a step at a time...