Awareness.

This is important in the practice of aikido......come to think of it is important to our daily lifes. But are we Aware? Awareness is being in a moment where our thoughts, actions, feelings are fully understood and that we can see the source from where it came from. The true seeing in our minds and hearts.

In aikido, we constantly practice connectivity. Through this practice, example tai no henko practices, we are suppose to feel our ukes, and to learn how to read our body against our ukes. To feel the movements and indication of both our bodys. But what it is actually teaching us is to question we ourselves, how are we standing, how is my posture, am i relax enough, why do i exert strenght when I move, why cant i move, why am i getting angry when I cannot do it, why am I getting frustrated, and many more questions.

Awareness is the first step to improvement. If you dont know whats wrong, how do you know what to fix? Make sense. Aikido allows a practitioner a conducive place (dojo) to practice their awareness. And this is important. Practice makes perfect, just like golf. Our mind, is just the same. By going through the practices and perfecting our techniques, we are also training our mind, body and soul. Thus awareness is the first step.

An example to illustrate, Remember our first mae ukemi roll. Scared? Of course. So was I and many others. But what happen? We were made aware of this feeling and by overcoming this obstacle we improved our rolling and perfected our rolling. Now we are flipping and flying across the tatami without even thinking. But we had to break away from our fear first and in that we were Aware of something that we need to improve.

Cheers and smiles.