21 Aikido Experts Share Their #1 Training Tip
Jul 04, 2017
Mastery in Aikido takes time.
There are no real shortcuts around sustained practice, repeated failure, honest feedback, and the gradual refinement of body, mind, and relationship.
But there is enormous value in learning from people who have already walked far down the path.
In 2017, during Aikido At The Leading Edge, I brought together dozens of senior Aikido teachers, innovators, and practitioners from around the world for a ten-day online gathering.
At the end of each conversation, I asked the same question:
“What is your #1 training tip for someone to keep their Aikido at the leading edge?”
The answers were remarkably diverse.
Some emphasized commitment and repetition. Others focused on connection, curiosity, honesty, authenticity, self-reflection, and integration.
Taken together, they offer something more useful than a collection of techniques. They offer different perspectives on what it means to keep developing after the novelty has worn off and the real work of practice begins.
I’ve organized 21 of those responses into seven themes:
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Commitment to Practice
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Connection
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Curiosity & Exploration
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Honesty
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Authenticity
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Inquiry & Self-Reflection
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Integration
Read them slowly.
You don’t need to agree with every perspective. Instead, notice which one speaks most directly to the edge of your own practice right now.
1. Commitment To Practice
There is no development without practice.
Again and again, experienced teachers point back to commitment: showing up, meeting difficulty appropriately, purifying intention, and staying engaged with the process over time.
Christian Tissier, 8th dan | Aikido Sensei
“At the beginning in Aikido we must practice with agreements, to work together. But the more we practice, the more we need to face difficulties from our partners that we need to learn how to solve. The difficulty must be according to that persons level. If they are good, then push a little more. Solving these problems in an Aiki way is the study of Budo.”
John Stevens, 7th dan | Aikido Sensei, Author
“Misogi. When ever anyone asked O Sensei what is the essence of Aikido, he would always answer ‘Misogi’. Aikido is a practice of self purification”
Lawrence Koichi Barrish | Aikido Sensei, Shinto Priest
“Passion, that’s perhaps the most important part. Training is also important. Lots and lots of training. But training that’s driven by the passion to really hear the whisper of divine nature.”
2. Connection
Aikido does not happen in isolation.
Merging, blending, relationship, and harmony are built into the art itself. Once basic individual principles such as center and ground begin to stabilize, practice naturally extends into the relational field.
How do we meet another person?
How do we receive force?
How do we remain connected without losing ourselves?
Richard Strozzi-Heckler, 7th dan | Aikido Sensei, Author, Leadership Facilitator
“Make the relationship primary. The connection, the contact, the ‘musubi’ comes first.”
Paul Linden, Ph.D., 6th dan | Aikido Sensei, Trauma & Peace Work
“When you are doing techniques and movements in Aikido, always keep in mind how you could injure each other. Both as Uke and Nage. Paying attention to that will keep you present and remind you that you can choose to protect your partner. That will change how you move, and Aikido will start to talk you differently.”
Joe Thambu, 8th dan | Aikido Sensei
“Be a good uke. I think that if we are good ukes we can keep learning. As long as we are taking ukemi, we can receive our partners technique, we can be guided, and we are keeping ourselves young.”
3. Curiosity & Exploration
Practice becomes stagnant when certainty replaces inquiry.
Tradition matters. Lineage matters. Form matters.
But Aikido itself arose through exploration.
The challenge is to remain curious without losing the framework of the art—to keep questioning, experimenting, and growing even after years of experience.
Linda Holiday, 6th dan | Aikido Sensei, Author
“Open the door. Open the door to O Sensei and see what happens.”
Blaine Feyen, 4th dan | Aikido Sensei, Aiki-Cast Podcast
“To stay on your leading edge keep researching. The traditions are no doubt important, but we can get too traditional if we are not careful. So develop your aikido while keeping it in the philosophical framework of Aikido.”
Kayla Feder, 6th dan | Aikido Sensei
“Never stop looking for ways to grow and change. Even if you’re training with just one sensei, in one dojo. Keep your passion, and never stop looking for ways to grow and change.”
4. Honesty
Growth demands honesty.
Aikido gives us countless opportunities to hide behind technique, rank, hierarchy, ideology, or an idealized version of ourselves.
Honest practice asks something more difficult:
What is actually happening?
Who am I in this moment?
What works?
What doesn’t?
Where am I defending something that needs to change?
Jack Wada, 7th dan | Aikido Sensei
“Be personally honest. Who are you? What are you right this moment? You have to be honest. If you reach for a concept of who you want to be, you may be ignoring the things in you that really want to talk to you at that level. So personal honesty is key.”
Jan Nevelius, 6th dan | Aikido Sensei
“Keep researching and honestly ask yourself ‘Is this the best way that I can do this technique? Is this the best way that I can move?’ You have to keep on giving up what you’ve learned, in order to learn something new. For that we have to constantly challenge what we know.”
Anita Paalvast, 4th dan | Change Facilitator, Aikido@Work
“Practice what you preach in your own life. Take it off the mat yourself. Be reflective and courageous with yourself and ask ‘How do I show up in situations and challenges that I meet?’ It’s ok to lose it sometimes, but to learn from that.”
5. Authenticity
Aikido lives at the meeting point between classical forms and universal principles.
At first, we copy.
We follow instructions.
We repeat what our teachers have shown us.
That is necessary.
But over time, something else must happen.
The forms have to pass through our own body, experience, temperament, and understanding. We begin to discover where inherited form meets our own unique expression.
That is where authenticity enters the practice.
Wendy Palmer, 6th dan | Aikido Sensei, Leadership Embodiment
“Study O Sensei and recognize the extraordinary state that he tapped into in order to download Aikido to us. As you connect more to O Sensei’s lineage, your body will start to respond because there is something there that can touch you. Allow that to come through you.”
Richard Moon, 6th dan | Aikido Sensei
“Be honest and authentic. O Sensei told us to accomplish our bestowed mission. So you be you. Be as honest and authentic as you can with respect, harmony, and consideration of other people. But never break your connection with your bestowed mission.”
Kimberly Richardson, 6th dan | Aikido Sensei
“When you walk into the dojo make a conscious practice of bowing to O Sensei. Leave your ego at the door, and open yourself to a larger sense of the possibilities. Consciously extend your energy outward in goodwill. And practicing to be as authentic as you can be.”
6. Inquiry & Self-Reflection
Practice alone does not guarantee development.
We can repeat the same habits for decades if we never examine what we are doing.
Self-reflection turns experience into learning.
What is motivating me?
What am I assuming?
Where am I pretending to know?
What am I actually trying to embody through this practice?
These kinds of questions are not separate from Aikido.
They are part of the Path.
Robert Frager, 7th dan | Aikido Sensei, Sufi Sheikh, Psychologist
“Approach Your Aikido as constant learning. Try to keep reminding yourself that you don’t know as much as you pretend, or think you know.”
Teje “Fudo Myo” Bell, 5th dan | Aikido Sensei, Qigong, Zen Roshi
“Keep your practice fresh with the quality of ‘self-reflection’. Integrating self-reflection with the movement, and technical aspects of the art is critical. Remember, self-reflection.”
Patrick Cassidy, 6th dan | Aikido Sensei, Conflict Resolution Facilitator
“Reach deep within yourself and explore your motivation and inspiration for choosing the art. What compels you to practice, and what do you hope to embody in your life? Then stay open and watch your understanding mature and evolve.”
7. Integration
The deepest value of Aikido is not limited to technique.
Over time, practice asks us to integrate more and more dimensions of ourselves.
Active and receptive.
Masculine and feminine.
Uke and nage.
Self and other.
Multiple perspectives that may initially seem incompatible.
Integration does not mean flattening these differences.
It means developing enough awareness, capacity, and skill to hold more of the whole.
Robert Nadeau, 8th dan | Aikido Sensei
“Be present. Settle, open, and allow. Move in balance between active and receptive, masculine and feminine. Be present and include the physical. Allow the energies that come into you, and let them move. Open to the idea that these energies want to mix into a fuller You.”
Dan Messisco, 6th dan | Aikido Sensei
“As ‘nage’, receive the attack with an uke frame of mind. Yielding to the energy and allow the natural manifestation of kaeshi waza to determine the path of resolution.”
Miles Kessler, 6th dan | Aikido Sensei, Meditation Teacher, The Integral Dojo
“Embrace the tension where 2 perspectives cannot exist in the same space at the same time. Embrace that space; with inner awareness, enduring patience, and applied skill. Create the inner container and the external skillful means to hold that tension… and evolution will just happen.”
Which Teaching Do You Need Now?
There are no shortcuts to mastery in Aikido.
But there is also no substitute for good teachers, mentors, spiritual friends, and training partners.
They cannot walk the Path for us.
What they can do is help us recognize the pitfalls, blind spots, wrong turns, and possibilities that are difficult to see from where we currently stand.
And perhaps that is what these 21 responses offer.
Not twenty-one commandments.
Twenty-one doors.
One may be more relevant to you today than all the others.
So rather than asking which of these teachers is right, try asking:
What does my practice need from me now?
More commitment?
More connection?
More curiosity?
More honesty?
More authenticity?
More self-reflection?
More integration?
The point is not to collect good advice.
The point is to recognize the piece of advice that becomes practice.
