I started aikido late in life, but I had been involved in various arts from
childhood on. My start was in judo which forever taught me the basics of
falling and throwing. My challenge today, however, is to learn to fall in a
different way. To use the mind and let your body fall and land as if it were
a feather. Sounds weird, but after you've seen it, you know that there's
another level to it. Now you just have to experiment and find it. 

My path took me from judo to a couple of punching and kicking arts. That
taught me good stuff to include stretching techniques that have held me in
good stead to this day. Something happened, however, when I noticed I was
not able to keep up with the rest of the class. My blocking techniques
seemed to improve, but I think that was out of survival. The kicks were
coming in too numerous a number for me to handle. It seemed I could return 1
or 2 for every 5 received. Part of class was always sparring where you could
show your stuff. As time went on I started to dread this. It seemed I
wouldn't accept that I was slowing down. We wore rubber helmets, breast/rib
guards, forearm and shin guards, cups and foot gloves. This was for the real
full contact sparring. Other times we would wear nothing and do what we
called "light contact". I complimented a guy after our sparring by telling
him he had really good kicks. He responded by telling me I had good blocks.
It seemed to trigger him into telling me about another art he was studying.
He said it was aikido and involved a lot of blocking, but not blocking the
way we knew it. I remember him saying it was like "magic". I registered that
conversation in my mind as something to be sure to check out in the future.
Meanwhile, I kept trying to keep pace where I was, as I wasn't ready to give
up. A notice in the paper said that the head of aikido was coming to Hawaii
from Japan to give a demonstration. My wife and I attended and my feelings
were mixed. I recognized one participant who had on the black dress like
pants. I had seen him once before throwing troublemakers out of a bar. He
looked proficient at the seminar, but I also thought he was being
unnecessarily rough. I saw others who looked like they were dancing with a
partner and using very little effort. It then struck me that this did not
require a lot of stamina. Everyone made getting up and down from the ground
look so easy. Boy, was I wrong. I wasn't too sure of what I had witnessed,
but I was ready to give it a try and started visiting dojos in my area. That
was a number of years ago now, and I have never regretted my move. This is a
place where size and strength no longer matter. And, you can probably train
in this for the rest of your life. Witness the elderly men and women
practicing aikido. That is something I rarely saw in the other so called
harder martial art styles. This is why I practice. I can continue to learn
and improve in an art that someone long ago told me was like "magic". My
only regret is that I did not discover this as a child, or even as a young
adult. To train with someone my age who has been practicing aikido for 30 or
40 years, is awe inspiring. In fact, sometimes they make it look like a
dance.

-Ekewaka