Testimonials

It seems like only yesterday that I walked into the gymnasium at the Berwyn Heights community center and saw the line of people on one end of the mat stretching their wrists. They were all doing it in unison, the instructor keeping them in time. Then he called out a word in Japanese and they all began doing a different exercise, again, in unison. Then the line exercises began, and people started getting thrown. Needless to say, I was intimidated. Well, as it turns out, it wasn't only yesterday, but about two years, and they've been great! The dojo is, thankfully, no longer in Berwyn Heights, but at the PG Plaza Community Center in Hyattsville, MD, which is much closer to my home. There have been some changes, and some new faces, and I've come to see that virtually anyone can have a good experience with Aikido. Its not about competing with other people, but about helping everyone reach their maximum potential in the art. You get in there, you practice as well as you know how, and you pick up new things and get better. You can learn something from anyone. That open-mindedness in Aikido is conveyed through the attitudes of everyone in the class. These people will not try to be better than you; they will try to be your friend. Thats really cool, and it makes for a very nice, laid back experience. In fact, the laid back atmosphere is my favorite part of the class. We kid around, we joke, and we just thoroughly enjoy the class, and that makes it so much easier to be receptive to what is being taught, and is a great reason to keep coming back. Its an extremely organic learning process, and it just feels right. I don't have a single negative thing to say about it. I just love it.

Its true; there is a definite learning curve, but then again, if there was no learning curve than it wouldn't need to be taught in a class. I remember I had absolutely no clue what I was doing when I first started out. I couldn't tell nikkyo from a ham sandwich, and to this day, there are still a few Aikido related things that I get confused with food. But that's okay, because I'm still learning. I'm an orange belt right now, which means that while I've accomplished some things in the art, I've still got a ways yet to go, and the instructors are quick to point out that even having a black belt doesnt mean that you've learned everything there is to know. Learning Aikido will take a long time, but it's such an enjoyable learning process that I really don't mind staying with it for a long time. After all, life itself is a learning process. Aikido is one of those things that can help you get more out of life.

Timothy Sullins

Aikido, for me, is not so much about the physical, though there is that. Having taught English for almost 30 years now, I find something like every 8 years one of my students will physically challenge me. Given our world and society, I have students who have or will lose their jobs, their wives, their husbands; most of my students are single parents, trying to make everything mesh, their children worrying them to tears; I can't think of a class I've taught in the last decade where I haven't had multiple addicts and/or pushers, and there's depression (the psychologists say 1/3 of the population at any given time), fear of failure (turned aggression), learning disabilities. . . . Life.

The real value of Aikido to me is in training-for and allowing the measured response, the calm at the heart of a hurricane. Most of my students are not bad people; they're trying, making an effort, swimming upstream. I need to make sure I don't over-react to a student who fails to perform an assigned task (perhaps because of a child that's ill), or challenges a grade, loudly and vociferously, pounding the desk, splintering my office door, which happened in November. A student who screams foul for a grade or a class is really telling me they care, that this is important to them. Often they're telling me they don't understand, and I need the calm and the patience to take it that way. Aikido teaches patience, confidence, and the measured response. That's the value of Aikido to me..

David Bates
Professor of English
Bucks County Community College