What can an Aikido teacher learn from the Circus?
I once visited Zippos circus which took place in Victoria Park, Scotsoun, Glasgow.
I highly recommend the show. The atmosphere they create and the performers themselves were a marvel to watch. I was blown away by the spectacle of the first half of the performance especially.
Something you can tell for sure is that these performers have supreme confidence in their abilities. They have clearly trained these often dangerous feats over and over.
When we learn new movements and skills they often feel clumsy to us at first. We may even resist them.
Gradually as we practise the movement over and over the body and brain work together to gradually make these movements automatic and natural feeling. These performers have taken their skills beyond just being able to do them automatically, they can do it under pressure, in tricky situations and in front of a viewing audience.
They don’t just practise until they can get it right, they practise until they never get it wrong.
We can take that lesson into preparing for a grading. By the time we get to the grading, the movements and techniques should be so automatic for us that we don’t have to think about it and we just enjoy the performance.
All of the performers fell in line with one of our principles: perform with confidence.
Even when a mistake was made, it never seemed like a mistake as they continued to smile and simply move on and try again. They were unfazed by it and made it seem like it might be an intentional part of the performance.
If something goes wrong in our Aikido practise and a technique is not working, we should not get flustered. We should just relax and try again.
Lastly, they all showed great Ki and relaxation.
None of the performers ever looked tense or nervous and their posture and body language was open and their Ki extended towards the audience.
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