Moving/Being

Aikido and World Peace

This last April, Aikido practitioners from countries of the Eastern Mediterranean assembled in Nicosia, Cyprus, for a unique seminar. Practitioners from lands that have been in chronic conflict for decades, if not centuries, all practiced Aikido together–North and South Cypriots as well as Greeks and Turks; Israelis and Palestinians, together with Arabs from Egypt, Jordan, and Iraq. The seminar was an opportunity to experience the power of Aikido to promote understanding and peace.

Aikido is a non-violent martial art and a practice of harmony. How can a martial art teach peace? Imagine someone yelling at and threatening you. Imagine someone trying to knife you. What would you feel? Most people would be captured by the fight-or-flight reflex. Their hearts would pound, their breathing would become labored, their postures would constrict. They would either freeze in fear or lash out in anger.

This same physiological reaction is part of any confrontation. People in conflict generally get stuck in an enemy mode of feeling, thinking, and acting. They see the other person as an enemy, as less than human, and they are disposed to act in harsh, hurtful ways. The enemy mode will prevent people from looking for and finding non-violent, cooperative ways of resolving the conflict.

Beyond that, the enemy mode makes you look like an enemy. This will elicit the fight-or-flight arousal in the other people involved in the conflict and establish a vicious circle. All parties in the conflict will be trapped in a cycle of fear and anger.

Aikido defense techniques are smooth and circular, built on relaxation and yielding, and founded on the idea that protecting yourself must be done without injuring another human being. Spending long hours facing practice partners who are delivering strong physical attacks and drilling yourself in gentle, non-violent defense techniques will break down the fight-or-flight reflex. You learn how to relax in the midst of conflict and look for harmonious solutions.

At Aikido of Columbus, we add explicit body instruction to the usual Aikido teaching methods. Mindbody training shows people how to work with breathing, muscle tone, posture, and movement to develop an integrated mind/body state of power, love, and peacefulness. By maintaining a peaceful body during conflicts, people have a foundation for resolving conflicts in productive ways. At the Cyprus seminar, as an addition to the Aikido training, I taught three bodywork workshops, one on embodied peacemaking, one on trauma recovery, and one on ethnic trauma.

In addition to the formal Aikido training, Aikido gave the participants a shared interest within which develop informal communication. On the first night of the seminar, there was a dinner for all the participants, and I wrote the following note in my seminar diary:

We went to dinner as a group. It was at a restaurant on the Turkish side of the Green Zone. We had to pass through Greek and Turkish checkpoints to get into the Turkish zone. Along the way, we passed signs telling of atrocities in the 1974 war. And signs saying military vehicles were not allowed, and taking photos was not allowed. The buffer zone is derelict buildings, with old signs still on them, telling what the stores had been once upon a time.

The dinner was inspirational, in a quiet way. There were Israelis and Arabs sitting next to each other, telling jokes and sharing food. There were Iraqis sitting next to Americans, talking together. The music was a live, two-man band. Playing old Elvis songs. And then some Arabic songs. A group of Arabs got up to dance, and some Israelis joined in with them, and the movement got more and more exuberant. Then, totally surprising, the musicians segued from the Arab songs into an Israeli song, and the group kept dancing. That was inspirational, and not in a quiet way.

It may at first seem strange to think that a martial art has a contribution to make to the growth of peace in this troubled world. However, it is only through each individual’s embodying peace in her or his life that the world as a whole will achieve change, and Aikido is a means of developing a peaceful body.

Paul Linden, Ph.D. is a martial artist and body/movement awareness educator. He is co-director of the Aikido of Columbus/Columbus Center for Movement Studies (www.being-in-movement.com), at which he teaches Aikido, Being In Movement® mindbody training, and the Feldenkrais Method® of somatic education. Paul is the author of three books: Comfort at Your Computer, Winning is Healing—Body Awareness and Empowerment for Abuse Survivors, and Reach Out—Body Awareness Training for Peacemaking. His work focuses on the application in daily activities of an integrated mindbody state of awareness, power, love, and freedom.