As you may have noticed, this year Sara and I are launching an Aikido course. This is the first in a series of posts that we will occasionally publish during this new adventure. We do believe that it is necessary for us to have a track record (even written) of the trajectory of this journey. A bit like a family that sits down on a sofa flipping through an album of pictures, reading again old cards and letters: it is important to remember constantly where we started from. Refreshing the motivations. Appreciating the journey done on this route, correcting if possible the errors that life inevitably brings. Taking new opportunities.
In general, when the possibility of launching a course, starting any activity occurs, a first question arises.
Why?
We firmly believe that one of the reasons why each of us comes into the world is to become a tool of propagation – and if possible, of growth – of what good, beautiful, true and healthy life offers.
And life, which is always generous, offered us so much, through the relationships we had with those who took care of us, granting our growth.
Aikido is one of such gifts. Yet, gifts are almost useless if they are kept closed in a closet just intended to be shown them occasionally to satisfy our ego.
Our dimension (we would like to think: everyone’s ) is to be students. Curious individuals who are helped by talented guides who know how to warm our heart, nourish the mind, and masterfully train the techniques.
Thus, in these years of practice, a clear vision arose slowly for us to train both for ourselves and for the people who we meety in daily life . A vision that in our heads clearly pointed to “then” and “elsewhere”. A time and a place where we could grow together with young practitioners and adults offering them alternatives to the little or nothing they live in.
Then, as always, the gifts that life brings are revealed in ways and times that have nothing to do with our planning. They simply manifest themselves and ask for acceptance. This is why the opposite also happens: the more you want something, closing at the same time yourself to what reality offers you, the less you will ever achieve.
So it happened that in parallel to a structured (and even heavy, frankly speaking) path to being legally and lawfully counted as federal trainer, some people we met in a start-up Aikido course years ago acted independently to find a location and a facility that could host a course. And that they offered us this perspective.
It happened that we put ourselves in the hands of our teacher, leaving ourselves to his evaluation and together we read all this as positive and constructive. For us, for our growth, for the growth of those who will walk with us, for our group.
This is our answer to the “why”. Which evolves into a “because”
Meeting so many people at the demonstration that we held in the square in the municipality where we will hold the course, this “because” revealed a deep echo.
Behind the curiosity; behind an attitude of “experiential tourists” who today practice Aikido, tomorrow Karate and the day after tomorrow collect bazookas; behind the often submerged desire to be able to dedicate time to oneself; behind the call of a path interrupted years ago; behind the induced fear that generates the demand for “self-defense” courses; behind the tendency to offer experiential bulimia to their children with agendas worthy of professional athletes…
Behind all this emerged the strength of the answer. Because we have the possibility to deepen a tool to feel good, to live our space and our time a little more consciously and with more fullness.
Good journey to all of us.