Individuals may be born with different innate abilities, strengths and weaknesses, they have the option to exploit, expand on or simply waste whatever they are given. We all have the ability to take whatever we have, and bring it wherever we want, thanks to a simple idea: training.

Starting to train and walk the learning path means to accept one's current abilities as what they are: just a temporary state, an illusion, and not something that should dictate neither how one's life must be lived nor how it should end. Training is a process, a transformation path that transcends all barriers. And it comes down to spend many hours on leaning, repeating, incorporating and integrating techniques to finally free yourself of them. In Japanese, this process is summarized into three major phases: SHU HA RI.

SHU is a total abandonment to a chosen tradition and series of teachings. It requires a great deal of trust in a teacher and/or a tradition, as you absorb and incorporate the form that forebears have left for you. It is a stage of pure mechanics, of distinct steps, of kihon or basic technique. Even if a specific technique doesn't work for you now, you have to trust that it is not there without reason, and that it will come to you at a later stage of your training.

HA is an experimentation stage. In addition to the basic understanding of the mechanics, it is a time for questions: how do I make the movement flow? How do I adjust the kata I learned to this situation I am experiencing right now? What if I meet resistance in an unexpected manner? Sometimes, the form needs to be broken. Sometimes it needs to be discarded and changed into something else, an approach referred to as henka waza (changing technique) in Aikido.

RI is a liberation stage. The idea of "applying a technique" (waza) must disappear, as it otherwise implies a conscious control of uke, which is a form of aggression. If I decide to apply a given technique, I am the attacker, uke becomes nage and I have opened the path for kaeshi waza (countering techniques). In his enlightenment, O-Sensei claims to have forgotten all the martial techniques he had learned. What was left in him was an instinctive and spontaneous response to any martial situation, a state he referred to as takemusu aiki, the ideal of total freedom we are invited to pursue.

Thinking of these stages as a linear process may be too simplistic, as this would suggest that there is an end to training: I rather think that the process is cyclical, and all three stages keep repeating themselves as we go through the phases of SHU HA RI.

It happens every now and then to think "Oh, I know how to do this", or "I understand that". Yet, change uke or see the same technique performed by another instructor and you find yourself having to go through a revisit of the basics, to conciliate what you thought you knew with what you just learned! On the other hand, even early in one's training, there are some moments where stuff simply happens, and techniques just come alive without any obstacle! Of course, as one's training progresses, I assume that one spends more time or effort in a specific stage of SHU HA RI, but the circle never ends: and the goal of training remains the training itself. We are left with this idea of O-Sensei as a martial arts master, and may naively be tempted to think of him for ever in the stage of RI. But we cannot forget that all of his life, he was a martial arts student that never stopped training: searching, studying and refining, going over and over around the circle of SHU HA RI.

To me, the phases of SHU HA RI still are a little bit of a riddle. It is odd to think that the highest purpose of training in a given form should to leave the form, or relating to O-Sensei's enlightenment experience, to forget all the techniques we spend so many hours learning and refining in training. Why bother with the form to start with if to give it up? Or even as relevant: why chose one form or art instead of another? If it is indeed an illusion, why train in Aikido at all? During his latest visit to the Dojo, John Stevens-Sensei was asking a similar question: "why do you do shiho nage?", usually one of the first techniques taught to beginners, that we yet keep practicing and refining all of our life.

If I strip Aikido down to only one technique, say shiho nage, and remove the distraction of going over multiple techniques or variations (and there may be much value in maybe doing so for several entire training sessions...), can I honestly claim that I still learn something at each execution? Is it really the technique itself that I am practicing and improving, or is it something else, more elusive, but with deeper implications? What if shiho nage, to keep this example or the entire Aikido system as a whole were just a tool, a context, designed to teach something more fundamental than what appear to be the focus? What would this be?

I started my Aikido training to gain control over my body and mind. When I first saw Aikido, I saw graceful, controlled movements in an apparently perilous martial context, and perceived the ability of controlling oneself under any level of stress as a great ideal. With time and training, I have been able to pick up some skills. With time and practice, I have also been able to precise my quest for control over my body, narrowing it down to three simple questions I carry with me on and off the mat, that the training gives me a chance to explore: (1) How do I develop and maintain the correct posture that connects me simultaneously to Heaven and Earth (tenchijin), so that I can be strong, yet supple, balanced and immovable yet mobile and never planted? (2) How do I develop and sustain correct breathing (kokyu), so that I can move in a relaxed and coordinated manner, without ever feeling tired or looking out for breath? (3) And finally, how do I develop the correct attitude that makes me a better person? That is, how do I adjust what and how much I give to my partners, and in what spirit do I receive what my partners and teachers have for me (ki-musubi)? These questions may change with time, as encounters and experiences may trigger new thoughts and realizations, going around the circle of SHU HA RI, but for now, they form the core of my research through Aikido.

Frantz