The discipline of aikido can be challenging for people who are used to traditional Western models of study where the student moves in a linear fashion from concept to concept. In aikido – as in other Eastern disciplines such as Zen meditation, calligraphy, and the tea ceremony – instead of progressing linearly from Point A to Point B, students circle around the mysteries of the discipline, looking at them from all angles, striving to get closer to the calm center of the spinning top that is the mind. The test is always the same: the one-on-one combat that is a metaphor for the battle the student must do with his or her own mind and ego.
Success in aikido is about learning to absorb or blend with your opponent's energy, rather than trying to land the hardest blow. It can be a very humbling discipline to study, because strength alone will not get you very far. In fact, it is often harder for stronger students to learn proper technique, because they can muscle their way through bouts on strength alone – until they come up against someone stronger than they are.
Aikido teaches the student that meeting force with force will never work, that the minute you choose to attack, you have lost, because you have gone outside of harmony. But it is not about being passive; it is about putting aside your fear and your self-absorption and acting to protect both yourself and your opponent. In fact, aikido enlarges your worldview to include your opponent's. It is a lesson that businesspeople often spend a lifetime trying without success to learn. After all, if you are unable to see what your competition is seeing, you are eventually going to fail.
This book will show you how to succeed by acting in harmony with your own nature instead of fighting yourself, by leveraging the strength of everyone around you instead of trying to act alone, and by maintaining a sense of balance instead of trying to push your way through a problem with brute force.
Most of us do not face a hail of bullets most days, but we do confront challenges that feel impossible. We do not believe we have the strength to fight the battles before us. Too often, when we find ourselves at a crossroads, we hesitate. We want to hold off on making the right choice because we are afraid. In this book, I will show you how to gain the clarity to make the right choices, how making those choices is empowering, and how even the most unlikely battles can be won.
My Path to Aikido
I first stumbled onto the principles of aikido as a U.S. Marine stationed in California. But in order to understand why this discipline appealed to me so deeply and how I came to make aikido the center of my life, we have to go back further.
I was born in the small town of Erie, Pennsylvania. My parents are wonderful, supportive people, who always taught me that I could be or do anything. But they were happy living the small-town life. I always yearned for something different. And that “something different” came to be symbolized by Japan and the world of martial arts.
It's a little embarrassing to admit now, but I think it was the TV show Kung Fu that first sparked my interest in martial arts. Of course, the idea of a Hollywood show about a Shaolin monk starring a white guy is cringeworthy today – but as a little kid growing up in Pennsylvania, all I knew was that martial arts were supercool, and the idea of the honorable warrior embedded in the show really spoke to me.
I'm not embarrassed at all to say that I grew up dreaming of becoming an honorable warrior in my own way. I took karate lessons for years in part because of that dream. Then, at 17, I decided to enlist in the Marines. I was drawn to the idea of becoming part of an elite team of fighters who lived by a code and fought together as a team. Plus, I knew I wanted to see the world, and the Marines' major international base is located in Okinawa, Japan. Joining the Marines would be my ticket to the place I still imagined as the birthplace of the samurai. So, right after I graduated from high school, I was off to Marine Corps boot camp in South Carolina.
As crazy as this might sound, I loved boot camp. It was probably the least stressful time in my life. Of course I was exhausted when I fell into my bunk every night, but everything was decided for me. I knew where I had to be and what I had to do to succeed. I loved being part of the team, loved pushing myself as hard as I could, loved having a structure of support around me that guided my energy in one singular direction.
First Encounters
After boot camp, I was deployed to a base in California, near San Diego. Suddenly I had some free time, and I decided to look for a martial arts school. That's when I stumbled upon aikido.
From the first moment I saw aikido being practiced, I was hooked. It's a beautiful art to watch. It's very fluid – there's no offensive striking or kicking like there is in karate or many other martial arts disciplines. Aikido is a grappling art, like wrestling, in which the practitioner uses throws, joint locks, and other submissions to control a bigger and stronger attacker. The movements are all based on leverage. Something of that elegance communicated itself to me immediately, and I knew this was something I wanted to pursue.
So while I lived in California I settled into a routine. As soon as my shift was over at 4:30 PM, I was gone. I'd hop on my motorcycle and drive up the coast to the dojo where I was starting to learn the beautiful discipline of aikido. I was 19 years old, and I was willing to work as hard as I had to in order to learn.
Journey to Japan
After two years in California, I was deployed to the Marine base in Okinawa, Japan. I went looking for an aikido school on the island, and as it happened, there was only one. That school was run by the man who became my teacher, mentor, and lifelong friend, Professor Iwao Yamaguchi.
I was originally stationed on the island for just a year, but I extended my deployment through the end of my enlistment, in 1993. I advanced to become a first-degree black belt in aikido while I was stationed on Okinawa – and I also started to learn my way around Japanese culture.
Of course, I made plenty of mistakes. I remember I visited this beautiful Buddhist temple pretty early on in my time on Okinawa. I was studying Japanese at the time, but I wasn't very good at it yet. I thought I was asking this monk what the name of the temple was – but every time I asked, he kept pointing down the hallway toward the bathrooms. Was this some kind of mysterious Zen nonanswer? Nope. Turns out, what I was actually asking him was not what is the temple called, but “What is the name of your honorable toilet?” The Japanese word for “temple” and “toilet” are very similar, and I was using the wrong word! This very patient monk was just pointing out the bathroom to me, over and over.
By the time my service in the Marine Corps was finished, I had learned a lot about aikido and about Japanese culture. But I knew I had more to learn. I decided to stay on, and I found a little-known visa that would allow me to stay for another year to study the culture. So for a year I lived the life of a traditional martial arts apprentice, studying with my teacher, Professor Yamaguchi. I also studied the Japanese language and Zen meditation. By the end of that year, I was approaching fluency in Japanese, and I was a second-degree black belt in aikido.
After that, I finished my college degree, studying part time at the prestigious International Christian University in Tokyo. I stayed on in Japan after I graduated, spending a year researching keiretsu, the large Japanese corporate conglomerates that dominate Japan's business landscape. My professional experience in Japan culminated in working for many years at a large international consulting firm helping Western Fortune 500 companies succeed in the Japanese market.
Finally, in 1999, I moved back to the United States, began working in the corporate world, and teaching aikido on the side. And then, in 2003, everything changed.
The Interruption
Right after my thirty-fourth birthday, I was diagnosed with testicular cancer – and instantly I was plunged into this whole other world. I went in for surgery less than 48 hours after my first doctor's appointment. The surgery went well. And for a couple of months the news was good. Until it wasn't.
Three months after my surgery, I found out the cancer had spread to my lung and I was going to have to go through chemo – really aggressive chemotherapy, all day, five days a week. My body felt completely destroyed.