Aikido Comes from Toddler Movement

For the past twelve years, I have promoted the idea that aiki-jujutsu and aikido were developed by observing children at play. Most martial artists who heard this idea rejected it, but those who saw my examples were persuaded to consider it more carefully.

In his blog entries on “Natural Movement,” Ellis Amdur said that, in his observation, children’s fighting methods are based on a simian-like overhead flailing. He inferred from this that aikido did not come from baby movement. But aikido really is not an art of conflict, so we won’t find its roots in the actions of children already embroiled in conflict. We find the root of aikido in the unbothered, casual movements toddlers make when they are busy with their own interests and don’t want to be diverted.

I have read that aiki was discovered by Minamoto Yoshimitsu, watching a spider capture an insect with its web. I thought this meant that the spider personally captured the bug with intercepting, blending movements, but now I understand that the web was stationary and the spider merely waited for bugs to come into it. Yoshimitu’s comments didn’t refer to the physical movements of aiki. He meant that aiki sets the conditions for sure and reliable success in life, based on nature.

So where did the physical techniques of aiki originate if not in a spider? Were they observed in the interplay between a snake and a bird? Were they based on the tiger or dragon? O Sensei’s zodiac sign was the dragon. Mochizuki Sensei kept a driftwood dragonhead in the dojo kamiza to represent O Sensei. So maybe that is a clue, but Mochizuki Sensei always said that aikido is based on the sword. Still, most aikido doesn’t seem to include much kenjutsu. Many people wonder why we do things in aikido in such particular ways and find no clear answer, so it is generally accepted that the arts were invented theoretically, on abstract principles that symbolically refer to nature, but which, being based on extreme cleverness, are superior to natural human responses. Further, it is understood that these extra-natural methods must be “reprogrammed” into the human nervous system by repetitive conditioning. I began aikido training with Glenn Pack in 1974 at the University of Alabama. I went through a good bit of austere training under Patrick Auge in the 1970s and 80s and lived as uchi deshi to Minoru Mochizuki Sensei for 21 months between 1990 and 1992. I taught under Sensei’s directions both before and after I lived there and I continued training at the dojo until 1994. I was well acquainted with the full range of Yoseikan Aikido techniques and I was able to observe Mochizuki Sensei in detail over a good, long time. I also had some intensive education in the Feldenkrais Method of neuro-muscular education, and that is what helped me to understand.

Now I am convinced that aikido and all martial arts are based on the reflexes and movements every toddler displays when he is able to stand and walk. Toddler movement is to martial arts as grapes are to wine. Martial arts are highly cultivated concentrations of certain entirely natural human traits and this is the real meaning of “natural movement” in the martial context. Still, though Zen tells us to have a mind “like a baby” or “like a baby’s grip.” We believe that we must replace our natural heart and mind with a “programmed” mind. Martial arts point us to the movement of birds, snakes, bears, antelopes, panthers, lions, tigers, monkeys and dragons. Judo incorporates the “mountain storm” and the “wind storm” among its methods, but it is said to be based entirely on principles of physics, to be mastered through rational thinking. So isn’t it natural to believe that martial arts are theoretically and intellectually “invented,” then input to the student’s nervous system through intense training? Isn’t it natural to believe that we must train in martial arts until they are “second nature”?

But there is a broad opinion that modern aikido has lost something essential. All this austere repetitive training seems to have produced no one else like Morihei Ueshiba. And the question is, “What was lost?” and “Where was it lost? How can we get it back?”

Let’s go back to Yoshimitsu. He said that aiki sets up the conditions for reliable success. Modern training relies on training second-nature reflexes, but when you talk about reliability, you have to consider natural human reflexes. Conditioned reflexes will fail if not sufficiently learned and they will fade if not continually reinforced. Also, certain very primitive reactions will reliably occur even in a well-conditioned person if the stimulus is sudden and intense enough. The very structure of the body provides faster nerve conduction for such reactions than for conditioned responses. In short, nature lies below conditioning and remains after conditioning and it will show up under stress. Look at the way trained martial artists reacted in the early UFC competitions. Never having fought against any art but their own, many of them were shocked at the harsh reality of the cage and resorted to wild brutality, only to lose beyond question. Despite their repetitive, excellently formed practice, in the clinch, they reverted to primal instinct. When the words were over, their real natures emerged and some of those people seemed shocked to find that that nature was not what they thought they had developed with all their training.

Mochizuki Sensei called his teaching “Yoseikan.” In the US, this was always understood to mean “the place where what is right is taught” ( yo — teach; sei — correct; kan — house). Now I believe that, like Yoshimitsu’s example, this English translation does not convey the true nuance of the Japanese meaning. As I now understand it, “yo” means “cultivate” or “nurture,” while “sei” (also “tadashi” and “masa”) means “inner correctness” or “what is naturally right” or “really right.” Now I understand “Yoseikan” to mean “the place to cultivate correctness.” And that means to work honestly from a real human motivation or “soul.”

So I have come to believe that “real” aikido is a fine cultivation of the best aspects of human nature. This puts me in mind of the famous aikido saying “masakatsu agatsu,” or “correct victory is self victory.” This has been said to mean “victory over oneself,” actually “victory” over one’s own nature. But what if we read it this way: “really correct victory is to win oneself?” Or, “to win the right to be oneself?”

No one can “teach” you someone something that is “naturally true for you,” but, through observation and consideration, you can find what is correct and true and cultivate it. That motivation is at the heart of what we call human dignity and aikido cultivated from that natural dignity is a powerful protector of one’s right to be oneself. Like Yoshimitsu’s aiki, it has to be reliable for use with human nature. At the high martial level, that means to train for the kind of attacks that we will really get in the cruel world. But the root of that nature is explicit in toddler behavior, even to very complex examples of aiki movement that we have been told must be “reprogrammed” into our nervous systems. The only programming that needs be done is to expel from oneself all that is not truly natural. The natural human nervous system needs no “reprogramming.” We simply have to recognize our “sei” or “masa” nature and cultivate it.

Here is how I first recognized the root of aikido.

In about 1994, I reached out to pick up my year-old daughter. She was standing, crying with both arms raised. I tried to take her wrist, to pull her to me, but she didn’t want to be picked up. She sagged toward the floor, drew her arm in and stepped back with the opposite foot. I almost went off balance from the slight grip I had caught on her wrist. It was a startling feeling, but what really shocked me was that she moved exactly like Mochizuki Sensei, then in his middle eighties, with eighty years of martial arts training behind him. My toddler daughter had used nagashi tai sabaki (flowing body movement), his fundamental kihon. It was the first time I saw an aikido baby step, but it showed me that aikido is literally a natural human activity.

O Sensei used to demonstrate how people could not pick him up. People remarked then that it looked like what a baby does, but no one seemed to think seriously any further along that line. But a toddler doesn’t just sag his weight. If he does not want to be held, he will sag, twist and turn, moving instinctively where you are weak and where he is strong. It’s only an opening step, but it’s very effective for the first instant and if the caretaker is not quick, he will get away. I believe Yoshimitsu or his predecessor observed these kinds of movements in children and recognized the supreme opportunity they presented to apply yawara joint attacks or throws. And thus was aiki-jujutsu born, I believe. I can also see the reason for saying that it was based on a spider. It presented a huge power over the enemy, but one that could easily be modeled simply from hearing about it. This obscurity has left a lot of strange loose ends in the arts, vestigial movements that no one understands. But if we watch toddlers, all becomes clear.

One famous aiki master addressed the mystery of why the training includes so much practice against the wrist grab. It’s argued that men don’t fight that way and that we are unlikely to be grabbed by the wrist in a fight. This master said that the wrist grab comes from an opponent’s trying to prevent you from drawing your sword. Well, maybe he was hiding something there. It’s true that if someone grabs your wrist, you can effect aiki age by reaching across your body and turning your hand as if to draw a sword. But I think the mystery of aiki training for wrist grabs is simple: it comes from a parent’s taking a child by the wrist. That was where I think the old masters saw the genius of a genki toddler for escaping. A healthy baby, before much social conditioning, has a healthy spirit and a will to do his own business. His human nervous system naturally uses both kiai and aiki to get what he wants and neutralize the strength of people much larger than himself. Imagine if your aikido were effective against someone five times your size. That is effective aiki and babies have it. Of course, it is limited, just like a sprout coming up from the ground. But it is effective and reliable enough for a jujutsu master to base a revolutionary fighting method on it.

Think of the young girl whose kidnapping in Florida was caught on video. The attack was a classic same-side single-hand wrist grab. That video could easily have shown the girl throwing the attacker with shiho nage or yonkyo. Neither is too difficult for an eleven-year-old girl. I taught both techniques to both my daughters before they were ten. I’ve taught them to many children before they were ten. Not that I would ever want them to need it. But you simply spin around in either direction from the same-side grip and you get one technique or the other. It may be just effective enough for the intended victim to escape.

I’ve met numerous young women who reflexively twist and turn out of a wrist grab, but they tend to be awkward, without basic organization and with extra movement and self interference that comes from all their social conditioning, inhibiting much of their true spirit and sense of self. Real aiki is pure economy in relation to another human being’s presence and actions. So most people believe this must have been figured out and calculated, organized and formed outside the human mind and body, then pressure-cooked painfully into the individual. But I have observed many examples of toddlers in action, displaying pure aiki movement without awkward or extraneous effort.

These toddler actions are the real roots of aikido and all other martial arts:

gripping

pulling

reaching

sitting up

falling over

catching oneself by putting an arm down

pulling up

falling down

standing upright

lifting and dropping the weight

walking

The root of kiai is standing upright.

The root of aiki is sagging to the floor.

Moshe Feldenkrais, a judo student of Jigoro Kano, created a method of neuro-muscular education largely informed by his wife, a pediatrician. In his books, including The Potent Self and Body and Mature Behavior, he explained the course of early human nervous system development and adjustment. I paraphrase here what I understood of it.

It all begins with a new infant lying in bed or on the floor. He feels the pressure of gravity in his skeleton, muscles and viscera and learns to change those feelings by exerting his muscles. He naturally grips things placed in his open palm he pulls them. He learns to reach for his mother and father and to grip their clothing, fingers and hair. By reaching, gripping, pushing and pulling, he learns to sit up and the pain of falling over, all without verbal translation. Before he can learn to stand, he must reflexively put a hand down in the direction he is falling to protect his head. He learns to pull up to stand, then learns to fall from standing. Then he begins to walk. Walking, he learns to fall with movement. Running, he learns to fall with momentum. Most babies develop just fine along these lines as long as they are not severely traumatized by injury or shock.

The infant progresses through constant struggle in the crib, trying to figure where he is and what is happening to him without words to shape his perceptions. Once he can stand and walk freely, he is the captain of his will. In this state, the healthy toddler is unbothered by almost anything. He tends to recover quickly from problems. He responds to obstructions in the simplest and most final way his nervous system allows. He spontaneously combines and applies simple skills learned in standing and walking to put obstructions behind him. He goes over, under, through or around and carries on without a backward glance. He remains in the mushin state of the samurai, responding whole-heartedly to the demands of the environment, willfully and adventurously moving into the unknown with a smile, completely faithful to the facts of the deadly world just as it is.

And it is a deadly world. Babies die in accidents of their own error every day. Still, most babies survive falls, falling objects, electric shocks, burns, insect bites and possibly snake and dog bites to grow to adulthood. When I was a child, there were no seatbelts in cars. We stood up and walked around in the backseat and crawled over to the front seat and stood in it while the car was in motion. We rode bikes without elbow and kneepads and absolutely without helmets. And we rode them no-handed, downhill in traffic. It’s a wonder any human child reaches adulthood, yet we do.

When my son was about fourteen months old, he tried to get out the door when I was going to my car for something. I took his right wrist with my left hand and pulled it across his body so that he turned around toward the left and faced back into the room. My next move was to lead him that way and get him walking back into the room. But he wanted to go outside.

When I turned him around, instead of stepping forward with his right foot, as I wanted, he dropped his weight and stepped backward with his right foot, out the door and down to the sidewalk, facing into the room in a long left forward stance, his right arm forward, in my grip. He had neutralized, for that second, my power to move him. And he was in perfect position to apply any number of aikido techniques if he knew them. Thankfully, he didn’t. We parents must be able to capture our babies or they would all die. So I was glad my son didn’t know any techniques, but I was impressed by what he had done. I wanted to cultivate his sense of such movement, so I let him go, and he collected himself and headed down the sidewalk as magnificently as O Sensei. I just shook my head and followed to keep him out of trouble.

It was a baby aikido step, but just as a child’s walking and running naturally become more skillful and complex as they grow, his aiki communication also becomes more complex. My son’s response was only a combination of a few little moves that he already uses daily for self-directed exploration and survival, and that particular combination worked. All he did was remain upright and balance the turning and pulling forces in his arms and legs through the center of the body. All children do this early on, but it is very subtle and they can be traumatized completely out of it by excessive emotional or psychological pressure.

Recently, I’ve noticed that when he is standing and doesn’t want me to take something from his hands, he will draw the object to his stomach and whip his body around 180 degrees. Grabbed with a same-side single-hand grip, Mochizuki Sensei would grip your attacking wrist with his other hand, pull it to his stomach, and turn his body around 180 degrees. It was virtually the identical movement, but Sensei could easily break your arm across his ribs with it. I’ve been watching the baby to see quite how he does it. He is incredibly fast at it, and completely natural, with no training at all. If you have a toddler, look now! Study his movement! A girl will do these things just as well as any boy. It is natural human reflexive movement. Sensei recommended the move I described just above for women’s self defense. That’s why he gripped the attacking hand with his free hand and pulled it to himself. Even a small woman can do it that way.

Around sixteen months, my boy began showing a new complexity of skill. He would come to where I was sitting, get a grip on one of my fingers and pull until I stood. As I stood, he turned, still gripping my finger and ended up in position for yonkyo or shihonage. Depending on his grip and the direction he turns, a number of pure aikido techniques could result. He does this innocently, but he pushes the hand ahead of him as he walks where he wants me to go. He leads firmly and positively with strong extension of ki. He has always sat naturally in seiza and sometimes I see him looking like Ueshiba Sensei, in a wide, slightly squatting stance, elbows pulled in to his ribs, both palms turned up, eyes looking like the power of the universe is flowing through him. That is the nature of a human baby.

Of course, it’s not all sweetness and light. He recently met another boy a month younger than himself. They were standing near the couch when my boy reached up with both hands, put one on the other boy’s jaw and the other on the back of his head and threw him to the ground. It was straight out of Mochizuki sensei’s Jutsu Ri No Kata, without the defensive opening. He just threw the other baby down. So it’s fortunate that babies naturally learn to fall and be thrown without being hurt, as long as they don’t hit something other than the ground. It’s also fortunate that my son isn’t too skilled as he’s not old enough to control it. But he naturally did a technique directly out of Sensei’s kata. That’s why I say kata training is not meant to “reprogram” us any more than aikido training. The kata is a direct reference to nature, through the body, for people who have been “programmed” away from nature. If you want to say that kata is “reprogramming,” try thinking of it as debugging your natural being and getting rid of the false code that has already been programmed in.

If you do have a toddler and want to observe these kinds of things, be careful not to alert them that they are doing anything special, or you will spoil it. Also, be careful not to overexcite them in the process and don’t try to get them to improve what they’re doing. Of course, discourage bad behavior, such as throwing other children down by the head, but mainly, it’s best just to let them be themselves, watch them all the time and see how they handle things when they don’t know you’re watching. As they grow, you can help them cultivate self defense skills through games and play until they are old enough to study with others.

Conditioned reflexes will fade, but cultivated nature matures. Even the best second-nature assimilation will remain artificial. Its motivation will always be unpredictable. It can come or go, wander or be diverted or triggered by strange stimuli. Someone acting from nature needs no extra motivation and does not easily get diverted.

Patrick Auge once defined “sei” in the sense of tadashi as “what is true for yourself.” I never took that as an abstract moral or philosophical idea, but as finding the way the techniques really work for you, according to your height, weight and personality, and through those techniques learning the art. “An artist must express himself,” he said.

If I have learned anything, it is that an artist must be himself. That is not something that can be imposed by someone else or forced on oneself. And on the other hand, it can’t be faked even by oneself.

The task is not to reprogram your nervous system to a better way of being, but to come to firm grips with your own real nervous system, which, above all, needs you to let it be itself. Then it will serve you with creativity and responsiveness that will seem phenomenal to people who are heavily programmed. Know your own heart, know your own real reactions and find the root of your technique there. “Sei” refers to natural rightness of the individual, beginning with uprightness not because it looks better or science says it’s better, but because it is the nervous system’s natural response to gravity. If you have a basically healthy body and your spine doesn’t naturally lengthen directly perpendicular to the earth, it’s because you have distorted your own nature, or someone has done it to you. Seiza is called “correct” sitting because it’s a natural human way of sitting. Babies effortlessly do it with their spines upright. Toddlers have all the root physical skills necessary to do any martial art in the world. They display these skills in surprisingly complex combinations by one year of age. It is best to recognize those skills and use them as the basis of technique.

Recently, when I was working at the computer, my son came in and took the outside of my shirt sleeve with both hands, in a sort of yama arashi grip. He began to squat toward the floor, hanging from my sleeve. When he felt the support, he actually laid back in mid-air, still hanging from my sleeve, then rolled his body to the outside and sagged all the way to the floor, still holding my sleeve. I recognized the sutemi waza movement of Kyuzo Mifune, Minoru Mochizuki and Kyoichi Murai. My son’s 10 kilos were too light to displace me, but old masters saw the potential in that kind of movement, like the seed of a mustard tree.

When I saw my baby daughter use a kihon movement of Yoseikan Budo, I realized that Mochizuki Sensei must have acquired his vast facility in martial arts in a manner exactly backward from the standard method. He had not trained until the techniques were second nature. He had cultivated his techniques out of first nature—the natural human response, the same as any human baby’s, expressed in one very mature form.

This puts a different light on the sign he kept in the genkan of the dojo: “Never forget the beginner’s mind.”

Another Zen saying is “Have a mind like a baby.”

Jesus said, “Unless you become as a little child, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.” And he said, “The kingdom of heaven is within you.”

As for Jesus the fighter, they said no man could lay hands on him. People used to use that line to compare Morihei to Jesus, but when Jesus laid hands on men, they were healed.

Still, Morihei remains one of my bigger heroes. When Ellis Amdur read my perspective on the origin of aiki technique, he said, “…this may be directly tied to Osensei’s ranting at students that they weren’t doing ‘aikido.’”

“…fighting/aggression, is as absolutely basic a neurological potential as the ‘neutral’ organization of the organism within gravity, ” Ellis said, continuing, “But what this means…potentially at least (is that) true aikido…is NOT a fighting art. All this talk over the years about natural movement may have been, rather than moral preachment, a simple practical statement. Ueshiba, in effect, was saying that the technical rationale for his aikido was using different parts of the brain and different nerve pathways than those used for ‘fighting.’”

In an Aikido Journal online article, Diane Skoss said, “Morihei Ueshiba apparently did not approve of the kata training method, believing that “static” prearrangement of techniques interfered with the direct, spontaneous transmission of techniques from the gods.”

To me, this says that, like Yoshimitsu, O Sensei’s aiki was based directly in his God-given nature as a human being. Our failure is not to err in performance of a kata and it is not failing to be like Morihei. Failure is when we forget to be ourselves.

But back to Ellis’ comment that “(O Sensei’s) aikido was using different parts of the brain and different nerve pathways than those used for “fighting.”

Well, I agree that aikido uses “not fighting” reflexes, but it is not passive or “accidental”. O Sensei got his ever-changing aikido straight from the source of human being, but aiki-jujutsu was rooted in severe and treacherous samurai fighting. So it had first of all be effective and reliable. I think the early aiki masters saw in their own children that sometimes, the best way to respond to resistance is to brush it off and go on with your business. Which, in the case of the old masters, was to apply a jujutsu lock. But what if Morihei recognized that those techniques are truly rooted in human nature and wanted more to express that nature than to express the techniques? If his aikido was really a pure expression of his human nature, then no one else could really do it.

If aikijujutsu and aikido are based on observation of toddlers’ movements, adding appropriate joint locks or throws at the end of a baby aiki step, I can imagine many reasons for the masters to keep it secret. But our lives don’t depend on our skill with the sword and aikido has become such a strange ritual society that it can be very difficult to see its direct roots in nature. For those who really want to see it, you only have to watch the nearest child at play.

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David Orange, Jr. — May 15^th, 2006 (add comment)