The long road to tatami

When I woke up the morning of Wednesday, 8 February 2006, I didn't have any idea that my life was going to change that day. Well, it wasn't quite that dramatic. However, it was that evening that I took my first tentative steps onto the tatami to learn a martial art, aikido. I now feel as if everything's changed for me since then.

Back in the 1980's, a close friend and mentor suggested that I look into something called "aikido". He, himself, is a former karate-ka who believed that aikido would be good for me -- not only for my general fitness, but also to help me feel more comfortable with myself. Although I didn't take up his suggestion at the time, he gave to me a copy of Gozo Shioda's well-known book on aikido entitled, "Dynamic Aikido". Alas, that book sat on my bookshelf for years.

For years, that is, until late 2005 when, spurred by overwork and office stress, I decided to pick up that book and read it. Sure, it's easy to read a book about sports -- there are thousands of them at any major book retailer. But I was in a mood to act. And this book really moved me, not because of the specifics of aikido, but because of its gracefulness. It really looked like something I could once again sink my teeth into.

You see, it had been over 10 years since I had seriously participated in any sport, and my passion at that time was racing bicycles (road cycling, to be specific). Unfortunately, road cycling takes an extensive time commitment, one that modern work-life seems to not allow me. Cycling also requires roads (preferably uncongested ones), and that's quite a tall order for someone living in central London.

But, what do you do when you are interested in something like aikido, but you don't know where to go to find it? I haphazardly started searching on the web for dojos, completely oblivious to the idea that there are many different styles of most martial arts (aikido is certainly no exception). I eventually found the website of the British Aikido Association which, at that time, was the home for all styles of aikido in the United Kingdom, and from that website I discovered that voila! there was a shodokan aikido dojo a mere two blocks away from my office in London.

And so it passed that on the 8th of February in 2006, I found myself at London's Central YMCA learning how to safely fall backwards onto tatami mats. I've been falling ever since and, thank goodness, I see no end in sight.