Aiki Jo, Japanese short staff

Wellbeing, fitness & Aikijo club.
including mind and body consciousness practices
There is a philosophical element to energy and breath exercises.

Realise that aikido will fulfil many of its principles
in your everyday life.
Your life will be better for it,
in more ways than you can imagine.
So, try it for yourself.

We will explore more wellness and consciousness exercises drawn from oriental arts as well as themes on health and self defence.
A class suitable for all.
Just turn up on the evening or use contact page for more details from instructor

Is this one of the great secrets of aiki? see blog post

If you've seen something before, don't let your mind tell you not to see it again, try seeing with new eyes.
The art was the same at the beginning, it is you that changes.

Hanging on to the past, leaves you no hands free to grasp the future.

If you are not sensitive enough to harmonise with the weapons, and become 'one' with them . . . that is, a partnership and not a dictatorship, then how can weapons be correctly training the body for Aikido ?
The weapons in aikido are there to teach and change your body …
are we listening to them?

Short video showing very useful Jo exercise here

A few years ago the club experimented with cutting newspaper with a boken. It is a great test of your relaxation as well as skill. Muscle tension seems to be detrimental to a clean cut and the paper is merely crumpled and torn from the fingers of the students holding it taut. Worth a try … think you have a good ken cut?
Let a sheet of newspaper reveal the truth.
Also, inspired by a top Japanese sensei cutting bamboo while it was suspended on paper held up by sharp knives, we had a go at cutting the bamboo - with students holding each end !!! Very gingerly I might add.
The clip in videos was an attempt in my own garden to explore why it might work.
For fun … here

If the attacker moves first, how can you arrive before them? HERE

Short videos available on gripping and the ideomotor effect
are on the video page. Here

Aikijo, (Aiki Jo, Aiki-Jo),
harmony of spirit with Jo,
the Japanese short staff.
Aikido weapons class in North Devon.
Aiki Jo Bideford.
Aiki weapons training.
(Jo and Ken, short staff and wooden sword,
also looking at kumi tachi, tachi dori, Jo nage,
Jo dori,ken tai jo)
taught by Richard Small in Bideford, Devon, UK,
principle based teaching.

Much gratitude to the photographer and promulgator of these fine images.

Free Aiki weapons workshop offered to any club in south west England.
Use contact page to ask.

"Aiki weapons have been an integral part of Aikido
from the beginning. Some would say, a foundation of the art."

There are visible differences in the aiki weapons from styles that developed from various sword schools.
They are often not the same, neither have they the same purpose.

Some Jo kata resembles spear practice more than it does Jo.
Perhaps the Bo and spear techniques were added and applied to the Jo merely for convenience. I don't know.
It makes us consider the katas' origins.
Nuances of use may be different but
both are valuable in our search for harmony.

The following pages serve to reinforce an understanding of Aiki weapons and give purpose to teaching them as a separate art. By which path we can learn to co-ordinate and energetically connect our whole body
as one. . . one with that of the universal.
We use techniques and methods handed down by the late Saito Sensei 9th Dan to my own teacher,
Sensei Tony Sargeant 7th Dan Aikikai and adviser to TIA Europe.

Class teaching is also a blend of many years Tai Chi study, bringing some interesting and useful mind and body principles from the 'internal' arts to use in Jo training and practice. What is Ki if not Chi?
Increasingly we find valuable links with the ki principles taught by Koichi Tohei and still taught by selected teachers who made the effort to study meaningfully.

It is the explorer, the adventurer, that most enjoys discovery. . . so why not be one?
Join us.

Martial Arts in Bideford.
Aikido and weapons.
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'Invest in yourself. . . and keep the change!'

Cambridge, Howard Mallet Club. A visit by Sensei Pat Hendricks in the 1980s.

Experience a traditional martial art for yourself and find out who you really are, for that is their purpose.

Aiki Jo Bideford is an affiliate member of this association

Dojo registered with Aiki Extensions

Registered instructor with this association

and a participating dojo in Aiki Peace Week

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In memory of Stanley Pranin.
Our world of Aikido would not exist today without all
he achieved to keep the faith and the truth.
May his journey continue in peace.
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“Some things are hurrying into existence, and others are hurrying out of it; and of that which is coming into existence part is already extinguished. Motions and changes are continually renewing the world, just as the uninterrupted course of time is always renewing the infinite duration of the ages.
In this flowing stream then, on which there is no abiding, what is there of the things that hurry by on which a man would set a high price?”
Marcus Aurelius

“. . . in the hands of a serious student,
it (weapon) is a pathway and
a prayer towards balance and peace.”
from my good friend Terry, (Karate 4th Dan)