Peaceful Warriors

Aikido & The Force of Love

by Wendy Kagan and illustrations by Annie Internicola, June 29, 2011

Roll open the barn doors in a Woodstock artists’ colony and you’ll witness a scene of beauty and grace. Men and women enrobed in white and black perform a fluid dance of power and restraint. Sometimes they spin like human pinwheels, thumping the padded floor, yet in another breath they’re standing firm, ready to thwart one another with what seems like the barest flip of the thumb or wrist. With light streaming through the antique windows, it’s less like a scene in an action flick than it is a Japanese painting—elegant and precise yet with strong Catskills motifs.

In many ways, the martial art of Aikido is painting a brushstroke of bold serenity across the region. It took root here in the Byrdcliffe barns, where Woodstock Aikido came to life almost 25 years ago as the realized vision of its founder, Harvey Konigsberg Sensei. One of only a handful of non-Japanese Aikido instructors in the world to hold the rank of seventh degree black belt, and also a master painter, Konigsberg inspires almost pious devotion among students both here and at the New York Aikikai in Manhattan, where he also teaches. One student half-jokingly describes the 71-year-old sensei as “the rabbi I never had”; several disciples live in the area just to be around Konigsberg and his dojo. Encouraged by their teacher, a few senior students have gone on to open their own dojos in surrounding towns such as Phoenicia, Kingston, and Kripplebush. Others have woven the discipline’s mind-body-spirit connection into their work off the mat in surprising ways, spreading the tenets of nonviolence that distinguish Aikido from other martial arts.

The Protective Samurai
Developed in the early 20th century, Aikido—the art of peace—is one of the youngest martial arts and perhaps the most spiritually evolved. Its founder, Morihei Ueshiba—often called O-Sensei, or “Great Teacher”—died in the same year of the Woodstock peace-and-love music fest, 1969. And such was his way. While Ueshiba was an expert at several kinds of martial arts as a young man, around midlife he experienced an awakening: He realized that the way of the warrior is to manifest love rather than breed aggression. In this light the warrior’s goal is not to destroy or slaughter but to protect all living things in a spirit of unity. A peaceable martial art was born.

On a typical Saturday morning at Woodstock Aikido, Konigsberg rings the cow bell, its soft sound heralding the beginning of class. When the sensei demonstrates the first technique, he uses few words and hardly seems to move at times, making his mastery of the forms look effortless. As the class progresses, with groups of two or three enacting techniques on the mat, it’s easy to see how Aikido’s ideals of nonviolence come through in the physical practice. There are no punches or kicks. Instead one student role-plays the beginning of an aggressive act—such as a hand outstretched to strike—while her partner counters the attack with techniques designed to neutralize or redirect their energy. Sometimes the move is a throw, sending the attacker somersaulting through the air, and sometimes it’s a pin that renders the partner immobile yet leaves him unharmed. Concentrating on the core of the body—the source of “ki,” or life force, just below the navel—practitioners flow through circular movements that harmonize and blend with each other, resolving conflict instead of escalating it.

Yet Aikido is not soft; it is quite powerful. “If you have to, you can do damage,” says Konigsberg later in the dojo’s common room, which is adorned with a few of the sensei’s luminous paintings. “Within each technique you can issue harm or choose not to. Aikido has a life and death aspect; this is what it was based on. But it’s moved to a point where we take care of our partner. You have the flowing quality of dance but the edge of a martial art, which gives it a certain center.” Why do you need to protect an attacker who wants to hurt you? “In some cases you can’t,” says Konigsberg. “But if you have the option, the same principles and techniques that will protect him will also protect you.”