Aikido Journey- Conclusions after the Training Camp

Beauty and Aikido ©

As one of the purposes of this blog is to show you  and document the journey I am going through with aikido, I decided to go for this post. Even thought it is hard to admit it, during almost every training camp, I tend to lose confidence in myself.  So here is a post for everyone who ever lost confidence in practicing aikido for various reasons:

Busted body parts during free fall (I thought I knew how to do that already- feeling)
No technique name rings a bell
Requested to do all the techniques you know from shomenuchi and you blank out
Forgetting the jo katas
Bad body coordination (which one was the left again?)
etc. etc. etc.

Most of the problems come from comparing yourself to others...which is something one theoretically should not do, but cannot avoid doing. 

The duality of the following thought amuses me the most. Could be that both of these occur at the same time, as in my case:

1. You are taking your practice and yourself too seriously
2. You are not taking it seriously enough

What I mean by that is that I train as many times as I can, and I do get involved with aikido outside the dojo also, but at the same time, I cannot set my mind to seriously focusing on it. There are so many other distractions that stop me from concentrating.

So what should one do at this stage? What I did was Googleing for how others felt about this on forums and blogs. I really liked the following idea.

Anyone attempting to master anything goes through 4 phases: 

1. Unconscious incompetence
2. Conscious incompetence
3. Unconscious competence
4. Conscious competence 

This explanations sound like a great excuse...

So that's that... But did I ever attempt to really master aikido? I think I do it just for the fun of it and sometimes hit the wall of remorse when I see how seriously others take it and how quickly they leave me behind.


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