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Adult Aikido Program
Through committed practice, students cultivate many benefits for body, mind, and spirit. Physically, Aikido improves mobility, endurance, balance, posture, and dynamic strength. Regular training settles the mind, enhances awareness, and changes responses to perceived danger. With dedicated practice, Aikido offers an ever-deepening path to exploring our true selves.
Our Classes
Our adult Aikido program offers a full-time schedule of day and evening classes for students age 16 and older. Classes are intensive training sessions, where individuals develop according to their own body and fitness level.
Our scheduled Aikido classes include all level and beginner classes, which differ in the pace of training. Beginning students are welcome in either type of class and mixed levels train together in all classes. Adult memberships offer unlimited access to all classes, which include other important components of our training, such as Aikido weapons, iaido, and zazen meditation.
Please see our class schedule for real-time updates.
Aikido
Aikido body arts classes focus on practicing techniques with partners. Partners switch throughout class, and all levels of students work together. After warm-ups and conditioning exercises, the teacher will demonstrate, then work with students individually. Techniques respond to grabs and strikes by taking the partner’s balance and ending the encounter with a throw or a pin. Emphasis is placed on learning safe falling and rolling to allow for increasingly dynamic practice. Classes are vigorous, yet scale to a student’s increasing fitness and abilities.
“The purpose of training is to tighten up the slack, toughen the body, and polish the spirit.” – Morihei Ueshiba (O-Sensei)
Aikido Weapons
Aikido weapons practice is integral to Aikido training at Tacoma Aikikai. Our weapons curriculum is based on the system developed by Birankai founder, T.K. Chiba Shihan. Students first gain familiarity with basic strikes and kata, then move on to dynamic partner practice. Weapons practice using the bokken (wooden sword) and jo (wooden staff) strongly develop martial principles such as extension, distance, timing, and connection. When faced with a strike from a weapon, students gain a greater level of focus to enhance reaction time and awareness.
“The sword and jyo are extensions of your body and must be handled as if they have your blood running through them…Unless you can make the weapons part of your body, you have not truly trained in Aikido.” – Kisshomaru Ueshiba
Iaido
Iaido is a form of Japanese swordwork involving the study of kata to draw, cut, and sheath the sword. Iaido curriculum at Tacoma Aikikai follows the Iai Batto-ho school developed by T.K. Chiba Shihan and based on the systems of Muso Shinden Ryu and Shindo Munen Ryu transmitted from Mitsuzuka Sensei. Although students can begin with a wooden bokken, practice soon requires the use of a dull-edged sword (iaito). Advanced students may eventually use a live-edged sharp blade (shinken). A dominantly solo practice, iaido literally sharpens our form and martial intent through disciplined focus.
Apprenticeship
Tacoma Aikikai Community
Tacoma Aikikai is a community of diverse families and individuals who come to Aikido for many reasons. All ages, levels, and abilities practice together to challenge and support each other on and off the mat. Our dojo is also part of an Aikido community that extends regionally, nationally, and around the world. We are enriched by the friendship and practice from hosting seminars or traveling to events in the US and abroad.