An Interview With A Beginner

Interview with Michelle Sullivan conducted by Margo Ballou

Q: Michelle, when did you begin studying Aikido, and how did you decide on Aikido as opposed to some other physical activity?

A: I started about two years ago, after my friend Cappy started practicing at MIT, and she told me about it. She didn’t tell me a whole lot, but I had been kind of curious about martial arts for a long time, and since my best friend started it, I thought, hey, why not, I could try it too. I saw a flier up around RISD about it.

Q: Had you ever done a martial art before?

A: No, I hadn’t. I hadn’t come anywhere close. I was just curious.

Q: What interested you about martial arts?

A: I probably got interested when I heard my father talk about it. He practiced some type of karate when he was in college. He didn’t practice it for very long, but he said it really changed his way, the way that he thought about the world, and I don’t know, something about that, I guess, kind of stuck to me.

Q: Cool. And why did you stick with Aikido?

A: I’m stubborn. I like the people a lot; that kept me going back. And I like the whole mindset about it. It’s just like my dad said; it’s really made me change the way I think about some things, um, conflicts.

Q: So, do you have any other martial arts in mind that you might like to practice one day, or do you think you’ll stick with Aikido?

A: I think I’d probably stick with Aikido. I don’t have, really, any other, haven’t heard of anything that’s really captured my attention.

Q: What are your goals in your Aikido practice?

A: My goals... I don’t know, I haven’t made a whole lot of goals about it, I just like going.

Q: It’s mostly for fun and relaxation?

A: Mm, yeah: for exercise, partially, for just a light sort of discipline, I appreciate it, and it’s the closest thing I do to dance. There’s something about just making really beautiful body motions.

Q: And how often do you go?

A: I try to go two or three times a week, although I haven’t been going that often lately.

Q: What Aikido technique do you think is the hardest?

A: Oh gosh, I don’t know... Breakfalls! They scare me! I want to learn them, but I haven’t gotten around to it quite yet.

Q: What’s your approach to breakfalls, to learning them?

A: I haven’t really started learning them yet. A couple of times I’ve gone into class and, before class or afterward, I’ve pulled out the extra soft mat and just thrown myself head over heels a few times to try and get the hang of it, but I usually end up clobbering myself after a few tries, and give up for a little while.

Q: Yeah, I do that too. I can do breakfalls, but eventually I clobber myself and have to stop!

Who is your favorite training partner?

A: [pause] I don’t know. I don’t have any one particular person--

One person that I really enjoyed working with, but haven’t been able to work with lately is Mark, the hapkido teacher, just because he’s so much bigger than me. When I practice with him, he doesn’t seem to mind in the least that I put all of my force into throwing him around. He just smiles!

Q: Yeah, he was even nice when I hit him in the face. He said it made him feel at home.

How do you feel about training mainly with men in our dojo?

A: I hadn’t thought about it. They’re nice guys.

Q: Even though you’re only a fifth kyu, you’re one of the senior students in our dojo, and actually you’re the senior woman. When I joined the dojo, I had seen you in a demonstration, and I sought you out immediately. Do you feel comfortable as the senior woman in the dojo, possibly inspiring other women who are beginning Aikido?

A: I’m not a good enough role model! I haven’t been doing it long enough to be looked up to like that! I didn’t realize...I just never thought about it.

Q: You’ve tested for fifth kyu. What was your kyu test like?

A: I was terrified. I was so incredibly nervous beforehand when I was practicing, I kept screwing up, and I was just absolutely terrified that I could go up in front of everybody and forget everything. I had not been expecting the huge crowd that was there, so I was totally, totally taken by surprise to find out that it was, the whole dojo was testing that day. But I, when I was walking up to the mat, it suddenly occurred to me that I should treat this like a piano recital, and that I should try to make it entertaining for people so that they wouldn’t worry about me. So I just put myself in the piano playing mindset, got up to the front, and it all went pretty well.

Q: Who was your uke?

A: Somebody that I’d never met before.

Q: It was somebody from the dojo in Cambridge?

A: Yeah.

Q: How was it having a strange uke for the test?

A: I don’t think it would have made any difference whether I’d had somebody uke-ing for me who I’d known, I was looking at them as an attacker and not really a person. I was still incredibly nervous.

Q: How did you feel about having the four examiners watching you?

A: The four examiners? What do you mean?

Q: I mean the examining board at the front.

A: Oh. I try not to think about them.

Q: How do you feel about weapons?

A: Ooh, that’s fun! I’ve really not used them much at all, but the last weapons practice we had, with the bokken, oh, I just loved it. There’s something about practicing with a wooden sword that... It’s so perfectly useless to everyday life that I could just concentrate on making beautiful motions with my body and getting the posture correct and just holding the thing correctly. And something about that was just absolutely wonderful. It was kind of a nice change from not using weapons, which is a little more practical. Somebody attacks you, you can just chuck ’em on the ground, but I’m not gonna go out any time soon with a sword and fight anybody on the street.

Q: One friend of mine says that when she gets a sword in her hand, she scares all the men in her dojo, saying, "Now I know how you feel!"

Do you feel any different when you’re holding a sword? When I have a sword, I get really focused.

A: Holding a sword didn’t really change the way I was thinking or acting, but having somebody point a sword at me really kind of startled me. I didn’t realize how intimidating it would be for somebody to point a piece of wood at me.

Q: You mentioned that Aikido has changed the way you look at life. In what ways has Aikido interacted with your life outside the dojo?

A: Well, all that stuff about blending with your enemy. If I’m not getting along with somebody, running into conflict, in a lot of cases it just makes me stop and think about what I will accomplish if I fight that person tooth and nail, or if instead I let them think they’re getting their way. I find it easier to sit back and just let a person talk now, and I can be very calm about my response, and also I can see that it doesn’t hurt to let people win an argument. It doesn’t make that much of a difference. I’m less likely to drive myself crazy, and not trying to win an argument very forcefully.

Q: To what extent has Aikido been what you expected it to be?

What have been your biggest surprises?

A: I don’t know! I went into it with so little idea of what it was going to be that I don’t think anything really took me by surprise. It was all very, very new to me. I think, the only thing, the only ideas I had about martial arts was that karate involved making kiai noises and hitting people with the side of your hand, and it also had some sort of mindset to it that really profoundly changed the way my father thought about the world, something beyond the kiai noises and the karate strikes.

Q: Do you ever wish we got to do kiais?

A: Ah, I spent one summer at a different dojo, and there they encouraged people to do that. Mostly I just felt silly.

Q: How long do you anticipate continuing to practice Aikido?

A: As long as there’s a dojo available to me, I’ll practice. Although I don’t think I’m going to organize my life around living near dojos, I have too many other things that I want to do in the meantime, but, you know, if I have to stop practicing for a year or several years, and then I end up back near a dojo again, I’ll go back.

Q: When do you think you’ll test for fourth kyu?

A: AAAH! I suppose the next time Carl asks if anybody wants to test, or just if the opportunity comes up, I’ll do it. I was too busy this last time around to put in the extra time to make sure I knew what I was doing.

Q: Yeah, maybe next time we can train together.

A: That would be fun.

Q: I think that’s about it. Is there anything else you want to say about Aikido?

A: Yeah, actually. I was talking to somebody the other day who had some questions for me about why I was interested, and I kind of had a revelation while I was talking to him, that I really like Aikido for the process and not the product, which is the way I tend to think about illustrations. When I initially studied illustration, I was thinking it was all about having a final piece of work to be published; and to the person who’s buying it, it really is about that final piece of work, but to the person who’s doing the illustration, if it’s not about the process, the time it takes to make the thing, it’s going to drive you crazy. It’s hard work, and if you don’t enjoy the process, you can give yourself ulcers. With Aikido, especially with the last practice with the bokken, I wasn’t learning the bokken so that I could eventually go out with a sword and fight off attackers, because that’s not ever going to happen. It was about getting my posture right and making beautiful motions and centering myself.

Q: Yeah, when I’m being more goal-oriented about the Aikido, it’s just not as much fun.

A: I guess that was one reason I started out, was because I liked the idea of being able to defend myself. Before that, if somebody were to attack me, I would either scream and run away, or try to punch them, although I’d never really had the chance to practice punching before. Initially I was totally excited about being able to throw somebody, you know, being able to put them on the ground. That was just a really satisfying thing, but now that’s not my goal any more; it’s a nice side product.