Aikido and Speech Therapy
Being rather than doing
When I was in my mid twenties, my boss paid for me to go to speech therapy. The therapist specialized in working with professionals who had communication difficulties.
At our first meeting, she evaluated me by saying I spoke in a monotone and that my face was boring to look at. This was in the early ’80s, so I told her she reminded me of Nancy Reagan.
Here is the Aikido part of the story.
Between sessions, she wanted me to practice by recording myself on a tape recorder. At the same time, my job required me to make cold calls. Instead of measuring success by how many appointments I booked, I shifted my attention toward the clarity of my speech, my tone, and the quality of my presence during the calls.
Ironically, once I stopped obsessing over the result and focused on the quality of the interaction itself, I became a very effective cold caller.
This is where I find myself now with Aikido.
The moment I become too focused on “making the technique work,” my attention narrows and the relationship begins to disappear. But when I focus on the quality of connection, when I move from doing something to someone toward discovering the “us,” my balance begins to organize itself naturally with my partner.
I think this is what O Sensei meant when he said, “You are wrong. I am constantly losing my balance. My skill lies in my ability to regain it.”
Perhaps what makes Aikido an art is the transition from doing toward being.
The picture of the turtle you posted almost looks like it has Depth — ha!
-But seriously,
undersea creatures look like they’re from another world, and this one almost feels like a 3-D image.
What strikes me about your story is that it feels like a pedagogical reflection disguised as a personal memory.
(My favorite part.)
The shift you describe — from trying to
*make*
something happen toward attending to the quality of interaction itself — feels very familiar.
It suggests that technique does not actually create relationship;
Rather, relationship allows technique to appear.
(It’s as if the stronger
a persons opinion is when attacking,
The easier it is to redirect it, which becomes a lesson for the defender that seems counterintuitive, and that is being indifferent when redirecting.)
Your cold-calling example makes this beautifully clear.
When evaluation drops away and participation becomes primary,
skill seems to organize itself.
The same thing happens in practice. The moment attention narrows onto “making the technique work,” something essential disappears. But when attention returns to the shared experience — the “us” — movement begins to resolve on its own.
It reminds me that balance is never something we possess;
It is something continuously restored within interaction. Perhaps that is why practice feels alive — we are not demonstrating stability so much as rediscovering it, moment by moment, together.
What I especially appreciate is that your story points to something larger about Aikido itself.
Again and again, people train deeply in Aikido or related arts and then carry its principles far beyond the dojo. You can see it in movement education like
“Spatial Dynamics”through
Jaimen McMillan,
in dance through
Steve Paxton’s
“Contact Improvisation”
and in
“somatic education” through
Moshe Feldenkrais
(a longtime judo practitioner influenced by the tradition of Jigoro Kano).
Others brought the same insights into leadership and human development — people like Wendy Palmer, Paul Linden,
and George Leonard.
What’s striking is that none of these fields look like martial arts on the surface, yet the same qualities keep reappearing: shared balance, listening instead of opposing, organization emerging through relationship rather than force.
It begins to feel as though Aikido functions less as a fixed martial system and more as a generative discipline — something that quietly reorganizes perception itself.
Your story feels like one of those moments where that migration becomes visible.
The art isn’t confined to techniques;
It shows up wherever attention shifts from controlling outcomes toward participating in connection.
In that sense, Aikido may not be the abandonment of doing, but the relaxation of ownership over doing.
Technique stops being something we perform and becomes something that emerges naturally from relationship.
That transition -from doing toward being.