There is a concept in aikido called “beginner's mind.”
It is the mental state that newcomers to aikido are in — or the mental state for starting anything new. At its core, beginner’s mind means openness to learn without assumption. But the concept is just as important to a black belt as it is to a white belt. Beginner’s mind is necessary for teachers and an important reminder for everyone, especially in a place like UBC.
In the moments before I was awarded my black belt in aikido, I realized that, despite more than a decade of experience in the martial art, I was about to become a beginner all over again. Sitting there, focusing on my breath in the quiet hush that always falls right before a class starts, the ceremony felt daunting. After the bow into class, my whole dojo lined up with feet tucked under them, their attention on my teacher as he called my name. What I had to do was an easy-to-mess-up sequence of bows, shuffles on my knees, sitting just in the right spot and then some more bowing. My friends also being awarded their black belts couldn’t help me: I was going first.
Doing a black belt test is a big deal. But maybe the awarding ceremony is an even bigger one.
Your test is a balance between keeping your head and letting muscle memory completely take over. Aikido isn’t a competitive sport — you have a partner who, for the most part, is on your side. A test is not combat, but a demonstration, a showcase of your skills and a repetition of moves you have done a thousand times — especially with my teacher, who will drill practice tests until he's turned you into a perfectionist.
But no one prepared me for the award ceremony, aside from a quick recap the minute before, and now, I was stressing that I’d forget a bow. Though I’d already passed my test, I truly felt like a beginner.
We are all experiencing and learning new things all the time, especially as university students. But it’s not every day that we decide to learn something brand new, because it's hard. To try something for the first time is to be completely inept, to likely make a fool of yourself again and again and to persevere through the frustration of just not getting it. Think of the last time you tried a new sport or took an elective completely out of your depth. Being ignorant forces you to learn a lot, and quickly.
Obviously a university is a space of learning, but it’s easy to get caught up in surviving the next midterm or finishing an essay just in time for the midnight deadline. When you lose track of beginner’s mind, you take for granted the fact that you know anything about your subject and risk the sort of unnoticed intellectual arrogance that hampers improvement.
As I was putting on my belt after the awarding ceremony, one of my teachers came up to congratulate me. He mentioned another common martial arts concept, the idea that true aikido practice only begins at black belt. This idea is that only at black belt can you really begin to learn — before that you are only developing your foundation, the basics. It's a complicated notion. At black belt, you can begin learning to truly connect to your partner’s energy, their ki. Black belts are told to have a beginner’s mind because when a teacher is trying to show you something and you think you already know how to do it, you are closing yourself off to the process of learning.
Early this summer, I was asked by another dojo to teach at a seminar for kids they were hosting in Kelowna — coincidentally, the same city where I had done my black belt test seven months before. At the end of one class, the organizers had the kids sit in a circle on the mat and ask us questions. One that came up was what each of us was currently working on.
I wanted to come up with something clever or interesting, but with no test in my near future, I was mostly focusing on school. In aikido, you always have something to learn (another martial arts concept designed to shape you into a workaholic) but I didn’t have something I was actively trying to improve.
I told the kids that I was working on approaching my practice with a beginner’s mind. I admit, at the time I blurted it out as a barely formed thought. I haven’t really stopped thinking about it since — I have concluded that it isn’t in my practice that I need to work on having an open mind, but in my teaching.
I have been teaching aikido since around the age of 11. In those eight-odd years, my aikido has definitely improved and I hope my teaching has as well. But the relationship between my teaching and learning has not changed — my processes of learning and sharing that learning are so closely tied that I wouldn’t be able to separate them. Whenever I learn something new that I think could be useful for the kids, I file it away for when I can pass it on. I get better so my students can improve, and they make me better in turn.
Teaching is more to me than the classes I lead. I connect with people of all ages, and though the flow of knowledge might appear to be one-way, the children and adults I instruct have taught me as much as I have taught them. I’ve had to learn skills like public speaking, communication and empathy. Working with people in a community is rewarding, and being part of the family at my dojo has made me into who I am today.
When kids start helping out in the younger classes at my dojo, we usually have them do a lot of watching. The way they learn how to teach, especially from the start, is “monkey see, monkey do.” In order to succeed, they must be willing to imitate what the older teachers are doing — which requires a willingness to learn. I have watched countless kids grow frustrated and quit teaching because they don’t believe they have anything to learn.
At some point, I lost track of beginner’s mind in my teaching. I felt I had gotten good, my friends and I were at a point where there was no one hierarchically above us. No one was putting in the hours or the hard work that we were except my teacher. I was confident, and though there’s nothing wrong with that, it led me to a position from which I couldn't easily learn more.
When I say to myself now that I’m working on having a beginner’s mind, I think about how necessary the mindset is to being an effective teacher, one that is not only open to learning, but is actively putting themselves into a beginner’s shoes, both to understand their students better and to grow themselves. A teacher who is not actively developing their knowledge and their teaching skills is stagnant, and what they can impart is limited.
A good teacher is a student first and foremost. The best is one that still considers themselves a beginner. A small part of it is humility, another part is respect for your students because you see them as fellow learners. But the biggest part is that no student wants to learn from a teacher who no longer cares to learn about the subject, who wouldn’t sit in their own lecture and take notes.
Beginner’s mind is a nebulous martial arts concept told by old men to young black belts in an attempt to prevent them from getting arrogant. But thinking about it this summer, I realized that it’s also something we all let go of at times in favour of the comfort of feeling skilled. Being a beginner is difficult, but is it not also fun? Beginnings are defined — above all else — by their possibilities.
Beginner’s mind can mean something different to everyone. It might be stepping out of your comfort zone, occasionally humbling yourself, not taking yourself too seriously, being more spontaneous, trying something new for the sake of the experience, allowing yourself to fail, being empathetic to someone less experienced that you, being open to the possibility that those you are trying to teach can teach you something too.
University is the time to be a beginner. It is the time to be playful and curious, for new experiences and big firsts. It’s a space for learning and teaching, and should be one where both can happen at once.
First online
Share this article
