Welcome to South Austin Aikido

By Gilbert Ryan Hughes

I have been involved in Aikido for close to a year now. Before I was even part of the dojo, I heard stories of how Aikido is different from all the other martial arts I have taken. The first time I went to watch a class I saw so many things I was looking for, and later on I found out that there was even more that Aikido offered. When I first started training I had a hard time learning the philosophy of Aikido, as all do, but learned quickly how to use my center.

When I started out I heard the word “relax” many times. I learned later that when you are told to relax, no matter how relaxed you think you are, you really aren’t. The more I learned to relax the easier my movements were, but it didn’t only effect my moves. Like many things in life, your life reflects your activities. The more I learned to relax in Aikido the more I learned to relax in life. In Aikido, like everything in life, you have to take things step by step with patience. If you don’t have patience you become frustrated then you become tense then you are not able to do whatever move it is you are trying to do.

Although Aikido has offered me many things other than just how to be patient and take things step by step. It has also allowed me to begin and build new friendships. In my time that I have trained I’ve made many friends and am still making them with every new student or visitor that comes to train at the dojo. More importantly, all the friends that I have made have become family.