Aikido Insights with Dave Goldberg, Sensei: Aikido Versus Other Martial Arts

When most people hear Aikido, the first thing they think of is martial arts.  Although Aikido has a foundation in martial arts, it can be much more.  Life Purpose Advisor recommends the study and practice of Aikido because it offers the opportunity for personal transformation and, therefore, helps with finding ones life purpose.  It is often hard to describe this process to a non-Aikidoist, who may have a life philosophy excluding a physical practice like Aikido.
To offer insights into Aikido, Dave Goldberg, Sensei of Aikido of San Diego, addresses  insightful  questions  related to this transormative martial art.  We will be presenting those questions over the next month to promote thought around Aikido and the relationship to Transforming the Body (one of our key modules).  Please ask any additional questions on Aikido and its relationship to your personal goals or finding  your life purpose in the comment section below.  We’ll do our best to answer them.
Goldberg Sensei, began with the following questions:

• Why did you choose to study aikido as opposed to another martial art?
• How are your previous training experiences in aikido as well as your perspective on aikido unique and how are these reflected in your teaching?
• What aspects of aikido do you think generally foster the most personal growth or the greatest personal evolution and what parts of aikido have influenced your own growth and development?
• So this question of, “What is aikido?” comes up a lot. How has your understanding of what exactly is aikido changed over the years?

Question:  Why did you choose to study aikido as opposed to another martial art?
In this excerpt, Dave Goldberg talks about his shadow, the relationship to Aikido and Inner work and how his introduction to Aikido was a true gift. (Thank you to Laura Fleisch, History Graduate Student and Uchideshi at Aikido of San Diego who facilitates the discussion.)
After listening, consider your own mind, body, spirit connection.  Are you providing yourself an opportunity to allow the system to transform naturally or do you feel blocked?  Tell us about your thoughts on Aikido, Martial Arts, and/or transforming the body.

Read the transcript:
Dave Goldberg: Well, I don’t really know to tell you the truth. The opportunity came to me in the form of aikido when I was in high school. Over a Thanksgiving family get-together, my older cousin Jonathan was home from Tufts University where he was doing aikido and he showed me some stuff that I thought was pretty cool and he told me about the art and so I guess in that sense, it chose me in some strange way. I didn’t actually start until I was just finishing college. It wasn’t really available to me in a convenient way so I took some time to get around to it but it was always on my mind.
It’s interesting. You know, I sort of discovered in the last couple of years of a lot of inner work, how coming to aikido came to me through my shadow, so to speak. It was interesting growing up. I was always kind of compared to my cousin Jonathan and not as the one who was always doing better, so to speak. He was better than me at this and better than me at that and in very indirect ways, my family sort of reminded me of that.
And when he showed me this, I think that really what was happening was that I sort of discovered that there was something I could probably do better than Jonathan. So this disowned part of myself that was perhaps not feeling particularly worthy had a gift and the gift was aikido and I’ve been doing it ever since and it’s interesting how those things happen.