Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Agent of Change: Diana Knobel

It’s a beautiful day in mid-August when Diana Knobel and I finally meet at The Well on 2100 First Ave. S., where her spiritual counseling practice is located. The building is one of those charming old mansions in a neighborhood that highlights the Minneapolis of both yesterday and today. The dominant vision here is that of the neighborhood as a renewable resource, with enterprises both new and old in vibrant co-existence with one another. F.Scott Fitzgerald meets Nuruddin Farah.

Knobel invites me to explore the building’s old world charm as she fixes herself a cup of tea. Then we settle into a plush sofa in her office, which is decorated in soothing colors. The shelves are a study of Knobel’s spiritual teaching lineage, with portraits of teachers who pioneered methods in forgiveness, including notables like Mary Hayes-Greco, Edith Stouffer, and Roberto Assagioli. In addition to being a spiritual counselor, Knobel is a filmmaker and mother of three.

Drano for the Soul
Knobel’s counseling practice focuses on practical spirituality: forgiveness. Learning to forgive is done on an individual level, says Knobel, and “it’s like Drano for the soul. The effect is like burning a log in the fireplace. It’s done. The result is freedom. It doesn’t mean that you condone or allow misbehavior. It’s about understanding.”

“Let me put it this way,” says Knobel, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. You can’t expect somebody else to do something different. True freedom comes when you change yourself.”

Having struggled through what she calls, “a dysfunctional childhood,” Knobel worked hard to break out of the mistakes her own parents had made with her. She says, “I suffered horribly from low self esteem. I coasted through high school. I was dealing with the divorce of my parents. I regret not taking that more seriously. When I look back on that period – at eighteen, I was at the peak of my intellectual ability, but I had no support structure. There was no one there to channel me.”

At eighteen, Knobel began searching for “where to land” and enrolled in a Bible college, where she studied for two and a half years. “I was a bible thumper for six months of my life,” says Knobel, “I thought, ‘I’ll try this God thing because my life isn’t working now.’ I jumped in with both feet.”

Within twenty-four hours of attending North Central Bible College, Knobel entered into a “born-again experience.” She stopped smoking, drinking, and participating in sexual activity. “It felt nice to come into the city with the feeling that God was watching over us.”

After a while, the experience became almost cult-like, says Knobel, who felt that the overarching message was that, “It’s not going to be safe if you leave the protection of this circle.” Knobel started feeling increasingly uncomfortable with the born-again lifestyle and reflects now that, “You can’t put God into a box and say that spirituality includes only this and this, only what is within these four walls.”

“I’m not a fatalist in any sense of the word, but there is some thread of rhyme or reason in our lives. There does seem to be destiny and free will can sign us up for it.”

The experience was a worthwhile one for Knobel in the sense that it gave her insight into “what Christianity was meant to be and what it has become…an understanding of the Right Wing political movement and how to go head to head with that. Bible college was a part of the preparation.”

Each Choice has a Consequence
Knobel switches gears for a moment and says, “The first movie that ever impacted my life was Jewel of the Nile, with Kathleen Turner. I was a budding feminist at that time. The patriarchal hierarchy was grating on me, but I didn’t have the language to deal with it. I saw Jewel of the Nile and wanted that kind of life that Kathleen Turner’s character had.”

Knobel removed herself from the religious environment and headed for Europe, where she backpacked on her own for nine months. “God didn’t strike me down with thunderbolts, but served as a guide. There were no lightening bolts – but enlightenment.” She learned to rely on her own judgment and intuition and came to think of the experience as an exercise of faith.

While in Spain, Knobel first encountered the Englishman who was to become her husband. “It wasn’t tourist season, so we were the only blondes in Santiago del Campostello. Our heads stuck up above everybody else’s, otherwise we wouldn’t have seen each other.”

The two were married in 1985 and eventually set up residence in North Minneapolis. Knobel spent the next eight years in her near-north neighborhood, where she and her husband worked as property managers for absentee landlords. Over those eight years, they also worked to rehabilitate their own property, an effort that came in handy when they eventually traded it in for a hobby farm in Lino Lakes.

Knobel and her husband had their first child (of three) in 1989. She is grateful to her (now) ex-husband because, for him, “staying home as a mom wasn’t an issue. It was unheard of in the 80s. ECFE (Early Childhood and Family Education) was just starting. Those of us who stayed home were feeling guilty about not being real women – about not having both professional lives and children.”

Her firstborn daughter was premature and spent the first three weeks of her life in an incubator. “It was an intense birth and there was an intensity about parenting. We wanted the best of everything and made the decision that one of us would stay home.”

Years earlier, at the Bible School, a prophet had predicted that Knobel would get married, have children, develop her spiritual gifts, and eventually start her own ministry. Back then she just dismissed the thought. Now she grins and says, “I had been a feminist, wanted a professional life..but this is how it has played out. The prophecy has unfolded. Boom-Bang-Pow.”

Being a mother gave Knobel a chance to explore her gifts. It was an opportunity to “get in touch with my God-self. I listened to that voice inside. I feel like I’m an incredible mother because of trusting that intuition. I’ve worked very hard to have a gentle, loving voice and had moments where I realized, ‘Oh, it’s my job to repeat myself.’ I’ve been up front with my kids about sex and abuse of drugs. It’s important to say, ‘I don’t want this to happen to you.’”

Meanwhile, Knobel says, “Living in North Minneapolis was a trip..the high crime rates, poverty, economic injustice…After a while, you couldn’t even garden in the back yard. It was scary living there with young children, so we decided to get out.”

A good friend of Knobel’s told her about a HUD property in Lino Lakes and Knobel fell in love with the place. It was a hobby farm on five acres of land. Though the house was in terrible shape, Knobel and her husband were well prepared to do repairs. They sold off their property, made a bid on the place, and waited an agonizing three weeks to find out if they got it. “I thought, ‘It’s not OK for you God, to show me something like this and then take it away.’ When we won the bid, it was a turning point for me in trusting that the desires of our heart are not about Satan. It’s God’s way of instructing us what we should do next.”

Knobel and family moved in. The goats moved in three days later. For six years, they milked goats, made their own cheese, sold eggs and milk to whoever wanted it. “It gave me something to chew on as I was raising the kids. It was great for their immune systems, being exposed to a certain layer of germ on you all the time. My kids are all healthy.”

Whenever I feel like I haven’t found a niche, I can look back and say, ‘Well, I’ve raised three amazing kids.’” This past July, Knobel’s oldest daughter departed for a yearlong exchange program in Brazil. “I realized that I had done it. I had launched a happy, healthy human being into the world,” says Knobel.

Over the years, Knobel’s marriage had started unraveling. Issues that weren’t getting resolved in their marriage began to show in work that was not getting done around the house. I thought, “Maybe if we have one more child, that will make it work? It didn’t.”

Although she and her husband generally agreed on how to raise the children, cross-cultural differences made things difficult. Being English, her husband had been brought up with the belief that “you don’t change your status.” It contrasted with Knobel’s American ideal that, “you can be anybody and do anything.”

When Knobel announced that she wanted to go back to school, her husband said that he would not support her. Knobel felt herself being presented with a choice. “If I stayed, I would be an unsatisfied human being without the chance to develop myself more. I voted for divorce.”

“Each choice has a consequence,” says Knobel, “It’s not about reward and punishment.” It’s a method she learned a long time ago through ECFE. When avoiding a power struggle with a child, “you give them two choices and you teach them how to make a good choice.”

Agent of Change
Knobel now has a B.S. in Visual Technical Communication and The Art of Persuasion, with a minor in Leadership. As someone who strongly identifies herself as being an agent of change, Knobel is interested in the power of symbolism to harness social movements. The Peace sign, religious art in pre-Christian Europe, and Michael Moore’s documentaries are just a few examples from history.

“We’ve come to a time where society has to choose which path to go down,” says Knobel, paraphrasing an Anishabe tribe prophecy. “We can choose the scorched path, which is brown and well-traveled. Or we can choose the one that is green and lush and unknown.”

Knobel, who has stepped out into the unknown many times in her own life, says, “If there’s one gift that I can offer, it’s to send the message that it’s really ok to embrace the unknown. There are ways of doing it so that you don’t have to suffer. You don’t have to control it all the time. You don’t need to have it materialize in the world to trust that it will work out. If you can do that, things will change on a dime.”

She continues, “Right now, the physical world dominates in our society. Companies don’t treat their employees as assets. People at the top need people at the bottom working as widgets. It’s not sustainable. The emphasis on power and prestige and position has surpassed the ideal of harmony. Decisions are being made by a group of men at the top. There is no equal playing field. There’s no attention to what is happening to the environment. We are playing with our lives. We can’t make decisions without including what happens to the environment, what the economic impact will be.”

Knobel meets regularly with a water group organized by the Women’s International League of Peace and Freedom. Mobilizing to conserve our drinkable water supplies, she says, is priority. If the male dominated world of politics and international business won’t pay attention, then the rest of us need to do something about it. She says, “It’s up to women to get into powerful positions, to figure out how to have voice. The patriarchal method doesn’t work. It’s women, moving in a line, creating the fabric, the network. We’re locked into a system that doesn’t support enlightenment and self-acknowledgement. We have a choice. We are not victims. Wake up or stay asleep.”

When Hurricane Katrina hit, Knobel took her message on the road to help with the relief effort. She brought her video camera and, while assisting with food and supply transport, began filming the spiritual transformations she witnessed along the way. The further south she traveled, the more she felt the seeds of social change in the wind.

“There were people who had nothing, who had lost everything. They were so spent, but filled with contentment with being alive. They understood the value of life. There were volunteers who had everything else, but were searching for meaning in their lives. There were people who were connecting with meaningful work that’s not about getting paid. The consequences of this are incredible.”

Using a massive truck on loan from the Minnesota Family Project with the words “Power to the People” prominently displayed on the back, Knobel joined up with Mission from Minnesota and other relief organzations. “On our first trip down, I trusted that everything would fall into place. We fundraised to keep the truck going. There was food stuck in warehouses. We filled the truck twenty-five times with protein, carbohydrates, water and drove back and forth, trying to distribute in a way that was fair.”

After returning from her sixth trip to the devastated area, Knobel met Jessie Buckner, a man who was looking for someone to help him organized Youth4Nola, a service program that plans to involve inner-city youth in the New Orleans recovery effort. This Thanksgiving holiday, Youth4Nola will send a team of forty volunteers down to New Orleans to pitch in with painting and rebuilding for a week.

The experience is intended to be transformative, says Knobel, and to encourage participants to ask themselves, “How do we deal with chaos in our own background? Why is it easier to go long distance than it is to look into our own backgrounds? People flock to a crisis, because of the possibility for change,” says Knobel, “but how does this happen here? No one wants to talk about racial issues in Minneapolis. There is complacency, apathy as you go further north (away from the Gulf Coast). It’s because society has forgotten.”

Now off on her seventh trip to the devastated area, Knobel has about one hundred hours of footage documenting the changes she is seeing. “Making this film,” she says, “is a way of getting the message out.” She’s hoping that people will start regarding themselves as participants in a bigger picture. “I want people to understand that if they don’t have time or money, they just have to change their light bulbs. Even changing to energy efficient light bulbs can help with global warming. Start making changes in your own personal lives that will help people who are affected by it. Take a proactive and reactive step. Don’t wait until it’s too late, until it’s mandated by the government.”

Visit Diana Knobel's Website


Photos of Diana Knobel by Valerie Borey
Credit goes to Quito Ziegler for the Minnesota Family Project truck

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Shifting Gears: Wendi Moore

Wendi Moore is the creator of Life’s Little Cheat Sheets, a series of books, writings, and programs that promote personal development. Her services include one-on-one intuition coaching, professional speaking engagements, and business consulting on female-friendly marketing. The author of Open Up and Fly, Shifting Gears, and Everyday Leadership, Moore also runs a blog from her website at www.wendimoore.com.

We meet at a Caribou Coffee near Moore’s Burnsville home. Dressed for the scorching Minnesota summer in a white tank top and shorts, Moore gives off an impression of warmth and approachability. She is petite, friendly, and responsive to the environment around her.

As she settles in for our interview with a bottle of water, I ask her how she had gotten into her line of work in the first place. She says, “this may sound strange, but the work found me. It’s not something I would have even thought of doing when I was in college.”

Developing Intuition

The course of events that triggered her career began in 1994, during Moore’s first pregnancy. “I had never been pregnant before,” she says, “I didn’t know how you’re supposed to feel when you’re pregnant, but I felt a communication with the soul of the child. It would appear sometimes, like if I lay down for a nap. There was a connection.”

“Then I had a miscarriage and I wanted to know what happened to that soul. That’s when I started really thinking that we are more than we appear to be, more than just our bodies. I wanted to know what happens to us when we die.” Coming from a religious background, Moore turned first to traditional religion, but was dissatisfied with the answers given her. “I’m not the type that just takes answers from people.”

Moore didn’t want someone to “hand the universe down” to her. “Don’t get me wrong - I have total respect for people and their belief systems,” she says, “but I needed to find my own answers.”

Since “religion wasn’t doing it” for her, Moore began taking intuition classes. She studied for two years with a teacher who taught her about developing her intuitive senses. Over time, more and more people started seeking Moore out for her insights until finally she was told, “You have to get out there with this.”

Asked to define the term, she says, “Intuition is not a gut feeling. It’s a knowing. It’s when there is no way you can know something, but you still know it’s true.”

As an example, Moore tells me about a reaction she had while driving to Ham Lake last year to visit a friend. “I think I was on 65, somewhere in Blaine – I’m not sure, I’m terrible with directions. There’s this restaurant I love called the Camille Sidewalk Café. The only one I know about is the one in Hopkins, but as I’m driving I start to slow down because I know that there’s a Camille Sidewalk Café over there somewhere. My kids are like, ‘What are you doing?’ and I don’t see anything, so I keep driving. Some time later, I’m going to visit that same woman in Ham Lake and I’m driving by the same place and I get that sense of knowing again. I look over and there’s a sign for the Camille Sidewalk Café.”

“Intuition is something that is developed over time, and you need to practice every day, ” says Moore, who holds her coaching clients to a high standard. After setting their own goals, clients have to follow a rigorous schedule or she will discontinue their sessions. She tells them, “You set your own goals and I will hold you to them.”

Practicing the intuitive process involves cultivating an awareness of one’s environment and matching intuitive predictions against defined outcomes. To start off, Moore says, “I may have clients pick something that they don’t care a lot about. At election time, maybe it’s something like the senate race in Fargo, something a Minnesotan might not be paying any attention to. Who does your intuition tell you will win?”

Moore has also seen coaches give their clients a covered book to hold and, without letting them open the book, have them write down their impressions about the content of that book. “Ninety percent of the time,” says Moore, “they’re right.”

Goals vary according to client and it’s not uncommon for Moore to work with individual clients for a year or more. One client, for example, came to Moore with the objective of being able to have a foot planted in two very different worlds: the earthly world, where the five sense dominate, and the energetic world, where intuition plays a role. Being in that kind of space, says Moore, “alleviates a lot of stress. You can see problems coming and ask yourself, ‘How can I get this to be not such a big deal?’”

An Energetic World

When asked to clarify what she means by energy, Moore drops her voice slightly and nods her head toward the line of people forming at the Caribou register. “Look at that line of people over there. I see them as a blob of energy. Each person has their own energy, and when one of them moves, everyone else in line shifts as well.” As she speaks, a transaction is completed at the register and an elbow-shaped kink in the line, hinged by a mother-daughter pair to one side and a woman in shorts on the other, begins to straighten itself in short bursts of movement.

“If you’re in a room by yourself with your back to the door, you can tell when someone walks into the room, even if you don’t see or hear them,” Moore says, “Just being around other people’s energy can make you feel happy or tense.”

A number of clients come to Moore complaining of energy-related problems. “Some of them want me to do something about the negative energy of a spouse or co-worker, but I tell them it’s about learning how to adjust their own energy in order to accommodate so that it won’t affect them in a negative way.”

In some cases, leaving a negative environment might be the wisest choice. Moore tells me that at one point, she had to switch physicians because of the “horrible energy” in the office. For whatever reason, a negative energy had infected the place and, as a consequence, the staff was rude and made mistakes all the time. Many of her clients are making the decision to leave corporate world for those same reasons and come to her asking, “Can you help me work with my energy?”

For those who don’t have the option of leaving, Moore helps them to shift their own energies through a combined process of meditation and visualization. She teaches them how to “expand their energy until it connects with all four walls, the ceiling, and the floor, and how to block other peoples’ energy from coming in.”

“A lot of times, sensitive people will get sick at a place like the Mall of America because of all the bad energy of people around them. I used to come home from there with terrible migraines. Now I teach people how to be around that energy without taking on other peoples’ feelings. For example, if someone is walking too close, you can shoot energy out so that nothing comes in. Or you can contract your energy and shield yourself that way.”

Self-talk is also an important component of Moore’s work. “You get what you tell yourself,” she says, “it’s about believing you can reach that goal.”

Moore’s hopes for the approaching autumn include putting together a class that will integrate self-talk and visualization methods. Her vision is that it will be like “an acting class, where [students] would play their future selves. The more you play your part, the more you become that. It’s a chance to experience that life for a while and see if it’s right for you. Students will figure out exactly what they want and come to a party as the person they want to be. They’ll ask each other questions about how they got there and where they are going from here.”

Shifting Gears
At the core of Moore’s business right now, however, are her professional speaking engagements. She has been booked all over the country for talks addressing various aspects of personal development. Though she has sometimes been called a “motivational speaker,” it is a term she balks at, saying, “You can’t motivate someone to do something. They have to motivate themselves.”

While related, Moore’s talks cover a range tailored to the specific needs of her audience. Shifting Gears is aimed at helping participants to unblock and redirect their own energies when an obstacle gets in the way. Everyday Leadership addresses the need to take responsibility for one’s own life and emphasizes a model of leadership that does not emphasize power, but rather, empowers others. These first two are more popular with her corporate clientele, while Discovering Your Magical Mindspace, is more frequently requested by women’s groups. Concerned with helping people to look more deeply into themselves and their surroundings, the talk encourages participants to look at things from a different perspective.

Moore’s target audience is female, but she is sometimes surprised to find a number of men showing up for her talks as well. “Oddly enough,” she says, “they’re usually either in their twenties or forties. Not so many in their thirties.” Many of her corporate marketing clients come from male-dominated organizations that are interested in diversifying their own client base, but need assistance in attracting women to their services or products.

Overall, Moore attributes the increasing level of male participation at her events as a positive consequence of breaking out of a 50’s conservative religious culture, where men were under pressure to be, well, manly: conflict-oriented, emotionally repressed, and short on sensitivity. “Parents are raising their children – sons and daughters - to be more open to this kind of thing. As we’re evolving, we want our children to see this. We are making the choice of raising them to be intuitive.”

Although Moore is raising her own daughter (10) and son (8) to be in tune with their surroundings, she’s not interested in expanding her practice to include working with children. “Don’t get me wrong,” she says, “I think kids are great, but I’m very careful not to interfere with the belief systems their parents are bringing them up in. Even at home. If my daughter is having a new friend over and they’re planning on goofing around with a Ouija Board, I’ll make sure to ask her parents beforehand if that’s OK with them.”

Moore studied psychology in college back in her home state of Illinois, but says that learning from experience has been priceless. Her work – influenced heavily by Taoism, she says - is for people who are “tired of being handed the answers. It’s about teaching people to look at things from a new perspective.” She tells me, “In some ways, it’s a lot like what you do – just sitting down to talk like this. It’s about listening.”

Before parting ways, we head out to the parking lot where Moore pulls a copy of her book Shifting Gears out of the trunk and hands it to me. As I climb into my own car, I flip open the cover and read the passage on the first page:
All of the fighting and the wars and the problems in this world could easily be resolved if everyone realized that it’s all based on personal belief systems. Once we shift our belief systems, all of the fighting and the wars and the problems associated with those belief systems go away because it’s not important to us anymore. – Wendi Moore
Visit Wendi Moore's Life’s Little Cheat Sheets™

Photos courtesy of www.wendimoore.com

Sunday, August 06, 2006

Turning the Wheel: Al Smith

It’s a warm Thursday evening in late July. Even though the door to the Twin Cities Aikido Center is propped open, the whirring sound of ceiling fans serves to mute the sounds of the city outside. The space inside is neat and white from floor to ceiling. It’s not sterile, like a hospital - the simplicity has an organic feel to it. A thin wall divides the shoebox office from the rest of the room, which is large and uncluttered. The floor here is blanketed by a white canvas mat that absorbs both the sounds and the physical impact of bodies thudding against the ground.

This dojo (at 2390 University Ave. in St. Paul) is one of the largest Aikido practice halls in the Midwest, with classes running every day of the week. Instructors teach on a volunteer basis and beginning students are encouraged to learn from their more experienced counterparts. Classes do not follow a set curriculum, so students bring varying levels of experience with them to each class. On this particular evening, Sensei Al Smith has permitted me to come in to observe a class session geared more towards Aikido newcomers.

Turning the Wheel
About fourteen men and two women are perched on their knees in seiza position. Most of them are clad in white garments called keiko-gi. A few (Smith included) wear wide-legged black trousers called hakama, which can indicate the rank of a black-belt holder.

Students are attentive as Smith finishes demonstrating how to grip a partner’s hand above or below the wrist and deter his attack with a torqueing movement. They separate into pairs and spread evenly across the room. Looks of intent concentration creep across their faces and the hall is soon filled with a graceful choreography of seizing and falling.

Smith stops to observe a nearby pair. As one man launches into attack, his partner grabs him by the hand, stepping sideways to pull the arm up and back. He applies pressure to the attacker’s elbow, gaining enough leverage from the angle to get his attacker off balance. The attacker loses footing and falls backward onto the floor with a swift rolling motion. His back is rounded and both legs swing up automatically to bring him back to his feet.

When Smith claps his hands, all students are once again seated against the wall in seiza position and call out, “Hei, Sensei.” He takes a volunteer by the hand and, extending it outwards, shows the arc that is formed by the curve of body from wrist to waist. “I’m taking the wheel,” he says in his distinctive Southern twang, “and turning it into shape.” With a spiraling movement, Smith brings the volunteer down to the ground and shows the group how to pin the attacker by placing one knee at the short rib and one at the wrist. He then twists the attacker’s arm until a slap on the floor signals that his attacker has had enough.

Smith’s movements are gentle, but firm – reminiscent of someone trying to soothe and immobilize an agitated animal. Since the philosophy of Aikido is rooted in self-defense and non-aggression, there is no attempt to counter-attack. The emphasis is on harmonizing with the attacker’s aggressive movements by using circular motions – essentially, using the attacker’s own weaknesses to diffuse the confrontation.

Students split into pairs for practice, sometimes slipping from movement into quiet consultation with one another. They work through the actions verbally, illustrating techniques with the flat planes of their hands. One student complains to Smith that his partner’s arms are too strong to effectively manipulate. Smith jokes, “That’s why some people carry guns, you know,” then proceeds to show the student a more effective technique for bringing his partner down.

Smith claps his hands again and students reassemble in a line against the wall. “Imagine the wheel, imagine you’re holding on to the tiller of a ship – turning it, not forcing it,” he instructs, “Visualize yourself behind that wheel.”

With another volunteer, he demonstrates how to catch an attacker’s hand in the web of his own. “It isn’t a secret Masonic handshake or anything like that.” He brings the palm of his hand forward, catching the back of the other man’s hand in his own. He pulls the man down to the ground easily with a swift spiraling motion.

Smith then shows how to rapidly shift his center to avoid a direct line of attack. As the attacker charges head on, Smith shifts his weight to the side so that he is standing parallel to the other man. From this angle, he grabs the man’s arm without difficulty and swings him down to the mat. “Here,” he says, “You can grab above or below the wrist – just don’t brace the wrist with your fingers.”

There is a chorus of “thank you’s” from the students as they break out once more into pairs. From where I am seated against the wall, I can hear short eruptions of cooperative and respectful conversation between partners as they compliment, critique, and offer explanations to one another.

Directly in front of me, one student is dragged to the ground with his arm bent at an easy angle. Helpfully, he says, “Try pulling it that way,” and flicks his head to indicate a location somewhere behind him. His face reddens as his partner tries this and he rests his head briefly on the ground before slapping to show his submission. “That was good,” he says, rising to his feet.

Locating the Center
As practice continues, I allow my attention to drift away from individual moves to the pattern of movement itself. I am momentarily reminded of Bjork’s factory-centered musical number in the film, Dancer in the Dark. The film’s clutter-crash-bang cacophony of grinding machinery and rubber-soled shoes is replaced here by a much more peaceful syncopation: the whirring fan, the vinyl slip of bare feet padding against the canvas, of hands slapping, bodies thumping, and voices lowered in consultation. Smith’s resonating clap pierces through these noises from time to time, centering and reshaping them.

Class ends with a meditation. Some students close their eyes for this; others leave them open, directing their gaze toward the altar. The altar is flanked by several racks holding wooden shafts of varying lengths: the jo (walking sticks), bokken (wooden swords), and tanto (knives). A scroll at the left bears the Japanese characters ai (harmony), ki (energy), and do (the path). To the right hangs a portrait of Aikido founder O-Sensei (Morihei Ueshiba).

All bow to the portrait, then break formation to join a more informal semi-circle. One by one, each student introduces him- or herself to the group and Smith takes the opportunity to ask if there are any questions or comments. Tonight there are none, and while some students disappear to change into street clothes, others start right in on tidying up the place. To my right, one student switches on the vacuum cleaner. Another student bellies down with a cleaning rag to scrub a spot off the canvas mat.

Whereas the center of an individual is located somewhere in the gut area, the center of the Twin Cities Aikido Center appears to lie in its collaborative nature. With a 501(c)3 designation, it is a non-profit organization that is run entirely by volunteers. “It’s not a strip mall martial arts center,” Smith tells me, “No one draws a cent of salary. It’s not a business – everyone, students and instructors - pays membership dues. It’s about harmonizing.”

Appointed by the board of directors, Lynn Vongries and Cal Blanchard are the center’s co-chief instructors. As with all of the instructors at the center, they are yudansha (holders of black-belt ranks) and certified by Hombu dojo, in Tokyo. The Twin Cities Aikido Center assists students in qualifying for the nationally standardized ranking examinations, but is careful to point out that “Aikido is not a sport. There are no competitive tournaments. The Aikidoist betters his or her self without belittling others.”

Walking the Wok
After the place has been cleaned and everyone has changed into street clothes, Smith and his students invite me to join them at The Village Wok for their weekly Thursday night dinner. It’s a cozy restaurant near the center and just off the University of Minnesota campus. The staff here is clearly familiar with the group, calling members by name and engaging in light banter. We’re taken to a quieter room in the back where several tables are pushed together to accommodate the size of our group.

It’s an intimate setting and conversation flows easily at the table. The formality and focus of the classroom has been abandoned for a more light-hearted tone. A gold panel at the rear wall reveals a scene with white cranes on long delicate legs. Beneath this picture, two students joke about the cult-like nature of the martial arts in general and kid Smith about needing to find a resident cult leader for the center. Smith smiles good-naturedly and shakes his head.

From the tabletop exchange, it’s evident that many of the members (Smith included) arrived at the Twin Cities Aikido Center after sampling several of the other martial arts. From the other end of the table, someone comments, “If you wanted to learn how to fight, there’s Judo, Jujitsu….” His neighbor counters that, unless you’ve already devoted several years to studying these arts, you’re almost better off in an attack situation if you’ve had no training at all. A few chuckles skip down the table.

“In that case,” another guy adds, “a gun or a can of mace will do it.”

After the waiter has taken everyone’s order, Kevin - one of the group members - signals that he has an announcement to make. His girlfriend has been admitted to a master’s program in neurology at King’s College and, in love, he has decided to go to London with her. There are congratulations all around, as well as utterances of surprise and dismay at their departure. It is, in a sense, the response of a village to one of its members, and an indication of the communal nature of the center itself.

And, like a village, there is a range of ages reflected in center membership, as well as a relatively balanced distribution of genders. The composition of each class varies, Smith tells me, depending on individual schedules and how often a practitioner can make it every week. Though tonight’s class consisted primarily of men in their twenties and early thirties, he says that nearly a quarter of the center’s members are over fifty-five and there are usually a good number of female participants. The structure of the group is always changing.

Even the communal dinners, such as the one we are attending tonight, arise from the special circumstances of the group. The early morning classes, Smith says, sometimes go out to breakfast together afterwards if they don’t have to be at work right away. But there is no hard and fast rule – it just happens and evolves naturally, “arising from the philosophy of the group itself.”

After fourteen years as an Aikido practitioner, Smith’s approach both inside and outside of class is one of harmonizing with the nature of the things around him. He demonstrates, but does not dictate. He fields questions, but does not compete with the answers. He is responsive to situations, but does not force them.

I recognize it later when I stop to read the center’s literature, quoting O-Sensei’s reflections on Budo (The Martial Way): “True Budo is to accept the spirit of the universe, keep the peace of the world, correctly produce, protect, and cultivate all things in nature.”

Visit the Twin Cities Aikido Center

Photos by Valerie Borey