Mat Space

Three Rivers Aikido Dojo has been in St. Louis for nearly 30 years. We once trained on Manchester Rd. (for about 22 years) and when the building was sold, we moved to a smaller interim dojo on Clayton.  We at TRA are so proud to announce that after three long years in a cramped third floor space, we are moving to a bigger place! Our final day of training in the interim dojo will be October 30th, 2017 - this is a test day, so don't forget to drop by and support your fellow students! While renovations at the new dojo are underway, students will train anywhere they can find a senpai to work with, and we are looking for a more official place to hold training in the meantime. Our Clayton dojo building is being renovated as well, so if anyone knows a good gymnasium or dojo we could use (at an affordable cost), please contact the dojo secretary or Sensei! As renovations get more involved in the coming weeks, Three Rivers asks that its students put forth a commitment of at least...

As a teacher of Aikido for over thirty-five years, I am always amazed at what experiences individual students take away from their dojo. I have noticed that depending on the age, gender and outlook of any particular pupil, each student walks away from each teacher and/or class with clearly different lessons, even though they all attended the same class. Whether we are observing O Sensei’s archived films, reading his writings or appreciating his calligraphy, the one constant element that all Aikido students experience is, a very compassionate yet powerful teaching.  One without the other would be looked at by traditional Japanese aesthetics to be completely decadent, if not as useless as a Japanese sword that cannot cut.  Even if a samurai sword had hundreds of hours of labor pored into it, (even if it would have the most beautiful  tsugata  (shape),  hada  (folding patterns),  hamon  (tempered edge), with all of the  tsunegashi ,  ashi ...

The tl;dr version is, the phrase "I have to train" or "I must train" spoken in Japanese is said, "to not train is not good."  Think about that.  The phrase has the same meaning, but a very different connotation. Conjugating Japanese verbs is relatively easy. to go - iku いく to go (polite) - ikimasu いきます to not go - ikimasen いきません then suddenly... have to go - ikanakutewaikemasen  いかなくてはいけません Boy, that escalated quickly!  I had to consult with Japanese speakers to decipher that one.  What this translates to literally is, "to not go is not good" or "if I do not go it is not good".  This double negative becomes an affirmative providing a sense of urgency to the mandate. So to conjugate a word for to train or to practice becomes 稽古 to train - keikosuru けいこする to train (polite) - keikoimasu けいこ します to not train - keikoimasen けいこ しまん must train - keikoshinakutewaikemasen けいこしなくてはいけません Or literally, ...