Aikido students host event to raise money for new facility
DAVE MASON, NEWS-PRESS STAFF WRITER
Matt Bridi, left, throws Werner Schott into a roll during an Aikido Kenkyukai Santa Barbara class at the Buddhist Church. The students will raise money for the school by performing countless rolls like this at a roll-a-thon.
The students in Lia Suzuki’s martial arts class must have amazing equilibriums. On Tuesday, they’ll be performing somersault-like rolls.
Over and over and over.
The aikido students will participate in a roll-a-thon from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at the Buddhist Church, 1015 E. Montecito St. They’ll ask for pledges per roll to raise funds for the renting of a better facility for the nonprofit Aikido Kenkyukai Santa Barbara, among other necessities, said Ms. Suzuki, the school’s head instructor, president and executive director.
The money could quickly add up.
After all, Ms. Suzuki has seen students do as many as 200 to 250 rolls.
Here’s how it will work. A student will go up to another student seated on the mat. The student will grab the wrist of the seated student, who will respond by throwing the person with that arm into a roll. After rolling, the student will stand and try to grab the wrist again and get thrown into another roll, and that will continue as long as the roller can handle it during an 8-minute block.
To avoid injury, students roll diagonally, unlike in your typical somersault.
When they’ve had enough, other students will take their place, and the rolling will continue, Ms. Suzuki said on a recent day at the Buddhist Church.
“Adults throw the kids, and kids will throw the adults,” she said.
She said the aikido move is done by affecting the opponent’s balance and momentum. “We [never] want to stifle the attack. You know how to keep yourself safe and let the attacker (move) past you.”
Ms. Suzuki stood and demonstrated by pretending she was about to punch someone. Rather than trying to stop the fist, it’s more effective simply to lean to one side and dodge the blow, she said.
“That’s why aikido is great for everybody,” regardless of size, Ms. Suzuki said.
In addition, “it’s great eye-hand coordination and it’s a great cardio,” she said.
Ms. Suzuki has 16 active students, ages 3 to 50.
Wait a minute. Three-year-old students?
Sure, Ms. Suzuki said. “They do forward rolls and backward rolls; they’re incredibly cute.”
The fundraiser is intended to allow the students to move to a better facility. For five years, Ms. Suzuki taught students at a “dojo” or training hall on lower State Street. She and the group improved the facility by building a new wood floor above the existing cement floor, installing a shower, renovating a bathroom and adding changing rooms.
But Ms. Suzuki said they couldn’t stay there when the rent suddenly jumped from $1,200 a month to $6,500. Aikido Kenkyukai Santa Barbara left the facility in July 2007.
After a break for a few months, classes resumed at the Veterans Memorial Building in December 2007 in Santa Barbara, and, a year later, Ms. Suzuki began teaching Saturday classes at the Buddhist Church. This month, she added Tuesday and Thursday classes there, and that’s when the classes moved out of the Veterans Memorial Building.
Werner Schott, left, watches as Matt Bridi lands safely after Mr. Schott throws him into a roll.
But she said Aikido Kenkyukai Santa Barbara needs its own facility. “If we had our own space, we could have classes five, six days a week,” said Ms. Suzuki, adding that there wouldn’t be scheduling conflicts with other organizations.
Other reasons include convenience and safety. Currently, before each class, students must carry Ms. Suzuki’s heavy tatami (rice/straw) mats from the stage in the Buddhist Church’s fellowship hall to cover the tiled floor. It would be better for students to work out on mats that cover a wood floor, which gives more when there’s impact, Ms. Suzuki said. “Having to train on this (tiled) floor is not good for the kids.”
IF YOU GO
The Aikido Kenkyukai Santa Barbara roll-a-thon will take place 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. (and possibly longer) on Tuesday at the Buddhist Church of Santa Barbara, 1015 E. Montecito St. Students will take pledges per roll.
Aikido Kenkyukai, a nonprofit organization, offers classes at the Buddhist Church. Cost is $75 a month for youths and $100 for adults. Classes for young children, ages 3 through 6, are 5 to 5:30 p.m. Tuesdays and for older children, ages 7 to 12, from 5:30 to 6:15 p.m. Tuesdays. Classes for those 13 and older are 6:30 to 8 p.m. Tuesdays and 6 to 7 p.m. Thursdays. A class for all ages is 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. Saturdays.
For more information, call 805-870-5437 or e-mail: info@aksb.org.
Aikido is an important martial art, she said.
It resolves conflicts without either opponent being injured, and the lessons reach far beyond the workout mat to relationships, Ms. Suzuki explained.
“Whether it’s a verbal or physical conflict, if you win today, there’s a good chance (the loser) will come back tomorrow with his cousins,” she said. “When we go for win/lose outcomes, we’re setting up ourselves for another confrontation.
“Both people end up winners in an aikido match,” she said, noting the conflicts are resolved safely for both people.
“There’s no competition in aikido; we don’t have trophies,” Ms. Suzuki said. “We train and train and train.
“There are no strikes; we don’t punch and we don’t kick,” she said. “There are so many different techniques. There are some wrist locks that policemen use. If the person struggles, they will feel some pain. If they stop struggling, there’s no pain. That’s why (aikido) is popular with police officers. They can defuse a situation without injuring anyone.”
Ms. Suzuki teaches students how to allow attackers to move past them, and safety is stressed.
The instructor has seen aikido help at-risk teenagers and even one youth who had schizophrenia. He reached the point where he could do the exercises without being interrupted by voices in his head, she said. Apparently aikido gave him something else to focus on.
“If you sat down and talked with him, you wouldn’t think this guy has a mental illness,” Ms. Suzuki said. “He credits aikido with his recovery.”
The martial art has been the focus of much of Ms. Suzuki’s life.
The Bucks County, Penn., native lived in Japan from 1987 to 1996. She studied aikido with Takeda Yoshinobu Shihan. She returned in 1996 to Bucks County as a fourth-degree black belt, then moved to Santa Barbara in 1999. She said she picked the area because it matched her criteria for a site for an aikido school. It was the right size and a university city, which made it more likely to be progressive and open to aikido, she said.
She first taught at a Montecito gym, then at the Santa Barbara Judo Club before ending up at the facility she rented on lower State Street from 2002 to 2007.
Ms. Suzuki, who studies in Japan once a year and is now a fifth-degree black belt, said she hopes the roll-a-thon accomplishes more than fundraising. She hopes spectators will learn something about aikido, which was started in 1943 by Morihei Ueshiba, a Japanese man who had mastered other martial arts.
“It was the next evolution of the combination of those arts he had studied, and it was his own personal expression of the influence those arts gave him,” she said.
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