Daily Sound: Aikido Instructor Promotes Nonviolence

By RAY ESTRADA — Jan. 19, 2010

After receiving her sixth-degree black belt in the Japanese martial art of aikido this week, Lia Suzuki is into her second year of providing South Coast residents with a path toward peace.

Since starting her nonprofit organization – Aikido Kenkyukai Santa Barbara – a year ago, Lia Suzuki is hard at work raising funds for it.

The nonprofit encourages the practice of the Japanese non-violent martial art of aikido and promoting it as an effective vehicle for self improvement and spiritual growth, and as a harmonious way to resolve everyday stress and conflict.

As the top sensei at Aikido Kenkyukai Santa Barbara and national director of Aikido Kenkyukai USA, Suzuki teaches the “art of peace” to anyone from the age of 3 and older. “Kenkyukai” translates from Japanese to “research group,” she said.

The nonprofit also runs various community projects, such as its sponsorship program for low-income and at-risk children, who are given the opportunity to train in aikido regularly.

A former competitive horse rider from Pennsylvania, Suzuki became interested in aikido and initially trained in Boston.

After planning to visit Japan for a short time in 1987, she ended up finding a job as an English teacher, getting married and then returning home in 1996.

While going through a divorce, she visited Santa Barbara in 1999 and was quite taken with the area. After teaching at some YMCAs in Pennsylvania for a while, she decided to move to the South Coast. It was about that time she reached her fourth-degree black belt.

From 2002 to 2007, she operated a for-profit dojo on State Street until the rent became too high. It went from $1,200 to $6,500 a month. “When I lost the dojo, I had to take a step back and decide what to do next,” she said.

She continued to do barefoot deep-tissue massage, which she had learned earlier and practiced as a side job. However, her senior students wanted her to come back to teaching the martial art in which she excelled.

“I was doing a style of aikido no one was doing in the United States,” she said.

Similar Aikido Kenkyukai dojos operate in Australia, Germany and Chile, but only two are located in the United States. Suzuki also started the Aikido Kenkyukai dojo in Pennsylvania.

During a recent class at the Santa Barbara dojo, five young male students were put through their paces at the Aikido Kenkyukai dojo, which is set up in the Santa Barbara Buddhist Church on Montecito Street.

When Suzuki prompts him, the smallest boy counts out loud in Japanese. Another boy corrects him, but the energy builds as the giggling kids practice their moves and falls on the off-white mat. As they pause to sit cross-legged, the boys seem to grow in confidence and poise.

Suzuki has a problem many nonprofit founders run into: she wants to accomplish the group’s goals through teaching, but needs to spend more time handing administrative duties. So, she’s decided to seek a volunteer receptionist and administrator. These positions would help her find sponsors to pay for low-income students.

Suzuki also is seeking to enlarge Aikido Kenkyukai Santa Barbara’s three-member board of directors.

“I’m looking for all kinds of involvement,” she said.

Using Facebook, YouTube and other social media, Suzuki is raising funds pretty much herself at the moment with the aid of Aikido Kenkyukai Santa Barbara’s Web site, www.aksb.org.