I've been doing Aikido for about forty-five years, and I've never trained another martial art. That's a deliberate decision, so I'm not going to compare Aikido to other arts, I genuinely can't. What I can tell you is what Aikido has asked of me, and it turns out to be a specific and demanding lis...

When I survey new students at my dojo about why they came to Aikido, the most common answers are self-development, discipline, focus, managing anxiety, self-defense, and fitness. After thirty years of teaching, I'd say they're right about what they're looking for. Most of them just don't yet know...

In forty-five years of Aikido, I've walked into hundreds of dojos around the world: Japan, Europe, the United States, Australia, China, and more. You can tell a great deal about how people train before anyone sets foot on the mat.

I remember being invited to teach at a dojo where a beautiful pho...

I've been teaching Aikido for over thirty years, and I've watched hundreds of students hit the same wall at roughly the same point in their training. The ones who got through it almost always did one specific thing differently, and it wasn't more classes.

I had a student, maybe second kyu or fir...

I was sitting in a coffee shop in Japan with Yamaguchi Sensei and some of his students, near Ochanomizu Station, right after training. I was maybe shodan or nidan at the most. I was blown away, first by the range of topics he pulled into the conversation, and second by how often he drew me in, de...

Every serious practitioner has had this experience. You come home from a seminar confused. Your technique feels worse than when you left, and you can't fully explain what you spent three days doing. This is not a problem. This is the seminar working.

I had a student who came back from a seminar ...

There's a specific moment in Aikido training. It doesn't happen on schedule, and you can't force it. Something shifts, you stop trying to make the technique work, and it works.

I remember one throw from when I was maybe fourth kyu. I was getting frustrated with my partner, who kept telling me to...

When the Challenge Stops Coming From Outside

For most of your time on the mat, progress has an obvious engine. A sempai throws harder than you can handle yet. A technique won't sit right in your hands. A partner's ukemi keeps surprising you. The mat pushes back, and that pushback is what makes y...

After decades of Aikido training, some lessons become clearer than ever. In this video, Lia Suzuki reflects on patience, fundamentals, and the surprising simplicity that emerges after many years of practice.

Fast attacks can trigger tension and panic in Aikido. In this video, Lia Suzuki explains why calm must be trained under pressure and how staying calm widens perception and improves timing.

Most Aikido students think that learning more techniques will make them better. But after nearly a decade training in Japan, I learned that real Aikido skill comes from going deeper into a few essential movements — not collecting more waza. In this post, I share stories from my training with T...