Aikido of San Jose - News Article

August 1, 1999 as seen in the San Jose Mercury News

SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS
DATE: Sunday, August 1, 1999
Section: SECTION: Silicon Valley Life
Edition: Morning Final
Page: 1G
Memo: A CONVERSATION WITH LEIGH WEIMERS

 

" SHARING THE FORCE THAT BRINGS ABOUT BALANCE IN LIFE "

LEIGH WEIMERS column
NEWSMAKER PROFILE
JACK WADA
PROFESSION: Owner-Instructor, Aikido of San Jose.

''I've always been more a Bruce Lee kind of guy. But I'm working more now on harmony with nature, harmony with self.'

• BACKGROUND: Born in Santa Cruz, Wada started aikido training while a senior at the University of California-Santa Cruz and, after tiring of graduate studies, decided to make the martial art his life's work. He has operated Aikido of San Jose since 1980 and is highly regarded as a master teacher.
  
• EDUCATION: Bachelor's degree in biology, UC-Santa Cruz; graduate studies in Russian language at the University of California-Davis; aikido studies at Shingu, Japan.
  
• HOBBIES: Studying mythology, psychology, quantum physics; playing basketball.
  
• FAMILY: Divorced, he is the father of a daughter, 21, and lives in Felton.

THE SETTING is San Jose, but the action looks as if it's from a galaxy far, far away.

Combatants wield swords resembling lightsabers. As one attacks, the other smoothly moves out of the way, parrying the blow, turning the force of the attack into a weapon against the attacker. Bodies roll, tumble and regain footing again. It is oddly rhythmic, almost a ballet and, despite the warlike overtones, strangely peaceful.

That's the goal Jack Wada pursues as he instructs students at his Aikido of San Jose martial arts studio in the city's Japantown -- to turn aside wrath, to gain inner harmony. And, if it looks like something out of ''Star Wars,'' good battling evil, well, that's the sort of thing that got him involved in aikido in the first place.
Aikido, the martial art traced to 14th-century Japan, involves the mind as well as the body, explains Wada, 51.

''Way before the 'Star Wars' movies, the aikido master Ueshiba Morihei was teaching that mind and body working synergistically together could produce something that was greater than the individual parts. He spoke of energy, a flow. George Lucas calls it 'the Force.' If you examine the myths of other cultures, you find this is an important theme -- that there's something more than just the material world. And that's what we try to do, to experience that in a general way.''

Not all Wada's students sign up seeking to tap some cosmic force, of course. One woman says she started aikido after she was attacked, to learn to defend herself against future incidents. Another, a San Jose police officer, says he did it to stay in shape. But it becomes clear from watching Wada teach that he's passing along more than just a self-defense or gym lesson.

He reminds his students to ''center'' their bodies, to find a balance point just below the navel and concentrate on it. ''It makes you think of the here and now, present time, to be in the moment,'' he says.

He tells one, preparing to counter an attack, to ''visualize a flow of water going through your arm -- the flow of energy, or chi. Balance within oneself, energy flowing out.''

He teaches them to fall safely, to practice cooperatively, hence the gentle dance appearance of the training. Aikido is basically defensive but should a person forcefully resist one of the basic moves, broken bones and torn tendons could result.

Most difficult of all, Wada teaches the students to counter their basic instincts -- to not automatically throw up their arms when attacked, for instance, but to calmly think instead of where they are and where the attacker's force is heading so that they can use it to counter the attack. ''It is not easy, turning off the instinct,'' he says. ''It's retraining the body and mind to stay calm,'' to put a new pattern of defense into the body's muscle-memory. Do it often enough, he says, and the motion becomes almost automatic.

Even the adrenaline that kicks in when a person is threatened can be used, he notes. ''That's just another form of energy, of the force. You can learn to use that extra kick, to go with it peacefully and make it work for you.''

He looks at his body. ''A part of this has to be deeper than my mind. It has to be more than 'fight or flight.' If we're able to look at adrenaline as just more energy and flow with it, that energy becomes a friend. If we fight it, it becomes an enemy. We tense.''

Could there be a lesson here for overstressed Silicon Valley residents, their neck and shoulder muscles knotted with tension as they hunch over their computer screens?

''Everything today has gotten so mental,'' Wada laments. ''We're so divorced from the body, and stress is the result. People tend to respond to situations where there's too much energy by getting stressed out. If they're able to relax with it, to use it, to flow with it, that's better. The problem isn't really stress -- that's just energy -- but the response to the situation that allows this energy to build up. Unless we learn these lessons (to relax, to take what's given and to use it to our best ends), the stress will get worse.''

It wasn't so much dealing with stress that got Wada involved with aikido, though. It was the Cold War and shows about spies and superheroes.

A native of Santa Cruz, Wada first tried aikido in 1969 when he was a senior at the University of California-Santa Cruz.

The Inspiration

He was a biology major who also was studying Russian, the thought in the back of his mind that he might use the latter skill as a Cold Warrior. ''And there was this British TV show called 'The Avengers' and this woman (Diana Rigg), this spy, who used martial arts,'' he recalls. ''I guess I was in love with her, so I decided to try it.''

Wada enjoyed aikido so much -- ''I'd done a lot of studying, but aikido allowed me to do something with my body'' -- that he continued it at the University of California-Davis where he continued his Russian studies. ''And then I went off to Japan to start studying aikido more seriously. I didn't speak Japanese (he's third generation Japanese-American) so I had to learn it as I went along. Every time I wanted to say something in Japanese, Russian would pop up first. After about a year of that, things started to come together.''

Change in Direction

Things came together so well -- his skill and enthusiasm for aikido increased rapidly -- that when he was offered a graduate scholarship to study Russian in Australia, he turned it down. ''I realized I was sick of school, that I couldn't deal with any more papers, any more graduate seminars. I decided that aikido was my life.''
Wada returned to the United States, started teaching aikido at his Santa Cruz alma mater and got married. Then he got a call from Robert Nadeau, who had opened Aikido of San Jose in 1976: You want to come here and teach?
''I was overwhelmed,'' Wada says. ''He was this high-ranked person, and I was only this black belt back from Japan. But I said, 'Sure.' I taught here for a couple of years. And in 1980, he sold me the school.''
Wada has been a model tenant, says Tad Kogura, who owns the historic former Japantown theater where the school is housed. ''And I've checked in on what he teaches,'' Kogura adds. ''It's not a rough thing. It's not violent. But they do learn to protect themselves. They do not panic.''
That's true, Wada agrees. ''In aikido, there's a saying that true victory is a victory over one's self. It's not a victory over someone else in either a physical or a psychological way. It's internal.
''It's also something I find myself failing at every day. We all fall down. It's how we get up that counts. If I'm losing my temper, if I can catch it and re-center, then it's a victory.''
He counts among the high points of his career the visit to his school in 1990 by film and aikido star Steven Seagal. ''He's a wonderful man, very powerful,'' Wada says, ''but when he was teaching class here, he was very considerate. He signed autographs, posed for pictures. He taught wonderful classes here that people still remember.''
Among the low points, there was his divorce after 16 years of marriage. Wada hopes he has learned from that, too.
''I tend to be obsessed,'' he acknowledges. ''I saw the first 'Batman' movie -- the good one with Michael Keaton -- about 15 times. My mind is polarized toward aikido. I don't want to be distracted.''
And no person likes being considered a distraction. He and his ex-wife are on good terms now, he says.
''Aikido is about balance, the balance between mind and body, light and dark,'' Wada notes. ''The thing I'm still struggling with is finding that balance.''
The aikido master smiles ruefully.
''I'm a work in progress, not someone who has this finished thing.''
As are we all.

 

Illustration: Photos (3)

PHOTO: Diana Rigg's use of martial arts in her starring role in ''The Avengers'' television series, with Patrick Macnee, played a part in Jack Wada's decision to give aikido a try.
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PHOTO: Aikido master Jack Wada stands by the Japanese character ''ko,'' which unites with ''ai'' to mean ''light of the spirit.''
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PHOTO: Second-degree black belt David Eves, bottom, follows Jack Wada's instructions.
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