Humor and Aikido
I’ve been a practitioner of Aikido, a Japanese martial art, for nearly 30 years so it was a bit of a surprise to me when I didn’t see the similarity Aikido has to certain uses we put humor to. I feel like I should have seen this similarity long before, but I didn’t. Of course the Venn diagram of people who are interested in Aikido and humor is pretty small, so this might be the pinnacle of a “I wrote it because I wanted to.” I beg the reader’s indulgence. So how is that a Japanese martial art, Aikido, is like humor? I’m glad you didn’t ask. Let’s start with what got me thinking there might be a connection.
One of the ways I use humor, especially as a teacher, is when I need to broach difficult topics. I try to find a way to inject humor either just before entering into a discussion, where things can be difficult to get started, and of course I pepper it through such discussions when and where I can. The levity is needed, nice when there, and restorative. It functions to lighten the mood and give people a momentary bit of respite.
As a martial art practice Aikido can be restorative as well. And there’s a good bit of levity when you’re thrown (ok, that was a pretty bad and stretched pun there). But that’s not where I see the strong functional similarity. The ways I see them related is how they work to diffuse tension, redirecting it, all while trying to avoid aggression or using force to overcome someone. The beauty of Aikido, what attracted it to me in the first place, is the approach it has in dealing with attacks or aggression. The main idea is that the practitioner, when confronted with an attack, tries to use the energy of the opponent against them to render the attack harmless, or at least much less harmful. This approach isn’t simply limited to physical confrontations as wonderfully shown in this famous story about Aikido.
I think humor and Aikido are similar in that both are or can be used to diffuse tension or distress around a situation. Of course, both can also be used to do the opposite, but any tool can be put to various uses good or ill. Aikido trains us to find ways to make the energies of the two individuals work together rather than meet force with force. A practitioner of Aikido wants to take that aggressive, straight-line energy and diffuse it, redirect it, and ultimately work with it to resolve the situation without confrontation or force responding to force. The sense is that when you meet aggression with aggression, all the actors involved, lose. But when you redirect an attacker’s energy in such a way that you avoid harm and avoid harming them, that’s the best outcome. Humor often works the same way.
Humor can be used to introduce the difficult topic in a way that the audience isn’t as worried going into the discussion. Here, humor doesn’t allow the negative energy or feelings become overweighted and negatively influence the subsequent discussion. We can also use humor to bring us out of a situation when the feelings are too intense. Jokes about the difficult topic allow us to break away from the direct and directly reactive responses we might have or instinctively turn to, and reposition ourselves not as antagonist, but as partner. We see can see similar outcomes from the stories of concentration camp survivors finding solace in humor when times were especially difficult. In Aikido, when our techniques fail, or when we become entangled with our partner and we’re not able to do what we want, our sensei will often find that we’ve started to fight rather than work with our partner. This causes movement to stall.
This isn’t unlike when we’re in the middle of a difficult conversation and we start to stagnate. No progress is being made; people are digging in their heels. A well-placed joke, or a witty observation about something in the discussion might be all that’s needed to get us past the logjam. When we overly focus on the negative, when we become consumed by the negative, we often find it hard to move beyond. A well-placed joke reminds us that the issue isn’t the anchor that we’re making it into. The right technique in Aikido helps me see that the direct or aggressive energy isn’t all there is to the person making the “attack.” Both of them remind us, and help us see how much that the negativity is not necessarily as bad as we think. If we learn to move with it, move around it, dance and play with it, then we make much more progress.
It’s a tad worrisome that it’s taken me 30 years to realize this, but I am glad for the insight. It opens up a whole new way of thinking about humor. I hope it might have opened up some newer ways of thinking for you as well. And lest anyone think I am taking Aikido too seriously, check out this satirical video by martial art satirist Master Ken.