MY TIME IN IWAMA

In setting out to write this story of my time in Iwama, I thought it would be a review of my exposure to Aikido and to living in Japan. I believed it would recount a life being lived in O Sensei’s dojo as an uchideshi, a live-in apprentice and Aikido student to Morihito Saito Shihan, and in Iwama town as a sotodeshi, living outside of the dojo; a factual biographical sketch of the time-period from 1987 to 1993. And though it has stayed true to that in some respect, the book turned out to be a passage in my life that retells my spiritual coming of age, my coming to terms with life itself. Because this episode of a few years contain the seeds of an awakening; the seeking for truth and of finding my self in a profound and deep transformation that would become the guiding light for the rest of my life. It is a spiritual journey that happens to take place in Japan and through my travels in Asia from the age of 23 to 30, and so Iwama became the fertile ground, the good soil, where the seeds of life were planted and nurtured. Iwama was the field of experience over six years where I had time to contemplate life and grow up as a human being. Far away from the safe and secure homeland of Sweden, family and cultural responsibilities I had the luxury of having the time to think, to reflect and to study. Aikido was the perfect grinder to beat the grain from the husk, to physically work out, to live close to the land and to encounter life as a guest. Being a stranger, a foreigner, in Japan gave us the unusual freedom to be who we were, to find out who we wanted to become, and to shape the future according to our own heart.