also the center of the word aikido. Ultimately aikido is all about energy – balancing it, channeling it, harmonizing yours with your opponent's. In order to accomplish this, we start from a place of heiki – calm energy.
Aikido is a unique grappling art known as meditation in motion. The discipline requires you to remain calm in the face of adversity. Some martial arts ask you to go a bit out of control and release a lot of violent energy – yelling, kicking, and punching. In aikido, we must retain control. It's not about being passive or gentle – it's about letting go of fear, passion, and other artifacts of the ego.
This process of letting go of what we think and feel helps us open our minds to what the situation truly is. If you begin a bout with a desire to prove yourself or humiliate the other person, you're limiting what you'll be able to see. You'll see a threat, or you'll see an opening for a really cool move, instead of clearly seeing how your opponent is moving and what opportunities you have in the spaces created by their movements.
The same is true in our personal and professional lives. If you begin an argument or a negotiation mired in passionate emotion, you won't see the situation clearly. You won't see the other person as they truly are, and you will miss the multitude of true opportunities that are right in front of you. If, instead, you can remain calm, you'll be able to see many paths that wouldn't be available to you if you were angry, sad, upset, or out of control. Calm energy, heiki, provides access to opportunities you might not otherwise see.
An Opportunity to Prevent Violence
In May of 2013, Ingrid Loyau-Kennett was on her way home on the number 53 bus through London when she saw what she thought was a traffic accident.3 Without stopping to think much about it, she got off the bus to see if she could help provide first aid to the victim.4 But the situation she was walking into was no mere accident – it was a knife attack on a British soldier by terrorists who believed they were exacting vengeance for Britain's involvement in wars in the Middle East.5
Loyau-Kennett went straight to the victim and felt for his pulse. Almost the second she realized he was dead, she was confronted by one of the attackers. He was holding a gun and a meat cleaver in his bloody hands.
What would you do in that situation? Would you panic? Run away? Try to hit or kick the attacker, take away his weapons?
There were dozens of people standing in the street that day. Almost none of them made a move to help or interfere in any way. Some of them took pictures or shot video with their phones.
Loyau-Kennett stood up and faced the killer. “I didn't have any adrenalin at this moment,” she has said. “Instinctively, and through my scout training, I like to keep calm and be respectful.”
So she spoke calmly to him. She asked him questions – why had he done this? What did he want? Her goal was to keep this man talking, keep him from attacking anyone else. She could see there were children among the crowd watching the scene, and she thought, if he's going to attack anyone else, better me than one of these kids.
A True Hero
Loyau-Kennett may well have saved lives that day. But she doesn't believe that she did anything special. She thinks anybody could have done what she did.
I agree – anyone could have done that. But of course, most people wouldn't. Most people would be too afraid, too shocked, too angry, too something, to confront someone so obviously dangerous. Most people wouldn't have seen the path that Loyau-Kennett saw. Most people wouldn't have been able to imagine that asking a few simple questions could keep a situation like that from spiraling further out of control. But Loyau-Kennett was able to call on an inner reservoir of calm, and that calm energy allowed her to see a path nobody else could see.
In interviews, Loyau-Kennett has attributed her extraordinary heiki on that day to her Catholic faith.6 That faith helped her see beyond herself, beyond the physical danger she was in, and focus on engaging with the attacker. Her faith helped her to let go of her fear and allowed her to perform an act of great courage – without even thinking of it as something out of the ordinary.
Courage doesn't require religious faith. There are many ways to reach that state of calm energy. But I believe that Loyau-Kennett's faith was invaluable to her in that moment because it took her outside of herself. It gave her a perspective and a purpose that was greater than she was. And that is the nature of heiki – calm energy derives from letting go of attachment, letting go of fear, letting go of all feelings about the self. Exactly how you find your way to that state of detachment and calm doesn't matter – what matters is that you find that calm place and operate from within it. When you do, like Ingrid Loyau-Kennett, you will see a new way out of a difficult or even dangerous situation.
Calm Courage in the Everyday
Thankfully, most of us don't face down murderers every day. Most of us face more pedestrian challenges: a fight with a spouse, a negative review from a boss, a looming deadline at work. Summoning heiki can be just as useful in our daily lives as it is in a life-changing moment like the one Loyau-Kennett faced when she got off that number 53 bus. In fact, in some ways, finding equanimity can be even more difficult in a small moment than in a huge one. After all, when are you more likely to take a moment to clear your head before speaking – when you're facing a crisis, or when a colleague walks into your office to ask for an update on a project?
It's all too easy to get caught up in the wash of events in daily life. Most of us, most of the time, have “monkey mind” – we're constantly jumping from thought to thought, worry to worry. In today's world of constant interruptions, it's understandable – but it makes us likely to miss out on opportunities to change things or make real progress. When you approach a situation mired in your all-too-human emotions – stress, pain, fear, envy, excitement – you will only see that situation from your own perspective. You'll be thinking about how you need to defend your turf, justify your actions, get credit for your hard work, and so on.
When you approach a situation in a spirit of heiki, on the other hand, you'll see that situation from a kind of dispassionate bird's-eye view. You'll see more opportunities because you'll be thinking about everyone's needs and desires, not just your own.
I have a daily meditation practice that I will share with you very soon. And yet I still struggle to find equanimity in my daily life and work. Finding heiki in the midst of the bustle and business of everyday life is practice we must work at. And it's an incredibly powerful and beneficial practice. Heiki can become a knife that will cut through the toughest knots you're trying to untie in your personal or professional life.
A Moment When I Needed Heiki
A few years ago, I made a big change in my life, both personal and professional. I moved from the East Coast to the West, and I started to focus more of my energy on expanding my executive coaching, consulting, and speaking business. That meant that I had to start handing over the daily operation of my successful aikido academy to other people.
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Sarah Rainey, “Woolwich Attack: ‘I Looked Him in the Eye. I Was Sure He Wasn't Going to Kill Me,’”
Leo Hickman, “Woolwich Attack Witness Ingrid Loyau-Kennett: ‘I Feel Like a Fraud,’”
Claire Duffin, “Mum Talked Down Woolwich Terrorists Who Told Her: ‘We Want to Start a War in London Tonight,’”
Dawn Eden, “My Catholic Faith Inspired My Actions, Says Ingrid Loyau-Kennett, Heroine Who Faced Woolwich Attacker,”
