Beyond a means of self-defense, aikido can bring out a level of timing and fluidity to replace stiffness and stagnation in our daily lives. Liz Smailes meets a high-ranking aikido master living in Bangkok, Sensei Tony Tartagalia.

Often referred to as an “internal” martial art, aikido’s effectiveness hinges on understanding and controlling one’s self more than the opponent. The core movements that comprise aikido techniques are said to take little time to understand and not much more time to implement.

Our goal is not to throw, but to move so naturally, so effortlessly, that our opponent is not left wondering how they were beaten, but rather why they even bothered to attack in the first place,” explains Sensei Tony.
Keeping the students training day in and day out, year upon year, is not the complexity of the technique, but rather their own internal quest to find the perfect level of calmness, centeredness, and focus.
“Aikido is a great tool to alleviate the build up of stress. Within ten minutes on the mat, I can have control of a student’s mind and they will have forgotten whatever is bothering them at work, at home, or an event that just annoyed them on the street.

“After an hour, sometimes my students are so focused on what we do in the dojo [the name for the room where aikido is practiced] that afterwards they forget their wallets, watches, keys and recently one new guy, a CEO of a big company here in Thailand, he went all the way downstairs and was half-way home on the back of a motorbike before he realized he’d forgotten his shoes. He was still barefoot!”
Founded around 90 years ago in Japan by Morihei Ueshiba through the synthesis of the older martial arts that he had studied, Ueshiba’s goal was to create an art that practitioners could use to defend themselves while also protecting their attacker from injury. Today aikido is massively popular in Vietnam and Singapore, and now Thailand is slowly beginning to catch on to its appeal.
Tony first became curious about aikido when he was 14 years old, riding his bicycle past the local fire station in Titusville, Florida. Stopping regularly to watch men fly across the room and then laugh about it afterwards, they began to invite him in, and so the learning process for Tony began.
Several years later, after serving as a Navy Corpsman with the US Marines in the Vietnam War, Tony was disillusioned and felt alienated by life back in the USA. Not an uncommon problem amongst servicemen even today, but when Tony decided to pursue his interest in aikido as a means to find contentment again, he took the less common move of traveling to Japan.
“It was 1973 and that first year was tough for me. Not so long before arriving in Tokyo, I had been thrown into a war against Asians, and now I was placing myself in a room being buddies with them and throwing each other around in a non-aggressive approach. That alone was challenging to get my mind around.”
Aikido directly addresses this type of issue. The Zen aspect of it means aikido is always about right here, right now. The past or the future does not matter. It’s a non-competitive sport, the challenges are all within the practitioner and the whole idea is to create harmony. When watching two high-ranking aikidoists practice the art, it looks like a particularly graceful, energetic form of dance.
“I was only meant to stay a year, but when the return date came and I was the last in line at the airport check-in, I tore up my ticket, declared I was staying and hitchhiked my way back to the dojo where we had been living. Everyone in our group said I was crazy for doing it, but by that time the Japanese masters had accepted my long hair in those days and took me in,” laughs Tony.

The Aikido World Headquarters in Japan recently issued an aikido passport and accreditation stamps, which functions similar to the diving qualifications. Each person has a passport with a stamp of accreditation for each qualification and an attendance stamp for each seminar around the world, similar to country stamps in a regular travel passport.
Over four decades of learning since his first foray in aikido with the local firemen, Sensei Tony has reached the ranking of GODAN, which is a 5th degree black belt. He has lived in Japan, Korea, Vietnam and Thailand following a career teaching aikido and is also one of the few in the world who teach the sword technique, Nishio-ryu. Tony also practices a very traditional training, which will involve each student learning some words of Japanese along the way.
At his school in Bangkok, Sensei Tony has trained five black belts, one of which is a Japanese lady, who now assist him in teaching students from all walks of life – the Nana drug police, ballet dancers, famous western actors, DEA officers, children over six years to elderly people keeping medical complaints at bay.
“I have a student in Malaysia in his late 70s and he still manages to floor me sometimes. My background in medical training certainly helps me to understand the inner workings of the body and teach my students prevention of ailments. But the main appeal with aikido is that even the smallest or weakest person can master the mind over matter and come out on top, without being aggressive.”