On Happiness and Embodiment (and Aikido)

On why you’re not just a “brain in a vat”.

There is a difference between understanding a truth and deeply internalizing it. This is why there are so many evident truths to happiness that we understand at a surface level, but end up blithely ignoring in our own lives.

I asked Claude.ai for five obvious truths about happiness that people consistently underrate. It gave me a list that included paying attention to small pleasures more than grand achievements (presence), helping others, social connection, and happiness requiring intentional internal cultivation.

These are all great and worthy of their own posts – but there was one I discovered the last year that greatly improved my own happiness – cultivating a practice of martial arts as a means of physical improvement and social connection.

When I started doing Aikido – I probably was like the mean Software Engineer in the industry – overweight, a bit stressed, and skimping on sleep. I had always wanted to try martial arts – but I tended to gravitate toward running, calisthenics or weights for exercise – and these had never tended to hold my attention consistently enough to see major gains.

I think in my mind the major blocker to going and doing Aikido was the time, the hassle, and maybe a little bit of the embarrassment of going to do something with a group class. I had never been an exercise class person before.

When I stepped into my first class to observe though – something started to shift in my mindset. First – the opportunity to practice a technique based activity made me care more about the outcomes. Second, the ability to work with the same group of people week after week gave me a lot of motivation to continue to show up. Finally – doing Aikido took all of my attention and focus. When I would run in the past – I would always feel the thread of my attention slipping off of the activity if I didn’t have music or something else to anchor me to the experience.

With martial arts – there is an immediacy and physicality that locks you in and keeps your attention and focus at 100% throughout the entire process. In a world where we are constantly fragmenting our attention by using Slack, texting, and messaging tools – there is a lot of power in staying locked in to something. Martial arts forces that because, in the words of one of our instructors at the dojo, “If Uke breaks connection, Uke gets punched in the face”. Nobody gets punched in the face at our Dojo (at least not on purpose), but the things that we do require a focus, connection and embodiment that does keep you zeroed in throughout the entire experience.

This is all to say – if you’re someone who is a working professional that has hobbies but they’re all of the mind – I highly recommend cultivating a practice that gets your body moving and requires your attention at 100%. If that’s dancing, gymnastics, acrobatics or martial arts – if you stick with it and find a place where you like the people, I can guarantee that you’ll be happy that you did it.