Articles by Aaron Cass

In addition to teaching martial arts, I’ve been a classroom teacher for two decades. While the content I teach in a high school English classroom differs from the dojo, the process of helping students acquire skills is fundamentally the same. Where to Begin Of course, you can’t teach what you [Read More]

In my 30 years of training and 15 of running an aikido dojo, I’ve noticed some tendencies in the way people progress through their practice—or not. I have personally lost my way and found it again many times, and after years of practice I’ve found that the answer often lies [Read More]

Rough Night The night before my last day at the coffee shop, my coworkers and I headed out to celebrate. Soon I’d be leaving for Japan, and this would be my last hurrah. We ate and drank our way through the night, eventually ending up at the far end of [Read More]

Moving On By the time I arrived in Japan, I had quit aikido. Back in the U.S. I was training nearly every day, but in the time it had taken me to secure a job and get on a plane I was disillusioned with the art. I had been training [Read More]