Don't have recent martial arts experience?  You'll want 

Who this is - and isn't - for

You don't need to be sold a martial art. So here's the honest filter. 

It's for you if: 

• You've trained for years and still want to understand why some things worked and others never quite did 
• You're training now and you're curious what sits underneath the techniques you already own 
• The falls and the impact cost more than they used to — and you're not finished training 
• You think for a living, and you want a physical art that asks the same of you 

It's not for you if you want competition, sparring, cardio, fast grading — or to be told you already know this. 

Aikijutsu is not a fast art. It's a deep one. For someone with your background, that's either exactly the point, or it isn't.

You already know kuzushi

Every experienced martial artist does. You've drilled it for years. You may have taught it. 

In judo, kuzushi begins at contact — you take the grip, you break the balance. Here, it begins before contact is made. At posture. Before the grip. 

That isn't a variation of what you know. It's a different starting point for the same word — and most people who've trained for years can't make their existing model account for it the first time they feel it. 

That moment — where what you know stops explaining what just happened — is the reason to come.

If the falls cost more than they used to

You don't have to be finished to admit your body has changed. 

Aikijutsu has no lifting and dumping throws, no high breakfalls. No one lands on top of you. The techniques don't turn your wrist into a point of pain — in this art, the joint is never the weapon. 

If you can take a standing mae or yoko ukemi, you can do this. 

This isn't a step down from what you trained. It's the same depth, on an engine your body can still run.

Where this sits

If you've trained, you'll want to place us. 

Aikijutsu at Kobukai comes through the Yoseikan line of Minoru Mochizuki — to Yoshiaki Unno Sensei, to Jan Janssens Kyoshi, to Darren Edwards Shihan. 

The jo carries its own line: Yoseikan Jojutsu, Unno-ha — transmitted to Darren and completed after Unno Sensei's passing. It's taught nowhere else in the world in this form. 

You'll know how rare that last sentence is.

Who teaches here

Darren Edwards Shihan has trained in Aikijutsu for 35 years and taught in Scarborough for 23. His belt is coral red and white — a rank beyond black belt that most practitioners never reach. 

In class, he's usually the one receiving the technique, not demonstrating it. When the most experienced person in the room takes the role of the one being moved, it tells you something about how this art is transmitted — felt directly, through contact, nothing forced or driven through pain. 

For anyone wondering whether they can keep training into and past their fifties — he's what that looks like.

Come and feel it

For someone with your experience, the honest next step isn't reading more — it's getting on the mat once and finding out whether what you know transfers. 

Bring your gi. It won't be like ours — that doesn't matter. You won't be sat at the side and talked at. You'll train. A single session. No pain, no hard falls.  

You'll know inside the first few minutes. 

Message us on whatever's easiest — and tell us what you train. We'll find a time.

Prefer something else?