This may sound like an overstatement, but if you take the time to think it through, you’ll understand why the New York Aikikai is inextricably connected to our home on West 18th Street, not only because of our past, but because of a vibrant present, and our dreams for the future.

Speaking purely practically, it is not an exaggeration to say that our location positions us uniquely as a hub for the global aikido community. We are both a neighborhood treasure and an international destination. While aikido is practiced in dojos across the New York Metro region and around the world, dojo chos and their students come to us to train and refine their teaching. Whether it is from the Upper West Side, New Jersey, São Paulo, or Munich, traveling here is straightforward, with transportation options just steps away in all directions.

Beyond the plum address, our building itself is an asset—the square footage, the rooftop deck, the oversized windows—the “bones” of the space bring tremendous value to our community. To own a building rather than to be beholden to landlords and a ruthless rental market, gives us freedom and peace of mind that allows us to focus on our practice with the assurance that the doors will be open each time we arrive. In a city where so many places are inaccessible or transactional at best, having a home that welcomes us to practice is no small cause for gratitude.

Of course, it’s more than the tangible realities of an easy train ride and an iconic New York building that draws people from across the city and around the globe to come here. It is the spirit and the soul of this place. Decades of practice, connection, intention, laughter, frustration, and striving for transcendence have permeated these walls with the intangible, yet palpable atmosphere that we feel when we enter here.

It is this energetic spirit that evokes a bow as we enter, that compels us to remove our shoes, and to approach the mat with reverence, honor, and determination. Our bodies, too, have absorbed the energy of relentless commitment to this art that has been practiced here. Those who have gone before us, and our past selves, have left a mark on this place that we recognize in conscious and subconscious ways, an impact that drives and feeds each hour we practice.

If our address and our building are highly prized assets, the spirit of this place is an irreplaceable gift to us all. It is a collective memory that infuses all that we do here and provides the foundation upon which we build each layer of artistry in our progress toward becoming the best versions of ourselves that we can be, within the dojo and in our lives outside.

With these gifts comes a responsibility to care for our space, to bring the same discipline and heart to maintaining it and improving it that it allows us to do for ourselves, and to be sure that it is serving our community to the fullest capacity.

In this moment, we are experiencing an electrifying surge of excellence in the level of aikido we bring to one another. It is the dawn of a new era in which we are coming to realize that while our past has brought us to where we are, it does not define us. Yamada Sensei may have known this, but we are learning it—that his leadership was one wave on a vast ocean of practice that is greater than any one of us; that is vital and alive and calling us forward to deeper connection—life-changing, multi-generational, ever-evolving practice.

This is the energy that the New York Aikikai has to share with the world, the energy we have to share with one another and offer to others who are seeking a connection between the power of the physical and the depth of something within us that makes us feel fully human. It’s the energy that lives in each of us who has practiced here and in every corner of this place. It is the energy that couldn’t happen anywhere else.