Aikido school Berlin Kreuzberg

For more than 20 years, Aikido Dojo at the Gleisdreieck

In summer 2018, the Aikido Dojo at the Gleisdreieck celebrated its 20th anniversary. 1998, we first moved into the loft in Berlin Kreuzberg, and in March 2015 we transferred from the second floor to the ground floor. With great effort and much support from our members, we created an Aikido Dojo that fully meets our expectations of aesthetics and practicality. As result, a fusion of Japanese and European interior design has emerged.

The Dojo, a place to leave your everyday life behind.

The new space radiates calmness and clarity and offers plenty of room for training and contemplation. We have a reception and lounge area, a kitchenette as well as comfortable showers and changing rooms, separate for women and men. It is very important to us that you can leave your everyday life behind and enter a room of calmness and concentration. In addition to the 150-square-meter Aikido training space, there is a second room for Zen meditation and Yoga which is available for subletting and for our members.

We offer classes six days a week

Our very extensive training schedule not only includes Aikido but also Kenjutsu, Za Zen Meditation, and a course for beginners who passed the age of 50. Because of that, members must not commit themselves to specific practice days but can make their training schedule individually. In addition to the regular daily classes, we offer special seminars on weekends.

We care for a welcoming and cooperative atmosphere

It is most important to us, to provide an open and cooperative atmosphere that makes it easy for newcomers to integrate. Also, we are very proud to have a well-balanced representation of women and men in our dojo. For us, the measure of good training is the ability to work with all training partners – whether beginner or advanced – to practice seriously, concentrated, and at eye level. Their own ambition should not be made the yardstick of successful training. If all participants follow that idea, everyone will really benefit in the end.

In practice, we aim for natural movements

We are confident that it is not enough to perfect the technical aspects alone. Therefore we emphasize from the beginning the connection of breathing and movement. After all, the mastery of Aikido techniques depends on whether the Ki can flow freely because the body is permeable and the movements are natural. That does not mean that we don’t value the technic in Aikido. However, the practice of technique or kata in Aikido is more comprehensive than in sport, where perfection is used to achieve better performance. In Aikido we practice Kata to grasp the inherent principles and above all to become one with the movements of the partner. If the technic is mature, one can solve any situation without hesitation

Always keep the beginner’s mind

From our own experience, we know that effort and pleasure in training are inseparable. Your own efforts are the mainstay of the Aikido training, only by this, the meaning of the exercise becomes clear. Therefore, it is necessary to keep this beginner’s spirit, out of effort and joy, also as an advanced practitioner. Without that, your own ideas and your own preferences will otherwise easily become the benchmark of the exercise. Without recognizing that they represent an obstacle in further development. We are always happy to see newcomers on the mat. They make the dojo more alive and boost our motivation to find new ways to teach Aikido!

The dojo is a member of the Aikido Federation Germany. The federation was founded in 2000 and Ulrike Serak, as a founding member, played a key role in building the association. She is currently a member of the Technical Committee. Max Eriksson has been a member of the board since 2012 and was elected 1st chairman in 2020.

Through the federation, all graduations that are acquired in our dojo are also recognized by the Aikikai Hombu Dojo in Tokyo.

Aikido Föderation Deutschland e.V.

Aikikai Foundation / Aikido World Headquarters