On 22nd April 2026, Sensei Ian Walters will reopen his dojo after a long enforced break
Two weeks out from reopening his club, Sensei Walters is working the phones — calling round the people who’ve expressed interest, weighing up who might actually walk through the door. He’s also just been to A&E. Recovery from his hip operation had been ticking along nicely until, six or seven days earlier, a sudden pain in his hip sent him for an x-ray. Everything was fine — probably just a pulled muscle — but ordinary aches take on extra significance when you’re waiting to be sure the whole machine is working again.
So: a new dojo, a clean bill of health, and a teacher easing himself back into the thing that has shaped most of his adult life.
How it started
Sensei Walters began Ki Aikido in Brentford in 1981. Prior to that he had been studying karate, with plans to go to Japan and train in conditions he knew would be brutal. Then his karate teacher turned professional, and he noticed almost immediately that he wasn’t being pushed the way he had been. He started looking around.
An advert in a magazine pointed him at a weekend course with Sensei Neil O’Dwyer — five hours on the Saturday, five on the Sunday. “Absolutely exhausting,” he recalls, “because I’d never done anything like it before.” But it was all about ki and ki development, the things karate had never given him. It blew him away. He went back the following week with friends in tow, and by then his mind was made up: this was what he wanted to do.
It was on that second visit that Sensei O’Dwyer mentioned Sensei Williams was coming up to give a course. Sensei Walters had just had the pins taken out of a broken ankle, and he turned up with a swollen foot and not much idea of what he was walking into. He remembers watching Sensei Williams let loose on his assistant and thinking, God, this bloke is so powerful. Then Sensei barely touched him, and he found himself on the floor, giggling, with no memory of how he’d got there.
After the course, at dinner, Sensei Williams said, “Give me your foot.” Sensei Walters put it in his lap. Sensei stuck his thumbs in — it hurt like hell — and the swelling went down and never came back. That was the moment. He was sold completely.
Following the work
When Sensei O’Dwyer left, Sensei Walters – at that time a brown belt – found himself keeping the Brentford classes going, more out of necessity than ambition.
In 1988 he made the move to Somerset.
Why? Because some people had just left Sensei, and Sensei Walters felt he’d been treated badly. “I just wanted to support him and do what I could to help.”
For the rest of us who started Aikido later, it’s worth remembering that some of our teachers have uprooted their lives to be there.
The years as Sensei’s assistant were, in Sensei Walters’ words, the most challenging and most exciting period of his life. Asked how he’d benefited from those years, the answer comes without hesitation: he became calmer, more relaxed, more confident.
Around 1999 or 2000 he moved to Northampton. The training never stopped being central, even when life made it difficult.
What it’s for
The interesting question, for anyone who’s been at this a long time, isn’t whether they enjoy it. Anyone can enjoy a couple of years of something. The interesting question is why they stay.
What does Sensei Walters enjoy most about practice? “Just everything.”
The most important lesson from his time with Sensei? He can’t pin one down — every answer he reaches for makes him think of three more. What does Sensei mean to him? “I love the man. Aikido has changed my life. It’s become the most important thing in my life.”
Why keep going, after all these years, through injury and enforced breaks? Because he made a promise. Not a formal one — nobody asked him to — but the promise is there all the same. As Sensei’s assistant, he feels he has to continue the work.
And to a beginner — why should anyone start? His answer is quiet and unshowy: it can lead them to a calmer world. It might make them more resilient.
Resilience, tested
That word — resilience — lands differently in the context of the last couple of years. Sensei Walters admits he’s been really frustrated. But he also knew, throughout, that whatever happened, he was going to continue with Aikido. The training, he thinks, kept him from getting too depressed. Without it, he says, things would have been much harder. He’s certain of it. “It does change your life, Aikido.”
He isn’t promising he’ll be throwing people around at the upcoming group course. It’s been a long time. But he hopes to be there.
In the meantime, he’s on the phone to people who’ve expressed interest in his new club, sorting out the small things that need sorting, and getting ready to start again. A promise, quietly kept.
If you’re in his area and curious about Ki Aikido, get in touch with Sensei Walters via his club page.