Luc Mathevet: I think I was just looking for an original way to deal with conflict. I had been very influenced by the reading of Michel Random's book "Les arts martiaux ou l'Esprit des Budo". There was an Aikido section in a dojo not far from where I used to live; my brother was already practicing Judo there so I decided to give it a go. The loved straight away the aesthetic aspect, as well as the practice of weapons.

Guillaume Erard: How did this first class go?

Luc Mathevet: I really liked the dynamism and the rigor during the classes; I quickly had the desire to learn more and more. The atmosphere in the dojo was very nice and the group had a good cohesion.

Guillaume Erard: Did you have any martial arts experience prior to starting the study of Aikido?

Luc Mathevet: No, or at least not in a club... Several of my friends where also into martial arts so we just shared our knowledge and our ways of seeing things.

Guillaume Erard: You now share the teaching in Saint-Étienne with your teacher, Philippe Gouttard. It is quite rare for a practitioner to still be in such a close contact with his first teacher, in particular after all these years.

Luc Mathevet: It is because of Philippe's intelligence. He left me enough freedom to let me cultivate my own Aikido. When we are teaching, we should be encouraging our students to be autonomous, and we should certainly not be creating clones of ourselves.

Guillaume Erard: At which point did you decide to do Aikido full time, as your profession?

Luc Mathevet: Little by little, the perspective of becoming a full time teacher revealed itself to as I was making progress in to my studies of Aikido. I was always finding new directions to investigate and develop. Actually, the region around Saint-Étienne also allowed the opportunity to open new clubs.

Guillaume Erard: With the classes in the evenings and the seminars at weekends, the life of an Aikido teacher seems to be a bit "off" doesn't it?

Luc Mathevet: Yes, that is true; it is in fact the main disadvantage of pursuing such a career. It is sometimes morally quite difficult but when we manage to live off our passion, we must conscious of the luck that we have! With time, you learn to reach some kind of equilibrium between social and professional life.

Guillaume Erard: You are the technical director (DTR) for the FFAAA in the Rhône-Alpes region; could you please let us know what your functions are?

Luc Mathevet: My main function is to maintain an ensemble dynamic. It is my role to keep the cohesion between the clubs, the teachers and the practitioners. Through the league seminars, I try to give some guidelines and work directions for the study and the teaching of the fundamental principles that are exploitable within each club. These days, a DTR does not have to be the most senior or the highest ranked in the league but he has to be the link between all the practitioners and also be attentive to their needs.

The teachers formation seminars or master classes [such as the one taking place in Dublin on the 31st of October, click here for details]  are the occasion to work in a restricted group and also to have an interactive practice that is of course quite different from the normal seminars. It allows pedagogical and technical exchanges between teachers. On the other hand, theses classes are also used for the preparation of the candidates to the Brevet Fédéral (governmental teaching accreditation).

My other duty is to participate, with technicians of the other accredited federation [the FFAB led by Tamura Sensei] to the formation of Juries for the grading exams; we work at harmonising our visions by basing ourselves on fundamental criteria such as the technical construction, the etiquette and the integrity.

Guillaume Erard: France counts more than 60,000 Aikido practitioners in many different schools and styles. Do you think that Morihei Ueshiba's discipline can still grow and develop itself in France or should we be looking towards the new countries where Aikido is implanting itself fast?

Luc Mathevet: In terms of the number of licensees, it very possible that we might reach saturation in France. However, I really believe that the moral values carried within our discipline can spread outside the dojos on some specific occasions, for specific people. What Aikido has to offer in terms of corporal development and of conflict resolution can find many applications in many different domains.

Guillaume Erard: On this subject, there are more and more initiatives proposing the instruction on Aikido principles with the aim of an application within companies, communities (such as Ellis Amdur 's work) or even in a humanitarian goal (Nippon Kan , Aiki-Extensions etc.), do you know about these projects?

Luc Mathevet: No, I did not know about these. It is interesting because it proves that the principles of Aikido can reach far beyond the limits of the dojo. The British and the Americans are way more free and free of inhibition then we are. These are, in my opinion, ideas to study and to develop according to our own experience and the path we decided to take. In France however, some initiatives have been taken such as what Daniel Lance is doing with so called "difficult" pupils.

Guillaume Erard: The French government has a very important role in running our discipline in France. It is a situation that is quite unique in the world and that allowed the huge development of the practice of this art that we can see in France. In spite of all that, don't you find this system a bit restricting or perhaps obsolete these days, now that the discipline is well implanted?

Luc Mathevet: It is true that it can sometimes be restricting but it also bears some significant advantages. We have access to real professional teachers who know what they are doing and we also get access to facilities that we could never afford without the help of the state. Of course, we have to follow a certain number of rules but I think that this system is still advantageous and leaves enough room for everybody to be free to evolve.

Guillaume Erard: What do you think of more liberal systems such as what we can see in England, where each school awards its grades independently of the other institutions and where the only things regulated by the state are instructors' qualifications and insurance?

Luc Mathevet: I think that it can be interesting because fundamentally, each teacher who awards a grade engages his own credibility towards other practitioners but also towards the particular teaching that he claims to follow. The bottom line is that exchange is fundamental. In a group that stay locked within itself, there can be a slow depletion of the technique and the level. I do believe however that some measures can be taken to avoid that, with in particular things like pedagogic exchanges and technical discussions.

Whether it is a conscious phenomenon or not, everyone influence each other so this transfer of competence can exists without necessarily having somebody trying to impose his own way to do to the others. On the other hand, if we aim at teaching large amounts of people, we have to be ready to be controlled, judged and sanctioned.

We just have to find the right proportion between too much control and explosion. It is the research and the articulation of the teaching towards others that should be our guides.

Guillaume Erard: We often hear about people who feel that they are the victims of a system that they don't understand and which is above them, in particular the dichotomy FFAAA/FFAB. Do you think that new generations are more open to other styles?

Luc Mathevet: It is important not to idealise the small world of Aikido so we are not too disappointed eventually. What I mean is that even though we are looking for harmony, we are still human beings and we can sometimes be caught by our own competitive and egocentric nature. We set foot on the tatami, we don't necessarily put our ego aside, and neither do we get rid of our fears and ambitions. We are on the mat to build ourselves and it takes a lot of time.

Guillaume Erard: Thanks to the internet and magazines such as ours, today's practitioners know far more than their counterparts 20 years ago on topics such as the history of Aikido or the lineage of the different currents. Do you think that this is a good thing? Do people come to you with a vision of Aikido that corresponds to the reality?

Luc Mathevet: It is a wonderful thing that practitioners want to inform themselves, it proves that they are dedicated to the art and want to go further than the material proposed during the class. They don't only expect to be spoon-fed so that is great. However, is we drown ourselves in information; we are at a risk of loosing a certain spontaneity in our approach. Some of us have had an atypical, if not chaotic journey but it is precisely what built them.

Guillaume Erard: I personally can't argue with that given my own journey (laughs)! Don't you think that the huge quantity of information, sometimes contradictory, sometimes plain wrong can confuse young practitioners and even limit you in your work as a teacher?

Luc Mathevet: It can indeed slow down their progress in a first stage. It is important to put aside our intellectual knowledge in order to feel and live our own practice. Very often, the meaning of our first readings gets clearer under the light of dedicated practice.

Guillaume Erard: You share with Philippe Gouttard the function of technical director of the Dublin Aikikai Aikido. Could you describe to us the practice over there compared to what is going on in France?

Luc Mathevet: In spite of the cultural difference on the seminars timetables, I can't see any technical difference thanks to the incredible efforts that all the practitioners make. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Cyril Lagrasta and all his students for their dedication and their trust. Their capacity to mobilise themselves in order to attend seminars in Dublin and abroad really paid off.

Guillaume Erard: For you, what is the role of a discipline like Aikido in our current society and what does Aikido has to teach in priority to the practitioner?

Luc Mathevet: We are subjected to constant pressure, familial, professional and social and so on. I think that the practice of Aikido can be some kind of privileged sheltered state, away form these kinds of tensions and that will allow us to develop the other sides of our personality. Through Aikido practice, we can find ourselves in a peculiar psychological and physical referential that can bring us some sense of balance and charge us positively.

Guillaume Erard: I know from our past discussions that you are extremely open to other martial disciplines. Do you think that some can be complementary to the practice of Aikido?

Luc Mathevet: It is really up to each individual to decide. At some stages of our own evolution, we can find ourselves frustrated by what Aikido has to offer, we feel a lack of strikes, punches, kicks, groundwork etc. We therefore have to go elsewhere to investigate these particular dimensions. Care must be taken however because e most of the time, the mix of techniques can end up making us lose the Aiki principles.

Each discipline brings its own type of energy, it is a bit like in sport, and you won't make a marathon runner compete in sprint. English boxing fulfils the needs of a practitioner, he will however not be dealing with kicks and ground work. A judoka who enjoys himself in competition probably has little interest in kicks and nunchaku.

If I am interested in other disciplines, it is rather more to discover Aikido from a counter point, in a negative way than just pure completion. I try to find out the points of agreements and the differences of approach.

Guillaume Erard:  You often speak of personal development but  efficacy is also a point that you constantly keep in mind in spite of the controlled situations and codes that a pedagogic approach imposes within the study in the dojo. How do you reconcile both? Is the research of efficacy at all costs a hindrance to personal development and the other way around?

Luc Mathevet: The important point is not to get it wrong on what is efficacy. Aikido has been designed in order to develop and build the individual in all its dimensions and complexity; not to destroy. The confusion is often here: Aikido is criticised for not being efficient in order to put an adversary out of order but it is not the prime purpose. Technique is firstly a way to develop a mode of communication that is different and original. This mode of communication will help us to treat tensions in a different way. For me, the status quo is not excluded; the aim is not to finish the technique but to establish a situation that is acceptable for both parties. If I am not in an immediate danger, I don't need to destroy the other person.

When the forms of control appear in Aiki- jujutsu, we are already in the Aikido and when the technique is performed in denial of the other "too bad for him", we are in the pure martial application. What I mean here is that it is more a question of state of mind than technique even though forms do have an influence: a shiho nage that respects the joints directions and mobilises the centre of gravity is more in tune with Aikido of course.

If we consider communication as a purpose, we can see that the personal development which comes from practice is going to bring that kind of efficacy. Aikido has no direct sportive (to win) or martial (destroy) purpose. What is left of martiality in Aikido is the notion of vigilance and survival.

Aikido techniques come from Bujutsu to become Budo and have been created in order to react in urgency, to an immediate danger, not as a competitive system. The reaction of emergency, there is no planning going on, no fake engagement either. Judoka who also practice defensive Jujutsu know it: a defensive technique is not going to work in competition because the attack is not committed enough since the aim is "not to lose", "to buy time" or "to win points".

It is a very peculiar mentality. We also see that some professionals of defence often take placements, controls and directions from Aikido.

Aikido has changed a lot; some forms are obviously really educational and develop qualities that are themselves, applicable such as perception, mobility, relaxation, acceleration, knowledge of how to fall, vision of angles, knowledge of joints, determination and so on... O Sensei used to say: "Aikido has no shape"

Guillaume Erard: Thank you very much Luc, do you wish to have a last word?

Luc Mathevet: Thank you for allowing me to express myself, answering to an interview is also the occasion to work on ourselves in order to find meaning. Best of luck to all the Aikido students.

Photos: Hélène Rival
_________________________________________________

To go further:
The Marubashi Dojo website where Luc Mathevet teaches in Saint-Étienne