About Us
Wellsprings club members who attended Lewis Seminar at Charlton Down. Dorset. 2022
Our Story
Wellsprings Aikido trains a Traditional form of Aikido that was passed on from O-Sensei to the late Morihiro Saito Sensei. Morihiro Saito Sensei, 9th Dan, studied Aikido with the Founder in Iwama from 1946 until O-Sensei’s death in 1969. This was significantly longer than any other aikidoka. After the death of O-Sensei Saito Sensei became guardian of the Aiki Shrine and Chief Instructor of the Iwama Dojo. Saito Sensei saw it as his responsibility to faithfully transmit the art of the Founder. To do this he organised and classified the hundreds of techniques and devised methods and practices to aid the learning process.
Our club is also affiliated on a national and international level to Traditional Aikido Alliance (TAA), and Traditional Aikido Europe (TAE). Our safeguarding, coaching and insurance is with the British Aikido Board (BAB), the UK National Governing body for Aikdo.
We started to follow Lewis Bernaldo de Quiros (7th dan) in 2014 and a few years later he formed TAE and at present is the Chairman and Chief Technical Director of the organization. Lewis spent several years studying directly from Saito Sensei in Japan as uchi deshi (live in student) and preserves Saito Sensei’s legacy by passing on his teachings to the next generation of Aikido students.
湧泉 （Yuusen）
This means ‘gushing spring’.
湧 means gush/spring/upwell. 泉 represents spring/fountain.
Also used as the name of an acupuncture point that energises a person.
