Teacher embraces harmony lesson that comes from Japanese martial art

Craig Naylor moves around the dojo with ease and intention.  

He walks over to a stand holding a framed black and white photo of Morihei Ueshiba. A shrine for the martial art of Aikido founder, who died in 1969, if Naylor had the money, he’d decorate it with flowers.  

Naylor bends down to grab a wooden staff, also called a jo, set on the stand. An oval-shaped wooden stick meant to resemble a sword is also laid there. 

The 70-year-old is dressed in a traditional Japanese martial arts uniform called a gi. His newly received fifth-level black belt tucked away under his hakama, big billowing pants meant to hide one’s legs.

Using the jo, he demonstrates how to deflect a sword being swung at his head by redirecting its path and taking the sword while the attacker is unbalanced. He shows how to incapacitate an attacker by twisting their arm behind their back or bending their wrist toward their body. 

Aikido, though, which is not only a martial art but also a way of life for Naylor, does not encourage violence, only self-defense in life-threatening situations.  

The serenity of the discipline is reflected in the dojo he teaches it in. The eggshell white floors, strong scent of incense and cascading sunlight exude calm.  

Naylor teaches the modern martial art at the Embodied Movement Center off U.S. 2 west of Kalispell. Because of his skillful teaching, he recently earned his fifth-level blackbelt, which entailed being examined by the Takemusu Aikido Association based in Japan.  

“They want to see me teaching, they want to see me going to workshops around the country,” he said. “They want to see that you’re professionally involved in the art and in the organization.”  

Getting to such a prestigious level was no easy feat. Naylor was introduced to Aikido in 1979 when he was 25 years old.  

“I was a shrimp growing up,” Naylor said. He would get picked on as a kid and even as an adult. While he wanted to be able to defend himself, he is also a Lutheran.  

“I believe in turning the other cheek. So, I was looking for a way where I could fuse those two, and Aikido does that for me,” Naylor said. “I can be strong; I can be present. I can be nonviolent all at the same time.”  

Thankfully, he’s never had to use his skills in a real-life situation, but learning Aikido has made him more confident, he said. The discipline even saved his life six years ago while he was cutting down a tree. The wind shifted when he was cutting it, causing the tree to fall on him.  

“If I hadn’t been training Aikido, I think I’d be in a wheelchair,” he said 

Throughout the decades immersing himself in Aikido, he would take some breaks over the years, some longer than others. After an especially long sabbatical, Naylor found himself reinvigorated to jump back into teaching while at his yearly physical in 2010.  

He had just moved back to town after taking a job in Virginia. While getting his check-up, his physician asked about Naylor’s background teaching Aikido.  

“It was a direct question. It wasn’t, ‘Would you consider?’ It was, ‘Would you be my teacher?” he said. That doctor is now a third level black belt and a dedicated student, Naylor said.  

The story sounded like something from “The Karate Kid” film when a retired martial arts master crosses paths with a teenager in need of a guiding hand.  

The physician’s question prompted Naylor to throw himself back into the discipline that not only taught him useful self-defense but also helped him excel in his other creative endeavors.  

Also, a professional composer and conductor, he found that the motions he makes while disarming an opponent are much like slicing a conductor’s baton through the air. 

He had grown up playing the trumpet, and in college got into composing. “I was interested in just the way everything was put together,” he said. 

Naylor earned a bachelor’s degree in music education and a master's and doctoral degree in composition from the University of Southern California.  

He commissioned musical pieces for a variety of organizations and taught music for different ages around the country. He recalled conducting for the University of Mary Washington's wind ensemble when they performed music from all Indigenous American composers at the Kennedy Center and National Museum of the American Indian.  

He now conducts the Crown of the Continent Choir in Kalispell.  

But after the Covid-19 pandemic hit, he found it hard to make ends meet through music. “Performance organizations just died,” he said, which is when he found novel writing. 

While novels don’t sound like an outlier from the rest of his passions, the characters and plots he creates are quite the opposite of the pacifist ideals he surrounds himself with in both faith and martial arts.  

“It’s when I listen to my lesser angels,” he said. “In my books, I kill people, and I kill them in very creative ways. And in my regular life, I don’t do that.”  

Writing under a pen name, he creates twistedly evil antagonists who commit heinous crimes to be solved. He hopes to self-publish his first novel in the next month.  

“Now all of a sudden, I am ready to release novels, and there seems to be interest in my music again, and my studio here with Aikido is growing,” he said. “So sometimes I wonder if I can do it all.” 

To learn more about the Aikido classes Naylor offers or his music compositions, visit craigthomasnaylor.com. The Embodied Movement Center is located at 2449 U.S. 2 W.  

Reporter Jack Underhill can be reached at 758-4407 and junderhill@dailyinterlake.com.