Our Team
Sam Taitel (they/them)
Sam is a Mixed, Black, Jewish, and Queer being living on occupied Dakota, Lakota, Nakota, and Anishinaabe lands colonially named Minneapolis, MN. After being a dojo baby on the side of the mat in a basket, they began practicing Aikido in 1999, was an uchi-deshi (live-in student) at NY Aikikai under Yamada Sensei, and now trains and teaches at East Lake Aikido holding the rank of sandan (3rd degree black belt, 2017). Aikido has fundamentally informed how they move through and connect with the world: as an authentic and curious co-conspirator. They work to nourish belonging in the martial arts community and beyond, often utilizing body forward inquiry. They deeply believe that uplifting people’s capacities to be sensitive and aware in tandem with ancestral knowledge can radically shift how we share this world together; we must notice to care.
[IMAGE TO RIGHT: Sam Taitel color portrait. Sam is a brown skinned mixed-race person with shaved sides. They are smiling widely and wearing a white dogi with a frayed collar. The background is a red brick wall with a shoji screen at one edge. The natural dark brown color of their hair at the top of their head gives way to hints of purples and blues from the lighted strands peeking out from one side.]
César San Miguel (he/him)
César lives in Oakland, CA (unceded homeland of the Chochenyo Ohlone peoples). His Aikido journey began as a child in 2000 and he holds the rank of sandan (3rd degree black belt) under Jan Nevelius Shihan of Stockholm, Sweden. Moving through life as a Chicano (American born Mexican) he is continuously made aware of the iniquity and inequity present in our society, and by extension, our dojos. Drawing from his deep and ongoing study of ukemi, César approaches life with gentle compassion paired with clear and firm boundaries. He brings this combination to his work as a certified massage therapist with a trauma-informed approach that centers marginalized communities. You can learn more about his practice at inclusivemassage.space.
[IMAGE TO LEFT: César San Miguel color portrait. César is a light brown skinned man with black hair that is short on the sides and eyebrow length bangs that are swept across his forehead. He is wearing a white dogi and smiling against a red brick background with a shoji screen at one side.]
Malory Graham (she/her)
Malory fell in love with Aikido while in college training with Paul Sylvain Sensei in 1988. She founded Seattle Aikikai and has been professionally teaching since 1997, and received her 6th dan from Y. Yamada Shihan in 2014. Malory continues to develop her own training with Yoko Okamoto and Chris Mulligan Sensei of Aikido Kyoto. Along with teaching aikido and yoga, she has had tandem careers as a filmmaker and non-profit Executive Director. She has made films to promote women in aikido and has been deeply committed to the social justice/youth development field
[IMAGE TO RIGHT: Malory Graham color photo. Malory is a white woman with shoulder length brown hair. She is wearing a white ruched v-neck against a soft peach wall. There is a gi top and bottom hanging on coat hooks behind her. Text painted on the poster above the clothing hooks reads: "THIS IS A PLACE TO EXPERIENCE JOY"]
Evie Lynch (she/her)
Evie started training at Aikido of Madison (WI) at age nine and is now a student of Jan Nevelius Shihan, from whom she most recently received her 2nd dan. Evie has a lifelong fascination with creative forms of movement, including as a circus aerialist and competitive lumberjack athlete—outside the dojo she is a personal trainer and group fitness instructor.
“If Aikido is going to stay relevant in our future, we need to adapt it—no longer just for those in a position of social, cultural and financial advantage, it is all of our responsibility to put in the work to make change happen. There is no opportunity without access.”
[IMAGE TO LEFT: Evie Lynch color portrait. Evie is a white skinned young person with brown hair that is pulled back, light catches in some errant strands. She is facing the camera on a slight angle, wearing a dogi, and smiling against a blurred red brick background.]
Arielle Herman (she/they/i)
As a student of aikido, yoga, iaido and meditation, Ari relishes the study of how different lineages and even different arts intersect and inform each other, and is a proponent of the Post-Lineage movements in yoga and aikido. A cofounder and instructor at Rivertide Center located on the land of the displaced Mohican Nation Stockbridge–Munsee Band, she believes that the deepest learning occurs by investigating rather than receiving information, and that the communities in which we practice are the heart from which we grow. Training in martial arts since 2001, Ari’s practices also include foraging, wildcrafted herbalism, following the mycelium threads of intersection and asking too many questions (or perhaps too many is always one too few).
Increasingly skeptical of traditional ideations of lineage and hierarchy, Ari has chosen to step away from standard ranking and certification entities of the aikido and yoga communities, as these structures feel discordant with the most valuable elements of the practices themselves. In the spirit of Tikkun Olam, she takes inspiration in the eternally hopeful-even-while-broken nature of our aikido communities and believes that only in recognizing the ways in which our practice is most deeply flawed can we fulfill the ideals of aikido.
[IMAGE TO RIGHT: Arielle Herman color photo. Arielle is a white skinned person wearing a white dogi and blue hakama holding a jo with her hands near opposite ends in a tropical location. Their bleach blond hair is secured in a loose bun at the back of their head and it pops against both the brown shaved side of their head and the blue sky. The background is an almost clear blue sky meeting the darker blue-green ocean at the horizon and slightly dead yellow-green grass at the bottom - all in three distinct horizontal bands across the photo.]