OwlMatt
03-28-2011, 09:01 AM
I also post on martialartsplanet.com, and there is a wonderful thread on their aikido board that is simply aikidoka posting anecdotes of their experiences training under great masters of the art (usually shihans). There are some great stories there. I thought it might be enlightening to see what would show up in a similar thread on AikiWeb.
To start things off, I'll always remember something Ikeda Shihan said in a class he taught in September.
In somewhat broken English, he said, "Big dog: not bark so much. Little dog: bark, bark, bark, bark, bark." He went on to explain that power is quiet, and the more power we have, the less we feel the need to show it. It was a wonderfully simple lesson in humility and restraint from the shihan.