- encompasses a lot of things in aikido (and in life) in all its levels, whether it is the practical side or the esoteric side, whether it is in relation to an opponent(s) or with one's "SELF". You will never be able to flow with any attack if you are not in harmony with yourself. Simply beacuse you have allowed anger, fear, hatred, frustration and so forth to be a hindrance in responding with the proper mindset, thus delivering poor technique.
From whatever perpective we take it, and even from whatever style of aikido we practice the principle of
as taught by O'sensei will always manifest in various level of practice. When we focus on being "centered" or just by achieving a certain posture with a stability harmony within our physical, emotional, & mental state is already being emphasized. Whenever your sensei tells you to move as "a single unit" or "as one" aiki is given emphasis. Remember, before we can say that we can blend with our opponent we should learn how to blend with our moves first. Otherwise we wil find our movement colliding with that of our attacker. Or in the larger scale we find ourself trapped in the middle of two attckers because we seized to see the fact that their actions are not totally independent from one another. That they are based on each others movement which we can treat as just one movement. As O'sensei said "use the one to strike the many"