ChrisMoses

Everyone I've had hands on with from the Aikido world in the last couple years has had the same response, "you feel weird." Every one. We have a visiting Aikido (and formerly judo) guy visiting our dojo right now and in class a couple weeks ago he said, "man, this is what real judo ought to be..." At Dan's recent seminar last year in Seattle he had me show the newer folks the boat rowing exercise. Thankfully we'd been working on that one so I didn't look like a total moron! As I went around and let folks feel how I was doing the exercise they all went wide eyed and most insisted that I do it again because they didn't believe it was working on them. And it did. I think it's safe to say from their reactions, that NONE of them had felt that before. I'm not saying this to float my own boat, I would rate my own competency at this stuff as "barely foot in the door." But, when you actually FEEL this stuff, feel even the beginnings of real aiki, it's like finding a new color. Something is possible that wasn't possible a moment before. We also don't refer to our stuff as "aikido" either, so I don't feel the need to convince Aikido folks that there's anything missing in their art. I am convinced however that what we're working on is almost completely missing from Aikido, yet IS the aiki that OSensei was talking about.