View Single Post
Old 12-19-2002, 09:07 AM   #1
akiy
 
akiy's Avatar
Join Date: Jun 2000
Posts: 6,049
Offline
Learning How to Learn Aikido

Hi everyone,

One interesting question that I've been chewing on is how to teach someone to learn how to learn aikido. I very much believe that pretty much most, if not all, of us can teach people, but it seems to be a much deeper task to teach someone to learn how to learn aikido.

Basically, I think there's a difference between learning something and learning how to learn something and was wondering if anyone had any thoughts on how to teach someone to learn how to learn aikido.

For example, I've seen folks who seem to have the desire to learn aikido but, for one reason or other, just don't seem to get "it." I've seen folks who seem to be all too keen on getting it "now -- and right now!" A lot of people seem to either want to just get to the end of a technique no matter what -- kind of like skimming through a mystery novel to see "whodunit" without enjoying (nor understanding) the meat of the book. There are others like the "I have 12 years of experience in Foobarbaz-do so I slip back into that mode a lot" folks, the "Geez, I make so many honkin' mistakes every time I move that I can't even get through the tenkan exercise without beating myself up over it," folks, the "I've been doing aikido for ten years so I'll just keep doing the same things over and over and over and over and over" folks, and many others.

The above were just examples, of course. I'm sure people can come up with many other types.

My thoughts seem to come back to the topic of "awarness" in all of these cases, but that could just be me.

What sort of tips would you give to someone who just began their aikido training if they asked, "What approach should I take in learning aikido?" Or someone who has had six months of training but is getting frustrated? Any concrete exercises or thoughts that you can give to people like this?

-- Jun

Please help support AikiWeb -- become an AikiWeb Contributing Member!
  Reply With Quote