Yes, it is profoundly disrespectful of all these other things.

And I would hasten to add that privileging the internal norms and doctrines of the art/group/teacher over external reality and systematically constructing and defining external reality in terms of those internal norms is a common pattern in Japanese culture that those engaging in Japanese cultural practices would do well to examine critically. (Which is not to say that the pattern isn't found in other cultures, east and west, simply that it isn't so clearly present or normative as in Japanese culture.)

FL

I understand. Aikido is giving you a language to describe phenomena that existed before and independent of aikido, or a framework or set of metaphors for understanding them. The lens through which you view the thing isn't the thing itself, though. The lens is not aikido, and it isn't paddling either. It's just that through practicing aikido, it seems many people discover the lens -- a way of looking at things or experiencing the world that they hadn't previously. Then, when they start to have similar experiences in other activities, many of these people conclude that these other activities must also be "aikido", because that's where they discovered the lens. I think that's flawed reasoning -- demonstrably, because people learn this way of seeing without ever having contact with aikido.

I'm not trying to put down your experience. I'm just reacting to the way that some enthusiastic aikidoka seem to want to co-opt everything that is good and useful in the world and re-label it as "aikido". Isn't that disrespectful of all these other things? I live in a whitewater town; I've known many dedicated paddlers with international reputations, and almost none of them have ever been near a dojo. Instead, they've been on the river, in all seasons and stages, learning a thing that can also be found in a dojo -- but that did not come from a dojo. That's the important distinction IMO.