DH

Hi Mary
Opinion is how many, if not most, of the people in budo found their teacher or art. Opinion is how Ueshiba's fame spread so quickly. What does it say that aikidoka from an incredibly diverse background, both geographically and in pedagogy go out to research a method and come back home with a 100% consistent view?
Since it's become evident that those opinions are consistent, that being, that in their "opinion" it is not only superior to anything they have felt in aikido, the training method to attain it is as well, that they might be on to something. It bears looking at the pedagogy, since it includes so many different styles of aikido, active today, and stuents and teachers up to forty years in the art-which cumulatively is incorporating the equivalent of up to possibly a thousand years worth of diverse training experiences, that it suggests they are discussing some things, which are beyond your experience-and not theirs.

I hope we can get together sometime to compare notes, laugh, and have some good food.