View Single Post
Old 06-28-2000, 06:26 PM   #8
Mike Collins
Location: San Jose
Join Date: Jun 2000
Posts: 189
United_States
Offline
I train with a teacher who has changed affiliations in the not-too-distant past, and it is really cool trying to see what part of what I believed I understood from the past "style" translates to the current "style", and what part may have actually been a wrong understanding on my part.

These are both valid and good "styles" of Aikido, they just diverge at the point of emphasis. A close look reveals some really cool similarities. Fortunately, the current "style" is familiar to me, so it's not much of a sales job to be done on me; there are some for whom it is a major shift, though, and it is really interesting to watch the struggle to "believe".

I have been blessed to train with a lot of people who have had good, but very different teachers. I have seen what is (I think) right in an awful lot of supposedly radically different "systems". To think that Osensei spawned all of these (right, in my opinion) versions says volumes on what an incredible person and martial artist he was. I hope to die an old man doing the Aikido of Ueshiba Osensei. (It'd be a nice change from some of the crap I do these days:).

  Reply With Quote