Thread: Ueshiba's Aiki
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Old 11-14-2011, 04:29 PM   #296
Ken McGrew
Dojo: Aikido at UAB
Location: Birmingham, Alabama
Join Date: May 2006
Posts: 202
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Re: Ueshiba's Aiki

Quote:
Janet Rosen wrote: View Post
Jeez.
Well I was at the SF Seminar. We were never working on stopping anybody from doing anything, just providing just enough pressure per our partner's direction to give the partner enough of a challenge to work with but succeed - just as in good aikido training.
I am not and have never been a member of an ASU dojo. It happens the hosting dojo is an ASU dojo. I will say that the dojocho, a septuagenarian who has been training in aikido a good 50 years, was totally STOKED by the seminar, and saw nothing to contradict what Saotome Sensei or Ikeda Sensei do.
Janet, as someone who was there, this is the closest ANYONE in all the posts I've researched going back to about 2005 has come to describing what Dan is teaching. Why not describe it to us in more detail?

I have never said that what I take Dan to be doing is contradictory to Aikido training, at least not at the level of exercise which develops skills that can be taken back into Aikido waza. Most of my posts have been in response to the claims about what and why Dan is doing what he is doing (though without detailed description provided).

You say it's complimentary and yet THEY describe it in terms that sound contradictory. Dan and Dan's supporters say that blending, leading, and body positioning are tricks and not real aiki as found in O Sensei's Aikido, why is it wrong to challenge the claim? Why is it wrong to question their evidence? Why can they cite having taken ukemi from Saotome Sensei at a seminar as if that sums him up and yet all my training with him, with his senior students, and with his teachings doesn't count?

Whether what they are doing is O Sensei's aiki, the claim that they make, should be a claim that can be tested. And it would seem to matter what the answer is. If they are right, we should all train with Dan. If they are wrong, then we may choose to train with Dan, but for different reasons than the ones he and his supporters have presented.