Hi All,
After reading
Kevin Wilbanks' reply, I started thinking about how science would view aikido. I'm not talking about those who would establish
Ki as a particle/energy stream or investigate the validity of
TCM (
Traditional
Chinese
Medicine). I was trying to find things in psychology that could possibly explain the aikido experience from a western viewpoint, without any theories on Ki.
After looking in the psychology section, I came up with two items. The first item is the subject of this thread, the flow experience.
Quote:
Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, pg 4
...From their accounts of what it felt like to do what they were doing, I developed a theory of optimal experience based on the concept of flow - the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it...
|
The author specifically points to martial arts and lists aikido in his book.
Quote:
|
Flow pg 106
...These martial arts were influenced by Taoism and by Zen Buddhism, and thus they also emphasized consciousness-controlling skills. Instead of focusing exclusively on physical performance, as Western martial arts do, the Eastern variety is directed toward improving the mental and spiritual state of the practitioner. The warrior strives to reach the point where he can act with lightning speed against opponents, without having to think or reason about the best defensive or offensive moves to make. Those who can perform it well claim that fighting becomes a joyous artistic performance, during which the everyday experience of duality between mind and body is transformed into a harmonious one-pointedness of mind. Here again, it seems appropriate to think of the martial arts as a specific form of flow...
|
I know it's hard to sum up a book in two quotes, but is this aikido to you? Is aikido a flow experience or has this psychologist gotten it all wrong? Is there anything he might have left out?