Sascha Witt

This ties in very nicely with one of the points I made in the thread about the magic pill (from this week's poll).

When Aikido doesn't work, it means you did not do Aikido. You tried to perform one of the techniques but had had no clue of the Aikido principle behind it... and your technique did not work (common reasons: because you did not have your partner's balance or do not yet understand body rhythm and you went too fast or too slow trying to perform the technique. You are missing the the "harmony" that you need to achieve for the technique to work)

So the original quote

means just that. If you do "real" Aikido, if you use "energy" (yours and your partner's) with "harmony" you can overcome any opponent. If on the other hand you think Aikido is no more than a bunch of techniques (i.e. YOUR Aikido) and you fail to establish this harmony there is a good chance that you end up getting your butt kicked out on the street. But that's not because Aikido does not work, but because you don't yet understand what Aikido is.

YOUR Aikido (the one that doesn't work) are just a bunch of movements strung together, whereas Aikido (the one that does work) is harmonizing with your opponents energy and using it against him/her and the actual techniques used to acomplish this are secondary.

As I mentioned in the other thread I have heard it said that "You can do all of the techniques perfectly and still not do Aikido". The techniques are just tools we use to perform Aikido, but they are not Aikido. Just like we use our arms as tools to perform the teqhniques.

I have seen demonstrations where the Sensei used just one arm or even did not use his arms and hands at all... but he did use Aikido and it worked (better than when I use both arms).

So to sum up my response I think the original quote means: Aikido works. Your (perception of) aikido doesn't work.

I hope at least some of that made some sense to anyone other than myself

Take care everyone.