Quote:
Hunter Lonsberry wrote:
The fact that senior teachers are bringing in outsiders from their system to teach it?
|
Not where I train they aren't
It's a messy subject. I've often thought (when visiting other aikido dojo) that it was absent and should have been taught more. I put that down to my point of view being biased towards our version/interpretation of ki aikido.
In the end, I like being able to go to any aikido dojo regardless of style/affiliation and learn something, even if they aren't doing aikido the way I think it should be done. Everyone has something to offer. to say 'it' is absent from aikido is patently false. To say 'it' can be taught better is something I think everyone everywhere would agree with, IMHO. There are many different ways of training and manifesting this power I think. I think we're all guilty of preferring the approach we're more familiar with, whether it be Tohei's ki development. Aunkai, Bagua etc etc... I also think there's a lot of overlap with all of these approaches.
The perceived 'decline' in the effectiveness of aikido because of the absence of these skills is nothing new, Koichi Tohei said it would happen decades ago. The fact that this debate is happening at all just goes to show how right he was about it all. It caused a lot of bad feeling when he left the aikikai, it shouldn't be much of a surprise that it still does really. Like I said, messy
Mike