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Old 11-02-2003, 12:35 PM   #1
tedehara
 
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Dojo: Evanston Ki-Aikido
Location: Evanston IL
Join Date: Aug 2000
Posts: 826
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The Reptilian Brain

In Aikido people talk in a Japanese hocus pocus using words like Ki, Hara, Mushin and Zashin. However, that's not what this is all about is it?

Doesn't Aikido, like many of the traditional eastern arts, actually train the Reptilian Brain?

Functions like breathing, fight/flight and physical survival are known functions of this part of the human brain. These are the same areas of Aikido activity. Even the traditional admonition of not talking about Aikido, just train, could be an innate understanding that this primitive part of the brain doesn't understand language.

Perhaps it's harder for an Aikido beginner because they're trying to program an area that is usually left untouched.

It is only just recently that medical science has begun to understand the workings of the human mind. Shouldn't we apply those findings to Aikido, instead of relying on vague, traditional concepts?

This perspective stands dynamically opposite to the traditional approach of Aikido. It utilizes a modern knowledge of humans without any reliance on spiritual interpetations. If nothing else, it is a persuasive argument.

It is not practice that makes perfect, it is correct practice that makes perfect.
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