kewms

FWIW, I know several fairly senior aikido teachers who've spent a lot of time working on Dan's stuff. I don't know what's going on inside their heads, but the observable results seem like they've found a way to integrate bits and pieces that have been there all along. Something like what happens in the sciences when you develop (or learn about) a theoretical basis to go with your experimental phenomenology.

Much of what he's doing *is* already there in aikido. The people who say "we already do that" are not wrong. It's just that, in many cases, you have the exercises without an explanation for why they are important or how they should be done. Or you have teaching visualizations without an understanding of what body structures they are intended to produce. Or you have people who can personally do some impressive things, but haven't been able to transmit the skills to their own students.

Dan's great contribution to the aikido community, IMO, has been vocabulary and teaching methodology more than specific skills. He's American. He speaks clear, unambiguous English and is able to describe exactly what he's doing in a way that other Americans can understand, emulate, and build on.

Katherine