AikiWeb Aikido Forums - View Single Post - Aikido as External Art -or- Where's the Chewy Center?

DH · 03-09-2007, 01:49 PM

Edit
I wanted the last paragraph to say this.

Aikido is and always was meant to be an internal art. Its the only way its technical syllabus has much merit. I just can't pressume to insult Ueshiba as an imbecile who didn't know what he was talking about, or showed and did. Or his vision of change.
Nor assume that the many extremely experienced martial artists who saw and felt him were just somehow "awed" by his (rather common IMO) wristy-twisties and the... oh so unique... idea of turning from an attack. Lets get real. These accomplished Budoka-many of whom were the best in their fields, were never that stupid or easily impressed.
We were.

They ran head long into internal power and wrote about it. Their astonishment included Takeda, Sagawa, and Kodo. We just chaulked all that acclaim up to "waza."
So, do we reduce the observational skills and experiences of all those incredible budoka as just being as dumb and easily impressed as us?
Or where they the smart ones after all? Correctly identifying that there was, as stated, an "unsual power" behnd all this?
If we agree with any of that.
Then what direction do we take?
How?
Dan

03-09-2007, 01:49 PM	#5
DH Join Date: Aug 2005 Posts: 3,394 Offline	Re: Aikido as External Art -or- Where's the Chewy Center? Edit I wanted the last paragraph to say this. Aikido is and always was meant to be an internal art. Its the only way its technical syllabus has much merit. I just can't pressume to insult Ueshiba as an imbecile who didn't know what he was talking about, or showed and did. Or his vision of change. Nor assume that the many extremely experienced martial artists who saw and felt him were just somehow "awed" by his (rather common IMO) wristy-twisties and the... oh so unique... idea of turning from an attack. Lets get real. These accomplished Budoka-many of whom were the best in their fields, were never that stupid or easily impressed. We were. They ran head long into internal power and wrote about it. Their astonishment included Takeda, Sagawa, and Kodo. We just chaulked all that acclaim up to "waza." So, do we reduce the observational skills and experiences of all those incredible budoka as just being as dumb and easily impressed as us? Or where they the smart ones after all? Correctly identifying that there was, as stated, an "unsual power" behnd all this? If we agree with any of that. Then what direction do we take? How? Dan Last edited by DH : 03-09-2007 at 02:00 PM.
DH Join Date: Aug 2005 Posts: 3,394 Offline