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Old 10-06-2010, 09:18 AM   #5
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Join Date: Jan 2005
Posts: 1,996
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Re: Training .... when you are not training

There's an article in one of the Aiki News issues (somewhere between 001 and 060), where Ueshiba supposedly feels bad when a visitor shows up. Ueshiba excuses himself. Someone (I think Doshu) goes to check on him and finds him doing some training with visitor. They stop training and are talking. Ueshiba states something to the effect of, "Look, I'm training right now."

He wasn't on the mat, he wasn't physically doing techniques - he was talking ... and yet, still training aiki. Isn't that an interesting thing? Training outside the dojo.

In 1942, Ueshiba goes to Iwama which is, at times, called aiki-en, or aiki farm. So, he's doing "farming" with "aiki". In other words, he's using the physical activity of farming to train his aiki body skills and he's outright calling it that. Training outside the dojo.

Somewhere Ellis Amdur calls Ueshiba's jo movements (I think from a video of Ueshiba in Hawaii) hidden in plain sight. Training outside the dojo.

The transformation from Ueshiba's training that he did personally to today's Modern Aikido is one of the major changes that Kisshomaru and Tohei made. IMO, if you want to train Modern Aikido, train in the dojo. If you want Ueshiba's training model, it is fairly specific but can be done anywhere and everywhere.

IMO anyway,
Mark
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