Re: Post Conflict Strategies and Techniques of Aikido?
To be clear and careful here... Many people are injured because they choose to use vehicles in a fashion unintended and often against recommendation. There is a necessary level of competency required to appropriately (and safely) use tools for purposes unintended in the design.
I believe aiki is in many martial arts. I believe aikido is a martial art because it is a foundation skill. As I continue to research it, I believe aikido is a distilled curriculum designed to maximize aiki (if done correctly). To this extent, I believe anyone (effectively) practicing aikido is doing basic foundational work for any number of martial arts into which they would like to express aiki. To make it even easier, aikido comes with simplified versions of a number of techniques which exist in a number of sister martial arts to practice expression.
One of the things I think O Sensei did was try to distill down the purpose of aikido, allowing for the flexibility of successor generations to build a contemporary structure into which aikido could be housed. Much of this language surrounded individual achievement, however it was translated. That is, in considering the entirety of aikido its primary purpose was self-improvement. I think we have lost that message in some respects. Our dependency upon paired kata, our isolation in practicality, our community-based philosophical ideology. To put it rather bluntly, there is no "me" in aikido.
I become cautious when "me" get replaced with "us" and now I am asked to be part of a community that may not share my perspective. At one point in time, there was an aikido that could say, "well, let's find out..." Whatever O Sensei's original intent, I would advocate we are farther from the aikido that could work out with everyone and closer to the aikido that needs aikido people. I think without the ingenuity to use aiki in whatever we do, we are splitting hairs about the limited knowledge we have in aikido.
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