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05-15-2014, 08:33 PM
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#26
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Join Date: Apr 2006
Posts: 2,415
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Re: How To Make Friends With Aikido
Quote:
Katherine Derbyshire wrote:
I don't necessarily completely trust or completely distrust someone. I might trust them in some situations but not others, or only up to a certain line.
Similarly, there are degrees of friendship, from casual business or social acquaintance up to someone I'd want with me for the best and worst that life has to offer.
And degrees of harm, from "gave me a shove when drunk" to "broke into my house with a firearm." Not to mention all the varieties of non-physical harm.
Shades of gray, not black and white.
dps
Katherine
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OK I understand what you mean and it sounds like I have a narrower definition of what a friend is.
In context with what the thread is about, if someone would attack you with intent of doing you physical harm and you used your Aikido training to stop their attack, would they want to be your friend because you used Aikido to stop them?
Has this ever happened to you?
Last edited by dps : 05-15-2014 at 08:37 PM.
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05-15-2014, 11:31 PM
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#27
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Join Date: Aug 2002
Posts: 1,318
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Re: How To Make Friends With Aikido
Quote:
David Skaggs wrote:
OK I understand what you mean and it sounds like I have a narrower definition of what a friend is.
In context with what the thread is about, if someone would attack you with intent of doing you physical harm and you used your Aikido training to stop their attack, would they want to be your friend because you used Aikido to stop them?
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Beats me. You'd have to ask them how they felt about the experience. I would imagine that it would depend on all the factors listed above.
No, I don't speak from personal experience. My only "real world" applications of aikido have involved people who were obnoxious and drunk, rather than intent on harm. I didn't have the opportunity (or the interest) to go through an after-action analysis with them.
Katherine
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05-16-2014, 07:13 AM
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#28
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Dojo: Aikido South
Location: Johnson City, TN
Join Date: Aug 2004
Posts: 1,209
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Re: How To Make Friends With Aikido
No, Aikido is not about friendship. Aikido is about compassion. The early philosophy was intended to drive action from compassion. The later philosophy was altered to reflect non-adversarial accommodation. These two concepts are not equivalent. I have a narrow definition of "friend" and that rank of acquaintance would be difficult to meet for anyone who ever intentionally intended to harm me.
I may be putting words into David's mouth, but I found his original post to be a direct observation of an inconsistent ideology persisting in aikido that has no real metric of implementation success. Yes, that ideology exists in aikido to such an extent that my first post was an illustration of the mocking of that perspective. Yes, there is some possibility that through introspection, an attacker may realize that we acted in their best interest. Yes, there is some possibility that person would acknowledge that consideration at some point. My act of compassion does not reflect my desire to become friends. Again, my compassionate act not to dump a beer on a Red Sox fan does not reflect a desire to become friends with one.
Creating friendship through training is different. The alignment of personal goals, ideological beliefs and stress of training is a concoction for bonding, similar to many other team-oriented endeavors.
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Jon Reading
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05-16-2014, 08:19 AM
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#29
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Location: Massachusetts
Join Date: Jun 2006
Posts: 3,202
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Re: How To Make Friends With Aikido
I'd say that reflects a desire to not waste a beer, Jon.
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05-16-2014, 10:04 AM
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#30
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Dojo: AIA, Los Angeles, CA
Location: California
Join Date: Apr 2005
Posts: 1,604
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Re: How To Make Friends With Aikido
I often wonder about these things. For me, I think there is value in *not* viewing the other guy as an attacker per se when doing Aikido. Obviously they are and for practical reasons you can never forget that they are attacking and intending harm. But it ties in greatly with ideas of intent and control -- when you *try* to muscle, try to overpower, try to throw and allow that normal, human "oh crap" reaction takes over often the quality of the technique drops in to the toilet. Treating them as a "friend" in a sense allows me to relax and do what I should be doing.
All that said over the years I've come to see it more as "being professional" rather than treating them as a friend. Doing what I know how to do cleanly, efficiently, and allowing the training to do what it's supposed to do.
So really I see it as a somewhat one-sided thing since I have very little chance of changing their mindset or intent. I can only control how I deal with them. So sure, treating them professionally, competently, with care and compassion as well. I can get behind that. But "making" them your friends strikes me as something else usually well outside your power to effect.
FWIW.
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05-16-2014, 10:20 AM
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#31
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Dojo: Shodokan Honbu (Osaka)
Location: Himeji, Japan
Join Date: Mar 2001
Posts: 3,319
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Re: How To Make Friends With Aikido
I have no intention of making friends with Aikido. I want to bury that particular art into the mat, I want to own it. I want it to beg me to leave it alone and go bother Judo.
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05-16-2014, 10:38 AM
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#32
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Location: Phoenix, Oregon
Join Date: Jun 2004
Posts: 407
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Re: How To Make Friends With Aikido
Quote:
David Skaggs wrote:
For the past thirty years I have seen and heard that if you neutralize an attacker using Aikido they will become your friend.
Does anyone have an example of this?
dps
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Many of the folks I have bounced have come to realize that my security company works for the continued good of all. At least in a Thomas Aquinas sense of the word, this is love. The folks I deal with on a regular basis because they like a particular kind of music or have a favorite bar, or are into watching MMA sometimes have very conflicted relationships with me. They hate the authority they think I have over them (and I certainly dont disabuse them of their false notions...), but they appreciate us stopping them from going to jail or getting seriously injured against their will.
Some call me their friend. Nah, but I will certainly enjoy an event with them as long as they behave. Some are my friend, but only because I know them outside of my security work. Some I profoundly dislike and mistrust for what I think are reasonable reasons like they've hurt my coworkers or they are a repeat bouncee, or they just smell bad (no, really, nothing like having to bounce a guy who hasn't bathed or changed pants in a few weeks and who has thoroughly crapped himself....). Some love to mix it up, so will help us in a brawl, and learn to mitigate their misbehavior.
It would be much better if more of them realized that doing what I ask them to do is way better than doing what Officer Joe asks them to do is way better than doing what Bubba in the yard asks them to do.
Volbeat concert a few weeks ago, great awesome show. I'm patting down the first women coming in, a couple of girls that aint hiding nothing in those clothes, but damn I smell pot. Next lady, can I look in your bag? Sure. Whoa, that smells. Can you open your cig box? UMMMM, ERRRR...... She looks terrified. I do NOT tell her that I cannot arrest her she doesn't ask, but I do tell her straight up that she has three choices. 1. Lose her place in line, and put her weed in her car. 2. Keep her place in line and give me the pot for disposal. 3. Get bounced, not get in, no refunds, no malice, no cops, just no entry. She hands me the pot. Excellent choice. And then, she falls all over me for being the coolest security guard EVOR and she loves me and.... just go enjoy the show, I have about 1500 other chicas to pat down. Have a great night. She finds me after the show and and still LURVES me, pretty much humping my leg for not cuffing her and sending her to jail and beating her to goo. I'll take it. Maybe next time she'll just power a j down in the venue parking lot and leave the baggie at home. That'd help. Dont drive high, smoke out in the lot as long as she's subtle, get to see a great show that's long enough she can even drive home straight.
Win, win. That's more of what aikido is about for me. Getting for all of us to go home after the concert to tell our families how awesome it was.
Freaking Anthrax's guitar player is in Volbeat. Just like the good old times....
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05-16-2014, 11:09 AM
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#33
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Location: Phoenix, Oregon
Join Date: Jun 2004
Posts: 407
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Re: How To Make Friends With Aikido
And, the folks I have actually had to use actual physical aikido waza on, they had no interest in being my friend before or after they were out the door. And they have all gone out the door one way or t'other. Aikido can be powerfully uncomfortable on someone with no ukemi skills and enough free-floating anger to try to hurt strangers. Even if I dont put a painful technique on them, it bugs the hell out of someone with a lot of fight in them when they are wrapped up in complete emotional neutrality and are unable to get one in on us. Sometimes non-resistance causes escalation just as much as resistance does. I think the current lingo is "Haters gonna hate."
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05-16-2014, 02:10 PM
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#34
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Dojo: Oak Park Aikikai, IL
Location: Chicago, IL
Join Date: Apr 2012
Posts: 157
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Re: How To Make Friends With Aikido
Quote:
Krystal Locke wrote:
And, the folks I have actually had to use actual physical aikido waza on, they had no interest in being my friend before or after they were out the door. And they have all gone out the door one way or t'other. Aikido can be powerfully uncomfortable on someone with no ukemi skills and enough free-floating anger to try to hurt strangers. Even if I dont put a painful technique on them, it bugs the hell out of someone with a lot of fight in them when they are wrapped up in complete emotional neutrality and are unable to get one in on us. Sometimes non-resistance causes escalation just as much as resistance does. I think the current lingo is "Haters gonna hate."
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Nothing beats experience when it talks.....
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05-17-2014, 04:24 PM
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#35
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Location: Left Coast
Join Date: May 2002
Posts: 4,339
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Re: How To Make Friends With Aikido
Quote:
Peter Rehse wrote:
I have no intention of making friends with Aikido. I want to bury that particular art into the mat, I want to own it. I want it to beg me to leave it alone and go bother Judo.
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Janet Rosen
http://www.zanshinart.com
"peace will enter when hate is gone"--percy mayfield
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05-17-2014, 06:15 PM
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#36
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Dojo: Sakumeikan N.E. Aikkai .Newcastle upon Tyne.
Location: Newcastle upon Tyne
Join Date: Jan 2008
Posts: 1,266
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Re: How To Make Friends With Aikido
Hi Folks,
What about the other side of the coin? By that I mean how many times or occasions or how many so called friends in Aikido end up being anything but your friends?Aikido politics for example can destroy long term goodwill/friendships between people.Am I the only person who has experienced this?I think that the vision of Aikido portrayed by O Sensei was fundamentally good ie Lets all learn to live together as one etc.The theory is brilliant but do we practice what we preach?My own view here is No. I guess I am just a cynical old codger. Cheers, Joe.
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05-17-2014, 08:19 PM
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#37
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Location: Wild, deep, deadly North
Join Date: Aug 2002
Posts: 1,193
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Re: How To Make Friends With Aikido
Quote:
David Skaggs wrote:
For the past thirty years I have seen and heard that if you neutralize an attacker using Aikido they will become your friend.
Does anyone have an example of this?
dps
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You are mixing technical aspects of aikido with some pseudo philosophical divagations...nothing good can come from this...
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Nagababa
ask for divine protection Ame no Murakumo Kuki Samuhara no Ryuo
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05-18-2014, 10:45 AM
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#38
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Dojo: Boulder Aikikai
Location: Denver, Colorado
Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 372
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Re: How To Make Friends With Aikido
This entire discussion has been based upon some confusion, that if you neutralize an attacker using aikido he will become your friend.
No, no, no: If you circumcise an attacker using aikido he will become your friend. This is well-documented, and I can confirm it from personal experience, although I'm afraid you'll have to take my word for it.
CAUTION! I'm referring to post-War aikido. Daito-ryu will leave things, like their ukes, all tangled up.
Last edited by Dan Rubin : 05-18-2014 at 10:48 AM.
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05-18-2014, 12:11 PM
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#39
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Join Date: Aug 2002
Posts: 1,318
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Re: How To Make Friends With Aikido
Mohel Sensei is particularly known for the surgical precision of his tanto technique?
Katherine
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05-18-2014, 06:30 PM
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#41
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Location: Phoenix, Oregon
Join Date: Jun 2004
Posts: 407
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Re: How To Make Friends With Aikido
Quote:
Hilary Heinmets wrote:
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So, on a rare Thursday afternoon off about 22-23 years ago, I'm in my favorite used bookstore (Blue Dragon Books, in Ashland, OR) one day, giggling over this book: http://www.amazon.com/Mine-Son-Samur.../dp/0672630397
I had just started aikido maybe a month, had been several Monday (my only free) nights, and I noticed that the guy had lots of martial arts books. But, no money, so I walk on out without a purchase this time. Gotta get to class in a few, no time to chat. Stoked to get two classes in that week, gonna rank up quickly at that rate.
Dress, get on the mat, stretch, and in walks the bookstore owner, black belt and hakama. He must have been a nidan or an early sandan at the time. Whoa. Who knew?
Teehee. My weird life. I should get myself a copy of that book in honor of Bob. Hadn't thought about that in years and years.
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05-18-2014, 07:56 PM
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#42
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Dojo: Torrey Pines Aiki Kai
Location: San Diego
Join Date: Mar 2011
Posts: 107
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Re: How To Make Friends With Aikido
Hi Krystal! I am intrigued by the fact that new, it is $106.01 (really, does the extra penny really increase the seller's margin?) but good quality used editions are $0.29 - $35 most under $10; does this book have a freshness date?
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05-18-2014, 11:37 PM
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#43
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Location: Phoenix, Oregon
Join Date: Jun 2004
Posts: 407
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Re: How To Make Friends With Aikido
Quote:
Hilary Heinmets wrote:
Hi Krystal! I am intrigued by the fact that new, it is $106.01 (really, does the extra penny really increase the seller's margin?) but good quality used editions are $0.29 - $35 most under $10; does this book have a freshness date?
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I didn't even look at the price. Thirty cents sounds good, though. It was a pretty cool book. Not a hundred bucks cool.
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