Aikido - To Teach Without Speech

But I guess what you are saying is dont take the instructors direction as gospel, I take it on board with that mind set, but when my instructor is who he is ,I tend to go for gospel!

Ed Shockley wrote: The key is knowing when to speak and what to say.

I think this sentence frome Ed's post is the essence of a very interesting thread.

My own Sensei learnt the traditional mostly non verbal way from Kenshiro Abbe Sensei who came to the UK in the 1950's originally to teach Judo and Karate, adding Aikido when Japan gave permission. Many years later he spent a number of years with Tohei Sensei, who's teaching method ( much more verbal instruction and explanation ) had a profound affect on him. So in these later times of over 50 years of teaching Aikido, he will quite happily tell us interesting stories of his earlier training, both on and off the mat to illustate a teaching point. I personally am glad that I am a reciever of the more verbal style of teaching. In fact in post practice chats in the Pub he has said that as time passes he has noticed that beginners are 'getting' some of the concepts of training that many of his senior students took along time to learn from show - do.

I hope at some point to visit Japan and to practice there, so no doubt I will get some first hand experience of the learning from watching. Until then I'll try to live up to the high ideals of the quote I used above.

Cheers, all.

Not only do different people learn in different ways, a person learns in different ways at different times for different subjects. For instance, Whole English Theory works well for adults who already have the fundamentals of reading English. It sucks for people new to the language or for children just learning to read. As we grow and become more literate, how we learn new words and read becomes different. Learning Aikido is no different. We all learn in different ways at different times under different conditions for different things.

In terms of teaching, sometimes if you spoonfeed your students everything there is for you to transmit to them, those students never learn to experiment and learn for themselves. They never learn to become their own teachers and critically assess what they have learned from someone else. At some time, usually by the time of Sandan, you have to begin assessing all the different things you have learned and start throwing away some things or at least reclassifying them so that you can begin to develop your own style of Aikido. Unless you have a teacher that never expects to retire or grow old and die, you have to develop your own style of Aikido. One that works for you. To do this, you have to distill all your learnings. You have to take all that stuff you picked up at different dojos from different instructors and at the different seminars, and refine that material so that you can develop a system that works for your body and philosophy and what you use your Aikido for. If your teacher gives you all the knowledge he or she has, then your teacher is doing you an injustice. He or she should, at tlmes, just be giving you the slightest of hints so that you can go out and discover things on your own.

Rock