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Is Aikido Unique?
by The Mirror
07-31-2015
Is Aikido Unique?

This month's "The Mirror" column was written by Pauliina Lievonen © 2015, all rights reserved.
I've been thinking about marketing lately for my teaching practise in both recorder playing and Alexander technique. And reading articles on the subject one idea that I frequently encountered was the idea of an unique selling point.

There have been some slightly anxious discussions about the uniqueness of the Alexander technique on some internet forums I visit lately. Is it the teaching people to stop, to pause before reacting? But isn't that something they talk about in mindfulness as well? How about directing your movement, intentional movement? But many movement disciplines pay attention to that… Maybe it's the specialised hands on work?

So that got me thinking about what about aikido would be unique. A topic that has been discussed on Aikiweb in the past as well.

When you start to analyze the different ideas, techniques and practises that together make up the art of aikido, you start to realize that not one of them is unique to aikido alone.

Peace and harmony is the goal of many other arts. So is using your opponents power against them. The technical curriculum is sometimes almost identical to other forms of jujutsu. The underlying bodywork can be found and used in many arts.

Why is it that the question about uniqueness keeps coming up? From a marketing point of view it makes sense: COME TRAIN WITH US, YOU CAN'T GET THIS ANYWHERE ELSE! But why are we so susceptible to that marketing tactic? Unique doesn't necessarily mean better -- there are plenty of things that are unique in their awfulness.

One thing people who start martial arts often are looking for I think is some kind of power, almost of a magical sort. And one thing some people are looking for when the start the Alexander technique, is a magical cure for their problems, or a special ability to perform better at what you are doing. It's nice to think that you are learning something that makes you extra special. After you train for a while you start to realize that although you might be learning very valuable skills, they aren't magical, and you are still you, and people aren't all that impressed. Except maybe your mom.

On the other hand -- aikido isn't called karate. Alexander technique isn't called Feldenkrais. There clearly are some differences between the arts. It's just that the difference isn't just one thing, some super secret sauce -- the difference is a combination of many qualities that combine in unique ways to form the different arts.

Just like there are plenty of women with long light brown hair and glasses, and plenty of women who also love to drink tea, and are called Pauliina, and are good at languages, and can't drink milk. But at some point the combination of qualities ends up with a list of just one: me.

There isn't the one single thing in aikido that makes it unique and special. The real question we're asking is : why should I choose this art and not another? And after training for a while: did I make the right choice?

The one thing that is absolutely necessary if you want to teach someone something is this: they have to want to learn it. So the art you should choose is the one that appeals to you the most, the one that has the collection of skills you want to learn. That's the one you will be willing to put your time and effort into. What is unique about aikido for me is that I want to learn it. Something about it all, the techniques, the philosophy, the clothes, the etiquette, of maybe just the people at this particular dojo is appealing to me.

Is aikido unique? In the end, that might not be the right question to ask.
"The Mirror" is written by a roster of women who describe themselves as a disparate bunch of scientists, healers, artists, teachers, and, yes, writers. Over ten years into this collaboration we find we are a bunch of middle-aged yudansha from various parts of the world and styles of aikido. What we share is a lively curiosity about and love for both life and budo, and an inveterate tendency to write about our explorations.
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Old 08-07-2015, 01:15 PM   #2
R.A. Robertson
Dojo: Still Point Aikido Center
Location: Austin, TX, USA
Join Date: Jul 2002
Posts: 347
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Re: Is Aikido Unique?

You are the unique thing in aikido. No one can get the aikido that you know from anyone else but you.
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Old 09-05-2024, 04:15 AM   #3
P.P.J. Overvoorde
Dojo: Kokoro, Nijmegen
Location: Utrecht
Join Date: Oct 2021
Posts: 4
Netherlands
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Re: Is Aikido Unique?

Thank you Ross,and sure you are right - As Ueshiba explained as well. Because Aikido as true Budo is an individual path for yourself to find out and follow, by recognizing the natural movements and energies in your body, not going against them, and realizing and shaping your relationship as an individual in the bigger picture - also outside the dojo.
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Old 09-05-2024, 02:35 PM   #4
R.A. Robertson
Dojo: Still Point Aikido Center
Location: Austin, TX, USA
Join Date: Jul 2002
Posts: 347
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Re: Is Aikido Unique?

Agreed.

The study of Anthropology is largely the simple question of what it means to be human. All attempts at finding something unique about us have mostly fallen away. What we're left with is not anything singular and privileged, but rather a particular complex of otherwise common things. Like Paulina says, "the difference is a combination of many qualities that combine in unique ways to form the different arts."

All things are a confluence. A nexus. Intersections of other intersecting things. Not just the things though, in any random mixture and quantity... we are combinations that result from recipes that require right balance and proportion unfolding in right orders, where different things have different emphasis.

Aikido is one such study of the nature of confluences. Aikido itself is a confluence, not unique, nor made of unique constituent parts. When certain elements are emphasized, and others are attenuated or filtered according to what fits a given context, then distinctions emerge.

The question then might be reframed as "What makes something distinctive," rather than "unique." We can make ourselves and our aikido distinctive according to balance, proportion, emphasis, ordered action and stillness, and certain adaptive qualities of fluidity of form.

Grateful for the bump to the thread.

Ross
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Old 10-12-2024, 04:54 AM   #5
P.P.J. Overvoorde
Dojo: Kokoro, Nijmegen
Location: Utrecht
Join Date: Oct 2021
Posts: 4
Netherlands
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Re: Is Aikido Unique?

Thanks for your response, Alex. I can only agree with your strong recommendation to Aikidokas to read the fantastic book ‘Hidden in Plain Sight' by Ellis Amdur -- it is a pity that this has become so little known and has received so little attention among Aikido practitioners. It may be a slow starter on the market, but the value of such a study is of course not quickly lost. So there is every reason to be grateful to Ellis Amdur for publishing the results of his years of research, and to refer to it where possible.

In my response I did not indicate what is unique to my aikido. In response to the discussion I showed what, based on the statements of Ueshiba Morihei himself, he would give as an answer to such a question - I presume. Indeed, any serious practitioner of Aikido can honestly come up with a different personal answer to such a question -- Ueshiba Morihei would not reject that either, because he accepted differing opinions about the path one follows -- i.e. in one's own individual inner world in which reasons, motives and meaning as carriers bring about what is shown in the outside world, on the tatami -can also be different. What he also experienced with some of his direct students, and he respected even though he regretted it. But sooner or later he also expected that they would see the importance of his reflections in their development. Which much later became apparent with Nobuyoshi Tamura sensei. There is not always the mental peace and space, to place and investigate what one does on the tatami in a much broader context. By selecting the techniques that Ueshiba Morihei made for the practice of Aikido, O'Sensei did expect to make possible that internal experience and the working through of the forces from a broader context -- to whom it may concern.

Last edited by P.P.J. Overvoorde : 10-12-2024 at 05:09 AM.
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