Hi everyone.
I've been doing martial arts for about 15 years experimenting with different disciplines in my early years. I did do ju jitsu for about 4 years and have been doing aikikai aikido for about 8 years. There were times when I thought whether all the training was worth it and whether aikido could be used in a practical situation.
Well, just thought that all you dedicated aikido practitioners and students alike would like to know that aikido does work and very effectively too.
I had an incident just last week. I had a rather busy day having been up for close to 16 hours. I was pretty tired and just before I decided to go to bed I took the garbage out to the bins. Well its midnight and its dark and the bins are located behind a large gate just near the car port. About two meters (about 7 feet) from the bins I vaguely see a dark figure jump out at me to punch my lights out. What is colloqiually called a "King Hit".
Well I just toss my head back, the punch grazes my eye and some how I move (tenkan I think), grab something and he gets thrown to the ground and I land near or on top of him. I'm not really sure since it was dark and it happended so very quickly, though at the time everything seemed to happen in slow motion. Anyway there's a bit of a struggle and he says "please let me go" and for some reason I do.
Anyway he runs off, hopefully to go change his underwear
and all I get is a couple of scrapes and a small bruise. According to the police (my wife insisted that I call them) I was pretty lucky and they think that I might have disturbed him trying to break inot my car. The Police said if he had got that first punch in I could have been in real trouble.
I don't know. Anyway, my wife is happy I wasn't hurt. Maybe from a practical perspective this is what Ueshiba was getting at. That no matter what surprises there are, you are able to blend with the force and redirect it so that the aggression is neutralised and leaves the attacker with no other option than to submit or retreat. The result is no one is really hurt and the attacker is unable to continue with their original intent.
Anyone got any thoughts about this?