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My persOnal insights on aikido, karate, macrobiotics and daily life applicaTions
I remember the first time I ever read about aikido. It was in a book about a variety of martial arts, with a chapter dedicated to each. It said something along the lines of "don't let anyone tell you aikido is useful for self defence". It's unfortunate that there's a widely held belief among martial artists that aikido is not effective for self defence. In this blog post, I would like to address the reasons why this common idea exists, and also present a convincing case as to why it is not necessarily true.
First, let me knock out this myth of ineffectiveness with one swift strike. We need only to look at the example of Morihei Ueshiba, the founder of aikido. He remained undefeated in the many, many challenges that came his way. Experienced and highly successful martial artists (including, for example, boxing and wrestling champions) could not lay a hand on him without suddenly landing on the floor wondering what just happened. Morihei Ueshiba had "aikido" in the true sense of the word. Its meaning in self defence is to fully harmonise and coordinate with your opponent's attack. If you do this, there is no way you will be defeated. So aikido, then, could be said to be the MOST effective form of self defence, as you are developing a higher level then you would otherwise if you had trained to defeat your opponent through superior strength or even skill. Rather, you have fully joined with your opponent, so there is no longer any fight, so you cannot be defeated! Still following? If not, don't worry, just come and try an aikido class and you'll understand :) So why the common idea that aikido is ineffective? It's important to understand that when we are training in aikido, we are not always necessarily "doing aikido". Rather, we are working towards the goal of achieving aikido, that perfect harmony. However, many students and schools fall into various pitfalls that prevent them from achieving that. One pitfall that is commonly criticised by other martial artists is that sometimes when practising aikido techniques, your partner is too cooperative and just lets you do it. In Shin Sen, we avoid this pitfall by providing "centred resistance" and not going with something that doesn't take your centre. Again, if you don't understand, join us in training and you'll see! Another pitfall is getting too caught up in the mechanics of technique, rather than harmonising with your partner, finding their balance etc. After the founder passed away, different schools of aikido have diverged in different ways. They all have their positives and negatives, but they usually emphasise some aspects of aikido while missing other important points. This moved them further away from the overall "aikido" that the founder had. My sensei trained in a range of aikido schools, and, seeking the original aikido of the founder, combined the positive aspects of the diverse schools, while working to avoid the pitfalls common to each. That's why Shin Sen Dojo provides an extremely high quality of aikido training. Shin Sen students who have unfortunately found themselves in self defence situations have invariable found their training came out effectively, even if they didn't trust it would really work before. At high school, I was attacked and got into fights many times. This continued even after I was experienced in karate. But that all stopped completely once I started aikido. It was like something changed in my energy and the way of presented myself and interacted, nobody felt the need to start a fight with my anymore. Finally, aikido provides self defence in a more absolute sense that you can't achieve by simply learning a set of techniques to deal with particular physical attacks. Aikido trains your survival instinct. You learn to sense danger and avoid it. You learn to flow with danger and remain unharmed. You learn to deal with verbal attacks and all the challenges that life throws at you. I have applied aikido to verbal attacks, dangerous situations on the road, even walking around and avoiding collisions with people or objects (happens a lot less to me now, and hurts a lot less when it does happen, due to the skills in absorbing force painlessly). To summarise, aikido in its truest sense is the highest form of self defence.
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