As a member of any particular community I feel it serves best to be more critical of one's own group than anyone else's. For example I feel it is far more important, constructive and patriotic to point out problems with my own country, than to mindlessly wave a flag and tow the line.
Over the past few years my practice of aikido has grown tremendously by critically questioning the practices we adopt as aiki artists. I have found over time many of the practices have a limited use, but eventually need to be discarded after the lesson to be learned in digested and generalized.
So here I will start a critical series about the art I love and what I think the problems are of the aikido approach to training as it is generally practiced. I am hoping my readers will participate in this series by weighing in with their opinion.
What problems do you see in the practice?
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The paired practice of techniques comes under a lot of criticism;that aikido practice is unrealistic.
ReplyDeleteThe paired practice is a training method. Both shite and uke are developing their own skills, as well as providing the "sounding board" for each other.
I think a problem in aikido practice is not really having an understanding of what you're doing and why.