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?
Looking for Zorro
22 hours ago
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.