January 2011
Theoretical – Traditional « Dokodemo Diary
There are many ways of practicing including hard and soft approaches, training where injury never occurs or training with the idea that injuries sometimes occur since aikido is a budo. What is your opinion regarding this matter, Sensei?
September 2010
(Article) An empty head learns nothing « Dokodemo Diary
The idea that, in aikido, a new person needs to learn how to learn is paralleled by the above topic. If it’s really been shown based on study of artificial intelligence and cognitive science, then it’s almost silly to regard it as a novel insight tied to aikido. Yet, a trap that many seniors and teachers fall into is to try to teach people everything, indeed, spending very little time on the most elementary aspects and “moving on” to more advanced topics, considering them to be more practical, applicable, “real”, or possibly just more interesting.
There is, on the other hand, a trend in some circles to strongly emphasize the elementary aspects, and implicitly de-emphasize, possibly creating a subtle taboo around, more advanced topics.
1
(2 marks)