{"id":145,"date":"2009-10-01T15:52:10","date_gmt":"2009-10-01T19:52:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aikidocenterofjacksonville.com\/blog\/?p=145"},"modified":"2012-01-16T23:19:00","modified_gmt":"2012-01-17T04:19:00","slug":"what-unites-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aikidocenterofjacksonville.com\/blog\/2009\/10\/what-unites-us\/","title":{"rendered":"What Unites Us"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nOver the years, I’ve noticed a tendency\u00a0among Aikidoka to focus on differences, or the things that divide us.\u00a0 Whether those things are technique, pedagogy, or organizations, invariably the conclusion is: “Well, I’m sure that works for them<\/em>, but it’s certainly not the way we<\/em> would do it.” The implication, of course, is that the other way, the new<\/em> way, (which in most cases isn’t really new at all, if only our friend had been paying attention in class), isn’t actually Aikido, or at least the Aikido our friend thinks<\/em> he’s practicing.<\/p>\n

That’s why I love training at other schools, with other instructors. Rather than focus on those “things”, I try (sometimes successfully, sometimes not) to focus on our commonality, or those principles which make our techniques work<\/em>. It’s not the slight distinctions with ikkyo that matter, it’s the other things–positioning, distance, balance–that make the technique what it is. Sometimes we lose sight of this, to our real detriment.<\/p>\n

And the connections don’t just stop there. All the dojos participating in\u00a0our friendship seminar<\/a> have real connections to each other. They may be obvious, as between our school, Brevard Aikikai<\/a> and the Aiki O-Kami Society<\/a>. Our connection there, of course, is Yamada Sensei.<\/p>\n

Or they may be less obvious, but no less real. You may be surprised to learn that the founder of our school, Curtis Rosiek, was a student of Tom “Doc” Walker Sensei, the much loved founder of Sand Drift Aikido<\/a>. In fact, Walker Sensei tested our earliest students<\/a>. So our connection with Sand Drift is one of shared history.<\/p>\n

And what about our friends at Shugenkai<\/a>? Well, Woodard Sensei is a student of Kevin Jones Sensei, who studies under Maruyama Sensei. For years, Maruyama Sensei was a senior student of Koichi Tohei Sensei. Dee’s instructor, Yamada Sensei, although an uchi-deshi of O’Sensei, also counted Tohei Sensei as one of his instructors.<\/p>\n

The connections are there, if we choose to look.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the years, I’ve noticed a tendency\u00a0among Aikidoka to focus on differences, or the things that divide us.\u00a0 Whether those things are technique, pedagogy, or organizations, invariably the conclusion is: “Well, I’m sure that works […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,6,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dojo","category-jerry","category-seminars"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aikidocenterofjacksonville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aikidocenterofjacksonville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aikidocenterofjacksonville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aikidocenterofjacksonville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aikidocenterofjacksonville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145"}],"version-history":[{"count":49,"href":"https:\/\/www.aikidocenterofjacksonville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4433,"href":"https:\/\/www.aikidocenterofjacksonville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145\/revisions\/4433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aikidocenterofjacksonville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aikidocenterofjacksonville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aikidocenterofjacksonville.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}