Aikido Description (In Process)

What Is Aikido? Aikido was founded in Japan by Morihei Ueshiba (1883-1969). In the Aikido world he is known posthumously as "O'Sensei" which means "Great teacher".  He practiced many different martial arts and forms of spiritual training.  From this experience, he developed what is now called "Aikido. The history of Aikido as a martial art is not really very old, but it has ancient roots.  It was not until after WWII that Aikido began to gain popularity world-wide.

Aikido is based on centering and learning to stay centered during cooperative practice of paired conflict scenarios.  In Introductory Aikido classes we practice balancing (centering) our own and our opponent's mind and body first while standing, then while walking and lastly while carefully pushing and falling.   In the General classes we practice staying balanced and using this state of mind&body harmony to learn and responsibly use about13 basic techniques in about 16 different conflict situations.  This can lead to a 1st degree black belt after about 4 to 5 years of focused training 3 times per week.  The ultimate self defense goal is to protect ourselves and our attackers equally rather than just looking out for "number 1".

People ask if Aikido is like Judo, Taekwondo or Karate. Like Judo and Jujitsu Aikido could be categorized as a grappling and throwing martial art. We do not use kicks or punches in general. However, we do use punches and strikes to distract. These distacting blows are not intended to maim or kill an opponent. The main difference between these arts and Aikido is point of view and competition. Aikido does not see attackers as people to " maim, kill or otherwise thoroughly defeat" and therefore does not contain any competitions or tournaments. This has a great effect on students' point of view toward others be they at work, in one's family or "on the street".

Instead of sparring and "trying to win", Aikido practice partners take turns throwing and being thrown by each other. Students learn much about stopping conflict this way---how we all unawarely "make conflicts worse" by trying to defeat other people in a conflict. As training partners we learn to use these training situations to discover our own conflict continuing behaviors and thought patterns, "...the discord within ourselves...".

Aikido came from the Samurai tradition of "protecting the community". Aikido is a self defense in the sense that we try to bring harmony into every place we go---not just once a conflict has begun. The Founder of Aikido transformed deadly techniques into harmony producing techniques. In most situations the physical use of a technique is not necessary to resolve a conflict---if we are putting the "person to person" results of our training to work-- daily.

Is Aikido Good Self Defense? If one has to use the physical techniques to resolve a conflict and one has practiced seriously for at least one year then less damage to attacker and defender is likely than with the usual attitude of trying to "win" over an "enemy" who may attack at any time.
O'Sensei said that " true victory is victory over the discord within oneself ". As we learn to have control over ourselves, we can learn to resolve conflicts, verbal or physical with little or no harm to the attackers. Aikido is excellent self defense. But, if you need to be able to fight someone off soon (within the next month) we can advise you as to effective courses in self defense.

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Explorers since October 29, 2000

This page was last updated on 10/13/03 08:20:34 AM