Those who fight monsters should be careful not to become monsters themselves...

More likely to kill someone if you're not that good...but to my real point... many Aikido motions, joint locks, grabs, and throws are based completely on the use of the sword. It is an art born of many arts, but arts that used weapons...and believe me, if I choose to pull you in and take you down with Aikido...it's not a task that takes much effort. The take down is brutal, the collision with any hard surface whether you know how to fall or not is painful and destructive, and outside of a practice scenario can be very deadly with no weapon but me.

This is true of any martial art (thus the name).

I've heard it this way, and I like it...I tell my students this when they get that look of 'this is too gentle...'.

Ai-ki-do (ai -love, ki - internal energy, do - the way or method)...so basically I'm going to lovingly hurt you with the method of internal energy.

 

Lolthread is lol.

 

Hey don't knock it!

In this thread I'm one of those sword guys with awesome skills, who is fighting his personal demons and containing his killer rage!

I could get my own TV series out of that.

 

Pretty sure the ai in aikido refers to focus or meeting rather than love.

 

We do not use the term ai when speaking of techniques. We use the term awase. Which means to blend with an attacker to break his timing to deny him the distance he wishes and to pre'empt his attack or deflect it.

Ki is known as fighting spirit not some mystical internal element.

 

Sometimes, because I don't train in a controlling art like aikaido, I lose control of the beast inside me and I destroy Neo-Tokyo in a blast of psychic rage and then proceed to set myself up as a child God-Emperor. the gang's don't like it but hey, what they gonna do about it?

 

Send an infant child to kick your ass?

The Bear.

 

AAKIIIIRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!

 

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlmycQNOgq8"]YouTube- the rise and fall of Tetsuo[/ame]

 

That was a sad day. It would never have happened if I'd mastered my inner beast with Aikaido.

 

My life is a constant struggle against my own ever emergent 'dark powers'. If only I was just a little less damn powerful. :hammer:

 

If you mean, don't use unnecessary force, ie, don't continue to smash a guy's skull in after he's knocked out or otherwise incapacitated...yup...that's kinda common sense.

 

I don't know much about aikido but if it comes complete with a philosophy that stresses passivity and non-violence, surely that does make it fairly unique amongst the martial arts? I don't know of so many arts that come with a built in school of pacifist ideology.

I know some people will think it's a good thing that most MAs are just about fighting, but from the viewpoint of offering a choice for people who are after a martial discipline that encompasses a political, philosophical, spiritual (whatevah) element, perhaps aikido is pretty unique.

 

Isn't "refrain from violent behavior" the fifth tenet of Shotokan's dojo kun? The two dojos I trained at didn't recite the dojo kun at every practice, but I know many do, including one I trained at for one summer.

 

Refraining from violence isn't the same as popping a fool in the face when he spills your beer though. It just means don't go getting yourself in to unnecessary fights.

And before you say it, spilling beer is a fightable offence






Hear me roar.

 

Could be. I know sensei Funakoshi would have liked to see karate become a more all-encompassing school of philosophy and lifestyle as well as a martial art. I don't think that form of shotokan has survived especially well into the modern day (unless the shoto-kai have adopted more of the philosophical side of things). I've never trained at a shotokan club that taught anything but the martial side of the discipline - I've never had a philosophy lesson. I'm not saying would be a bad thing, but it hasn't been my experience and I don't know if I'd enjoy karate quite as much if some of the hitting things time was replaced with lifestyle education time.

 

I think this is another example of how the culture of Shotokan is different in the US and UK (along with all my previous rants about how you people routinely hit each other and we don't). You've never heard a Shotokan instructor attach philosophical significance to the fact that "every kata begins with a block" and "every kata ends with a retreat"? I've repeatedly heard both of those things used to argue that Shotokan is purely a "defensive" art, not one that could/should be used for "aggression." I think it's all a little silly, but I also think having adults recite the dojo kun at the end of every practice is silly.

 

two words: Tai. Chi.


Those are some bad dudes.

 

Isn't tai chi (discounting the few schools that teach martial tai chi) more a mixture of gentle exercise, posture correction and a bit of pseudo-science, rather than a philosophy?

 

At the schools that DO teach it as a martial art, it's infused with Daoist philosophy, which focuses a lot on the same "passivity" that you highlight in Aikido philosophy. It primarily comes in as a tactical thing--going with your opponent's force instead of meeting it head on--but it overflows into everything else as well.

At the taiji-for-health schools, you might get traditional Daoist philosophy or you might get metaphysical claptrap, depending on the instructor.