choreography

Recently there was an online discussion 1 about how “real” an aikido demonstration might have been 2, and/or how much might have been choreographed.  That discussion was so fundamentally interesting that I wanted to archive the main posts here…

watershed

After simultaneously training in two different affiliations for the past two and a half years, I finally made the leap. Now I’ve gone from a guest in Birankai to becoming a visitor at the Iwama dojo that’s been my home for a decade. It was extremely difficult, and the discussion with Sensei was spiked with… Continue reading

friendship

There are different flavors of aikido, usually representative of O-Sensei’s teaching at the time the branch fiirst sprouted from the tree. The early forms, such as Yoshinkai and Shodokan, and some of the later forms like Ki Aikido, have their own separate organizations. Yet even the main branch, the Aikikai Foundation (Aikido World Headquarters), has… Continue reading