Commercial Aikido

Is Aikido a business or “The Art of Peace”?

When I was starting my trainings I have read a lot of information about this martial art. All articles were very kind, filled with emotions, like “Aikido is so great, wonderful and splendid”. It was very elevated, and seems to me it could be fittingly to be the point of my life.

Then I decide to practice it, and to know more about it, because I was interested very much! From training to training I became all interested in continue. I was thinking about Aikido every day – how can I reflect Aikido techniques in regular life? I believe it’s possible, and “meaning of Ikkyu” isn’t to do this first control technique on the street against 10 people, but communicate with them using it.

But then I faced that you can make a lot of money, if you have a shodan. You can teach students, or you can teach a lot of students. You can make 1 “gas shuku” a year, with the students, who are real interested to visit it; or you can make 10 “gas shuku” a year, and oblige you students to visit it.

Also I’m not agreeing with the belt system. In the beginning there were only white and black belts. A lot of people thing that the system with a lot of belts was invented to make more money from students.

It is sad. Because if you have no enough money – you can’t practice Aikido.

Of course, I’m sure that Aikido is not a business, and it can’t be one. And I do believe that someday it becomes to be “The Art of Peace”.

Techniques against the boken

Last trainig was very interesting (even more than others :-) ), it was the day we do boken. But not everyone in our dojo has bokens… 14 people with weapon and 11 without. And our Sensei decided to show us techniques “unarmed against man with boken”.

I used to see techniques like “unarmed against man with tanto or joe”, of course it was very interesting to, and more applicable on the street… but I love the boken, I don’t know why. Maybe it’s more romantic, and I feel myself like a real Samurai :-). Besides this I believe there is some thing more deep, what I can’t understand and explain now. And I hope I will some day…

So we were doing Ikkyu, Shikhonage, Kotegaeshi and one more sort of Nage(I forgot the name).

I love shikhonage! It was the most beautiful technique. I’ll try to describe it.

Well nage has boken(in scabbard), uke hasn’t. Nage is trying to put out boken and knock uke to the belly. But uke stops him, grabbing his right hand. Then nage makes step back, halve of kaiten(in this position he can put out the boken), and knocks the uke to his side. Than nage grabs uke hand and doing iriminage, putting the boken to the neck of uke. Than uke is falling down.

(If someone knows this technique and can explain it better than me – I’m waiting for a comments :-) )

It’s a little bit cruel technique, but it’s really beautiful.

By the way – this techniques (unarmed against man with boken) helps me to see Ikkyu, Shikhonage, Kotegaeshi from some other angle. And I hope it will help me to understand it faster and more correctly.

P.S. Could someone give a link to the articles about Ki Aikido trainings?