As a scientist, I have often encountered Aikido teachers who considered the epistemological approach as an aberration in the study of an oriental martial art, sometimes even like an insult directed towards their work or their own persona. Today, I would like to discuss the benefits there are in studying a Japanese martial art while keeping in mind what the Enlightened have brought to us.
Warming up
It seems important to me to give some thought to this important part of the practice in order to insure an injury and a frustration-free practice. What first comes to my mind is this: if we were to practice our art in another place than in the dojo, we would have to move fast and with energy without undergoing the process of preparing our body for action.
A whole new can of music
How do you listen to your favorite music? Do you feed a CD to the player, hook earpads to your iPod, or organize playlists on the computer? Are you staying seated while listening or hang around doing other stuff? I’m guessing: first choice is earpad listening on the move, second choice is listening in the car, third is a cheap system with CD player and loudspeakers included. How many are today interested (or even know it exists) to a way of listening to music infinitely more enjoyable than the above mentioned? Just a few, I believe, really few. We’re in such a hurry today that we just can’t afford a relaxed listening session of good quality, one that would be focused on music only, with proper tools, the only ones that could guarantee for a sensational experience, similar to the “live” event: a source, and amplifier and a pair (meaning 2) properly placed loudspeakers.
The absentee
When you are teaching an Aikido class, you feel responsible for- but also grow very fond of the people who choose to train with us. Aikido has the ability to make people relationships very special. The result is an intimate link among trainees, very different from those that develop among teammates or “gym-mates”, or work colleagues. I’m not talking about everybody becoming friends, but certainly we are companions along a very special path, an intimate one, I’d say, one where we develop our human potential; in this, the teacher is only a person who is just a bit ahead on the same path.For the person in charge things are a bit different, though. He or she grows a particular feeling towards the ones who chose to train with him/her. It is a feeling similar to the ones between parent and child, with due differences. The parental instinct is there for sure, so if some of the trainees quits, a small quantity of suffering is granted.
Seeking the lost child within
Follow your dreams or become an “adult”?
I believe the United States made a very good job in exporting their culture by feeding our dreams. Some call it cultural colonization and they might be right. I grew up reading Marvel comics, so my contamination began with Spiderman (at the time we used the Italian translation of his name, but today the cultural colonization is stronger), although my deepest love was for Daredevil (just Devil in Italy); I was not immune to Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, The Fantastic 4 and the others. Everything was happening in the USA. Furthermore, as a kid I used to play with American Marines toy soldiers and even my favorite Italian comic, Zagor, was staged in the forests of the American northeast in the early 19th century – there was no way out…
Mono, stereo or multichannel
The unstoppable advance of the technologies that “make our life better”… (?)
Since when I was a kid, I have been amazed by the magic of audio reproduction. I began singing when I was about 3 years old, at 10 I was gifted with a tape recorder and I started to experiment. Soon after, at the home of an uncle of mine, I listened to a stereo system for the first time and I was captured by the effect created by the two loudspeakers emitting different sounds.
As a naive kid, I thought that maybe, if each instrument was played by a different loudspeaker, the reproduction of a musical event would have been even more realistic. But it does not work like that. To cut it short, we have two ears, so two loudspeakers recreate at the best the live experience of a musical event.