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Reflections on Aiki Expo 2002Aiki Expo was an excellent experience for me! Mr. Pranin did a fantastic job bringing together a rich diversity of instructors and students to share their love of Aikido. I would like to extend my deepest thanks to Mr Pranin and his wife as well as all the people who made Aiki Expo happen. Now that I have been back to Philadelphia for a few weeks, I had a chance to reflect on the Expo. I wanted to share a few thoughts about this event with you. The success of an endeavor like Aiki Expo derives from many factors. I believe one the greatest of these is the spirit of the students who trained. With this in mind, I want to thank all of the students who attended my workshops and took the time to train with me. Together we shared a great training experience and learned a lot from each other. I hope that I was able to impart to each of you some understanding of Doshinkan Aikido, its basic movements, its techniques, and how important it is to feel and understand your center access line. While watching all of you train, I was reminded sometimes that we often notice small differences in our techniques. But these are very small. In the grander picture, we all share the same spirit and love of Aikido. Like a great tree, the roots of Aikido all came from the same source. As Ueshiba Sensei evolved his Aikido from the Aiki-Jujistsu, taught to him by his teacher, Sokaku Takeda, he instructed many great disciples. My teacher, Goza Shioda, was one of these disciples. Each of these students met Ueshiba Sensei at a different period of his life. During their growth as students, they developed their Aikido techniques as Ueshiba Sensei’s teachings combined with their unique qualities as individuals. From this, each student may have developed a different approach to his Aikido training. Regardless of this diversity of styles, I believe all of them captured and maintained the same strong spirit of Aikido that Ueshiba Sensei imparted to them. I believe the time has come for us all to look beyond the small differences in our techniques. We need to get back to the idea of one spirit of sharing and learning through hard training. The roots of Aikido are all the same. The strong spirit of training is all the same. Events like Aiki Expo make this type of sharing happen! They reinforce the idea that I have always conveyed to my students- Aikido is for all! I hope in the future to be able to continue to participate in these types of cooperative events and partner in teaching with our instructors across various styles of Aikido. This is my vision--Aikido for all through cooperative training in our shared Aiki spirit. Each of us has something to offer. Each of us has something to learn from one another. For now, I believe it is important that we all go back to our dojos, reflect and digest the many things that we have learned. We need to continue to train hard and to develop our own Aikido. I leave all of you with my wish that each of your dojos continues to grow and prosper. If any of you have any questions about anything that I taught or would like to contact me, please email me at "yutada (at) doshinkan-aikido (dot) org" . I also extend an open invitation to any of you who are in the Philadelphia area to visit our headquarters’ dojo, (information is available on our website at http://www.doshinkan-aikido.org so that we can continue to share our Aikido training.
--Yukio Utada-- |