Training in Aiki and training in Aikido are two different things.
Training in Aiki requires the application of the ten-chi principle:
This requirement does not exist in Aikido training.
Aikido training is a method. In the word Aikido, we have become accustomed to translating do as way, but this is not the correct term; do should be translated as method. Indeed, it was with the word method that the Aikido works of Minoru Mochizuki and Tadashi Abe were translated in the 1950s: ‘My method of Aiki-jujutsu’, and ‘Aiki-do, a method created by Master Morihei Ueshiba’.
In Aiki, we practise on the Floating Bridge of Heaven, or - if one prefers a more Western-sounding name - on the Axis of the World. In Aikido, we do not have this concern; Aikido is the learning of a gestural language, it is a physical exercise, and this is why it has been possible to treat this art as one would a simple sport. It is impossible, however, to turn Aiki into a sport.
It is essential to understand what distinguishes Aiki from Aikido, and that this difference cannot be reduced to a question of how well or poorly the movements of Aikido are performed.
Faith in purely technical skills is a modern belief; it is an illusion created by the sporting spirit, for technical skills are a matter of method, and method stops at the threshold of Aiki.
As for the time spent on the tatami, it is no guarantee of success; one can practise Aikido for fifty years and still miss the mark when it comes to Aiki.
There must come a time when the window of the spiritual soul opens. Then the physical soul and the spiritual soul can work together to create the marvellous techniques of Aiki.
If it does not lead to Aiki, Aikido is like what Serge Gainsbourg sang in 1969 about physical love: it is a dead end.
