This is a time of great chances. One of the many is being able to stop and wait for silence to bring its gifts that will take little time to be manifest. Rediscovering a relationship. Reading a book. Understanding a text. The reflection on what we are experiencing. Rewiring our trajectory. Mirroring ourselves with less masks than usual and seeing ourselves as actually we are.
Despite the issues and uncertainties of the moment, I consider myself a lucky guy. Also because the Dojo I am a member of with Sara has never closed actually. On the contrary. The relationships have further developed and sharing, facilitated by the videoconferences that populated the evenings of the week and the weekends’ afternoons, spaced over wide, different, fundamental themes.
This week’s post is, together, fruit and tribute to this path and represents a very personal contribution for personal and group research to those who want to download and read the document attached at the bottom of the page.
Trying to summarize, and without wanting to anticipate its content: those who choose to continue a discipline have a kind of researcher attitude.
In his/her research path, the Martial Arts practitioner must deal with his/her own roots and with the proposals of a multifaceted and pluralistic world. What attitude does the practitioner have or may have, as an individual and as part of a group, when communicating knowledge? Facing with “science”? What kind of dialogue may there be, what temptations, what possible distortions may emerge in this confrontation?
Personally, although I do not define myself as a “man of science”, I cannot deny that my scholastic, academic and professional education was based on a scholastic and social model which anchored much of its, let’s say, certainties and expectations to the vision of the scientific method. As well as its perspectives.
In the same way, I cannot simultaneously deny that a certain absolutist approach that we could define as “technocratic” has led to forms of communication, organizations and relationships that have been and are highly divisive in society.
As a frequent visitor to the world of Martial Arts since the early 90s I have also been able to savor the way in which, in our environments, we relate to “science” and how we communicate it; the education and dissemination channels that are often accredited in our environments and the themes that spread in the circles that orbit around the dojos; the way in which “martial artists” discuss – sitting in front of a beer or on the web – covering these issues and also, alas, the much quarrelsome that derives from it.
I therefore found useful for me to ask myself about this compelling dialogue between… martial artists, especially Aikidokas and Science and try to analyze the various aspects, sometimes not so fluid, of it. I asked myself questions, sometimes even uncomfortable, about the intentions behind my – our – research. I tried to draw the coordinates to orient myself in the answer.
And, a Sunday a few weeks ago, this short document was born. About twenty pages, which flowed rather spontaneously.
I have no claim to originality, nor I’m in a position to teach anyone anything. I simply tried to place the camera from new perspectives, to summarize the study that feeds my path parallel to the practice and to be as sincere as possible, circumscribing and arguing the various steps.
Comments, criticisms, extensions, additions are more than welcome. We have the opportunity to rediscover the time of responsibility: of what we say, of what we believe, of how we communicate. Of our why and our how.
Happy reading, for those who like to.
Andrea
Click on the link below to download the PDF file
Aikido and Science a challenging dialogue
Disclaimer Photo by Ricardo Gomez Angel on Unsplash