Ian Dodkins wrote:
I know how to solve this - David, I hereby challenge your toddler to a fight!
I think you'll then agree that those 'natural aiki movements' as you call them do not have real application since aikido is more than just the movement (as Sensei Ledyard said).
If you can produce the same type of video footage when a todler is being attacked even by something its own size (e.g. a small dog) I would start to believe aikido (in its completeness) is natural within us.
If what you say is relevant, then your aikido would have to be effective against someone 18 feet tall and weighing about 1600 pounds (considering that I am about three times my child's height and about 9 times his weight, guessing you are about 6 feet and 180 lbs. [90 kg, apx]).
Do you suppose your aikido would be effective against someone that size, who had thirty years of aikido experience with beings of his own size?
Does that mean that your aikido is not aikido?
What we're talking about here is the "ROOT" of aikido. That it is an innate part of the human nervous system, that aiki is natural to human beings and that it must be cultivated--not that babies are already full-blown masters of aiki-jujutsu. We are all born with the roots of it and we can develop it from those roots with guidance or we can attempt to "program" it into ourselves, based on something other than our natural nervous responses.
Lacking someone 18 feet tall and 1600 pounds, do you suppose your aikido would work against, say, Jon Bluming?