Core Ideas

Aiki Principles

We use the phrase. What does it mean?

Practiced self-discipline is required to participate in making peace.

In the physical and intangible bodymind it matters deeply what and how practice happens. How you practice frames all applications of what you know, and what you believe frames how you practice. So "blending" with an "attack" applies when someone attacks your body with their fist and also when they attack your mind with violent words or inexplicably attractive but oppressive ideology.

What are aiki principles?

Peace can be practiced like a martial art

Most people think of peace as a state of Nothing Bad Happening, or Nothing Much Happening. Yet if peace is to overtake us and make us the gift of serenity and well-being, it will have to be the state of Something Good is Happening." - E.B. White

Exposure to several martial arts has made clear to me that the single shared thread in all is an acceptance of the endless presence of conflict and the need for practiced responses. Aikido departs from the bulk of martial practice with the realization from the ealiest level that truly effective responses in conflict lead not only to degrees of individual freedom from fear but also removal of the needs behind violence and the habits that perpetuate these at the systemic level. Participating in conflict by bringing skills that make this end more likely is then the art of peace. Peace can be learned, practiced, and taught.

Training in the Dojo suggests Arts of Peace In the World

AE is founded on the extension of peace practices from the martial mat into the everyday world. Three things in particular are so important that AE fails to function without agreement on:

1. the interdependence of individual and group training (across organizational lines of affiliation) and peace processes. Practice, Theory, and "Extensions" require Others with whom to grow in understanding.
   
2. the obvious relationship of aikido to other peace practices and liberal education itself.
   
3. the common ground of assuming there will be conflict and insisting on the option to move through differences to a place of mutuality, respect, and even support.
   

Please click here to add more to Arts of Peace Into the World.

Aiki Extensions Raison D’être

You should contribute (time, ideas, money, etc.) to AE if:

1. You've ever thought or said "if only the principles we say we practice on the mat could be applied here..."
   
2. You desire to learn, practice, or teach anything that shares similarities with aiki principles.
3. You want there to be more tools more widely available, both in the process of mind and body education and beyond the learning environment, for the making of peaceful communities.
   

Please click here to develop the Reasons AE Exists