[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJeIb1CQjqI]

This is a treasure found after being unseen for decades, depicting O’sensei at the end of his life teaching at Hombu Dojo. Basics, sword-work, and even “secret techniques” on film but more importantly, it shows how O’sensei practiced, how he related to students (beginners as uke…), and a bit of what his aikido looked like at the end of his life.

YouTube gives the new generation of Aikidoists unprecedented access to footage of O’sensei as well as most major aikido senseis from the 60’s to the present. What was it like before the internet to learn Aikido? You would travel to Japan to live with a great instructor, pick up what you can and go back home to try to in grain all you learned without anyone around who knew what aikido was. As aikido became more popular you would have an instructor who had done the traveling and you would learn what he or she figured out. (Aikido has been less gender biased then you would think). High level instructors would come to the US and tell you that everything was wrong and you would spend the next two years figuring out how to fix things only to be wrong again on the next visit. How did our senseis survive?

Now we can watch, re-watch, and obsess over moments in time that may help us answer what others had to figure out (if lucky) through trial and mostly by error (DAME!!!)  Aikido can manifest itself in an infinite number of styles, intensities and purposes (peace, blending, self-defense, and unfortunately bone breaking aggression). Footage like this is special because it is a chance to revisit the question: How can a philosophy of peace and mutual preservation take form as a martial art? O’sensei did not talk about how you had to do a technique (at least as recorded) but he repeated that aikido is love…it is medicine…it is the answer to the aggression in ourselves and others. Technical answers do hide themselves in these films but the true value lies in the chance to spend more time with someone who mastered the ability to believe in peace and love even in the face of an enemy.

For more great YouTube links check out the Sarete YouTube channel.