Cultivating one’s skills through the experienced other in aikido

This exploration of practicing aikido firstly describes the enabling and constraining structures that constitute the ecological environment of aikido, especially how these structures are closely linked and part of a network of apprenticeship learning closely connected to a Japanese heritage of martial art practices. On this basis it focuses more explicitly on the interactional dynamics between the two practicing. The analysis thereby aims at reaching an integrated understanding of the kind of meaning-making expressed in the doxa of aikido enables and constrains the specialised kind of participatory sense-making unfolding in physical interaction of the two practicing together. Practicing with a highly experienced other, the analysis continues to describe how the aikido practitioner’s sense of movement can extend to include the other and how this extended sense of movement can be exercised strategically. How the experienced other both seems to be able to harmonise with the coordinated interaction – yet also ahead.