Aikidô - principles of a spiritual art of peace

Abstract

A peace-loving person is not necessarily peace-able! Peace-ability depends on how those in conflict with one another are able to transform their conflictual, interactional pattern and, furthermore, their attitudes and emotions, driving their interactional pattern. That implies, that peace-ability requires a) specific interactional skills coping with conflicts, b) the capacity to regulate one´s own internal state, and c) a transformation of oneself resp. of consciousness. Moreover, it would be desirable that the measures of interactional conflict regulation, self-regulation and -transformation complement and support each other. This is the case in Aikidô, as I show in this paper. Aikidô is generally known as a Japanese art of self-defense – possibly as the non-violent art of self-defense at all. I want to demonstrate that the syllables Ai, Ki and Dô represent basic principles of conflict and self-transformation, which are transferable to different conflictual situations of man. Finally, findings of empirical research on Aikidô confirm essentially my remarks about Aikidô.