Our Aïkido dojo, at the Student’s Sports Association of Liege University (RCAE), was founded a little bit more than thirty years ago and the late Jean-Pierre Dewandre was the Sensei until his passing away in 2005. The techniques taught by him have been largely influenced by Nobuyoshi Tamura Shihan, one of the prefered uchi deshi of O Sensei. Early in the study of Aïkido Jean-Pierre, often, confronted the students with more realistic situations to avoid falling into the trap of static techniques. Of course, working statically may be interesting to go back to basics, to go back to the principle of Aïkido but we need to get out from it because anyone would attack you in a static way. Since the passing away of Jean-Pierre, all instructors of the Musubi Aiki Dojo continue to work this way.
We are an open minded club and all currents of Aïkido are welcome to work with us in order to improve the techniques of each. We also work with practitioners of other martial arts like Jujitsu, Karate or Iaïdo because we believe that no martial art is better than another. All roads lead to the top of the mountain or if a cup was only one sided we could not fill it with tea (both are japanese sayings). We just have one or two things in horror however ... It’s federation’s politics and people saying : “What I’m doing is the best, etc ...”.