We trained generally in Tohei-sensei’s traditions, although I’d also spent a fair amount of time in various other dojos. And what I’d found was that almost all ways of practicing aikido were all the same if you really understood what was really happening, but that they appeared very different if you didn’t. So anybody who had reached some level of mastery within any variant of aikido would, in some sense, have a similar understanding. But for beginners, what they were seeing was very different, and it was quite clear that some ways of teaching were more likely to produce people who had a real understanding than others.