Some years ago I was involved in a Buddhist group that was later widely identified as cult ar at least inclined towards cult behavior. During that time, a friend from the group reccomended a martial art to me-Aikido, which I attended for some time. I have since left both these groups but, looking back, I have some thoughts about this art. Greater vigilance is now present in Martial arts towards cults which is a very good thing. Sadly, it is much harder to identify a martial arts cult as a vague Eastern mysticism is almost part and parcel of some people's practice.
Aikido, as I see, it is a strange package. As a purely physical dicipline it is often rightfully seen as somewhat soft and philosophical and, at most, is seen as a kind of adjunct to a more practical style. Of course, many great (sometimes worrying) claimes are made by the practitioners themselves. What I noticed was that almost all of the practitioners had a strong interest in new age material (spiritual pornography as I call it) or were involved in some of the more cultish personal development groups on the market.
The above may be neither here nor there, but what is stranger, is that the group/s (and I saw many of them) tended to display many of the hallmarks of a cult and I am not applying the term 'cult' in a broad, loose manner. This may not surprise some involved in martial arts, as it has its roots in various new religious movements popular in Japan about 50 or 60 years ago.
Overall, looking back, I would say there are some groups that 'go under the radar' so to speak and become almost large, respectable and reputuble enough (on the surface at least) in the public consciousness to not get identified as cults. Physical disciplines are especially prone to this as the member may appear to gain some health benefits. I am saying nothing new, as many are now wary of martial arts cults. I was just wondering if anyone had anything to share.

There did appear to be some trappings of eastern religion when I did Aikido. They did not try to keep me from leaving when I stopped going to the dojo, so it is not cult like in this regard; they were pretty loose with membership regulations.

In Japan particularly, a lot of martial arts develop religious aspects. Historically this has been more true of things associated with taoism and shinto than Buddhism. Generally Buddhism has taken a fairly straightforward attitide to martial arts, i.e., it's about winning a fight, for enlightenment, meditate. If you read the biography of Uyeshiba, the ounder of Aikido, he claims some types of spiritual revelation. Not all of his followers took that completely seriously.

A lot of Buddhists do Aikido, all the same, and in fact a number of Aikido groups have Buddhists lamas and masters as patrons. But there is no way that it is a cult. You come and go as you like. there's no set teachings on reality or metaphysics. There's just stuff about energy and how to use it which is mystical but quite useful.

Most police forces in the world incorporate quite a lot of Aikido techniques in their training. Some of the techniques are really good, but a lot of them aren't easy to master. I think Uyeshiba was quite a genius.

A martial art with more Buddhist influences is Nippon Shorijii Kenpo.

Aikido is a cult. It’s selling “universal peace, harmony, love, and personal development” when it’s really about forced conformity, compliance and coercive control to promote fascism.
Men can take 40 years to learn “the art” whilst women need to learn it in a few months whilst being subjected to horrible abuse and violation. The men are sexually assaulting women to force them to submit. It’s really shocking…..
How do I know? I trained there for several years before I realized the men are energy vampires who aren’t teaching anything but rather exploiting the women. The chief instructor was female who is so trauma bonded to the higher rank males that they allow the men to do horrific things to the women. Some lineages of zen are the same.

These aikido groups and other martial arts are feudal cults that only care about the top of the hierarchy. They only care to see you “liberated” to use your energy and then discard you if you don’t prostitute yourself for the men.

A woman created a me too group which is just there to further cover up/gatekeep those who are violated while protecting the higher ranked men who are mostly are in relationships and also sexually exploiting the new women. These feudal cults only have one end goal to continue their lineages and infiltrate the most of society with a fascist goal of total control. The types of groups function on psychopathy while their members are energetically bonded to carry out their “masters” wishes which are all ego driven. The martial art is the equivalent to a sex cult. In one dojo the number o past or current couples should have been a red flag thigh they hide the extent of the enmeshment and complete dysfunction that’s ruining their shadow driven cult. The amount of stories of people being harmed by this one split off should be enough to shut them down. The biggest concern is that their aren’t a self sustaining cult. They use society at large to feed their appetites having a much more disastrous impact to everyone.