A Primer on Aikido, Aiki and IS

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[David Orange]

A summary view based on my experience with Dan, Ark and Rob John and informed by extensive reading of and discussion with Mike Sigman. Speaking for no one but myself and welcoming correction where due.

Power: the ability to be unmoved when an antagonist tries to move you; the ability to move freely though the antagonist tries to impede you; the ability to cause the antagonist to cease and desist, often through loss of his ability to organize himself to gravity.

6-Direction Power: intensive balancing of the self-contradictory directions of the body—front/back, left/right and up/down. Constant measurement of these six influences in all parts of the body is one thing that makes IS development so mentally challenging.

Internal Power: strength derived not from muscle and technique but by balancing the diverse functions of several different internal aspects of self. This generates striking power without “wind-up,” momentum or over-commitment of weight.

External Power: a strength based primarily in muscle and skeleton power applied in technique. Hard external power uses speed, momentum and timing through technique. Soft external power uses circular movement and timing for technique.

WHAT IS AIKI

1. The IS view is that aiki is an inner body skill and not one of outward movement.

2. aiki development involves integration of several physical and mental elements of “self,” including 1) bones; 2) connective tissue; 3) muscles; 4) ki; 5) mind 6) kokoro. Organization of these elements can lead to great power or, if imbalanced, to self-destruction.

Summarizing: aiki is a body skill which unites several layers of “self” from tangible to intangible, to purely imaginary, in a resonant system tuned not to social or intellectual forces but to the constantly changing and moving forces of Heaven and Earth, Fire and Water, resulting in a body that channels incoming force to the ground and remains free to issue force out of the ground connection, effortlessly to any part of the body to jolt the attacker.

Conclusion: “blending-through-movement aiki” is the omote of aiki—the “face” or visible form of aikido. It’s a type of physical effort that does not conflict with the other person’s strength but finds the weak side of the physical attack and leads it. But in O Sensei’s way, the soft and flowing movement is backed by the deep strength of immovability. This is the ura (unseen aspect) of “blending-through-movement” aiki. It is the ability to remain unmoved. There is an old saying, “You can run but you can’t hide.” This means that evading someone can only last so long, especially if he is very experienced. One will do well to evade an experienced attacker once. To evade him twice is unthinkable to a budoka. The question is then, “Can you affect him with aiki when he gets his hands on you? So evading is one face of aiki, but the invisible root of aiki is immovability with freedom to move at will, regardless of opposition. If such a person prefers to apply blending movement for technique, it’s an entirely different matter than “the same movement” performed by someone who knows only the omote of aiki.

When the attacker touches someone who has attained the physical state of aiki, he will feel that he has touched someone much stronger than himself: more solid, powerful and free to move. In attacking such a person, the attacker suddenly, unconsciously and uncontrollably fears having that mass move against him. He knows that he’s over his head in trouble and his body activates desperate unconscious escape responses. Much of aiki technique is just leading his flailing efforts into a fall.

3. What are the body skills of real aiki?

a. to channel incoming force through the body so that the force goes to ground and does not disrupt the posture or position of the aiki person.
b. to keep that incoming force balanced and give it a feeling of firm support even as one moves the point of support.
c. to attack without momentum or over-commitment of balance, producing shocking effects for the attacker
d. to neutralize the attacker’s ability to sense gravity and to understand his own movement
e. the opportunity to apply any kind of technique in that aiki moment

4. There is no purely spiritual aiki. It comes from the organization and practice of efforts with the bones, muscles and connective tissue. Real ki emerges when use of bones, muscle and connective tissue is understood and properly practiced in accordance with 6-direction power. This naturally produces much-improved physical strength and health, but that is not the state of aiki. It is the foundation for aiki in the body and without it, only a superficial kind of aiki is possible—notably, “blending-through-movement” can be done, but it has a narrow range of effectiveness if not based on immovability.

5. It Has to Be Felt (IHTBF). The only reason one should have to discuss this matter of aiki development is budo. One would have to be in the presence of budo people even to hear of it and get their opinions. And the only reason to be there would be to see them do the stuff or else show them that you can do it better. The whole key is to step up. Anyone who won’t step up to those he questions does not have a budo heart. And budo people won’t debate with someone who won’t step up. In most cases, if one has the courage to stop pretending to “debate” these questions and step up and challenge the claims, he feels something unlike he has ever felt in aikido class or in most other martial arts.

6. What has to be felt? Aiki must be felt This goes back to 6-direction power. A tree needs continual stress to grow strong. In particular, it needs the wind pushing against it from various directions, constantly sending signals to the roots, causing them to expand and deepen their connection with the earth. If a tree had no wind on it, it wouldn’t grow strong. So we first have to feel someone who has internal strength or aiki in order to begin to know what we’re looking for. So in IS training, we take on a particular stance and allow our training partners to challenge us in various ways, usually one force at a time, but sometimes several people stressing us from different directions simultaneously. The point, according to Akuzawa is to “tune” the body to constant high affinity to the six-direction self-contradictory forces. Dan’s methods seem similar, involving channeling incoming force so that the earth supports it instead of the muscles supporting it. Both guys can blast much heavier people back with very small efforts, no momentum, no over-commitment of balance, no loss of balance when they enter your stance to strike.

7. How can it be developed?
What we’ve discussed is really difficult for the mind to comprehend since the mind tends to dwell in logic, reason and debate. And IS development requires physical action with mental involvement to monitor and distinguish the actions of the bones, muscle and connective tissue. “Debate” is unworthy to this kind of training. Debate can be nothing better than shadow play compared to the real stuff. There’s no time to waste arguing about it. Those who do this will get the results. Those who try to prove themselves by debate will not be taken seriously. No physical results, no credibility.

What the mind uses to monitor the bones, muscles and connective tissue is called ki. This is another distinction the mind must recognize to make progress. First it had to recognize the difference between muscle and connective tissue. This usually takes a long time because the exercises are not explained. But when the student can distinguish connective strength from muscle strength, he can recognize the difference between mind and ki. It has learned that bone, muscle and tendon each have different natures and different kinds of strength. Now it must distinguish between certain functions of “the mind” itself and the operation of the bone/muscle/tendon complex called “the body”. Some body awareness functions are not carried out by mind, but by ki. These distinctions can be intellectually considered, but to feel the truth, they must be physically understood and the many different natures of mind, ki, muscles, connective tissue and bone must be properly combined in one self. This harmonization alone produces a fantastically different body than that of a person who lives primarily in intellectual debate. Or someone who lives primarily in muscle. How different does a body feel that carries a constant harmonization of the different natures of bone, muscle, connective tissue, ki and mind?

That’s how you get to an integration of bones, muscles, connective tissue, ki and mind. The last level of internal organization is to recognize kokoro (heart) and transfer the center of your organization from the mind to the kokoro, which is the source of ki and therefore the source of the body, therefore the root of the mind. When everything aligns with kokoro and coordinates from kokoro, great indeed will be the freedom of being. True self will be at peace with true self and in harmony with all things.

8. From here, it’s important to wring out the potentials from the training methods.

9. Why did so few “GET” it?
Needing to have this explained is why so few people ever got it. People like Dan dug it out from a lot of hard, physical training, as did O Sensei. Mike Sigman studied and discussed, but he worked hard for a long time to develop his understanding and skills. Minoru Akuzawa was very much the same, a ravenous worker of serious physical presence. Our great fortune is that all these experienced and intellectually capable people are dispensing the intricate details of IS development as eagerly as they can.

10. If someone is involved in aikido and has not “felt it” from some of these people, he owes it to his name as a budoka to go and find out if there is something under heaven that he does not already know.

FWIW

David

[Janet Rosen]

I would add...the ability to connect with, feel and affect another person's center even while they are not able to feel or affect your's.

[David Orange]

I would add...the ability to connect with, feel and affect another person's center even while they are not able to feel or affect your's.

Very true.

I posted the first post with the idea of laying out the whole system as I see it, being unable actually to do most any of the feats of power. I can do Ark's push-out pretty well, but that's about it for me.

Thanks.

[Janet Rosen]

I think most of us starting this journey are feeling how much focused attentive work will be needed. But at least there's a blueprint for those interested and motivated.

[graham christian]

Nicely put. Thank you.

Regards.G.

[Lee Salzman]

Very true.

I posted the first post with the idea of laying out the whole system as I see it, being unable actually to do most any of the feats of power. I can do Ark's push-out pretty well, but that's about it for me.

Thanks.

This is something Dan said in the Ueshiba's Aiki thread that, for its bluntness, made me turn my head, so to speak, and I think sums up the entire thing really nicely:

Hello Graham
I always call it IP/aiki. Internal power or strength is created from a balance of ki in yourself. From there you create aiki between you and someone else.
A quick study of that is Ueshiba's discussion of Heaven/earth/man. Where he notes that after you can manifest the energy between heaven and earth staning on the golden bridge do you release the mountain echo.
This is a well known concept and has to do with a balance of opposites and what it does to your body to remove slack and be full and stand suspended, thus any force-in "echos" back-out. Kuzushi on contact that can then be manipulated.

I am not much for tricks. Once you know how these things work there are many ways to display them. Some prefer to use power displays. I occasionally do that too. But power displays while profound and exceptional (and Ark is very good) are not where I am at. I prefer a softer approach-don't show them your power and dissolve their strength while entering in. Ark can do more than those videos show. We are only discussing what he chose to show in a particular video.

[gregstec]

Nicely put. Thank you.

Regards.G.

Interesting, Graham, if you are on-board with what Dave has placed up here on Aiki and IS/IP, why all the push back to Dan and others on their positions - it really is pretty much the same as what Dave wrote.

Greg

[David Orange]

... at least there's a blueprint for those interested and motivated.

If you see one of those, let me know....:)

I did want to lay out something like that, an overview, but I'm not sure how his relates to what Dan says or even what Ark says.

It did occur to me how different it would make the body to have full integration of all the major body/mind systems, all working properly and each doing the part it does best--no use of muscle when "intrinsic" strength is what's needed. No use of mind to try to understand what ki knows directly...

If all the systems are no working properly to begin with and they're being used improperly, it's like a house without good plumbing and electricity. You can live in it if you make some strange adjustments to your sense of dignity.

But put all the power and plumbing and insulation and curtains and blinds together and use it properly, and you have a very dignified place to live. And in a place like that, your mind can settle to its true dignity, in kokoro.

But my real purpose here is to get those who know to correct my outline and help me see better the potentials of such a harmonized body and mind, how better to achieve it and use it in effective living.

Interesting to know you've gotten involved in the training. That's great!

David

[David Orange]

This is something Dan said in the Ueshiba's Aiki thread that, for its bluntness, made me turn my head, so to speak, and I think sums up the entire thing really nicely:

Release the mountain echo...

Thanks.

David

[graham christian]

Interesting, Graham, if you are on-board with what Dave has placed up here on Aiki and IS/IP, why all the push back to Dan and others on their positions - it really is pretty much the same as what Dave wrote.

Greg

It's a good explanation. The subject is IS/IP. It's well put but that doesn't mean I agree with it as Aikido Aiki.

Regards.G.

[gregstec]

It's a good explanation. The subject is IS/IP. It's well put but that doesn't mean I agree with it as Aikido Aiki.

Regards.G.

Fair enough - but the word Aikido is in the title subject as well :)

Greg

[Lee Salzman]

Release the mountain echo...

Thanks.

David

Where's the in-yo, though? :D

[David Orange]

This is something Dan said in the Ueshiba's Aiki thread that, for its bluntness, made me turn my head, so to speak, and I think sums up the entire thing really nicely:

When I think of Dan's aiki, I think of him spreading his arms as a generous gesture of "sharing everything" (meaning he's about to blast your ribs).:D

But in fact, I get a tremendous sense of "giving" from him.

And I get the same, in different tones, from Mike, Ark and Rob. It's about sharing something really worthy with someone who will appreciate it. And that's always a blast.

Yes, what they're doing resembles various exercises from tai chi and yoga. But for the decades I've spent doing those kinds of exercises, no one has shown me how they work until I argued it down with Mike Sigman on another forum. Then I ran into Rob and Aunkai, then Dan.

I put some pretty bad insults on Mike and Rob before I was able to meet Rob at an Aunkai seminar. I never got to meet Mike Sigman, so far.

But for some reason, I always had a good rapport with Dan on the same subjects. And when I met him, he was really able to do what he said. He let me model it, but there was too much for me to absorb...I need to go to Hawaii and wait for him to come back there!

Another thing I wanted to mention is that once the body mind system is harmonized on the levels I described, IS training requires tuning the harmonized system to the six-direction self-contradictory forces. I know I mentioned that above, but that was on the level of waking the ki/mind to the multiple levels of "body". The tuning happens even then, but it steps up tremendously once there is a fully integrated and harmonized body/mind seeking to reach that orientation. And that is done by the same methods as above, the exercises that teach us to rely on the intrinsic strength and make us able to distinguish ki from mind.

I, unfortunately, have not managed to reach such a level. I'm only describing what I have glimpsed, looking for deeper clues from those who can provide them.

I'm also willing to share what little I know, for free, with anyone who is interested, regardless of rank or affiliation. You just have to come to me. I can't travel beyond the borders of Jefferson county without gas money and if you've got that much, you should save it up for Dan.

Best to all and thanks.

David

[David Orange]

Where's the in-yo, though? :D

I was thinking of it as the Heaven and Earth powers, which I think are the same as fire and water?

Or am I more confused than I had anticipated?

Alas...

[David Orange]

I'm also willing to share what little I know, for free, with anyone who is interested, regardless of rank or affiliation. You just have to come to me. I can't travel beyond the borders of Jefferson county without gas money and if you've got that much, you should save it up for Dan.

Of course, I will travel to meet with Dan, Mike or Ark or host any of them in my home and pay to attend their seminars. Don't get me wrong.

And let me give more credit where it is really due, the aforementioned but unnamed student of Mike Sigman (who has also trained a lot with Ark, but who showed me the basics of Mike's concepts): Jang Choe, of Atlanta. He not only allowed us to visit and train with him in Atlanta, but he came to Birmingham many times at his own expense to show us what he was learning. I guess he was the organizer of Ark's visit to Atlanta a couple of years ago. Jang really developed tremendously over the couple of years I was meeting with him. He's an excellent teacher as well as a great training partner.

So I'm not putting myself out there as an expert on the matter or someone you would pay to come to you, just offering to show the general outlines to those who are interested in the ancient subject.

David

[Chris Li]

But for some reason, I always had a good rapport with Dan on the same subjects. And when I met him, he was really able to do what he said. He let me model it, but there was too much for me to absorb...I need to go to Hawaii and wait for him to come back there!

March 2012 (http://aikidosangenkai.org/news.html) - see you there :) .

Best,

Chris

[Lee Salzman]

I was thinking of it as the Heaven and Earth powers, which I think are the same as fire and water?

Or am I more confused than I had anticipated?

Alas...

I think we're all confused when we try to put these things in specific terms. :( So I was hoping you knew what in-yo was well enough that you could tell me. :p

Far as I have so far puzzled out in reverse, rather noticing something in my own training and then trying to connect it back to what I've seen, it seems to refer, grossly, one side supports the other, and vice versa, for sufficiently vague definition of side. The 6-directions seem to be a form of that in a artificially linear sense along 3 different axes, while it seems to operate far more profoundly in the rotational sense with linear directions building off of it, like one side of the pelvis going one way driving the other side the other way. In writing it seems sorta quaint, but when each part of the body is doing it to each other, it imparts a really odd feeling to movement, and it seems like it fits the bill for in-yo.

[phitruong]

david, where is the dantien/hara movement comes into play? would have thought it one of the central tenet of IS.

[David Orange]

david, where is the dantien/hara movement comes into play? would have thought it one of the central tenet of IS.

It is, isn't it? I left it out because I don't understand it.
So that's something I need to figure out.

Thanks for the reminder.

David

[Howard Popkin]

That's where you put the tuna :)

[graham christian]

Fair enough - but the word Aikido is in the title subject as well :)

Greg

In the beginning was the WORD, and the word was BU!!! Ha, ha.

Regards.G.

[gregstec]

In the beginning was the WORD, and the word was BU!!! Ha, ha.

Regards.G.

Ok, you are getting whacky on me again - time to say good night :D

[David Orange]

March 2012 (http://aikidosangenkai.org/news.html) - see you there :) .

How I wish. But the future is young...if not this time...?

Thanks!

David

[David Orange]

david, where is the dantien/hara movement comes into play? would have thought it one of the central tenet of IS.

Well, I've worked with that for decades and I'm just getting to actually feel the real connections, much less use them.

You gotcher basic idea of "the waist" directs the force that moves from the soles of the feet to the tips of the fingers. And in aikido, it's a byword that you move from "the center" and so on.

I think the whole thing about the hara being "the seat of the soul" is because all the feelings of the body and all the emotions of the mind congregate there. The fascia carries the ki and emotion is very close to ki. That's why emotion of the mind is so influential in the stomach. The stomach is full of fascia, wrapping all the organs, separating them, supporting them, supporting all those muscles in the abdomen and connecting to the arms, legs and neck...Bad emotions go right to the stomach and cause the fascia of that whole area to do weird things. "My stomach is tied in knots" or "I have butterflies in my stomach".

Also, this area retains old emotions by freezing the fascia into a particular set of inner tensions that are experienced as "natural" for the individual. It affects how they walk, stand and sit. It's why you can recognize an individual by his movement. And that also affects the feelings in your own dantien, doesn't it? When you see someone moving worse or better than yourself?

So I think the first thing is to quell the torment of the mind. And that can begin by letting the mind concentrate on the dantien and make it interesting by putting the body in weird positions that stress the dantien in various ways through the weight of the arms and legs.

And the breath helps loosen the tightness of the abdomen and the fearful, avoiding emotions that would hold it hostage by "protecting" it. And letting the abdominal fascia loosen up, freeing the emotions, deepening the breath, lets the ki move freely. And then the mind can be involved with the dantien and the ki. Then you can harmonize the bones, muscles and fascia with the ki, mind and kokoro.

After that, you can learn methods of really coordinating the body through dantien. So I hear.

Actually, recently, I was doing something from Aunkai, the tenchi posture, with the palms up, straight arms up beside the head, fingertips facing outward.

It's always been hard for me to really straighten my hands and fingers like that, and I did some things wriggling my fingers individually, and with each finger, I could feel it all the way along my arms and into the abdomen, which let me release certain tensions in my abdomen, meaning my spine popped and I took a good, long, deep breath and suddenly felt much better than just a moment before.

A few minutes of that really did me a lot of good and I came away with a little more to think about concerning coordination of the body through dantien.

Please help, if you have any clues...

Best to you.

David

[David Orange]

That's where you put the tuna :)

...a deep thought...from the deep.:D

So do you do your tuna as sashimi?

Love that maguro!

David

[graham christian]

Well, I've worked with that for decades and I'm just getting to actually feel the real connections, much less use them.

You gotcher basic idea of "the waist" directs the force that moves from the soles of the feet to the tips of the fingers. And in aikido, it's a byword that you move from "the center" and so on.

I think the whole thing about the hara being "the seat of the soul" is because all the feelings of the body and all the emotions of the mind congregate there. The fascia carries the ki and emotion is very close to ki. That's why emotion of the mind is so influential in the stomach. The stomach is full of fascia, wrapping all the organs, separating them, supporting them, supporting all those muscles in the abdomen and connecting to the arms, legs and neck...Bad emotions go right to the stomach and cause the fascia of that whole area to do weird things. "My stomach is tied in knots" or "I have butterflies in my stomach".

Also, this area retains old emotions by freezing the fascia into a particular set of inner tensions that are experienced as "natural" for the individual. It affects how they walk, stand and sit. It's why you can recognize an individual by his movement. And that also affects the feelings in your own dantien, doesn't it? When you see someone moving worse or better than yourself?

So I think the first thing is to quell the torment of the mind. And that can begin by letting the mind concentrate on the dantien and make it interesting by putting the body in weird positions that stress the dantien in various ways through the weight of the arms and legs.

And the breath helps loosen the tightness of the abdomen and the fearful, avoiding emotions that would hold it hostage by "protecting" it. And letting the abdominal fascia loosen up, freeing the emotions, deepening the breath, lets the ki move freely. And then the mind can be involved with the dantien and the ki. Then you can harmonize the bones, muscles and fascia with the ki, mind and kokoro.

After that, you can learn methods of really coordinating the body through dantien. So I hear.

Actually, recently, I was doing something from Aunkai, the tenchi posture, with the palms up, straight arms up beside the head, fingertips facing outward.

It's always been hard for me to really straighten my hands and fingers like that, and I did some things wriggling my fingers individually, and with each finger, I could feel it all the way along my arms and into the abdomen, which let me release certain tensions in my abdomen, meaning my spine popped and I took a good, long, deep breath and suddenly felt much better than just a moment before.

A few minutes of that really did me a lot of good and I came away with a little more to think about concerning coordination of the body through dantien.

Please help, if you have any clues...

Best to you.

David

Hi David. I found this post interesting especially the view of mind and emotions and effects. Ilike the colloquial saying that the west has the mind as in the brain whilst the eastern view is that the mind is in the stomach.

Remember though that a lot of that butterflies in the stomach and other feelings can be associated with the vagus nerve also. That being said their are also other areas of the body where emotions get stuck and cause the effects you refer to.

I see you describe them as causing the fascia to go into a set of tensions. No doubt this is so in my view even though I don't use such terminology myself. This in turn affects the natural Ki flow in the body so I agree with you there also. Thus handling the troubled mind. All good.

In regards to your last question would you not say that wriggling your fingers was a method of getting rid of the tension? On doing this you felt what you described. Now I take it your method shows to you a releasing of tension throughout the connected fascia?

Well I would say what you are doing is what I would call true relaxation and when you do such you become more aware of center etc. No more significance than that. The more you do it the better you get. So I don't see you need more help on that point except more practice. aian other words, it's all good, ha ha.

Just my two cents as an outsider.

Regards.G.

[Janet Rosen]

Well I would say what you are doing is what I would call true relaxation and when you do such you become more aware of center etc. No more significance than that. The more you do it the better you get.

Graham, as someone who is doing this training, I must respectfully disagree.
Where I agree is that a specific form of relaxation is key to doing martial arts - of course, this is not new, it's part and parcel of judo's "maximum efficiency with minimum effort" and presumably predates that - the idea of only engaging what needs to be engaged.
However, there is something much more active being done. What is being described is literally learning to isolate and work with specific body structures that are not those most of us have been aware of feeling much less being able to engage.

[DH]

Graham, as someone who is doing this training, I must respectfully disagree.
Where I agree is that a specific form of relaxation is key to doing martial arts - of course, this is not new, it's part and parcel of judo's "maximum efficiency with minimum effort" and presumably predates that - the idea of only engaging what needs to be engaged.
However, there is something much more active being done. What is being described is literally learning to isolate and work with specific body structures that are not those most of us have been aware of feeling much less being able to engage.
"Maximum efficiency with minimum effort" will not help.
"Knowing" Anatomy trains will not help.
It's not just knowing what to use. It isn't an exercise.
It knowing how to move what.
Intent is everything. You can know every single thing, but without intent...you're no good. It's all for not. So good luck putting the pieces together.
Motion in stillness training an absolute.
Union of opposites a requirement in specific ways.
Whole body movement, a trained and specific thing.
How to move the body in specific accurate ways, long before it becomes...natural.

No matter how hard they try
No matter what they think they know
Aikido..ka will never find it on their own or through any Japanese teacher I have seen, watched or read. Their teaching model for this work is a disaster. In the hands of the japanese ...this is lost.

And of those who are training it? They will forever rule those who do not know.
In time, everyone will turn to them and seek them out.
I have never met the person, who once they felt it and you started to show them how to do it...did not want it. As every...single...Shihan....has said to me
I wish I had met you thirty years ago.
The comedy is them feeling this...after...they have read all of the nonsense written on aikiweb speaking against it. They laugh harder than I do. And none of them, not one, has ever told me that their own Japanese Shihan can touch it. They all know it. So does most everyone else who is just too damn connected and afraid to say it.
As Gleason says...
"We should be shouting this from the roof tops! I don't care who knows!"
Or
"It's graduate school for teachers."
Do I really want to argue with some Nidan ro Sandan being all defensive about something they cannot grasp?
For this reason I no longer debate how to do this on the internet. Never again. It's not worth making enemies with words. They're happy, so let them go do their own thing. In time, when they touch you in person, there continues to be nothing they can do to stop you.
Besides, every art needs someone to throw around and wonder... "What just happened?"
You can't fix everyone. Hence the reason it was always kept closed and taught to only a few. It's going to be interesting to see who pulls it together and gets somewhere with it.
All the Best
Dan

[David Orange]

I just want to go to Hawaii and wait for your seminar in March!

David

"Maximum efficiency with minimum effort" will not help.
"Knowing" Anatomy trains will not help.
It's not just knowing what to use. It isn't an exercise.
It knowing how to move what.
Intent is everything
Motion in stillness training an absolute
Union of opposites a requirement in specific ways
Whole body movement, a trained and specific thing.
How to move the body in specific accurate ways, long before it becomes...natural.

No matter how hard they try
No matter what they think they know
Aikido..ka will never find it on their own or through any Japanese teacher I have seen, watched or read. Their teaching model for this work is a disaster. In the hands of the japanese ...this is lost.

And of those who are training it? They will forever rule those who do not know.
In time, everyone will turn to them and seek them out.
I have never met the person, who once they felt it and you started to show them how to do it...did not want it. As every...single...Shihan....has said to me
I wish I had met you thirty years ago.
The comedy is them feeling this...after...they have read all of the nonsense written on aikiweb speaking against it. They laugh harder than I do. And none of them, not one, has ever told me that their own Japanese Shihan can touch it. They all know it. So does most everyone else who is just too damn connected and afraid to say it.
As Gleason says...
"We should be shouting this from the roof tops! I don't care who knows!"
Then you listen to some little Nidan being all defensive.
For this reason I no longer debate how to do this on the internet. Never again. It's not worth making enemies with words, when in person, there continues to be nothing they can do to stop you.
Besides, every art needs canon fodder to throw around and wonder... "What just happened?"
You can't fix everyone. Hence the reason it was always kept closed and taught to only a few. It's going to be interesting to see who pulls it together and gets somewhere with it.
All the Best
Dan

[DH]

I am willing to come to Atlanta dude!! Late Jan or mid Feb
Let's plan.
Dan

[DH]

Janet
I had sooo much fun meeting you!! What a doll. Who knew you were so funny too!
Maybe a repeat in the spring?
I can't wait to attack Rick and Bill and such. Maybe I will get to attack Saotome and Ikeda before hand!!
Imagine that?
I would die laughing at myself first
Dan

[David Orange]

I am willing to come to Atlanta dude!! Late Jan or mid Feb
Let's plan.
Dan

One of these days, we'll have enough interested people in Birmingham that you could come here.

I can probably still get the same guys for Atlanta, though. They were all interested--and Phi Truong would probably come.

It'd be cool. I just have to be at the mochi-making ceremony for my son's Saturday school in January. Maybe I can get enough points from that to make it to Atlanta in February!

Best to you.

David

[BWells]

Well Rick will certainly welcome you back Dan, and look forward to being attacked. He doesn't do half bad for a 75 year old does he:) . We are trying to incorporate what you taught into our classes but boy you gave us a lot. It's clear we need a refresher even after only a week. And Janet your are missed and totally welcome to drop by ANY time!!!!

thanks for the training
Bruce

[Janet Rosen]

Janet
I had sooo much fun meeting you!! What a doll. Who knew you were so funny too!
Maybe a repeat in the spring?
I can't wait to attack Rick and Bill and such. Maybe I will get to attack Saotome and Ikeda before hand!!
Imagine that?
I would die laughing at myself first
Dan

Dan, the pleasure was mine! As you saw, I'm not necessarily very talented at this m.a. stuff but damn I love it, it brings me immense joy and yeah I'm willing to make a fool of myself in public and keep plugging away.
Whenever I think I'm taking myself too seriously I remember a priceless moment from the 60s in which on a stage Pete Seeger turns to Arlo Guthrie and deadpans "but folk-singing is serious business" bringing down the house, as well as Arlo...the doing of the work, the learning, is hard enough but no reason to approach it ponderously, heavy-hearted.
Practicing daily and still not feeling things enough to even include all of the few exercises I aim to focus on (trying not to bite off more than can be somewhat successfully chewed as it were).

[Janet Rosen]

Well Rick will certainly welcome you back Dan, and look forward to being attacked. He doesn't do half bad for a 75 year old does he:) . We are trying to incorporate what you taught into our classes but boy you gave us a lot. It's clear we need a refresher even after only a week. And Janet your are missed and totally welcome to drop by ANY time!!!!

thanks for the training
Bruce

Bruce I'd be happy to drop in more casually to train, but it's awfully had to justify tanks o'gas and a five hour round trip on a regular basis, especially when so many things already get not-done or put off to do later....give Rick a big hello from me!

[Toby Threadgill]

I would add...the ability to connect with, feel and affect another person's center even while they are not able to feel or affect your's.

God bless you Janet. wink wink....

Toby Threadgill/TSYR

[Janet Rosen]

God bless you Janet. wink wink....

Toby Threadgill/TSYR

:-)
You know I can't actually do this stuff....but...I DID demonstrate getting Dan to blush, which is just a sneaky old budobabe way of taking somebody's center...:D

[Mark Freeman]

Intent is everything. .

Motion in stillness



I've only clipped the above 2 quotes from Dan's post as they are fundamental to the fun that I am having with my aikido practice at the moment. I'll explain...

I have long been an adhearant to the 'Intent' is everything mantra. My first aikido teacher was fairly physically disabled. Polio as a child had left him with legs that had virtually no muscle. So he effectively was balancing on two sticks with a joint in the middle (his ankles had been surgically fused). He was totally committed to using mind/ki/intent as a way of power, as he didn't really have much alternative choice. His mobility was a bit of a head scratcher for the medical profession, some of them were convinced that he should not be walking at all. He had a very powerful mind, and his aikido was driven by it.

Consequently, my focus in my practice and subsequent teaching, has always had a stong bias towards the mind and what it is doing at any given point in the process. And as the 'style' of aikido I fell into is heavily Tohei influenced, the co-ordination of mind and body has been my primary reason for continued study. So relaxation and extending the mind have always been a part of what I do.

However, extending the mind, or even less helpfully 'extending ki' are pretty vague descriptions of what is really happening. It is the students job to figure it out for themselves, understand what is going on and then be able to pass on that knowledge to others.

On the recent seminar that Dan gave in the UK, the point that made the most impact for me, was the solo standing exercises, in which the mind directs movement, but all in stillness. I recognised on a deep level at that moment, that this was a valuable practice for me, and it had not been part of my aikido practice up till now.

So I have been playing with this on a daily basis, (not easy for an undisciplined soul like me) and going to my normal aikido classes and teaching as normal. Only now, I have a whole new set of things going on in my mind/body, that is allowing me to create and use new exercises to help my students along the difficult path of improvement.

The fun I am having now, is getting uke to come and grab, and before they get to physical contact I have set up an 'intent' which is going in a particular direction (up,down, spiral, whatever), and when they make contact, watching the surprised look on their faces as they start to move in 'my' predetermined direction of choice. I could do this sort of thing before working with Dan, but now it all makes so much more sense, I have more of an understanding of why it is working. I also relied more on some bodily movement. Now I am revelling in the "motion in stillness" -Thanks Dan:)

I steered clear of the bizzare Ueshiba's aiki thread, I was surprised Jun let it run on for so long. I do freely admit though, that when I first came onto aikiweb, I was sceptical and distrustful of both Dan and Mike. I wasn't as vocal about it as KM, but still, I had the 'certainty' of my knowledge and experience with an exceptional teacher. But curiosity overcame arrogance, and a meeting with both men, has left me an even more enthusiastic student of the aiki arts. I don't really care which way aiki-do/ai-ki-do is spliced up. I just want to improve what I do, which I am doing.

Thanks David for starting this interesting thread, let's hope the discussions can stay on deepening understanding, rather than politics and personalities (having said that Dan is a fun guy to train with:) ).

regards,

Mark

[Chris Knight]

Now I am revelling in the "motion in stillness

Hi Mark, this sums up my understanding so far quite well....Its trying to understand the concept that this can be attained, and train the body thus...

Unfortunately I cant afford a teacher so am plugging away at self tuition on this, gleaning as much information as I can on the way... My teachers see Dan as often as possible in the UK so in time, I'm hoping they will help pass this information down to me, as we slowly incorporate this into our Aikido training.

The annoying part is for me that self tuition can be a pretty dangerous and damaging business in itself as specific details can probably frequently be missed.

However, the wife and children come first, and hopefully I will mange to meet up the top exponents further down the line

I've read quite a few chinese texts which seem to correlate with the stillness and intent training so I'm hoping I'm travelling in the same direction as everyone else!! :D

[chillzATL]

One of these days, we'll have enough interested people in Birmingham that you could come here.

I can probably still get the same guys for Atlanta, though. They were all interested--and Phi Truong would probably come.

It'd be cool. I just have to be at the mochi-making ceremony for my son's Saturday school in January. Maybe I can get enough points from that to make it to Atlanta in February!

Best to you.

David

You guys should totally plan something! :)

[graham christian]

Graham, as someone who is doing this training, I must respectfully disagree.
Where I agree is that a specific form of relaxation is key to doing martial arts - of course, this is not new, it's part and parcel of judo's "maximum efficiency with minimum effort" and presumably predates that - the idea of only engaging what needs to be engaged.
However, there is something much more active being done. What is being described is literally learning to isolate and work with specific body structures that are not those most of us have been aware of feeling much less being able to engage.

Which bit of what I said do you disagree with? David is practising yes? He's getting results yes? The more he does so and gets confident then the more he will relax and thus see even more. That's what I'm saying. I'm sure he must be practising whatever else is involved too.

Relaxation is one of my preconditions but don't think I mean that 'maximum efficiency minimum effort' saying and the concept of engaging only what needs to be engaged. No, that's not my way.

Anyway, time will tell. If he has a specific technical question on what you are practising I'm sure he'll ask the relevant question to the relevant person.

Regards.G.

[DH]

Which bit of what I said do you disagree with? David is practising yes? He's getting results yes? The more he does so and gets confident then the more he will relax and thus see even more. That's what I'm saying. I'm sure he must be practising whatever else is involved too.
Regards.G.
Relaxation as a model is a mistake anyway. Functionally, it is virtually meaningless as teaching tool.
If you totally relax, you will fall down. I never relax and the result is it makes me very soft to the touch when I want to be-to include while am invading space and taking center.
I equate the value of saying "relax" to move your insides as having worth. Move what? The next time a Japanese teacher tells me to "move my insides" I am going to tell him I took a dump before I got here, thank you very much. As teaching axioms...it explains nothing.

We have so many examples of men escorting Ueshiba on to the mat in his old age where he went from sagging old man muscles to inflating and feeling like iron.

"Standing in the midst of Heaven and earth the mountain echo is revealed"...Ueshiba

That didn't happen from "relaxing"..nor was it from flexing.
And everytime someone says to just relax...they're wrong. The real comedy is that everyone is convincing themselves that they "get him," that they are doing Ueshiba's aikido....yet have no clue how to do that very basic first step, much less all the other things he did and talked about. It's much easier to just say you know what he was doing than to have to demonstrate it.

There are detailed specific things to be doing and training. Watching people flex their way through and use things in isolation is of course wrong. Watching them go through the next phase and try to uniformly "whole body flex" is still wrong. But the inverse, watching people swirl about, afraid to use their arms and evading because the only other option for them is muscle is a mistake as well, and you see it over and over. Watching someone move connectedly is a rare treat. Feeling someone very good at it rarer still. Feeling someone who can go from super soft to bone breaking power in a split second and back again in rapid seamless succession even more so. And not one bit of it has to do with relaxation. It is whole body unity and connectedness, not noodle arms and empty evasion. It is interesting to hear people go on and on abut how much they know...then you watch their bodies fall apart while demonstrating their "expertise"; one side weighted, weight shifting across the throw-line, shoulders flexing, fat man aikido...moving from the hips...sometimes all in the same guy.

Knowing anatomy trains will never fix any of that. Oddly enough, knowing good training metaphores -the classic way to teach it- will.

Therein lies the rub. Not everyone who is connected is doing the same thing and moving the same way. They may share internal connections that manifest totally different, hence the reason that some internal coaches are not really going to help much or get you the same results for aikido and traditional weapons. In fact some methods are in direct conflict with each other.
This is why I keep telling people to go train with multiple sources. I think things reveal themselves to smart people. Others will never get it and will screw up their own bodies in the attempt. But in both cases they need to make their own choices.
Dan

[graham christian]

Relaxation as a model is a mistake anyway. Functionally, it is virtually meaningless as teaching tool.
If you totally relax, you will fall down. I never relax and the result is it makes me very soft to the touch when I want to be-to include while am invading space and taking center.
I equate the value of saying "relax" to move your insides as having worth. Move what? The next time a Japanese teacher tells me to "move my insides" I am going to tell him I took a dump before I got here, thank you very much. As teaching axioms...it explains nothing.

We have so many examples of men escorting Ueshiba on to the mat in his old age where he went from sagging old man muscles to inflating and feeling like iron.

"Standing in the midst of Heaven and earth the mountain echo is revealed"...Ueshiba

That didn't happen from "relaxing"..nor was it from flexing.
And everytime someone says to just relax...they're wrong. The real comedy is that everyone is convincing themselves that they "get him," that they are doing Ueshiba's aikido....yet have no clue how to do that very basic first step, much less all the other things he did and talked about. It's much easier to just say you know what he was doing than to have to demonstrate it.

There are detailed specific things to be doing and training. Watching people flex their way through and use things in isolation is of course wrong. Watching them go through the next phase and try to uniformly "whole body flex" is still wrong. But the inverse, watching people swirl about, afraid to use their arms and evading because the only other option for them is muscle is a mistake as well, and you see it over and over. Watching someone move connectedly is a rare treat. Feeling someone very good at it rarer still. Feeling someone who can go from super soft to bone breaking power in a split second and back again in rapid seamless succession even more so. And not one bit of it has to do with relaxation. It is whole body unity and connectedness, not noodle arms and empty evasion. It is interesting to hear people go on and on abut how much they know...then you watch their bodies fall apart while demonstrating their "expertise"; one side weighted, weight shifting across the throw-line, shoulders flexing, fat man aikido...moving from the hips...sometimes all in the same guy.

Knowing anatomy trains will never fix any of that. Oddly enough, knowing good training metaphores -the classic way to teach it- will.

Therein lies the rub. Not everyone who is connected is doing the same thing and moving the same way. They may share internal connections that manifest totally different, hence the reason that some internal coaches are not really going to help much or get you the same results for aikido and traditional weapons. In fact some methods are in direct conflict with each other.
This is why I keep telling people to go train with multiple sources. I think things reveal themselves to smart people. Others will never get it and will screw up their own bodies in the attempt. But in both cases they need to make their own choices.
Dan

Dan. You don't know how much I agree with some things you say. Especially when some teacher says relax or keep one point etc. But putting me in that category would be a mistake. On the other hand those old ways can be beneficial in certain ways so they are useful when needed.

You seem to pride yourself in your delivery, that's good by me. It is probably needed. However, it's all a matter of degrees, how much to give, in what order, and when. You have your constructs. I have mine.

Your view on relaxing is the view I come across often thus the conclusions you come to. Once again a classic misunderstanding. I might see you do as you say and notice how much relaxation is there yet you may say you don't.

I know what relaxing completely means and can teach it in such a way that others get it. They then in turn know what it means and laugh at what they thought it means.

Don't worry I'll teach you one day and guess what? You will probably say ahhh, so that's what it is, I've been doing that all along.

Regards.G.

[ChrisMoses]

Wow, great post David. Very well thought out, concise and I even like that you chose to leave out things you didn't feel you had down enough to really talk about (dantien work). It's a humbling thing to have to say, "Yeah, I don't own enough of that to really talk about it." A sure sign of someone really working on it.

I think many of the arguments we had in the past arose from what each of us meant by "aiki". We were really talking about completely separate things but using the same term.

[DH]

Dan. You don't know how much I agree with some things you say. Especially when some teacher says relax or keep one point etc. But putting me in that category would be a mistake. On the other hand those old ways can be beneficial in certain ways so they are useful when needed.

You seem to pride yourself in your delivery, that's good by me. It is probably needed. However, it's all a matter of degrees, how much to give, in what order, and when. You have your constructs. I have mine.

Your view on relaxing is the view I come across often thus the conclusions you come to. Once again a classic misunderstanding. I might see you do as you say and notice how much relaxation is there yet you may say you don't.

I know what relaxing completely means and can teach it in such a way that others get it. They then in turn know what it means and laugh at what they thought it means.

Don't worry I'll teach you one day and guess what? You will probably say ahhh, so that's what it is, I've been doing that all along.

Regards.G.
All due respect I have seen you move. We are far apart.
I know it sounds cagey...I get it. But there is no conspiracy theory going on when a thousand people train under a bunch of different teachers and they all end up seeing and talking about the same thing.
As one Shihan said to me (who teaches around the world) your've ruined me. Every where I go, from students to my own teacher, every one's a mess!! We don't know what we're doing or talking about." All I said was "Now you know how I've felt watching you guys."
I just heard from a bunch of people training at a recent seminar who said "This is incredible we're just walking through people and they can't throw us or lock us." This was their old crew, who started to ask "What are you guys doing?" Likewise, I am a sweety and would never harm you, I don't know why but I kind of like you, but Buddy boy, you would be brushed away like you weren't even there. I don't think you really understand or have ever felt what I am talking about. Therefore it doesn't register. It can't. You have no frame of reference for the soft power being discussed. And no I am not just talking about me.
There is simply no comparison to be had between what you have shown on all your videos and then this type of training. There is a certain commonality that would ring true and be more definable. I didn't know the chinese lingo for much of what I do, I had to learn, but the principles are consistent and I could discuss them with grandmaster level guys who had their hands on me and telling me what they called this or that. So outside of verbiage, there is feel. Maybe someday we can play and then go to dinner and share some laughs.

Dan

[DH]

I've been asked to explain what I mean by the Japanese having a poor teaching model for this. One friend of mine cautioned me that it appears racist.
We have too many Japanese and too many foreigners who spent decades in Japan who say the same thing for it to be racist. There are very well known Japanese teachers who admit it. This is the result of cultural norms. As one fellow-who got his under grad and grad degrees in Japan some decades ago- once opined "In six years of higher education do you know how many questions were asked in a Japanese classroom? Zero!"

As an educational model that had to make the leap from a closely held family method of transmission to a twice a week ...or (international) twice a year seminar style...it leaves much to be desired. I think it is a bit much to assume that any one teacher will have the where with all to make both the cultural leap, the generational leap, and the change in teaching model all at the same time.

This particular work needs to be taught in detail, questions answered as a students intuition kicks in, and language to de definitive, both in metaphor and in anatomical detail. I have watched Japanese teachers struggle with that portion over and over. Add to this that the knowledge has to first be there. I know of sixteen Aikido Shihan learning this material...two are Japanese, oddly the Japanese have trouble....even with each other, much less conveying it to Westerners.
So instead of demonstrate and ask no questions this material can be demonstrated, discussed in detail anatomically and with metaphor to know how to effect the mind/ body. Yet, outside of Ueshiba, I have never read it, heard it, or seen it displayed in the same fullness....in Aikido. I don't think there is a Japanese aikido teacher alive who can cover those bases. I have seen some good exponants, but they suffer for lack of good teaching models and specific language. Example: at two recent seminars, Ikeda was teaching and people on the floor were using my descriptions to help each other actually do...what he was doing. All they got was "Move inside." That doesn't nearly cut it. As one American Shihan said at another get together when the Japanese teacher sat down. "I will now explain what he did...and how to do it!"

We are no longer doing the koryu family style one to one model in small settings in the village where you absorbed it. As Ueshiba said "Maintain six direction awareness before and after technique. This is taught in practice." ...well..no..it isn't. Why? Because he didn't teach it well and it got mistranslated and no one in post war aikido cared to know what the hell it meant anyway.
So unless you are a genius or get a lot of one-on-one instruction; stealing technique and mimicing is a piss poor way to go. Sure it may work, but it is just as likely to fail.
Dan

[kewms]

I've been asked to explain what I mean by the Japanese having a poor teaching model for this. One friend of mine cautioned me that it appears racist.
We have too many Japanese and too many foreigners who spent decades in Japan who say the same thing for it to be racist. There are very well known Japanese teachers who admit it. This is the result of cultural norms. As one fellow-who got his under grad and grad degrees in Japan some decades ago- once opined "In six years of higher education do you know how many questions were asked in a Japanese classroom? Zero!"

I've read of similar experiences elsewhere in Asia, where Western teachers in China, Hong Kong, etc. had enormous difficulty getting students to ask questions or really to participate in their classes at all. Are the Chinese any better at teaching these skills?

Katherine

[ChrisMoses]

Example: at two recent seminars, Ikeda was teaching and people on the floor were using my descriptions to help each other actually do...what he was doing. All they got was "Move inside." That doesn't nearly cut it. As one American Shihan said at another get together when the Japanese teacher sat down. "I will now explain what he did...and how to do it!"



First, I love Ikeda Sensei. He's a great guy. He's an extremely talented martial artist to boot.

BUT, I don't know how many seminars and classes I've been to of his where he would say, "working! not working. working! not working... OK you try..." and that would be the extent of his explanation. Totally useless. If you already knew what he was doing, it was fairly obvious what the difference was, but if you didn't there was no exposition to get there.

I think it actually makes sense that the Japanese would be bad at explaining things like this. You have a language that prides itself on being vague, where the more specific you are about things, the more you have the potential for being rude.

I think that some of that culture may be changing however. I actually gave a presentation in California last week to a room of senior IT folks from various Japanese corporations and they asked almost fifteen minutes of detailed questions after my thirty minute presentation. I was genuinely surprised.

[kewms]

I think it actually makes sense that the Japanese would be bad at explaining things like this. You have a language that prides itself on being vague, where the more specific you are about things, the more you have the potential for being rude.

I think that some of that culture may be changing however. I actually gave a presentation in California last week to a room of senior IT folks from various Japanese corporations and they asked almost fifteen minutes of detailed questions after my thirty minute presentation. I was genuinely surprised.

Japan has an advanced, technology-driven economy. There's nothing inherently vague about the language: it can be as precise as any Western language when the situation calls for it.

OTOH, the difference between technical Japanese and literary Japanese is quite dramatic. I'm only a very beginning student of the language, but I find technical Japanese much easier to read. The vocabulary is harder, but it largely dispenses with the grammatical constructs that give literary Japanese its layers.

Was your audience composed of people based in California, or in Japan? My Japanese friends here in the US seem to appreciate American directness.

Katherine

[Marc Abrams]

The teaching model of old was a close-knit, family-based system where the person spent most of, if not the entire day learning from the teacher, every day for a substantial period of time. As we know from our own studies, that there is no replacement for hands-on with learning a martial art, let alone the deep, deep stuff like IS, Aiki, ect..This model put a premium on hands-on experiences and tended to intentionally cloud the written transmission to prevent others from stealing the "secrets." There was a minimum of verbal instruction and written instruction. That family model protected secrets in waring times and served to "hard-wire" in this material. The transition from warring states, to a unified nation served to make the minimize the need for people to spend a good portion of their lives learning in this manner. This teaching model was brought forward into the Edo period and this model is still prevalent in the Asian martial arts community. The problem with this model is that students do not spend many years living with their teachers. Hands-on with the teachers constitutes hours a week, month,..... This model is not practical in the manner in which our teachers learned it and taught it to us.

Finding a balance between accurate verbal instruction, along with substantial hands-on experience seems to be the most efficient model, based upon the manner in which most people train today. Myself and some other instructors have even shifted away from a waza-based teaching model to one the emphasizes the verbal and hands-on instruction in the teaching of important principles and allowing the waza to emerge from the application of those principles. This model is by no means set in stone as myself and other instructors struggle with finding efficient and effective means of transmitting the heart of our arts.

Marc Abrams

[graham christian]

All due respect I have seen you move. We are far apart.
I know it sounds cagey...I get it. But there is no conspiracy theory going on when a thousand people train under a bunch of different teachers and they all end up seeing and talking about the same thing.
As one Shihan said to me (who teaches around the world) your've ruined me. Every where I go, from students to my own teacher, every one's a mess!! We don't know what we're doing or talking about." All I said was "Now you know how I've felt watching you guys."
I just heard from a bunch of people training at a recent seminar who said "This is incredible we're just walking through people and they can't throw us or lock us." This was their old crew, who started to ask "What are you guys doing?" Likewise, I am a sweety and would never harm you, I don't know why but I kind of like you, but Buddy boy, you would be brushed away like you weren't even there. I don't think you really understand or have ever felt what I am talking about. Therefore it doesn't register. It can't. You have no frame of reference for the soft power being discussed. And no I am not just talking about me.
There is simply no comparison to be had between what you have shown on all your videos and then this type of training. There is a certain commonality that would ring true and be more definable. I didn't know the chinese lingo for much of what I do, I had to learn, but the principles are consistent and I could discuss them with grandmaster level guys who had their hands on me and telling me what they called this or that. So outside of verbiage, there is feel. Maybe someday we can play and then go to dinner and share some laughs.

Dan

One day no doubt. As I said, I know and can explain relaxation to those who see it as you describe and they end up with renewed views.

I also said you don't know how many things I agree with you on. Teaching methods being one. Far out concepts I can explain and get people to do, that's my major skill so you don't have to tell me who you can talk to and what they say when you teach for I have the same responses and have done for years. Nothing new to me.

I like it when experienced people see those videos for I like their responses. It tells me what they can see, what they think they can see and what they are unaware of. Indeed I expect it as they are used to what they are used to and so anything outside of that framework they cannot see or understand.

There may be no comparison between what I have shown and what you do but that's all good to me as I don't do what you do.

Come on you and I know why you don't post videos yet you set a different criteria to mine as I see it.

Ha, ha, talk about lost in translation. That's all part of good teaching isn't it?

Regards.G.

[ChrisMoses]

Japan has an advanced, technology-driven economy. There's nothing inherently vague about the language: it can be as precise as any Western language when the situation calls for it.

OTOH, the difference between technical Japanese and literary Japanese is quite dramatic. I'm only a very beginning student of the language, but I find technical Japanese much easier to read. The vocabulary is harder, but it largely dispenses with the grammatical constructs that give literary Japanese its layers.

Was your audience composed of people based in California, or in Japan? My Japanese friends here in the US seem to appreciate American directness.

Katherine

They were all based out of Japan and had flown over for the presentation.

While I agree that it is possible for Japanese to be just as detailed as other languages, I find it interesting that as you begin to get more and more detailed about IS concepts, everyone I've dealt with begins to leverage Chinese terms. "Hara" and "koshi" are rather ambiguous terms that can describe a fairly large area of the body and don't contain the detail that you need to really discuss what's happening in the body. What is the Japanese term for "kua" for example? The "one point" as Tohei described it is often associated with the dantien, but I don't think this is a good 1:1 association.

[kewms]

Maybe the use of Chinese is similar to the use of Latin for medical terms and scientific names. Not more or less precise, necessarily, but a common vocabulary across countries and training traditions.

Katherine

[SteveTrinkle]

Re. Japanese teaching methodology... I only have experience with one group in Japan, it's where I first started aikido. The senior students had all done lots of training with Yamaguchi Sensei since their late teens. They had very heavy hands and very soft touch and could move me in ways that just felt like something weird had happened. But the teaching methodology was to throw the crap out of you until you were so tired, until your muscles were useless and your brain completely fogged,until (as I understood it) your body just had to rely on something other than usual kind of movement. They would always say, "rakuni..." (which was translated as "relax" but not quite relax in the Western meaning). I really think that they just did not know any other methodology and did not know how to describe more clearly what was happening with their bodies. Plus they really liked the macho aspect if this kind of training. In any event, like many have already said, I wish I had been taught this IS/Aiki long ago. Like others have already said, this IS/Aiki approach is showing me something I was looking for for a long time, and really not getting.

[graham christian]

Hi Steven. That's interesting, I was trained the same way except I was given more explanation. So there you are, different teachers again.

Regards.G.

[Eric in Denver]

The "one point" as Tohei described it is often associated with the dantien, but I don't think this is a good 1:1 association.

Perhaps a digression, but I think an interesting one. I attended a seminar with Tohei's son last year, and he explained the one point as now being located much, much lower than tradition descriptions of the hara. He identified it as the area a few inches below the knot of a hakama.

[graham christian]

Perhaps a digression, but I think an interesting one. I attended a seminar with Tohei's son last year, and he explained the one point as now being located much, much lower than tradition descriptions of the hara. He identified it as the area a few inches below the knot of a hakama.

That's right. It always has been that location.

Regards.G.

[phitruong]

One of these days, we'll have enough interested people in Birmingham that you could come here.

I can probably still get the same guys for Atlanta, though. They were all interested--and Phi Truong would probably come.

David

phi would definitely like to come, since he still has lots to learn, and atlanta or birmingham is still within driving distance.

[phitruong]

And the breath helps loosen the tightness of the abdomen and the fearful, avoiding emotions that would hold it hostage by "protecting" it. And letting the abdominal fascia loosen up, freeing the emotions, deepening the breath, lets the ki move freely. And then the mind can be involved with the dantien and the ki. Then you can harmonize the bones, muscles and fascia with the ki, mind and kokoro.

After that, you can learn methods of really coordinating the body through dantien. So I hear.

David

don't have anything to say about emotional aspect, since i am a bit emotionally retarded.

i don't know enough about the dantien/hara movement to really describe, only that it's the focus and control mechanism of your internal power, and i don't meant it's in the sense of holding hand and singing kumbaya kind of sense. lately, i have a mind that we should have started the IS training here, dantien/hara movement, before other aspect of IS. but what do i know about these stuffs other than talking out of my ass. :)

[Lee Salzman]

don't have anything to say about emotional aspect, since i am a bit emotionally retarded.

i don't know enough about the dantien/hara movement to really describe, only that it's the focus and control mechanism of your internal power, and i don't meant it's in the sense of holding hand and singing kumbaya kind of sense. lately, i have a mind that we should have started the IS training here, dantien/hara movement, before other aspect of IS. but what do i know about these stuffs other than talking out of my ass. :)

The best place to start is probably wherever we can. It is probably a 99.9999% (yes, made up on the spot) certainty we will screw up badly, and that screw-up will have later consequences that we will regret. But at least when we learn better and fix it, we'll have the conviction of hindsight. There is no perfect system. No perfect teacher. Our bodies are the product of billions of years of evolution, and we're silly enough to think anybody can really explain it all. No way, Jose! But then again, maybe we've actually hit that 00.0001% chance of being right from the start, and are too naive or stubborn to realize it? Better to just eat what is put on our plates than starve. There is no dantien with foie gras and a nice Chianti at the banquet I got shuffled into, but they got brussel sprouts, too much snow, and freezing weather, but maybe that is what I need in the end. :p

[Eric in Denver]

lately, i have a mind that we should have started the IS training here, dantien/hara movement, before other aspect of IS.

Interesting you say that, Phi. I worked with the suit in finger tips stuff for like a year, and got some sense throughout a large part of my arms, little in the back and kidney area, but couldn't really do anything with it.

Towards the end of summer, I got some feedback, which basically lead me to starting everything over again. So I started back with leg strengthening, being relaxed while standing, jinpath/weight underside practices, and gave up on the finger-tip jin stuff. I also went back to abdominal breathing instead of reverse breathing and started working on feeling suit from abdominal area out instead of the other way around. I feel like I am getting a bit further along now.

If I am in a stance for torifune, I can now use my breathing to rock forward and backwards on my legs a few inches, and can get just a litte motion from my arms. Interestingly, I tried it yesterday while holding a flimsy jo made from a superlight wood, and I completely lost the sense of being connected. I think I have a long ways to go before I get up to pole shaking.

[Lee Salzman]

David, I was thinking about what you said about kokoro at the beginning of this thread. This tied back into an article I had read maybe two weeks ago about the wonders of implicit memory.

It gave an example, imagine you are driving a car, now put your hands on the wheel and change lanes.

Okay, the details of the example were slightly foggy, but it was pointing out that what you just did with your hands, under the guidance of your explicit recollection of what you do was actually wrong: you just turned the wheel to one side and relaxed it back, whereas it was claiming what you actually do without realizing is then turn the wheel just as far in the opposite direction, then back. Okay, so I don't have a car to verify the details, just a beaten up cheaply mass-produced bicycle that I soon need to replace, but I got what it meant.

It's not terribly earth-shattering an idea, and I think we all realize it to the point that it is pretty quaint. Your body learned it, it is accessible via an external environmental context, a mnemonic, but if you have to give a conscious recollection of it, you will most likely be unable to just do it without deliberate memorization of the process as it is happening. But then again, it has strange repercussions for body conditioning...

I came to an incidental realization this morning that brought that to a head. Lately in my training I have noticed that the less I self-impose via spatial/thought reasoning in my mind's eye, the less I narrate what I am doing via that process, the better my body would seem to self-organize. I was down to, in essence, a skeleton thought in my head to get my body moving, okay force out there via that body part, force out over there via that body part.

But then I noticed something funny, I got rid of one of the ends. A block in my training I have had related to the mobility of the cervical spine disappeared. It was not that I was trying to impose on it, I was just thinking where I wanted to go, without the how, but I dropped even that. Hmm, maybe there was something wrong with my mentation process, and I just needed to shift that around. So I kept stewing on that during the morning, and then for whatever reason, I dropped both ends, there was nothing left. Or rather, there was still something left, but it was completely below the level of the voice-in-the-head brain, it felt like existing in my body. Like I had to consciously invade every part of my body with my awareness. If I failed to even invade one little place, things would go wrong, but if I focused whatever it was, things started going right again. What the hell was that?

Stranger, when I did this, my body assumed an organization, just even posturally, it clamped down a bit, to something that was much better connected, better able to move and change. After a few minutes, I figured out how to intensify this. It struck me like a cannon ball. This was a mnemonic below the level of my conscious thinking, but still deliberate in a way that is hard to explain. I was feeling my training, nothing more, nothing less. The feeling was exactly that of my practice, but without the mental thought overlay, and reduced to a tingle; it was every pattern I had trained into my body over the past year, with layers peeled off (indeed which I had been told to peel off, but still in the process of figuring how). This was not some mental state that I could have just accessed via a year ago, because there were no underlying patterns to access; it was a superposition of that experience. All the countless movements I have been training, all the improvisation, it had blurred and blended down to one mental mnemonic, that so long as I was that mnemonic, I could access it all, but without thinking about it, and just doing it, at a rate the conscious mind would have been unable to process.

TL;DR Deliberate training of things builds patterns we can later access below the level of heavy-handed conscious thought, but so long as we carry that deliberate shepherding of our bodies outside the training, the actual training can never come out. We must explicitly work towards that.

[sorokod]

The IS/IP claim is that it/they provide a superior way to manage confrontations, generate physical power and more. It is then natural to ask why these abilities aren't available to humans "by default" and require a fundamental retraining of the body.

[Lee Salzman]

The IS/IP claim is that it/they provide a superior way to manage confrontations, generate physical power and more. It is then natural to ask why these abilities aren't available to humans "by default" and require a fundamental retraining of the body.

If anything, it may be rather a measure of the unintended abuse humans put upon their bodies and the warped line of evolution through which we arrived at our peculiar form. Our bodies are evolutionary overkill, because they had to be to survive everything a silly monkey could do to it. That overkill can be exploited, but it is not very easy and requires a long and focused period of learning.

That's no different than elite level performance in any physical or mental endeavor. People are not just born sprinters or swimmers or cyclists or gymnasts or writers or astrophysicists or violinists. Sure, you can try to do any of those things without practice, you just will suck at it relative to what is possible. You have to actually develop your innate biological potential, it doesn't just happen on its own. We can already move, balance, absorb and generate power, feel, react, blah blah blah, without training, just rarely good enough to deal with the unpredictable nature of monkey-on-monkey combat.

Also modern living style is mostly sedentary, so we spend a lot of time conditioning in bad movement and thinking habits and postural perversions. We also learn bad movement habits from our parents, who also most likely learned bad movement habits. Half the practice is just removing all the bad crap you've accumulated before starting training, which was allowed to develop because it was never physically stressed enough to fail, which, as far as one-trial human learning goes, gets interpreted as success.

[Janet Rosen]

The IS/IP claim is that it/they provide a superior way to manage confrontations, generate physical power and more. It is then natural to ask why these abilities aren't available to humans "by default" and require a fundamental retraining of the body.

It starts as soon as we put children in structured rigid shoes and sit them down at desks mist of the day...take it from there...

[sorokod]

It starts as soon as we put children in structured rigid shoes and sit them down at desks mist of the day...take it from there...
Following this logic societies that don't do so consist entirely of people posseing the IS qualities.
Is this really the case?

[Lee Salzman]

Following this logic societies that don't do so consist entirely of people posseing the IS qualities.
Is this really the case?

This is sort of like arguing that just because you did not actively forbid your child from reading, but merely failed to provide him with books or show him how to read them, that it is his fault for being illiterate.

[BWells]

I grew up in a mining town in Colorado and had a couple summers working for the town digging sewer ditches. Had a couple of older (60 maybe) tramp miners doing the pick and shovel digging as well. I'm not saying they had Aiki but they could go all day while my 17 year old body burned out in an hour. They were relaxed, used their whole bodies, used their connection to the ground to throw the dirt with the shovel and when they hit a large rock it seemed like they never fought the rock, but blended with the shape and usually moved it fairly easily. I think anyone who does physical work over a long time and who is good at it does get some parts of Aiki or they beat their bodies up. It's not trained and from the martial arts perspective there are a lot of elements missing but IMHO there are pieces learned over time to in being good with many kinds of physical work.

[sorokod]

This is sort of like arguing that just because you did not actively forbid your child from reading, but merely failed to provide him with books or show him how to read them, that it is his fault for being illiterate.

Not quite. To follow your analogy it is like sorrunding children with books, encouraging those who try to read and punishing those who don't. Over many generations. Yes they will all be literate.
I assume here that this is/ip thing gives advantage to those who have it and puts those who don't at a disadvantage.

[sorokod]

I grew up in a mining town in Colorado and had a couple summers working for the town digging sewer ditches. Had a couple of older (60 maybe) tramp miners doing the pick and shovel digging as well. I'm not saying they had Aiki but they could go all day while my 17 year old body burned out in an hour. They were relaxed, used their whole bodies, used their connection to the ground to throw the dirt with the shovel and when they hit a large rock it seemed like they never fought the rock, but blended with the shape and usually moved it fairly easily. I think anyone who does physical work over a long time and who is good at it does get some parts of Aiki or they beat their bodies up. It's not trained and from the martial arts perspective there are a lot of elements missing but IMHO there are pieces learned over time to in being good with many kinds of physical work.

Perhaps I am wrong but I think that what mr. Harden is claiming has a totally different quality.

[BWells]

Oh I agree that they didn't feel like Dan and , none of these folks could have done any of what Dan does, but they had a much more integrated body than someone like me at the time. As i said it wasn't Aiki but with work and training (and a lot less booze, they really could drink!) they would have had a head start on folks who spend all day at a desk

[sorokod]

If anything, it may be rather a measure of the unintended abuse humans put upon their bodies and the warped line of evolution through which we arrived at our peculiar form. Our bodies are evolutionary overkill, because they had to be to survive everything a silly monkey could do to it. That overkill can be exploited, but it is not very easy and requires a long and focused period of learning.

This is interesting. Are you saying that due to some evolutionary pressure the use of is/ip fell into disrepair? What would this pressure be? Also this implies that some earlier ancestor of ours did have is/ip. Is that your position?


That's no different than elite level performance in any physical or mental endeavor. People are not just born sprinters or swimmers or cyclists or gymnasts or writers or astrophysicists or violinists. Sure, you can try to do any of those things without practice, you just will suck at it relative to what is possible. You have to actually develop your innate biological potential, it doesn't just happen on its own. We can already move, balance, absorb and generate power, feel, react, blah blah blah, without training, just rarely good enough to deal with the unpredictable nature of monkey-on-monkey combat.

Actually as presented it is quite different. If I want to become stronger I can devise some half baked training scheme and if I follow it I will become stronger. Not as strong as I could be with professional coaching and not as strong as top athletes, but stronger. Same for sprinting and other activities you mentioned. With is/ip as described here we have something qualitatively different. It is not more of the same, it is counterintuitive and it can not be acquired without a teacher (or can but with vanishingly small probability). If I am misrepresenting the is/ip case, please correct me.


Also modern living style is mostly sedentary, so we spend a lot of time conditioning in bad movement and thinking habits and postural perversions. We also learn bad movement habits from our parents, who also most likely learned bad movement habits. Half the practice is just removing all the bad crap you've accumulated before starting training, which was allowed to develop because it was never physically stressed enough to fail, which, as far as one-trial human learning goes, gets interpreted as success.

How do you define modern? Since the industrial revolution? Do you believe that before "modern" times humans could tap into is/ip directly without a need to retrain themselves? How about those tribes in the Amazon basin (probably don't exist any more but just for illustration), are they (were they) in a ip/is state of grace?

As I was was writing this another question occurred, are humans are the only beings capable of achieving is/ip? If so why? If not who or what else?

[Lee Salzman]

This is interesting. Are you saying that due to some evolutionary pressure the use of is/ip fell into disrepair? What would this pressure be? Also this implies that some earlier ancestor of ours did have is/ip. Is that your position?

No, I am saying it never actually existed as an inborn trait. Humans are not born knowing how to read. But with lots of training and learning from their parents, they can. And only after that, in which you had societies stable enough to pass on reading, could you legitimately say that being a better reader could function as a selective pressure. Even then, that is comparatively modern. Go back a couple hundred years. What were literacy rates like then? What was the state of literacy like throughout most of the timeline of the modern human species (wikipedia claims anatomically modern human is 200,000 years old, and behaviorially modern is 50,000)? Reading is pretty new as a widespread phenomenon. Compare to IS, which has much less reason to spread than reading.

The human mind and body are very powerful, but for reasons totally unrelated to IS, or at best the precursors of IS. If you take the flexibility rolled into the system to do many things, and you instead apply it to one purpose that necessitates all of that functionality, you get something way more than the sum of its parts, like the ability to read books.


Actually as presented it is quite different. If I want to become stronger I can devise some half baked training scheme and if I follow it I will become stronger. Not as strong as I could be with professional coaching and not as strong as top athletes, but stronger. Same for sprinting and other activities you mentioned. With is/ip as described here we have something qualitatively different. It is not more of the same, it is counterintuitive and it can not be acquired without a teacher (or can but with vanishingly small probability). If I am misrepresenting the is/ip case, please correct me.


The likelihood you will encounter certain feelings on your own at such a magnitude that you will recognize them as significant is vanishingly small without a huge amount of experimentation in the actual domain which could take a lifetime, several lifetimes, to accumulate. A teacher can painstakingly get you to feel just a bit of it, and give you positive motivation to continue further even when that little taste he allowed you to feel would otherwise not feel very motivating to you. Especially when other alternatives may feel immediately more productive, but have way lower potentials in terms of ultimate utility. We stand on the shoulders of giants.

Example: when you throw a punch, it may feel like you get more of your body mass into it by throwing your hip forward with your torso to get your torso moving like a giant swiveling door. Indeed, this is an actual improvement over just flopping the arm out at your target, because there is a bigger mass accelerating. But now your torso is unstable, and your arm is, by virtue of being upon it, unstable, and has comparatively little power to if you learned how to strike without bleeding there, with, well, jin, if you wanna call it that. But since the torso swivel is a relatively easy thing to to learn by comparison, you see pushing the hips through everywhere.

Likewise, winding up for a punch may feel like it makes your punching immediately stronger, because you now have a longer time to accelerate your fist. People instinctively do this. But, it now takes you much longer to prepare to strike, so people see you coming from a mile away, but also there are a lot of other factors that can still make the end result weak even when it lands, like the above. But with, practice, you can learn to increase the power of your striking in ways that take quite a long way to learn, but eliminate the need to rely on windup to actually accelerate.

Those two issues are a matter of bodily harmony and how it applies to punching. You will not get your entire body to act in harmony on your own very quickly, no more than you will independently discover quantum physics on your own, without lots of painstaking research that may be too much for just your lifetime, having never learned anything about physics. Some things are very hard to see even when they're staring you in the face.


How do you define modern? Since the industrial revolution? Do you believe that before "modern" times humans could tap into is/ip directly without a need to retrain themselves? How about those tribes in the Amazon basin (probably don't exist any more but just for illustration), are they (were they) in a ip/is state of grace?


I refer to the accumulation of maladaptive habits by Homo Sapiens Officus Workerus. I am a programmer, I spend a lot of time sitting down, only using part of my body outside of exercise or other times I'm allowed to pry myself away from the computer. If there were ever a chance to learn IS spontaneously, it would not be at the keyboard, verily. A miner or agricultural worker or samurai probably has a better chance at independently discovering IS than me. :D

[sorokod]

No, I am saying it never actually existed as an inborn trait. Humans are not born knowing how to read. But with lots of training and learning from their parents ...

So as is the case with reading, while the brain that didn't evolve "to read" (so to speak) it is capable of reading, it is the same with is/ip where the body didnt evolve for it but is capable of
aquring it. Is this a fair summary? If so, do you beleive that is/ip is exlusivley a human capacity?

... You will not get your entire body to act in harmony on your own very quickly, no more than you will independently discover quantum physics on your own, without lots of painstaking research that may be too much for just your lifetime, having never learned anything about physics. Some things are very hard to see even when they're staring you in the face.

Not quite like sprinters or swimmers then.

...A miner or agricultural worker or samurai probably has a better chance at independently discovering IS than me. :D

Which one is it, quantum physics or physical labour? I don't think that you can have it both ways. Seems to me that the amount and scope of training that is needed (it is claimed) to obtain is/ip implies
great amount of leisure time which would be inconsistent with a agricultural worker.

[Lee Salzman]

So as is the case with reading, while the brain that didn't evolve "to read" (so to speak) it is capable of reading, it is the same with is/ip where the body didnt evolve for it but is capable of
aquring it. Is this a fair summary? If so, do you beleive that is/ip is exlusivley a human capacity?


I tried asking some dolphin friends. Responses were not forthcoming.


Not quite like sprinters or swimmers then.


Or is it? Could a swimmer necessarily coach himself to know everything there is to know about at the highest levels of competitive swimming? I think you are underestimating the difficulty.


Which one is it, quantum physics or physical labour? I don't think that you can have it both ways. Seems to me that the amount and scope of training that is needed (it is claimed) to obtain is/ip implies
great amount of leisure time which would be inconsistent with a agricultural worker.

It's not either-or. The point I am making is you will need hands on experience in the domain in question in sufficient quantity to discover it independently through reasoning about that domain, and that is only a possibility. On the other hand, physical laborers lack a competitive context, in which, having discovered it, they would either gain such an advantage that it would be highly sought after, or that others without it would be at such a disadvantage that they would feel a driving need to pursue it just to compete. That competition alone would ensure it was not only discovered, but continuously improved. Physical laborers might benefit from it, but not as much in the status sense as a soldier or military leader would that would drive the evolution of it. Empirically, historical warriors did discover it and continuously evolve it, because they had the hands-on experience and the need, or we wouldn't be discussing it now.

Say it took you a lifetime to get the seed idea and develop it. Then maybe you didn't understand it well enough that you could get others to do it, despite trying desperately to explain to them. So maybe you're the lucky clever person who not only discovers the seed, but then also manages to get it to sprout in another human's mind by also discovering proper teaching methods so that your new lineage doesn't just die off. Then, along the way, many other humans improve on it, over the course of hundreds of years, to the point where it is a field of such astonishing complexity that no one human could have discovered it all, indeed didn't discover it all, because it took a bunch of humans hundreds of years at least to flesh it out. Even then, it is an ongoing process, much like physics.

[sorokod]

I think that I have a general feeling of your take on is/ip.

May I ask if in your opinion, you have a beginners or an advanced practitioner's understanding of the subject, or maybe somewhere in between?

[Lee Salzman]

I think that I have a general feeling of your take on is/ip.

May I ask if in your opinion, you have a beginners or an advanced practitioner's understanding of the subject, or maybe somewhere in between?

If we're playing with excluded-middle, then definitely beginner. If we're playing in reality, then somewhere in between, closer to beginner than not, but still not at the end point, because really, the end points don't exist. There are things my brain understands, and likewise my body reflects that understanding. There are things my brain understands, but which I still continue to get shown my body does not yet understand, to which I nod my head at the explanation of what the body needs to be doing, because I've heard it a couple tens or hundreds of times, and yet the body still fails to do. You could say those things are IS. The are certain things my brain understands, which the body has not yet even had the time or basis to train. You could say those things are further applications of that IS which I am just starting to touch on. There are certain things my brain does not yet even understand, but thinks it has some okay guesses that still need further proving in practice, because those things are not coming from the same source as the other things, so are less cohesively integrated and require some square-peg-round-hole adhesion processes, and after that's done, I've still got some spare parts left over that the manual said I needed, and other parts the manual never talked about but which I think I need. You could say those things are aiki.

[ChrisMoses]

Some very good posts lately Lee! I must be spending too much time on Facebook, I keep looking for the "Like" button when I read your posts. :)