Demonstrating aiki, demontrating aikido.Same thing ?
In a another thread somebody talked about demonstrating aiki on a uke. Is it the same thing than demonstrating aikido on a uke ?
And if it is not the same, can somebody explain the difference to me ? |
Re: Demonstrating aiki, demontrating aikido.Same thing ?
Did we train together about 20 years ago - name is familiar.
Some people say you can apply aiki to all aikido techniques to make them more effective but I would say that the majority of techniques we study under the aikido umbrella are just jujutsu techniques. Those that use aiki in their execution are just a sub-set and more to the point one can only see/feel aiki when two forces (tori/uke) come together. I would have great trouble demonstrating what aiki is. |
Re: Demonstrating aiki, demontrating aikido.Same thing ?
I would say that one could demonstrate aiki in almost all aikido techniques... but it usually isn't.
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Re: Demonstrating aiki, demontrating aikido.Same thing ?
To Peter
Yes, we know each other from the days you were a aikido teacher at Cegep de Limoilou in Québec City.I have practice a couple of times at your dojo and you came at our dojo if I remember correctly to teach a class. Our "styles" were different but we manage to learn from each other. Your answer at my question is about the same way I think. |
Re: Demonstrating aiki, demontrating aikido.Same thing ?
I disagree with Peter. I think one of the things O-Sensei did in creating Aikido was to eliminate a bunch of techniques and refine others so they all became vehicles for practicing and expressing aiki. Since this skill was passed on to the next generation only very spottily, much of what we see in Aikido has devolved back to jujitsu.
As to what aiki is, that's a big debate. For me, and I think my perspective is similar to that in the post referenced by the OP, aiki is the joining of the two kis of yin and yang at the point of contact to eliminate conflict. As O-Sensei said when asked by his students why they couldn't do what he did, "It's because you do not understand yin and yang." |
Re: Demonstrating aiki, demontrating aikido.Same thing ?
I don't want to put gaz on the fire but according to the "IP guys" the aikido that I do for a long time now is not really aikido because I don't have the aikibody, the body that O'Sensei had when he was doing his thing.Is respecting the basics principles enough that I can call what I do aikido ?Is it just jujutsu with love ?
I will probably never put my hands on a person who is using or teaching the famous body, so there is my questioning about demonstrating aiki or aikido on a uke. |
Re: Demonstrating aiki, demontrating aikido.Same thing ?
Who are you asking? And why?
If you're asking me, and there's no particular reason why you should care what I think, if you're learning Aikido from an Aikido teacher whose lineage goes back to O-Sensei in some fashion, you're doing Aikido. Your challenge is to make your Aikido as good as it can be. To do that, regardless of who your teacher is, there's a lot of value to getting out and practicing with a bunch of different people from different lineages. |
Re: Demonstrating aiki, demontrating aikido.Same thing ?
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Best, Chris |
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Re: Demonstrating aiki, demontrating aikido.Same thing ?
I may have been that guy...
One of the things causing me grief these days is the inconsistent ability to "do" aikido. I have broken down things to try to better understand where the "doing" part happens. In that respect, I have consolidated around the concept of "expressing/demonstrating aiki" and demonstrating a practical application of aiki, "demonstrating aikido." Essentially, I am just talking about technique done with aiki. But, I believe that aiki is real and been shown, which is not what everyone else thinks. I also believe many of us are not actually using aiki in our technique. We can demonstrate aiki without framing that demonstration in a practical application (aikido). The most common demonstration I can think of is a push test. Or a pull test. The old guys did these a lot when they shared aikido with other arts. Pushing heads, jos, arms, etc. Mochizuki did these alot with judo players and there is a good clip of Sunadomari doing it in his friendship demo. Tohei, O Sensei, Shioda. They all did demonstrations that had these types of elements. I believe these sihan were showing aiki without the facade of technique to hide what they were doing. The point that I was getting at was that we (aikido people) should be able to show someone "aiki" in a variety of different ways so spectators could see aikido without risk of injury. My unspoken comment was that maybe we don't understand aiki as well as we think if we only have a limited manner in which we can share what we do. Any jujutsu girl can show you an armbar and hurt you in the process - how do we separate ourselves if we cannot show aikido without hurting someone? When we demonstrate aikido, we pick a collection of techniques in which we excel in expressing aiki and we present those techniques as an example of what aikido can do. But, I think sometimes we use kata to mask the lack of aiki. If I do good jujutsu kata, how is that dissimilar from good aikido kata? Hopefully, not much different. If I know someone will fall down from good jujutsu, who is to say my demonstration is not just good jujutsu? It has to be felt. Back to the practical idea of demonstrating aiki on someone with technique... How can we just pull someone out of the crowd to feel it if we are going to hurt them? Oddly, I started thinking about this several years ago when our shihan, Saotome sensei, stopped teaching kata. Most of his seminars now are aiki "tricks." the centipede ukes, no touch throws, push throws... I think he felt that "kata" was getting in the way of "aiki". While I don't have the newest ASU handbook, I am pretty sure "centipede nage waza" is not part of the curriculum on which we test. I believe sensei is trying to show us the real motor that drives his techniques. I think our collection of techniques were created for a common theme - the practical application of aiki. When you have the aikibody, the themes tend to constantly exist throughout movement. Is it different than modern aikido? Yes. But not everyone wants that. I also talked about aikido's tent size - there is a lot of variation in aikido and each one has some value to those who practice it. |
Re: Demonstrating aiki, demontrating aikido.Same thing ?
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We need to constantly review the source - kata - and then put aiki into those kata to - give them life. The takemusu of it, to me, is the escape from kata. Some people seem to think takemusu is randori or jyuu-waza. Not me. Takemusu for me is adding life to dead kata, in a kind of random, yet, predictable way. It is what mainstream Aikikai Aikido is. This is the main difference beween say, Aikido and Daito Ryu (totally fixed kata). Going back to randori or jyu-waza - most that I see just seems to be kata performed in a random way, like in a dfferent order. Any way: Learn the kata/shapes/waza, do some aiki exercises, then add what you `feel` to one of your waza and experiment. |
Re: Demonstrating aiki, demontrating aikido.Same thing ?
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Re: Demonstrating aiki, demontrating aikido.Same thing ?
My take on this is that there is a difference between demonstrating Aikido and demonstrating aiki on an uke - demonstrating aiki on an uke is one of a number of things you might do when demonstrating Aikido.
This is because of two reasons: 1) there are a whole raft of things you would want to show students that don't have to do with aiki. Or "IP" for that matter. Particularly if you are trying to train some martial skill into your students or yourself. Sometimes you just need to figure out how to properly attack a joint, for example. 2) Secondly, I have lately been thinking that the typical big, flowing Aikido movements come from demonstrations of "externalized" internal movements. Anybody who has trained with Hiroshi Ikeda Sensei should know exactly what I am talking about. You could look at some demonstrations of Aikido as being an explanation or picture of aiki, but without actually being aiki themselves. |
Re: Demonstrating aiki, demontrating aikido.Same thing ?
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I tend to agree with you. A good example of keeping things separate may be the famous conversion of the sumo player, Tenryu. Although familiar with sumo, most accounts indicate that O Sensei did not play sumo with Tenryu, but rather showed him aiki. Why did O Sensei abstain from showing aiki through sumo? While the converse of your example, I think an interesting example of the advantage being able to separate technique from aiki. Yes, I think some of our waza distortion comes from deliberate exaggerations of internal movement. I'm not sold on the argument that external movement can demonstrate internal movement; I think at best it simulates a feeling that we try to emulate when training internals. I think this has been part of Sensei's struggle to communicate that instruction. |
Re: Demonstrating aiki, demontrating aikido.Same thing ?
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I think the "shaping" observation in both comments is common ground. If I were to make a observation these two approaches are on either end of a bell curve -- one where -- ideally the "shape" is confined within the body and its resulting internal stress profiles -- and the other using the dynamic "shape" (of those same shape stress profiles ) but deployed into motion. From a teaching standpoint, I will say it takes a very long time to get people attuned to their internal structural state. They are simply too unconscious of it -- and have been basically since they learned to walk without thinking. This stuff requires as much consciousness in adapting your structural responses as it did when learning to walk (and I find the two are more related than not, actually.) Where the evolved praxis in aikido fell down (heh), it seems to me, is that the dynamics took two endpoints and took shortcuts and failed to follow the true "shapes" of the dynamic outside the body -- which is the same "shape" as the internal stress flowing into the body. If the shape outside the body is correc then when that movement resolves into internal stress - and the natural reversals of that stress (inyo ho) then occur inside the body as that happens. Then they flow out as movement again. Aiki Taiso are full of this. Water assumes the same shape as the bowl -- but without the bowl it is a hopelessly formless mess. Freeze the water -- and it will keep the shape even without the bowl -- but at the price of its fluidity. Swirl the bowl and water develops the typical spiral movement and a torsional stress profile that then overcomes gravity and rises up the bowl's edges, (and also drops in the center). The dynamic vortex has internal stresses that hold it in a stable and coherent structural form like the waterspout -- and it resolves its external movements and energies in a reverse flow (many people are not aware of this bit of physics (see e.g. -- vortex tube) -- The waterspout has a rising external spiral and a descending internal spiral (90 degrees out of phase -- i.e. - 十字 juji ) which balances and gives it both its coherent structure and its inherent power to disrupt anything that comes within its influence. (It is the same structural stress path as a torsional shear in the body, FWIW). The water merely swirling in the bowl lacks this fully circulating balanced and opposed stress/flow but shows its basic dynamic (rising outside, falling in the center). The awareness of this "shape" and its reversals occurring ("intent" -- or nen 念 (attention, feeling, sense)) is common to BOTH schools of thought, FWIW. I think it perhaps more than providential that a cognate to this 念 nen -- is 捻 (nen = twist, torque) (used in 捻転 (nenten = twisting, torsion). I shrink from concluding this is necessarily some sort of okuden wordplay - but the point suggests itself. True aiki -- it seems to me -- is that "shape" -- whether the static stress form as the in-yo poles shift places within the body -- or the dynamic movement form as they flow out of it (and then again reverse within the body of the unprepared adversary). Train that true "shape" externally, and one can become aware of that "shape" as its stresses resolve and reverse in the body. This is what started me down this road in my training. A fair bit of what is being sought in the approach beginning internally is disclosed in this way through CORRECT shape in movement. Too much in what is trained now more generally is not correct in these terms of "shape." I have not enough exposure to the internal modes of training (past what Jon has kindly shown) to say how much more the internal approach can cover and that the other may not. One weakness I will fully admit is that what I've done requires close observation of developing stress and resulting movement simultaneously -- and lots of people have problems with those just taken one at a time. I think both perspectives are necessary. Kokyu tanden ho remains in the evolved curriculum to refocus on the isolated stress perspective. Much that is being pursued in the internal approach appears to add immense value and expansion to this aspect -- and may be employed even without departing traditional forms -- and may actually bring the forms back to what they should be. |
Re: Demonstrating aiki, demontrating aikido.Same thing ?
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However, when he does so I do not believe he is teaching what you refer to as "aiki" (the definition of aiki being internal strength). It is certainly possible for one to read into these exercises and see something else though. However, over the years Sensei has explained what most of them are for so there would be no need to guess what they mean. Typically, they address blending, being flexible and being willing to change. An example would be a static ikkyo that connects to the shoulder or the blending with very small amount of energy. Also, you mention the push tests from Ki Society as an example of people doing what you are defining as "aiki" training for the aiki body, but it is my understanding that Ki Society under Tohei believe their grounding ability results from the projection of Ki not IS. Not true? Finally, sensei may do a few things that are about connecting in a way that you are defining as "aiki" but those are by far a minority of what he demonstrates in my experience and certainly IMO doesn't constitute a paradigm shift in his teaching. The majority of what Saotome sensei is describing in my experience is blending with Uke's energy to get kuzushi, to discombobulate. "Aikido techniques depends on blending with the force of the attack. It is that force which determines the movement....." Page 180 Aikido and the Harmony of Nature Again, its just my observation and the experience of those whom I train or interact with who train with Sensei too. Train Hard, Jason |
Re: Demonstrating aiki, demontrating aikido.Same thing ?
i agree with Jon. Saotome Sensei has stripped his teaching down to just aiki in recent years. I haven't seen him teach his self-defense applications or pull twenty new kata out of the air in a pretty long time.
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Re: Demonstrating aiki, demontrating aikido.Same thing ?
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Speaking for myself, I'm also not sure that I would agree that "aiki" and "internal strength" are the same thing. Certainly internal strength is an *aspect* of aiki, but (re)discovering internal strength wasn't Ueshiba Sensei's great insight. Katherine |
Re: Demonstrating aiki, demontrating aikido.Same thing ?
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Katherine |
Re: Demonstrating aiki, demontrating aikido.Same thing ?
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Best, Chris |
Re: Demonstrating aiki, demontrating aikido.Same thing ?
I certainly agree that anyone committed to his or her art or craft would learn after 20 years. I know I have! However, what I am saying is that I (and may others) have still seen him demonstrating techniques in a way that is consistent with the quote from Aikido and the Harmony of Nature. In other words, the majority of what he demonstrated from what I have seen is consistent with that. As I said, sure, he has shown other things that could be described as "tricks" but they are the minority in my experience and could hardly represent a paradigm shift brought about by some new insight into IS. He has explained the exercises were for pretty consistently. It just basically comes down to how one defines "Aiki" and what I am saying is the vast majority of what he is demonstrating from what I and others have seen and experienced is consistent with the quote. I would certainly not say that what he is doing had not evolved just that it is consistent with the Aiki as he had defined it which is the blending of energy. At least that has been my experience.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjk_cLB8yHw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F97kmNs8IiE Train Hard, Jason |
Re: Demonstrating aiki, demontrating aikido.Same thing ?
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Best, Chris |
Re: Demonstrating aiki, demontrating aikido.Same thing ?
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Katherine |
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