Mike Sigman

Ack... forget it. I found it in "The Essence of Aikido". John Stevens just mistranslated it because he picked the wrong words out of the possible translations (and it looks like one of them was inverted either in the original or by Stevens). On page 33 of the book is "The Eight Powers", which are also called "The Eight Powers" in Chinese, but also they're called "The Four Polarities".

Stevens translates them thus:

Movement-Calm
Release-Solidification (inverted?)
Retraction-Extension
Unification-Division


Perhaps more helpfully would be this translation from the Chinese:

Motion-Stillness
Powerful-Relaxed
Contraction-Extension
Hard-Soft


I cannot claim to be a translator of any sort, but the "Eight Powers" are pretty well known. They look cryptic and useless, but they are the basis of Ki training.

FWIW

Mike