Mike Sigman

I have to add that to be fully honest in the evaluation, it has to be accounted that my own perceptions can skew things a little bit. For instance there were a couple of "ki test" things that were, IMO, pretty vague in the explanations (I feel safe saying this because I could see a number of other people having probles, etc.). The first time or two I would try to do exactly the type of visualization that I *thought* Shaner Sensei meant, but then I'd finally go with "heck, I'm pretty sure all he wants is this" and I'd do what I would normally do. My partner (sometimes partners) would clap me on the back and tell me I was getting it. In a couple of instances, this got pretty funny, but those are beer stories. My point is and was that I think a lot of these things can be described and approached far more clearly than through vagaries and the "Ki of the Universe"...BUT please bear in mind my own potential preconceptions when I say those things. And I mean these commentaries in a good, constructive way, not as an aspersion.

Another thing I noticed a few times was that some "instructor" would lead me through how to do an exercise (and he/she would speak slowly, clearly enunciating the words, since I was a white-belt). What would happen was that they'd do something one way and/or have me do something one way (while they told me exactly what to do) and then they would do it another way and ask me if I didn't feel the difference. Now some of these are valid changes and expositional explanations, even though the points were vague to start with, but in some cases, these "now try it this way" things can be very bogus, the way they were doing those examples and changes.

There are some "tests" that are used by kinesiologists, chiropractors, etc., which suggest the relative strengths of joints, muscles, etc., that are somewhat valid... but there are a whole host of similar tests that have been shown to be bogus and which rely on psychology, limb-positioning, physics, etc. What I'm getting at is that some of the Ki-tests with the "now try it this way" were uncomfortably close to bogus, psychological, limb-positioning tests. I'm not saying anything about, though, other than the fact that the validity of tests and demonstrations is something that an astute student should always be analyzing. Far too many "demo's" in the martial arts happen to depend a lot on psychology, the desire to please, positional/physics situations, and so forth.

FWIW

Mike