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Old 11-09-2007, 09:24 AM   #10
Erick Mead
 
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Dojo: Big Green Drum (W. Florida Aikikai)
Location: West Florida
Join Date: Jun 2005
Posts: 2,619
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Re: Defining "Aikido"

Quote:
Dan Harden wrote: View Post
No..they are the same. It's only that many, if not most, do not understand either. ... The Aiki that is so often seen in Ai..ki..do, the blending and moving yourself all around to move them? It is incorrect. ... It's full speed... in the wrong direction.
In a sense I agree with you and in another I don't. It is harmonics -- physical harmonics. The plucked string moves without ceasing and yet waves of motion at a critical length stand absolutely still. The motion and the stillness are two different things, but one thing also.

Some train better beginning with the motion and then grasping the stillness that they then happen upon when they are attending to critical orientation. Some train better with the stillness and the criticality of the orientation of the operative elements in themselves, and then find ways to apply it in moving themselves and others. If the training through motion does not lead to stillness then the practice is wrong -- by the same token, if training through stillness does not lead to motion it is also wrong. The truth is both, and in that, something else emerges altogether.

The difference in points of view in these debates, I am coming to conclude, is largely a product of differences in natural kinesthetic perception bias in the learner. As I mentioned there are several types -- like the visual perception bias in many optical illusions. Some minds default to one image, some to the other, and only with difficulty are able to resolve the ambiguity between them that IS the complete picture of the truth as it is. A more dynamic example of these forms of perception bias and how they are both naturally defaulted in one direction or the other, and how they may be consciously manipulated, once realized, may be seen here: http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/sto...81-661,00.html

Cordially,

Erick Mead
一隻狗可久里馬房但他也不是馬的.
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