Janet Rosen

 

I believe from a reading of the text that our Dear Poster has chosen to misconstrue Dan's "putting hands on" Ikeda and Saotome Senseis as a threat of fight rather than as simply meeting them for hands-on training so they can feel what each other are doing.

FWIW I am a follower of nobody - I train at a totally independent dojo - when I was at an Ikeda Sensei seminar for the first time this past spring I found what he was teaching was explicitly in line with the internal explorations I've been working on: literally moving the entire center - NOT metaphorically but literally - encouraging students to work on this as solo exercise - and in partner practice, not just doing waza but incorporating into waza that connection, visualizing and energetically moving one's center into one's hands to effect movement in uke (he didn't verbalize it that way but having now trained once with Dan, I would say they are equivalent concepts) - I see NO CONTRADICTION BETWEEN WHAT DAN WAS TEACHING AND WHAT IKEDA SENSEI WAS TEACHING.