I'll tee off Kevin's post since it covers most of the points.
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Kevin Leavitt wrote:
I think Chris and I are arguing that the dicussion is alot more complex than simply using two words. and I agree with his assessment that on the paradigm that it is most often discussed by people who really don't understand the complexity of different types of movement it is done so in the context of "good" "bad" movement vice different physcialities
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Disagree here. Maybe in your general discussions, the internal = good, external = bad equivalency holds. Here on AikiWeb, the discussion has mostly been more sophisticated than that.
Quote:
Kevin Leavitt wrote:
In the end if the goal is to move something, then the goal is to move something. It really doesn't matter how it is done as long as the goal is accomplished. If we use so-called internal ways or external ways...does it really matter...no not really as long as you can do it.
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Depends on how you define the goal. If the goal is, "get this friggin oaf off me" and you can do it by throwing said oaf into the nearest wall using muscle power, good for you, do it.
If you're in a martial situation and want to move oafs who may be too large and strong for your muscle power, and who may not be so oafish after all and have the ability to strike back if they can tell what you're doing, the problem becomes more complicated. IS becomes more interesting.
MOST PARTICULARLY... in the context of Aikido training it becomes very interesting indeed. O-Sensei designed his art as a container for what he called aiki. Putting IS and aiki (by this definition) back into Aikido transforms every Aikido technique, giving it the stability and irresistability that it was always intended to have.
It is true that bodies being bodies, and good movement being good movement, there are very interesting correlations between IS and other athletic movement. Boxing coaches teach that a punch starts in the leg, power is delivered by the hips, and the punch is delivered through a relaxed arm. Hmmm, shades of spirals and relaxed power. A pitcher snaps his whole body like a whip, the power traveling up a body that moves in synchronized, not simultaneous fashion. Hmm, sorta like spiraling. Classical ballet offers imagery for how to move the limbs that sounds a lot like some of the imagery IS folks use. Weightlifters have different imagery to trigger recruitment of different muscle groups, interesting for the same reason.
But none of that is IS and none of it is aiki.