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Ki
There is an awful lot that could be said about "Ki". Most of it has to do with healing and the overall energetics of the body. This extends to the food we put in the body to nourish it. It is a vastly complex topic.
There are different kinds of Ki, as discussed by O-Sensei: Water Ki, Fire Ki, etc. An excellent way to get a handle on this topic as O-Sensei conceived it is by reading William Gleason Sensei's book, The Spiritual Foundations of Aikido.
But from a functional standpoint, the very complexity of the topic has led to all sorts of "abuse" if you could call it that. People with almost no background in Chinese or Japanese medicine, no Classical education in the Japanese Classics which formed the basis of O-Sensei's Spiritual world, who have read the relatively small amount of O-Sensei's writings that have been translated into English get totally enamored of O-Sensei "magic" stories, dance around the mat waving their hands doing "energy" techniques, etc. This of course has lead to the predictable counter reaction. There are folks who want to de-mystify Aikido. Who maintain that it is all just a matter of physics. Their practice comes down to being in good shape and understanding the mechanics.
Without needing to get into the topic on a technical level it is easy to demonstrate that "something" which we can call "Ki" exists. You can see this every time you are teaching and you give a visualization to a student who was stuck in a technique. Without changing anything that would visibly seen as mechanics the technique suddenly works when it hadn't before. Just because the student "saw" it differently in his Mind.
I can stand in front of a student with my sword and make a shift from a kamae in which my energy is very diffuse, my attention stops at the limit of the physical sword into a kamae (without changing the actual posture) in which my attention is focused to a point right through the student's head, in which I feel like energy streams from my sword tip at my partner's Center. I have had students involuntarily step backwards when I made that shift. I have not had a student who couldn't "feel" the difference. So I am sure that Ki is real and it is an important part of what we do. But the question is how do we use the concept for the benefit of our training and not get sucked into some morass of "wishful thinking magic waza".
Personally, I have found Gleason sensei's way of describing Ki to be of the most use in my practice. Basically, at least from the standpoint of technique, you can say that Ki is interchangeable with how you place your attention. If you place your attention on different places in the body it totally changes how a technique can feel and perform. If we allow our opponent to grab our attention with his attack, we are invariably defeated. I can reach out to an attacker with my attention and observe the effect it has when he feels it happening. None of this is magical or obscure although it certainly can feel fantastical when you are doing technique or taking ukemi.
I have trained with very strong Aikidoka who operate without any of this and their technique is simply mechanical. It can be defeated mechanically by someone who is also strong and understands the technique. I have also trained with people who are busy trying to be O-Sensei when they are at Kyu level or low Dan rank and are shooting their energy all over the mat and you simply step in and crush them like small bugs.
The great people I have trained with, Saotome Sensei, Ikeda Sensei, Tom Read Sensei, Mary Heiny Sensei and William Gleason Sensei all have something tangible that can't be seen but is felt. You can feel Saotome Sensei shift his attention as you attack and you can feel it in your hara. Tom Read sometimes feels like he has somehow crawled inside your head. You can go a whole class taking ukemi and never feel like you did a decent, focused attack. I have been "frozen" by a kiai. So there is no question, for me, that "ki" is an active and important component of what we do. It is certainly a crucial element in the kind of Aikido I am trying to do. So far, to the extent that I have been able to duplicate some of what I have been taught by my teachers, using the concept of "attention" and "ki" being interchangeable has worked well Possibly it might be if use to other people who have found more complex discussions of "ki" to be interesting but not very helpful in training.
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