Thread: Silk reeling
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Old 02-23-2011, 07:29 PM   #55
Thomas Campbell
Join Date: Sep 2006
Posts: 407
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Re: Silk reeling

Quote:
Erick Mead wrote: View Post
I wonder, Thomas, what you might think of these diagrams in comparison to those of the Chen school -- which I have used to relate certain aspects of aiki and "spherical rotation" as Dosshu described it.

http://www.aikiweb.com/gallery/showp...t&limit=recent

http://www.aikiweb.com/gallery/showp...t&limit=recent
I will be on the road soon and won't be on the forum much if at all, Erick, in case this discussion takes off over the next several weeks. But I will venture that it is an interesting comparison, to the extent I understand it. I'm not completely familiar with shear as it would be expressed in the human body, so I won't venture an opinion on the "shear spirals" in one of the sphere images.

It seems like the compression and tension spirals could map onto Chen Xin's drawings--particularly in connection with the "coiling inward" and "coiling outward" described in the translation of Chen Xin's writing mentioned above:

Coiling power (Chan Jin) is all over the body. Putting it most simply, there is coiling inward (Li Chan) and coiling outward (Wai Chan), which both appear once (one) moves. There is one (kind of coiling) when left hand is in front and right hand is behind; (or when) right hand is in front and left hand is behind; this one closes (He) (the hands) with one conforming (Shun) (movement). There is also one (coiling) that closes the inside of the left (side of the body) and the back of the right (side of the body), and another which uses the through-the-back power (Fanbei Jin) and closes towards the back. All of them should be moved naturally according to the (specific) postures.

As Joep pointed out previously, the coiling and spiraling is associated with opening and closing of different parts of the body. The suggestion is that the coiling follows the "natural" internal lay of connective and other tissues. The question is what the primary driver of the coiling is. Is the "close" and "open" simply compression and expansion of (connective and other) tissues that are laid out in a spiraling pattern . . . what drives the compression and expansion? You can work with some of the slow SREs of Chen Xiaowang with (gentle) reverse breathing and connect the action of the diaphragm with the sensations of stretch and contraction as you move through the pattern. You can work a slow, gentle version of the "Squatting Monkey" exercise of Dai Family Xin Yi Liu He Quan (with forward-leaning "gongbu" step) and feel reverse breathing helping to drive compression and expansion along a vertical (sagittal) ellipse. There are other exercises outside of the SREs that help a beginner both feel the internal connection and begin to condition it (partly as a result of coordinations developed in the exercises). I don't really know what aikido exercises might have the same potential--maybe funakogi undo? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBVxveyrsMY)

Since I don't train aikido (six months more than 25 years ago doesn't really count), I can't really speak to the derivation of your diagrams from what Dosshu means by "spherical rotation," etc. But the comparison of the diagrams themselves with Chen Xin's drawings is interesting.

Last edited by Thomas Campbell : 02-23-2011 at 07:33 PM.
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