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Old 12-06-2010, 09:04 PM   #15
David Orange
Dojo: Aozora Dojo
Location: Birmingham, AL
Join Date: Feb 2006
Posts: 1,511
United_States
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Raking Leaves

I think I started the shoulder relaxing idea because I spent the Thanksgiving weekend raking leaves. Then, after a week of relaxing my shoulders, I spent this past Saturday raking up the rest. I can say it was a better experience the second time around. I've always thought of leaf-raking and garden-shoveling as formsof misogi, since Morihei Ueshiba said "Farming is budo."

This time, I kept constant attention to keeping my shoulders relaxed and of course, I had to do a lot more with my body. I did a lot with my arms, too, without using the shoulders and without tensing them unnecessarily, and raking leaves there's just not a lot of that needed.

So I was trying to feel the relationship between the hara and the hands as I moved the rake against small resistance.

The other day, I was standing, trying to feel the weight and heaviness of my hands. When I made te gatana on both sides, my palms flat to the ground, my body lowered straight down, approaching the kind of "squats" I've seen in Aunkai. And I had a vivid image of Ark with his shoulders so relaxed. I went a lot lower and more smoothly than is usual for me, and very easily. I felt very heavy, but light and able to move. Everything seemed to move down very solidly and my position felt very strong, just from flexing my hands back parallel to the ground.

Another thing is that I have had rather permanent "ki arms" for a long, long time. I've had so many badly-applied ikkyo and nikkyo techniques done to me that my arms sort of evolved into permanent te gatana. My elbows simply didn't straighten. A rolfer gave me a complete set of treatments of the whole body twenty years ago and did two special sessions for my elbows. No effect. My body was just set to resist badly-done "arm bars". Recently, with this shoulder-relaxing, I was able to trace the tension in my wrists and elbows up into the muscles from my arms to my spine. Or that direction-ward. I paid attention to the bottoms of the biceps and the length of the triceps, the lines of tension that ran down to my wrists, and gradually, both arms opened fully straight as they haven't been for years.

For aunkai ashi age, you put your hands out straight to the sides, but palms facing outward, fingers pointing up. I was unable to approach vertical fingers not so long ago. Since doing the shoulder relaxation, I can do that posture much better.

It's not that I'm dong this in lieu of other training. It's part of it. I do some exercises and they suggest a particular examination via Feldenkrais. Which leads to insights into the exercise, which leads to doing more of the exercise, which leads to further insights. The exercises suggest research and the results of the research influence the exercise.

One thing for certain, there has been a lot of noise in my shoulders for a long time and I know that has been hampering my ability to hear what else was going on in my body. As much as my shoulders needed relaxing, all the middle-of-the back muscles and the muscles of the ribs all need to relax a lot as well.

So I'm not saying that total relaxation is the key. Proper tonus overall in the body includes both muscular tensions and load on the fascial network. Pure relaxation just melts you to the floor. But everything I can tell about IS arts like tai chi, bagua and xing yi is that they use all the strengths of the body together. What I'm trying is to better feel the strengths of the body.

183 times.

Thanks.

David

Last edited by David Orange : 12-06-2010 at 09:10 PM.

"That which has no substance can enter where there is no room."
Lao Tzu

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