Thread: Defining Kokyu
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Old 01-28-2017, 07:58 AM   #200
rugwithlegs
Dojo: Open Sky Aikikai
Location: Durham, NC
Join Date: Apr 2013
Posts: 430
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Re: Defining Kokyu

The original posts were more interesting, but I would have said that the kokyunage being described years ago is called sumiotoshi. Techniques have catagories and specific names or numbers assigned in older styles like Yoshinkan and Tomiki Ryu it seems that eventually got called kokyunage instead. I am reluctant to even use the word lately. Kokyunage seems to be a wastebasket used by students who never learned or managed to remember the proper names for whatever reason. More recent styles don't use the term atemi waza but do the same movements and now these movements are kokyunage. I remember Sensei complaining after a test that we did not realize many techniques had specific names and when asked for kokyunage we were doing something that already had a name. I never had a chance to clarify what kokyunage meant to him.

I also find it interesting to look at Judo language as it is more concrete. I have seen people argue about "the energy" of a kokyunage in vague ethereal terms when one is doing an otoshi and the other is doing a guruma or a maki or a combination of the ideas. Similarly a bagua teacher I used to study with would do the same gross motor movements but describe the fine details and quality of the movements in terms of the 8 trigrams - Heaven Palm (long, extended, outward, overwhelming power) versus Thunder (short, upward and outward, shocking) or Earth (coiling, receiving, drawing in, soft). If we have a language for this in Aikido, I never heard of it.

Kokyu seems to be about my own structural integration and movement? Kokyu Ho as a means of using this structure to issue power? Kokyunage about timing and placement? All the question marks as then neutralizing incoming force while issuing integrated and precise power seems to also be the definition of Aiki.
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