Quote:
Ed Duffy wrote:
Just coureous, how Akikai Aikido practioners learn the concept of KI? How do you learn to extend KI in a technique as compared to muscling thru it? Watching many Aikido videos (Akikai Style) and it just seems to me that they are muscling thru the techniques. Yet, when I watch O'sensei's later videos before his death, he isn't using the pure physical aspect. How does a Akikai student learn how to apply KI? Can you develop this outside of just doing the waza? Thanks and may God bless!
Ed  |
Hi Ed,
I think you will find in general a huge variety of ways of practising as well as of teaching under the Aikikai "umbrella".
My personal experience is that within the Aikikai "muscling thru it" is generally regarded as bad aikido. I don't know your level of experience, but in my opinion it is not always easy at an early level to tell the difference between technically excellent aikido, aikido performed with inner power, and aikido where uke falls too easily (either to make tori look or feel better or simply through habit).
My only time watching a ki aikido class (just one sample, so it is probably not representative) was disappointing - after all the ki exercises in the first part of the class I was expecting superior aikido, but what I did see was surprisingly scrappy and looked pretty ineffective. However, I have been in a couple of classes with Koretoshi Maruyama Sensei (ex-Ki Society), and found him deeply impressive, As I said, there is a lot of variation wherever you go.
I'm not sure either what you mean by "how to apply KI". I'm not convinced that Tohei Sensei's guidelines and the exercises he taught are the same thing as what is often referred to on AikiWeb as "kokyu skills", but that's a whole different discussion.
Alex