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Old 04-11-2007, 07:16 PM   #107
Gernot Hassenpflug
Dojo: Aunkai, Tokyo
Join Date: Jun 2005
Posts: 319
Japan
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Re: The internal 'how to' thread... let's hope

Hi Pete, very interesting post, thanks for putting things so plainly. "Hydraulic equipment" eh? Nice one! For my own, small, part, I had a look at at a career path review I had done some 10 years ago, and it said "in his late 30s, he ... start to see the intereconnectedness of all things". I guess that helps :-) I fully agree. I'd like to add one perspective: I feel that this training is absolute in nature, rather than relative about beating one person and losing against another. Of course, it's still relative to your own body, but the limitations of that are constantly pushed back. So, as Dan has said so often, the training is one thing, fighting is another. Or: Application is another. Since these ways of moving/coordinating are the root of all body motions from then onwards, they apply to everything.

For me, when telling people about this kind of stuff, I tell them to do only one thing: open out from the back, all the time, to the little toes and little fingers, so that they are standing on their heels really, and working the spinal muscles. It's a first step, and pretty hard to do when in practice the feet and hands have to be facing more to the front than out to the sides of the body, but I think that that the mind set change that results and solidifies once a certain amount of conviction is achieved, is most important, so that people can look and see at what another is doing and start to guess what is going on. I hope that more people in my immediate aikido circle will then be interested enough to seek out Akuzawa and others like him.

Of course, the tons of work, and instruction in steps 2 to N in terms of mechanisms, are needed to produce CXWs of this world, but the more people get started, the easier it will be in future to find willing teachers, and willing peers to train with. It's no fun to train in a dojo where nobody does this stuff but they call it aikido and go through all the moves. I've been having fun by teaching as many of the young ladies how to do this, since they seem to be more open to it (only if they ask, mind you) whereas I've only had maybe 1/10th as many guys asking for any details. Most simply don't ask, just work with me for the few minutes, and hurriedly move on. For a while I suspected body odour.

Last edited by Gernot Hassenpflug : 04-11-2007 at 07:20 PM.
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