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Old 09-24-2008, 04:13 PM   #32
DH
Join Date: Aug 2005
Posts: 3,394
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Re: Using ki-skills for "aiki" in Daito-Ryu

Quote:
Toby Threadgill wrote: View Post
On high level technique......
I have felt high level technique from many, most obviously Takamura sensei but this also includes several top notch Daito ryu shihan, aikido shihan. Don Angier, Ushiro Kenji, Tetsuzan Kuroda, Mikhail Ryabko, Vladimir Vasiliev etc...

Is it all the same? No. Each manifest their advanced application of waza in different in way. Kuroda takes your center immediately with a very soft touch. It's like an encounter with a ghost and unlike what I've felt from anyone in Daito ryu. I'm not saying its necessarily better, but it is distinctly different. Laying hands on Ushiro Kenji feels like grabbing a gorilla. ( Okay you got him, what are you going to do with him?) All the others are great, each in their unique way. My point is that people often become fixated on what "they" consider high level. If you like X-ryu okuden-aiki-myoden-voodoo, good for you, go do it. However, don't dismiss everything else thats different out of hand. Keep an open mind and realize you'll never learn it all. Myopic evaluation of others is intellectual failure and the stuff of defeat.
Toby
I think some of the guys here should address these comments as they have described -us- as;
Feeling ghosty, taking your center at a touch, feeling like a gorilla-all in the same men. Not to mention getting hit or what happens after you do grab that ghosty / gorilla -it usually ends up with you being thrown-not them.

It isn't about high level "technique," or expression of "technique." Technique and highly refined expressions of singular skills is what many guys have been getting away with for years. while they are great skills, they are none-the-less not "it." They can be partial understanding of it, or just simple waza, doing what waza is desgined to do- successfully mask inherent weakness in form or movements. Rob and Gleason have excellent definitions and theories on "The why of waza."
Anyway, so with having a partial understanding It's easy to impress someone who doesn't understand a broader scope of these skills and how they are all joined. It's also why no one wants to claim to be an expert yet!!!. Most see them and how deep they probably can go. That said they aren't meant to exist as partial skills. Each of these things are all manifistations of a body trained in internal power, used in internal skills or aiki. Anyone who "has it" should be able to express them all to the degree they "have it." More pointedly, "having it," means you are, by default, expressing it in balance. thus you are displaying all of these skills...as they exist in balance as one-as you grow in them.
What makes you ghosty is supported by what makes you feel like a gorilla, what makes you hit like a truck, makes you damn near impossible to throw, which make you very sticky and trapping and powerhouse when you hit.
Again though for those who may not know, and may be expressing residual doubts it is best to hear it from dozens who have described these phenomena all in single people's "feel" on meeting them. Their understanding of...it...is inescapable on touch.

Another case in point is people who do have it can and have played with Boxers, Judoka, MMA, Aikido, Daito ryu, Bagua, Taiji etc., all the while exhibiting those qualities of softness and power as one.
Doing push hands with serious players-demonstrates these things well; ghosty, trapping, leading, heavy, taking of center at a touch and....slam time.

So, back to methods.
If you don't have internal power training in your art, you are missing the finest training of your life. If you do, but you are training it in kata only, and worse as one-step kata, instead of in a fluid exchange with those who can absorb, change, redirect, capture, and throw you, using the same types of skills you possess? You will remain stuck and limited. Further, you will be susceptible to being taken apart by someone who trains at a level that is more dynamic and involves fluid non-cooperation..

Last edited by DH : 09-24-2008 at 04:27 PM.
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