Quote:
James Young wrote:
Absolutely. Abe-sensei has an exercise where he has people grap him strongly in morote-dori and then he returns that energy back to them with a slight wrist motion which in turn takes their center. When I practice this I can sometimes do it but my wrist movement is quite visible. When Abe-sensei does it his movement can be practically invisible as he talks about getting it down to 1mm or less.
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Not this is what Abe Sensei is doing at all. It just brought something to mind we were talking about in the dojo the other night.
It might be worth mentioning that while using ground strength is a good beginning to gaining a sense of neutrality in order to capture center on contact.... it is not required or the only way. Many have gotten by with forms of Hiriki for years. You can have various windings in the body that manipulate others forces. But here's the thing they will never lead to higher skills. In a sense we can be cheated out of a deeper study by an expert in a lower level skill.
Being able to use the whole mind/body connection to build you one step at a time to being able to eventually remain neutral under more pressing loads and change-ups when someone enters your sphere and you can instantly respond.... is far beyond hiriki and shapes of hands.
It is why Sagawa dismissed some "very" famous men- as going in the wrong direction.
It isn't in the hands.
It's all in the hands.
Those two statements are as far apart as the earth to the moon.
Cheers
Dan