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Old 01-25-2007, 01:38 PM   #238
Mike Sigman
Location: Durango, CO
Join Date: Feb 2005
Posts: 4,123
United_States
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Re: Baseline skillset

Quote:
Michael Young wrote:
I would like to see Mike and some of the others that practice these things maybe write up a description of what precisely they think should be practiced (or point us to someplace where a description can be found that they've already written). Then we can discuss and clarify those actual things. Of course the problem is the usual digression that these threads tend to follow. Mike,or Dan, or John (who has actually already started a thread with some specific descriptions of what he does, etc.) whattdya think? How about submitting an article to Jun?
Well, as has been pointed out, a discussion of basic skills is fine, but the problem is that too many of these things need to be actually felt and shown to be understood. Look at some of the posts and explanations I got into with Rob Liberti (that went from friendly to great friction). After many in-depth written descriptions but with no personal "feel", Rob got fairly outraged that the implication was the he didn't know how to do something, his teachers had taught him all that, yada, yada. Then, a couple of months ago, Rob visits Dan and gets a hands-on feeling for what some of the jin/kokyu stuff really is and suddenly he's a convert and is visiting Dan (I have no idea of Dan's skills personally, but the descriptions indicate that he's playing around with jin, for sure). So what did all those detailed writings of how to do things accomplish? Nothing much. So an extensive column wouldn't do much good until more people were on board and the discussions got around to whose approach to do such-and-such is best, what's the best way to get skill Y, etc., etc.

But, I'm fairly positive. Things have reached a critical momentum and there are enough people practicing some of these skills that I think things are just fine. Anyone who wants to ignore them and stick with the more external, technique-oriented approach is essentially looking at a dead end, IMO.

Best.

Mike
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