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Old 05-09-2013, 02:45 PM   #8
graham christian
Dojo: golden center aikido-highgate
Location: london
Join Date: Oct 2010
Posts: 2,697
England
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Re: Internal Training Practices within the art of Aikido

I think a lot of the Ki development exercises we do are probably very similar to yours Ron. We call them Ki development, we call them self development, but we purposely don't call them internal as we found too many folks in the past were caught up in too much significance on the word and hearsay. Another reason is that we emphasize universal meaning internal should equal external otherwise it's probably fantasy.

Although you emphasize 'correct feeling' as a principle we differ in as much as we emphasize a principle and then to get used to the feeling that principle results in.

When it comes to one point we get first people to develop it and get used to using it but then to do techniques from it. That would be a drill. Then we may for example use the principle of extend Ki and eventually get people to do techniques from that principle. Same with koshi etc. So all in all it's develope principle then practice doing technique from that principle. Then on to the next one.

We extend this to daily life and chores, even picking up a cup or bricklaying or another sport. So students have to report how they used the principles in a life activity and what benefit it had.

All self development.

It seems from my reading of posts that one thing which is normal and done as naturally as drinking tea with us but as far as I can see not very much done elsewhere is Ki atsu and thus sometimes we even call advanced aikido Ki atsu.

As Mary likes sharing different exercises people do within the framework of practice for some reason I just thought of one I get students doing the purpose of which is to stop them tensing when doing kotegaeshi. One of the causes being to do with the apparent need to grip. In this exercise we call it the sandwich kotegaeshi. It is done with flat hands. Good for hara. Just thought I'd throw that in there

Hope you get a lot of replies on this thread, could be interesting.

Peace.G.
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