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Old 07-03-2012, 02:24 AM   #38
philipsmith
Dojo: Ren Shin Kan
Location: Birmingham
Join Date: Jun 2003
Posts: 362
United Kingdom
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Re: It happens to the best of them

Quote:
George S. Ledyard wrote: View Post
I came to this late.... out of town.

At first I was tempted to take the O-Sensei video at face value and assume that the Founder's knees were simply older than his perpetually youthful attitude about waza, i.e his knee gave out when he dropped and he tipped over. But after many viewings I can clearly see that I was wrong in this.

Clearly O-Sensei was executing a movement from the "drunken monkey" style of Aikido, not taught publicly. What appeared to be a knee collapsing was really a masterful use of the neutral pivot point or "jiku point" allowing the Founder to give the appearance of falling sideways (thereby avoiding any strike that would have been coming at his head from the rear).

The hand he put down that appeared to be supporting him as he pushed up was actually a manifestation of the vertical dimension as shown in the "aiki cross"... his ki clearly in balance out of the palm and the shoulder simultaneously. It served as an anchor to the Earth should he have chosen to project his legs up for a spinning kick.

The uninitiated might well believe that he was slightly unstable as he got up as evidenced by his back and forth motion as he got his hips underneath him again. But that would only show their low level of understanding as it is clear to anyone with deeper knowledge of internal power and the spiritual world of Shinto that the Founder was demonstrating the very advanced concept of the "floating boat on a rough sea" as described in the Kojiki. What appears to be somewhat unstable movement is in reality an extremely advanced technique for projecting a wave like energy outwards thereby making ones opponent unstable and is one of the secret techniques of Daito Ryu.

I am continually appalled at the low level of discussion on the forums by people who profess to know better. How Dan could have thought that this man, the greatest martial artist of all time had merely fallen down is a testament to the infinite subtlety of the Founder's aiki.
That gave me a chuckle on a very wet Tuesday morning!
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