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Old 03-07-2012, 07:49 PM   #48
Mario Tobias
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 261
Philippines
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Re: What makes Aikido unique as a martial art ?

Quote:
Kevin Leavitt wrote: View Post
It does seem to attract those that want to intellectualize.
Aikido does indeed need a lot of analysis, theorizing and validation. IMHO, it is not an art based on a collection of techniques but on a collection of principles. That is probably why it takes so long to understand because the principles are hard to analyze, theorize and validate. Over the years in your career, you don't actually collect techniques but you collect principles one by one as you become "enlightened" . Aikido, imo is a principle-based art and not a form-based art. That is the big difference for me.

The difficult thing is that unless you know what to analyze, you can't come up with the theories. Even if you start generating ideas for theories, the next comes the next to impossible task of validating those theories as that idea of yours needs to work on every body morphology.

An example of a principle I know (although it is a natural law) is to use/apply of the concept of work in physics terms to understand where use of energy is minimal to control uke. Our idea of what work is is totally different in the context to work as described as a physical entity. Our mental idea of work is to labor, and in doing labor you are exerting effort every time. But in physics, work = Force X distance. Work is dependent on 3 factors: Force(Ki), distance(where you displace uke or a portion of him) and the angle of the force and distance (relative position of nage and uke). You are doing maximal work if the angle of the force and direction of the distance is 0(or 180) degrees. On the other hand, you are doing minimal work if the angle between the two entities is 90(or 270) degrees. Work varies if the angle is between the 2 angles

As a very simple example, consider that you are travelling with a heavy suitcase. Although you might feel tired because of carrying it and think that you are doing a lot of work, it might not be the case. Consider these 4 cases:

1) if you are just carrying it and just walking along a road, you are actually doing minimal work. The force here is gravity which is towards the earths center, the displacement is parallel to the road. The angle between the 2 is 90 meaning you are doing minimal work.
2) If you are walking up a flight of stairs then you are doing some more work as the angle changes
3) If you are climbing through a ladder, then you are doing maximum work.
4) If you put down the heavy suitcase (no wheels) and push it along the road's surface, then you are doing a lot of work. In this case, not only will you contend with the force of gravity but of friction as well. Friction is along the road surface so the angle is 180.

The application in aikido. You can simplify a person's Ki(force) by imagining it running along the spine and the arm's length. You can observe in all techniques a particular movement by going perpendicular to a persons ki to minimize the energy needed to control uke. Sometimes it is in the form of circles (tangential) like iriminage or ikkyo ura. This "principle" can be applied in all techniques. Unless you know this, you will be just trapped in the forms.

Again this is just a theory of mine but since it is a law of nature, surely it will work all the time no matter who you work with. I have a collection now of about 30 odd "principles" over a 2 decade period. The collection started very slowly but started to accelerate these past few years. The beauty of it is no matter how much difficulty you encounter, you always learn something new every practice. The so called "enlightenment" never stops.
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