View Single Post
Old 07-07-2011, 10:26 AM   #20
JW
 
JW's Avatar
Location: San Diego CA USA
Join Date: Aug 2000
Posts: 561
Offline
Re: Slight expansion on jin & flexible frame

Hi John- what you have described sounds ideal, and really exciting. Do you feel that you are doing "new" or "different" aikido now, or simply aikido as it always was in some sense supposed to be?

Oh, also, what did Ikeda do 10 years ago that was light bulb-ish? Was it things from the baseline parameters? (I haven't met him yet but I keep trying to think about how different people have different impressions of what he does/did.)

And, regarding love/feelings and Graham's point of view. It occured to me that there may be very interesting ways at getting at subsets of the skills Mike is talking about. Some of these ways may use certain visualizations to accomplish certain tasks, which is no surprise (because visualizations are a creative way of directing the yi, which will direct the qi). What I am realizing though is that one can employ "emotional visualizations" as much as any spatial/physical visualization.
It's another type of visualization and it could have useful impact of the state of one's qi. I could see "love" and "acceptance" and "confidence" as emotional visualizations that may affect the torso, and certainly will help one relax and allow connection to manifest into the extremities. This is a bit of speculation here.
It is a fascinating possibility.

I do recognize though that Mike is presenting the foundation for a very full understanding that allows one to operate independent of any elaborate visualizations once one has started to progress. So, although there is no immediately obvious philosophical potential here, I have found exploring these ideas in fact very enriching.
  Reply With Quote